Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Time management and maintaining your schedule is one of the most important quality controls in a float center. If you can’t get people out on time, it can throw off your schedule for the rest of the day. So, when does a float start? How do you measure that time? And what do you do if a floater starts late? Cut off their float? The next persons?
Graham and Ashkahn have been running Float On in a particular way for a long time now, and have particular insights into the challenges of how you manage your schedule.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Today’s question is, “when does a float start? When the shower starts? When they get out of the tank? Also, how to handle when people are late, or talking too much. I have a few chatty guests who throw the time off.”
Ashkahn: When does a float start? It’s one of those questions I hope our customers never ask.
Graham: You’re gonna say a Sophist kind of question, like “what’s the sound of one hand clapping?” When does a float start?
Ashkahn: Yeah, if the float starts and no one’s in the tank, is it really started?
Graham: Time is just an illusion, so … So, we … I guess it’s probably different for different centers, as well.
Ashkahn: It is different.
Graham: The way that we do it at Float On, is the timing for the floats just starts at whatever time the appointment starts at. And it ends a half an hour before the next client needs to come in.
Ashkahn: So, we’re kind of … yeah, we’re lying to people a little bit.
Graham: But, we also try to get people in early, so let’s back up from there. So, basically, if there’s a 9:00pm float, the 90 minutes for a 90-minute float starts at 9:00pm. Which means at 10:30, the music’s gonna come on. And for us, the reason that we do that is because, in order to keep our schedule, we just need to make sure that the music comes on at a certain time, so we have time to change over our rooms. And part of that’s because we stay busy, and another part of that is because we have all of our floats starting at the exact same time.
Ashkahn: Which is six tanks. So we’re doing a six-tank turnover in that 30 minutes.
Graham: Which means timing ends up being really important for us, so our decision starts at the fact we need that music to go on at, for a 9:00pm float, 10:30. Which means we kind of don’t have wiggle room for waiting for people to get in the tank, or measuring exactly when they shut the door to the float tank and lay down, or anything like that.
Ashkahn: So, unfortunately, for us, it’s really … if you go into your room at nine o’clock, you’re still showering and all that stuff, so your float’s probably actually only like 85 minutes, or something like that. And double unfortunately, especially if it’s your first time and we gotta go in and give you the whole walkthrough speech and everything, that cuts into that time, too. And, by the same token, if people come early, like you were saying … Especially our regulars, will show up five, ten minutes early. It depends on which room, some of our rooms get finished 10 minutes before the mark, some get finished right at the mark, stuff like that. But, if they’re early and the room’s ready, we’ll throw them in there, and they might get longer than 90 minutes.
Graham: Yeah. And some of our members are actually really smart about just trying to optimize their tank time, too. I know at least two of them that come in pre-showered. Like, they shower at their house before they come into Float On so they don’t have to waste early float time showering there.
Ashkahn: That’s funny.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: And this really might vary a lot from center to center, but at our center, unfortunately, there’s probably a chance a lot of people aren’t actually getting 90 minutes inside the float tank, because of that shower time and the way that our schedule runs and everything. But, even despite that, it’s very rarely brought up. It’s really not that often that a customer will even ask us what their time is based on, or when it counts as started.
Graham: And when we start to bring it up, too, I just kind of give them this stern, disapproving look and they usually just sort of drop it.
Ashkahn: Kick them out.
Graham: It’s what happens to floaters who ask questions.
Ashkahn: And it might be one of the benefits of having 90-minute sessions over 60-minute sessions. Like, I think people are kind of sweating the exact minutes a lot less at 90 minutes than they do for 60 minutes. Like, 55 minutes instead of 60 is kind of a bigger deal. And, I find the same thing for our two-and-a-half hour float, it’s almost nobody cares if they’re getting in five minutes late, or something like that.
Graham: Yeah, I was just gonna mention that our late night floats are definitely an extension of them.
Ashkahn: Yeah, no one’s counting the minutes on their clock to get in there for those two-and-a-half hours.
Graham: That’s a good point, actually. I hadn’t thought about the difference between the 60 and 90. It probably is a little more important to have your schedule really honed in on getting them that full 60 minutes when you’re doing them.
Ashkahn: Yeah. And, in terms of the second part of the question, what do you do if someone’s super chatty, or something like that? The nice thing is, if someone’s super chatty and they’re eating into their own time, they’re usually the type of person who doesn’t care. Or, they’re kind of doing it to themselves, and I think they recognize that a little bit.
Graham: Yep. And this is also assuming that you’re going with our model of just starting everything, and it’s over when that start time has reached its end.
Ashkahn: Which is true, there’s a lot of places that don’t do that, and a lot of float tanks come not set to operate like that, right? Like, a lot of float tanks come with this thing where you hit “start float session.” And from the moment you hit that button, times out whatever your thing is, 90 minutes, or 90 minutes and then music, or whatever your custom setup is.
