Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
If you’re seeing a change in clientele, it can be for a variety of reasons. As different populations become aware about how floating can help them, they generally tell people with like interests who might come try it out, which then slowly creates a community of enthusiasts who are float-conscious.
Graham and Ashkahn talk specifically about how recent research and awareness has helped bring floating to those with serious pain issues, and how that can create a ripple effect in local awareness for any float center.
Show Resources
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Welcome, everybody. Today’s question comes in from one of our listeners and it is a very specific one actually which is, “Our clientele used to be more relaxation/meditation oriented. Now, more people come for pain relief and other health reasons. Is this a new trend?”
Ashkahn: Interesting. I don’t really know.
Graham: It’s not something that we’ve heard as far as an overwhelming trend coming in from either our own center or other people’s centers.
Ashkahn: Yeah. I can make some wild guesses which is …
Graham: I’m excited to hear your wild guesses.
Ashkahn: Here we go. Well, one thing I noticed is that the pain relief clientele that we have have insanely great experiences. Some of our best and most of our stories of people have these incredible life-changing experiences in the float tank focus on pain relief, so I can see that having a big impact – just a natural word of mouth. You have people coming in for pain relief. They are probably going to be some of those adamant people going out and telling other people about it. That beams a message that gets spread easily. It makes sense to me.
Graham: Yeah, for sure. It very much is the, I guess, just level of the effects that the float tank has directly relate to how many more people get told about it from that person, how many more people are coming in from word of mouth with similar ailments as well. Fibromyalgia is a good example which we ran a fibromyalgia program. We’re a part of that at our float tank center. We didn’t do a ton of outreach to the fibro community. We sent a couple of initial emails out and I have no idea how much they got pushed from there. We saw a few clients coming in.
Over the course of the next few months, it really trickled up to the point where we had a fair amount of people with fibro who’d found out about it and were coming in to float and telling other people about the condition. When you have these communities, especially of acute disorders that don’t have a lot of outs for treatments, I think that it does really naturally spread within them. When someone actually connects with the therapy that helps them, the idea of sharing that with these other people who are suffering is really appealing.
Ashkahn: What I hear from people with chronic pain all the time is that they’re willing to try anything. When you’re in that kind of persistent pain, you forget about the like, oh, that sounds weird or whatever. You’re just like, “No, I don’t care. I’ll try it. If I can find something that works out, I’ll definitely go and try it.”
Graham: There’s an analogy in the business world, especially in the investment sector of things where investors want to know if you’re building a vitamin or a painkiller. That’s the two categories that you’re putting those into. The relaxation, meditation category is the vitamin. You need to do maintenance everyday. It’s really good for you to meditate. It’s excellent to be able to spend time in a float tank and go in and relax, unwind, shut off a lot of the day’s stress. But that compared to “I have been in pain every single day for the last three months and I floated. Now I’m not in pain.” That’s the painkiller side, this acute fix to something that was going horribly wrong prior.
In the investment world, that’s also what you want is you want the painkillers, not the vitamins is what people say. It’s hard to convince people to do habits that are good for them, but people will do anything to get rid of their pain when it’s happening. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the boost in switch over from that meditation crowd over to the health and pain management crowd is just that, the effects being so much more acute. The same people are probably coming in more often, too. It is hard to build a practice of something that’s not essential.
Ashkahn: Inversely, it might just be that the kind of meditation crowd is possibly some of the first people to find out about a float tank center. They’re already clued into that world. It’s on their radar. Those people probably have heard about float tanks before. When a place opens in town, they’re probably going to be some of the first customers to come try it out. It might be just that. You’re noticing that first wave of people all happens to be someone who are the most likely people to be like, “Oh, nice. A float center is open. I’m going to check that out now.”
Graham: It is true. I hear less so for float centers that are just starting up. But, when we were getting started and for a couple of years afterwards, we had the exact same thing with the Roganite crowd, people who listen to the Joe Rogan podcast, were almost always the early adopters. Half of your clientele, when you first opened up a float tank center five years ago, are all people who just heard about it through Joe Rogan and then slowly that transitions into a much broader general public. You have some more awareness and stability in your community.
Ashkahn: Interesting question though. It’s one of those things as the industry gets bigger, we’ll have more data on and be able to answer these in more sophisticated ways. But, until then, you can just hear us say whatever we think based off nothing.
Graham: Based on fact, not based on fact. It’s a flip of coin at the end of the day.
