Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Today’s Daily Solution explores why Float On runs 90 minute floats versus shorter ones, and talks about various float lengths and what choosing them means for your float schedule and, ultimately, your business.
As always, Ashkahn and Graham dig deep into their float bibles and guide us to wisdom, truth, and prosperity.
Show Resources
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: We’re going over a question from one of our listeners, which is,
“What are the benefits and downsides of 60 versus 90 minute floats?”
I should probably start this by saying that we have only ever run 90 minute floats and longer in our shop.
Ashkahn: Yeah, we have no idea what we’re talking about.
Graham: This is nothing but gut feeling and intuition and hunches on what’s about to come out of our mouth right now.
Ashkahn: But, there are reasons that we’ve only ever run 90 minute floats.
Graham: One thing I like about 90 minutes over 60 minutes is that it feels a little more intentional or prescriptive in a certain sense whereas our world just kinda runs on 60 minute time blocks so it feels very arbitrary, whereas when you tell someone your float is 90 minutes long it feels more like you’re saying that’s the length of time we think you need to be in there to have the experience that we’re trying to get you to have.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and I think one of the concerns that goes on the flip side of that is that without the option of 60 minutes, people would just think that 90 minutes is too long because that’s kind of their programming is to accept these things in 60 minute blocks.
Graham: I haven’t really found that to be true in our float center. I have had people call and I picked up the phone and as their booking an appointment they ask how long the appointment is and I’ll tell them, oh, you know it’s 90 minutes long, and they’ll often say, wow, that sounds like a long time, and I’ll say that you know pretty much everyone comes out and says that it felt like 30 minutes, and they say okay and they book their appointment, and that’s usually the end of it. I really can’t think of a time that I’ve told someone it’s 90 minutes instead of 60 and they’ve hung up and not booked their appointment as a result.
Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s one of the great secrets of being a float tank center owner is that what we do is so weird that no one knows about it so they just kinda trust you, inherently.
Graham: They shouldn’t, but they do.
Ashkahn: When they come in, if they say 90 minutes seems long, just you telling them I don’t think it is and you’ll enjoy yourself. They’re like “oh, okay, yeah that makes sense.”
Graham: Especially if it’s their first float. I think people get some benefits out of 90 minutes that they might not in 60 minutes, like just the fact that you can be in there past that kind of 45 minute mark that seems to be about where people kinda slip into the zone during their first float. They get a much longer period of time in that kinda “floaty state”, and I again, totally based on no real data, just hunches, feel like they maybe will come back to float more often after just a single float when you give them that 90 minutes instead of 60.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and that’s definitely something that’s always appealed to us I guess about doing the slightly longer floats is just giving people that extra benefit that comes along with staying in the tank for longer and hopefully better experience that encourages them to come back and if you can’t tell this is our totally unbiased report on 60 versus 90, by the way. I think you can pretty clearly see pros and cons on both sides, equally weighing out.
Graham: The obvious downside is that you can’t run as many floats, and there’s no getting around that. You just literally will not be able to have as many appointments, and you don’t charge 50% more for a 90 minute float that people are charging for a 60 minute float, so there’s definitely some kind of direct, on the surface economic downside to it.
Ashkahn: As long as you’re rocking out and keeping a really high capacity.
Graham: If you’re running a bunch of 60 minute floats but you can’t fill those anyway, again it goes back to the question of “why not just increase it and kinda give everyone a little longer in the float tank?”
Graham: What about for places that aren’t Portland and the bulk of the population wakes up before 10:00 a.m. where maybe they run on a little faster timeline? I hear that a lot of that too for New York or L.A. People wanting to just go in and out of the tank just to be able to fit it in with something like a lunch break, I mean that’s why even places we’ve stopped by tend to offer things that to us seem ludicrous, but apparently have been working out very well commercially like 30 minute floats or 45 minute floats.
Ashkahn: We don’t see them a lot, but there are a few places out there that do it and tell us it’s been going well. Again this is our very Portland experience, but I don’t get a ton of people that I feel like are trying to come in quickly and like work this into their schedule.
I feel like when people come to float it’s much more like when it’s a whole day that they have off and they have something like a picnic planned afterwards and you know it’s kind of the beginning of some big, nice relaxing day they’ve planned for themselves rather than try to just scrunch it in right away between two appointments.
Graham: Maybe that’s cause we’re not offering anything that could be scrunched in between appointments as much? Maybe they just don’t go as deep like in 90 minute floats. It kinda does bring you a little bit to this other realm, you know. Trying to do a 30 minute float, maybe it just takes you a little bit less out of the day to day zone, and people are able to kinda sneak it in almost more like a meditation break or something.
Ashkahn: I was just talking to Tom Fine about this actually, because he was talking about his research and how they did 45 minute floats in a lot of his research and how some of this research in Sweden is the same thing, 45 minute. Tom said they’d even done some 30 minute floats.