Graham: Yeah. And again, if your schedule’s not really packed, then obviously, you have a little more leeway with how nice you can be with people. If there’s not someone coming in immediately afterwards, that loosens up some of the restrictions, but to a certain extent, your hands are kind of tied. Either you can increase the length of your transitions in order to allow for the full float time of what’s booked. You can just advertise 80-minute floats or something, if you want to be totally accurate, and when people do get 90- or 95-minute floats, it’s just kind of icing on the cake.
There’s some options, but yeah, just the realities of needing to get people in on time, and the fact that when you turn on music for the people who were in there previously, they don’t always get out on time. So, keeping everything on a fixed schedule. Again, at least in our center, we haven’t really found a way to get outside of that, so it’s sort of an unnecessary, or unfortunate, necessity.
Ashkahn: And same thing for if people are late, I think was maybe the other part of the question. Unfortunately, at our place, they just get a shorter float time. We can’t really leave them in there for longer and throw off our entire routine and everything else. And really, I think this is something that’s not super conventional at every float center doing it the same way. I think really, it is, the way you set up, and exactly how busy you are, and what your timing is, and if your schedule is on a very fixed schedule. So, what you’re hearing from us is an extremely rigid, fixed structure, like all our floats start at the same time, they start at very specific times. There’s very little flexibility in the way that our schedule runs. And because of that limited flexibility, it means things like this. If people are late, they get shorter floats. If people are chatty, they get shorter floats. If we get them in late, they get shorter floats. Which is unfortunate.
Graham: Although, that’s the case where we’ll actually try to accommodate them as well.
Ashkahn: Right.
Graham: As much as possible. It’s like, okay, well, we’ll try to add an extra five minutes on to the end of your float, or something like that. All right. Yeah, there you have it.
Ashkahn: All right, if you guys have more questions, you can hop over to floattanksolutions.com/podcast, and we’ll answer them.
Recent Podcast Episodes
When DON’T you Feel Like Floating? – DSP 275
Graham has Juliet on the podcast today since Ashkahn is doing some post-Conference traveling.
The duo talks about times when floating just doesn’t feel like a good idea, which is something they have a bit of disagreement about. Juliet shares her experiences being cautious of her experiences in the tank and how she tends to have to be more mindful of when she floats.
How do you Handle Changing Memberships? – DSP 274
This year at the Float Conference, Derek hosted a marketing forum and took questions that he wanted to share with everyone here.
This episode focuses on how Float On handles memberships, including tiered memberships and how to gracefully transition from one type of membership to another.
Are Vapor Barriers a Good Idea for Float Centers? – DSP 273
You can tell when Graham starts to miss Ashkahn when he makes a soundboard made up of sound clips from previous episodes just to have Ashkahn do another intro.
Jake and Graham break down barriers in this episode. Vapor barriers, that is. These tools are a little confusing in the construction world and their efficacy is hotly debated in just regular construction, never mind the demands that a float center has, especially in regards to moisture protection. Fortunately, Graham and Jake know a thing or two about a thing or two and explain what vapor barriers are, how they work, and what the source of contention is.
What to Consider with Plumbing in a New Float Center – DSP 272
Graham and Jake talk about the confusing world of plumbing for your float center. There are any number of unpleasant surprises that can come about when planning the water lines to showers, getting floor drains in place, and making sure everything lines up how it’s supposed to. If the sewer main is too deep or not where you think it is, it can add a significant amount of cost to your build out just to get floor drains installed. Fortunately, the guys have some useful tricks to help mitigate costs and plan accordingly.
Should I use Spray-in Insulation for my Float Center? – DSP 271
Graham and Jake are still in a sans Ashkahn world at Daily Solutions, but they’re not letting it harsh their mellow.
The guys are talking about the different types of spray-in insulation today. It’s a pretty common material in construction and it can be a fantastic insulator for float centers, if you get the right type.
Jake and Graham go over the differences between open cell and closed cell insulation and why, specifically, float centers should avoid open cell insulation. They also provide some excellent pointers on the materials themselves and good conversations to have with a contractor regarding insulation.
Latest Blog Posts
Oh, the Questions You’ll Hear!
When you run a float tank center, you’re going to get asked a lot of questions. Do I float naked? Can I drown? Is this sanitary? Many of these are easy to answer: It’s recommended. Not without a conscious, and determined effort. Yes! There are some questions, however,...
Happy TANKSgiving (Giving Gifts to Monthly Members)
Monthly memberships are an important way to ensure that your float tank center has a consistent, if not dependable, amount of business.
While pricing structures for memberships vary widely across the industry, we’re focusing less on the strategy of what to charge and looking more at the benefits we’re actually offering. Once we’ve established a solid offering, then we can revisit pricing.
Running a successful monthly membership program takes more than just charging customers and making sure they use their credits. With a little creativity, we can find ways to increase engagement.
Your Flow Meter May Be Inaccurate (and what to do about it)
Float tanks tend to use a lot of parts borrowed from the pool and spa industry and, whenever that happens, it’s always important to question whether that pool part works accurately with our salt water solution. We’ve recently gained some insight into that question on...
The Float Tour Blog Roundup!
The following is our collection of links to the all of the Float Tour blogs. My chronicling of our adventure, highlighting all of you out there.
Thank you for the memories.