Ashkahn: It’s all coming out. It’s all coming out.
Graham: The short answer to your question is, no, we personally haven’t noticed any trends.
Ashkahn: Definitely not.
Graham: All right. Thanks, everyone. We’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Benefits of a Free Float Giveaway – DSP 315
Float On has been known throughout the years for pulling off outlandish marketing stunts with mixed success. For example, we ran a giveaway on social media back in 2014 for a full year of free floats to our lucky winner.
Derek and Ashkahn provide a follow up on the success of that campaign and talk about the primary, secondary, and tertiary benefits that came from doing such a major giveaway.
The Importance of Social Media – DSP 314
Social media seems to be the only marketing platform that anyone talks about anymore. How to do facebook ads, when to post on Instagram, how to improve Google SEO… it’s a broad topic that seems to dominate the conversation in marketing.
Ashkahn and Derek explain not only why it seems this way, but the misconception of relying too heavily on social media in marketing strategies, as well as a defense of social media as a platform.
How to not be salesy selling memberships – DSP 313
Derek and Ashkahn give the low down on pitching memberships to customers. A lot of float center owners don’t want to come off as pushy sales people after people get out of their floats.
Ashkahn sympathizes with this a lot, since that’s exactly how he felt when he first started selling memberships for Float On. He and Derek suggest a perspective shift on the idea of memberships, as lots of customers end up being appreciative of the opportunity, and don’t feel like they’re being overly pitched to.
Why is Water Treatment Important? – DSP 312
If float tank water is safe, in part because of all the salt, then why is there such a huge emphasis in the industry for water treatment? After all, there haven’t been any reports of anyone getting sick because of floating.
Ashkahn and Graham tackle this question and challenge the idea on its face, because, well, just because something hasn’t been reported doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, and given how little is known about water treatment in float tanks, it’s a good idea, as an industry, to minimize the risk of infections and illness as much as possible. Really, there’s a lot of reasons, from peace of mind, complying with health regulation standards, and even marketing, to maintain your float tank solution to as high a standard that you can.
Soundproofing Windows of Your Float Center – DSP 311
Graham and Ashkahn discuss soundproofing windows of a float center, but first they talk about which situations may even warrant soundproofing in the first place. It may be that soundproofing is better prioritized elsewhere.
If you do decide to soundproof your window, the guys give you some tips on how best to do it and what to look for when picking out which type of glaze you may want along with a few other options.
Latest Blog Posts
What? Another Product Announcement? The New and Improved About Float Tanks Guide!
We’ve learned a lot since then, so has the industry and the rest of the world. Floating is no longer considered some obscure practice. The industry has become very well established the world over and is continuing to grow. As such, the About Float Tanks Guide in particular desperately needed updating.
There has been new research, new standards in manufacturing, and as an industry, we have a much better understanding of all things float tank.
Download the latest version today!
Announcing: The 2017 Float Tank Industry Report
In 2014 we started gathering answers to a survey that would eventually become the very first State of the Float Industry Report. We've released one every year since, and this year we (once again) have the most contributions that we've ever had. In total, 193 existing...
Working with a Landlord
If you’re planning on opening up a float center, it’s likely that you’ll end up renting and, therefore, working closely with a landlord. Like any business relationship, it takes communication, discernment, and openness to make a renter-landlord relationship feel truly comfortable.
Everyone involved is taking a risk and the reality is that, when it comes to floating, it’s probably more risk than your average small business – craft shop, bar, hair salon, law office, what-have-you.
This piece also includes a free download – a compilation of support letters from float center landlords!
Employees vs. Independent Contractors. Which is better when offering additional services?
Part of what makes all of this so confusing is there isn’t a one-size-fits-all set of actions that differentiates a standard employee from an independent contractor. Your State regulators, the federal Department of Labor, and the IRS all have their own criteria for what constitutes an “independent contractor”. Here, we’ll just be using the IRS definitions as a sort of jumping off point to the issue. If the status of employees is ever challenged, the IRS determines the status on a case-by-case basis over several criteria by a panel of judges, very similar to American Idol.
Basically it comes down to who is in control of the work. How much control does the company have over the type of job being done vs. how much control does the person providing the service. This manifests in different ways, but to fit the definition of an independent contractor, a service provider really does have to be independent. Beyond just using this guide, you should always consult an HR lawyer if you feel like there’s any confusion or ambiguity.
Basically, the rules fall into three main categories…