Graham: As a tangent too, they thought we were crazy in Sweden when we were telling them that we were doing 90 minute floats when we first went over there some years ago.
Graham: Nearly every center over there thought that we were … they were …we were sitting at dinner table and they were actually telling us that we were crazy for doing floats that long. And over there, 45 minutes is really is much more the norm. Okay, tangent over.
Ashkahn: So Tom Fine’s suggestions that, perhaps there’s different benefits that you’d get at the 30 minute mark versus the hour mark versus the hour and a half mark. If someone’s coming in for something maybe more like shoulder pain or back pain, that 30 minutes might get them to the spot where they get the relief they’re looking for and beyond that doesn’t actually contribute a whole lot more. Whereas if someone is looking for a different type of benefit from floating, it might take that full hour, hour and a half sort of time range to reach it. So, I don’t know, and it’s just his theory as well but definitely an interesting thing to think about.
Graham: So you heard it here, we’re not actually certain about anything.
Ashkahn: That’s right.
Graham: What about combo floats? So doing things that are 60 minutes and then sometimes doing 90 minutes. Or running half of your tanks of 60, half on 90 and then the other half on two and a half hours?
Ashkahn: It’s mostly difficult to get around the logistics of something like that. If you have a fixed schedule where all of your floats are starting at set times during the day, like all at 1:00 p.m. and then a whole other batch at 3:00 p.m. and another batch at 5:00 p.m., it’s really difficult to offer 60 minutes because if someone chooses 60 minutes, you’re not gonna shift your whole schedule structure around to shorten everything.
You’re just going to get them out 30 minutes early, and then your float tank is just going to sit there empty for 30 minutes. To me that’s almost a little bit silly because it would have cost you like $0 more to have someone stay in the float tank for that full time. So there’s that and having two different rooms that have different lengths of float mostly just gets into difficulty with your floats not starting at the same time, which is hard for taking groups of people and for noise. Making sure that noise from one room isn’t disturbing a float in another room.
Graham: That’s a good lesson that people can get going into this from the outside and those who aren’t actively running the float tank center right now might not realize, which is that pumps in the float tanks are really noisy. It sounds like a jet engine kicking on in there sometimes, especially when you’ve been in a float tank and you’re used to the quiet solitude and that noise really, despite all the crazy soundproofing we do, actually just blasts right through the walls. It’s very, very rare that we found a float center that can run a pump in a room adjacent to another float room and have that noise not just immediately blast over to whoever is in the other tank.
So when we’re saying about starting at the same time, that’s a little bit of that reason is pump noise is just so hard to block out plus the noise of cleaning and doing walk-throughs. It’s just one of those challenges again that lot of people first getting into this might not recognize as something that needs to be overcome if you want to run those different schedule float tanks.
Ashkahn: At our center we offer two and a half hour floats as well as 90 minute floats and the way we get away with it is we just have a time of day where all of our floats switch. So at 11:00 p.m. we switch from doing 90 minute floats to two and a half hour floats and we do two of those through the middle of the night and then we switch back to doing 90 minute floats. That switch over means there are no gaps in our schedule. All of our floats still start at the same time. We don’t hit any of the snags that I just mentioned, but we do offer multiple lengths of floats.
Graham: And theoretically you could just build two totally separate float centers and do 60 minutes in one and 90 minute floats in another.
Ashkahn: And then you could let us know what the actual information is with real data and not just random hunches.
Graham: People wouldn’t need to trust our random, off the cuff information that we’re spewing out here.
Ashkahn: Yeah, so that’d be good. Someone should do that.
Graham: All right, that’s the benefits of 60 and 90 minute floats, and we’ll see you next episode.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Why Do Float Centers use Child Sized Earplugs? – DSP 245
When shopping around for earplugs for float tanks, there’s only a few that actually work well in the float solution. One of these is the Mack’s wax earplugs, basically the standard for swimmers as well. But why do so many float centers buy the child sized ones when stocking their float center?
Ashkahn “Big Ears” Jahromi let’s all of us know what he thinks is going on and that many people may be using these earplugs incorrectly. Graham “Normal Ears” Talley, backs him up with some facts and important reminders.
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Many of the studies on floating have demonstrated an impact on the parasympathetic nervous system. Graham and Ashkahn talk about the information that’s been studied so far.
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Are Google Ads Important – DSP 241
When looking at online marketing, Google Ads seem like an obvious choice, but are as relevant for Float Centers as they are for other businesses? The most useful thing these ads do is boost search result placement, but if the ads are to boost the ranking of a float center that is the only center in town, it’s not going to affect search results much.
Derek and Graham dissect the platform and really focus in on the uses (or lack thereof) of Google Ads for float centers and provide tools and tips for online marketing and how to make it as effective as possible.
