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
Common Float Tank Issues – DSP 295
Graham and Ashkahn give the skinny on the foibles one my encounter when purchasing a float tank. These aren’t specific to any one manufacturer, but they are useful things to look out for when shopping around for a tank.
What is Float On’s North Star Metric? – DSP 294
Graham and Ashkahn talk about the guiding principles and metrics that dictate how they run Float On and what they measure for success. While they don’t have any float center secrets, they do provide some useful advice in how to look at numbers, when to pay attention to them, and perhaps more importantly, when to ignore them.
What Can you Say About Float Centers Closing? – DSP 293
It happens every once in a while that a center you knew closes down and it can seem like a dark omen for the rest of the industry. The reality is that these are individual circumstances that are brought about not because of a major trend as much as just life events coming up.
Graham and Ashkahn share their take on other float centers closing and what they know about it and how frequently they think it’s occurring.
How to Build a Green Float Center – DSP 292
Graham and Ashkahn talk about the options available for sustainable options when building a float center, or more accurately, the lack thereof. Unfortunately, the materials necessary to make a float room saltproof and waterproof tend to be very unfriendly for the environment.
The guys break down the specific options available and what to consider when adding green technology to your own center.
How We Financed Float On – DSP 291
Graham and Ashkahn are asked about how they financed Float On.
As the guys explain how they started, they go along slight detours to talk about all the mistakes they made along the way and how they’re unsure that Float On could even start today like it did back in 2010. They then go on to explain the pros and cons of the extreme bootstrapping they did to make Float On happen.
Latest Blog Posts
The Heart of Floating – Guest Post by Kevin McCulloch
“When we commit to The Heart of Floating, we form relationships and communities. We share experiences, we connect, we learn, we teach. We care.”
In this guest post, Kevin McCulloch, owner of Float St. Louis and organizer of the Rise: Float Community Gathering, explores the heart of floating and it’s power and potential to connect, heal, and grow individuals, relationships, and communities.
The Most Ambitious Float On Project Yet
We have a new endeavor that we’ve been working on in private for awhile now, and we think that it’s going to make a big splash in our salty little industry. After many years of testing behind closed doors, we’re finally ready to take the plunge and release our secret project to you, the floatation community.
You might want to sit down for this one….
The Start-a-Center Giveaway Returns!
Everyone knows that, when it comes to gifts, it’s much more fun to give than to receive. With this year’s Start-a-Center Giveaway, however, I’m not so sure anymore. With over $13,000 in Float Tank Solutions products going to one lucky duck (plus $4,000 worth of goodies from other float industry homies), we humbly suggest that we may have finally tipped the scales in favor of the recipient.
If you’re Charlie, this Giveaway is the Golden Ticket, which I guess makes the Construction Package a Wonka bar and the Ninja Fans are the Fizzy Lifting Drink. So, what do you have to do for a chance at all the Everlasting Gobstoppers?
It’s been three years since our last Giveaway, and we thought that it was long overdue for another one. So, what’s the dealio? The Giveaway is a chance to give a big ol’ boost to a deserving Float-Center-To-Be. This time around, we’re taking things to a whole new level, with over three times the value of products and services being given away. To you. For free.
Dear Everyone: Please reconsider building your own tanks
Look, we get it. Really. Float tanks are expensive – especially for what can seem, from the outside, like a glorified bathtub with spa parts attached. It doesn’t take long to go from, “Why is this so expensive?” to “I’ll bet I could save money by making my own tank!” After you start mulling it over, you get excited. You could be offering something no one else does right now… because it’d be your own creation! How hard can it possibly be?
As experts in only thinking about half of the consequences of our actions (at best), we’d like to say, “Incredibly hard, actually!”