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In this post, we’ll be looking at those enigmatic acronyms: TAM, SAM, and SOM, which are the backbone for the market analysis section of your written plan. We’ve helped a couple hundred float centers to develop their business plans, and we’ve found that this one area generates the most questions, and seems to generally be the most difficult to wrap your head around.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #9
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Rather than following the usual path of incremental progress with its research, LIBR is tasked with pursuing alternative treatments that have a chance of “shooting the moon” and making potentially large leaps in medical progress. Float tanks are just the kind of technology they’re looking to explore.
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On our journey we found at least three owners who are actively looking to sell their float tank centers, and in all three cases the centers are doing well. Life often calls us in different directions than we expect.
In case you’re in the market for a pre-established business, without all the trials and tribulations of starting from scratch, here’s information on two centers that are, for the moment, available to swoop in on…
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #8
The desert is vast and the sun is harsh, but it doesn’t deter floating. We’re officially off the beaten path. From here, the float centers have become a bit more spread out. Everywhere we go, however, the people continue to be kind and eager to see us.
Everything in between Arizona and Texas is nestled in between some of the major manufacturers in the United States, providing some resources that other areas just don’t have. Areas that might find building out a center prohibitively expensive due to additional shipping costs, not to mention that real estate is cheaper than in major metropolitan areas, can save a bit of money when planning their buildout.
Show Highlights
Show Resources
Show Transcription
(in case you prefer reading)
Recent Podcast Episodes
Why Do Float Centers use Child Sized Earplugs? – DSP 245
When shopping around for earplugs for float tanks, there’s only a few that actually work well in the float solution. One of these is the Mack’s wax earplugs, basically the standard for swimmers as well. But why do so many float centers buy the child sized ones when stocking their float center?
Ashkahn “Big Ears” Jahromi let’s all of us know what he thinks is going on and that many people may be using these earplugs incorrectly. Graham “Normal Ears” Talley, backs him up with some facts and important reminders.
What Causes that Float Tank Twitch? – DSP 244
Graham and Ashkahn discuss what causes that mysterious twitch people sometimes experience in the float tank, called the hypnic jerk (AKA hypnagogic jerk, sleep start, sleep twitch, myoclonic jerk, or night start ). While the guys offer up some interesting theories, there’s not a lot of research that’s been done on what causes these, so we’re left with theories, more or less.
Ashkahn thinks it has to do with pancakes.
Does floating impact the Parasympathetic Nervous System? – DSP 243
The Parasympathetic Nervous System is the part of your body that gets really excited when the rest of your body is winding down. Taking care of the digestive and rest systems are an important part of human health and physiology. How do float tanks affect this system?
Many of the studies on floating have demonstrated an impact on the parasympathetic nervous system. Graham and Ashkahn talk about the information that’s been studied so far.
Getting Salty With Speakers – Professor Hu – DSP 242
Dr. Peicheng Hu is a researcher from China that studies floatation therapy over there. He’s speaking at the Float Conference this year so Ashkahn decided to take the opportunity to talk to him about the Chinese float industry and some of the differences in the practice as well as the type of research being done out there.
Are Google Ads Important – DSP 241
When looking at online marketing, Google Ads seem like an obvious choice, but are as relevant for Float Centers as they are for other businesses? The most useful thing these ads do is boost search result placement, but if the ads are to boost the ranking of a float center that is the only center in town, it’s not going to affect search results much.
Derek and Graham dissect the platform and really focus in on the uses (or lack thereof) of Google Ads for float centers and provide tools and tips for online marketing and how to make it as effective as possible.
Latest Blog Posts
Fancy Acronyms for your Business Plan: TAM, SAM, and SOM
In this post, we’ll be looking at those enigmatic acronyms: TAM, SAM, and SOM, which are the backbone for the market analysis section of your written plan. We’ve helped a couple hundred float centers to develop their business plans, and we’ve found that this one area generates the most questions, and seems to generally be the most difficult to wrap your head around.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #9
The Float Tour makes a stop in Tulsa, OK to visit Dr. Justin Feinstein’s Float Clinic and Research Center at the Laureate Institute of Brain Research (LIBR).
Rather than following the usual path of incremental progress with its research, LIBR is tasked with pursuing alternative treatments that have a chance of “shooting the moon” and making potentially large leaps in medical progress. Float tanks are just the kind of technology they’re looking to explore.
Float Tank Centers for Sale
On our journey we found at least three owners who are actively looking to sell their float tank centers, and in all three cases the centers are doing well. Life often calls us in different directions than we expect.
In case you’re in the market for a pre-established business, without all the trials and tribulations of starting from scratch, here’s information on two centers that are, for the moment, available to swoop in on…
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #8
The desert is vast and the sun is harsh, but it doesn’t deter floating. We’re officially off the beaten path. From here, the float centers have become a bit more spread out. Everywhere we go, however, the people continue to be kind and eager to see us.
Everything in between Arizona and Texas is nestled in between some of the major manufacturers in the United States, providing some resources that other areas just don’t have. Areas that might find building out a center prohibitively expensive due to additional shipping costs, not to mention that real estate is cheaper than in major metropolitan areas, can save a bit of money when planning their buildout.
