Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Do you need a business plan if you’re not building a business from the ground up?
Graham and Ashkahn chime in and give a solid “maybe” as a response. It depends on a lot of factors, for sure. Do you already have financing? Are you maintaining the existing business model or revamping it?
Show Resources
FTS Product – Business Plan Package
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Ashkahn: Hey, everybody.
Graham: All right, another day, another podcast.
Ashkahn: Yep, yep. We actually have a slogan now, huh?
Graham: Kind of. I’m Graham.
Ashkahn: I’m Ashkahn.
Graham: And today’s question is, “I’m buying an existing float tank …” man, a lot of purchasing float tank questions.
Ashkahn: Recently, yeah.
Graham: Yeah, recently. All right, so, “I’m buying an existing float tank center. Do I still need to have a business plan?” Well-
Ashkahn: Yeah, you should definitely purchase one from some sort of reputable float tank business plan company, I would say. That would be my advice.
Graham: Not all business plans are made equal, okay?
Ashkahn: There’s really only one, I think, that would be justified to purchase.
Graham: Yeah, there’s only one that’s made equal to itself. That’s it. That’s ours.
Well, okay, so there’s two ways to look at this, right? Or I guess there’s just different levels of business plan and business planning, and you didn’t capitalize yours. You obviously mean lower cased business plan.
Ashkahn: The informal.
Graham: Yeah, but should you have a plan of how you’re going to run your business and staff it and market and make a profit and all those kinds of technical details? Absolutely. I mean, you need them. You’re about to run a business, you know?
Ashkahn: You should have a plan.
Graham: Yeah. So, in that sense, you need to plan.
Ashkahn: For your business.
Graham: In the other sense, like, do you need a robust-
Ashkahn: Business Plan.
Graham: …30 page written business plan and five years of projected financials and kind of this more robust, capital B-P Business Plan? I mean, only if you’re financing the purchase of your float center, really. In that sense, it’s the same way as if you were building this from scratch, which is, it’s going to cost money to purchase and you can often get loans or investment for a purchase of something as well, just like you can for building it out. So if you’re doing that, then you probably need to have about the same diligence with your business planning that you would if you were starting from scratch. I guess the nice thing is some of those numbers can be filled in with the business that you’re taking over. Rather than needing to make projections for what your first year is going to be when you’re drawing on a totally blank canvas, you have someone to give those to you, and as far as things to market and what their usual customers are that are coming in.
A lot of these things that are guesses before you’re getting into a new business are solid and, again, should be provided in a really nice form by the people you’re purchasing this thing from. So, it’ll certainly make the planning easier.
Ashkahn: Yeah, I mean, yeah. A lot of times people are making business plans to go to a bank or investors or something like that, and finance the start-up costs, and if you are needing to finance the purchase of another float center, they might ask you for a business plan in that context, too.
Graham: Yeah, they likely will.
Ashkahn: It’s just going to be a different sort of beast in either way, right? When you’re writing a business plan to get a loan to start up a float tank center, you’re talking about, like, “Here’s the type of space I’m going to be looking for, here’s why I think this neighborhood would be good.” You’re making a lot of projections about why you think this area would enjoy a float center and there’s just so much more kind of intangible stuff going on there than if you’re purchasing an existing business that has already a track record of how many customers are coming in. Like, the bank’s probably going to want to know what are you going to do to improve these numbers or get this profitability higher or-
Graham: Or why is buying a float tank center here especially valuable right now?
Ashkahn: Why are they selling it? Why is it even up for sale in the first place? Those are the sorts of questions. And if you’re financing it yourself, this could be a lot more casual. You may just have that information from the float center you’re buying it from and even maybe have operational information.
Graham: I was going to say, an operations guide in that case is almost more … well, I don’t know, there’s still the whole marketing side of things and how are you going to make this valuable and in that sense, it is more operational. It’s kind of like the logistical business plan of how are you going to do this, and rough costs. Like, roughly what are my utility costs going to be per month, and hopefully, like Ashkahn was saying, that’s provided by the center you’re purchasing, and a lot of those variables will be stable. You still need to figure out what the heck you’re going to do when you take over these keys and grab your center. That’s going to exist no matter what.
Ashkahn: But yeah, I mean, with the capital B-P, I wouldn’t … if the center has finances you can look at and the basics of running their place-
Graham: If they’re not going for a loan.
Ashkahn: If they’re not going for the loan. If some of that stuff’s already there, I wouldn’t be tempted to sit down and write a formal 50-page business plan.
Graham: I’m pretty anti-business plan except for the purpose of raising money. I think a lot of that time that you’re going into detailed financial projections for five years could be better spent on-
Ashkahn: Running something in the real world.
Graham: … a little more day-to-day kind of things. So, I think we’re on the exact same page for that. So, again, the answer is maybe, for whether or not you need a business plan, but you definitely need a firm sense of operations and an operational plan for what you’re going to start instituting right when you take over.
Ashkahn: Yeah, especially because you’re flying a plane mid-flight at that point. The thing’s got to keep running from when you take it over.
Graham: Maybe you’ve never been a pilot before.
Ashkahn: Maybe the wing’s a little broken. All right, well, go dream about that for a while, and if you have any other questions, go to FloatTankSolutions.com/podcast.
Graham: Yeah. You can type those in, letter by letter.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and the little typewriter that we place behind our eyeballs will type them into our brain in sync.
Graham: I’m going to think about that now.
Ashkahn: Type that out .
Graham: I can’t get that out of my head. All right.
Ashkahn: Bye, everybody.
Graham: Talk to you guys later.
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Float Tanks in the Military – DSP 323
The military is famously tight lipped about the research it does in general. No less so than when researching seemingly benign practices like float tanks.
Graham and Ashkahn give their scoop on what they know about the military’s use of float tanks in their research and training programs.
Best Cleaning Practices without Burning Out Employees – DSP 322
Every float center has to compromise somewhere on how much cleaning to do between transitions. Where do you draw the line and how do you make sure that you’re keeping your employees happy without sacrificing sanitation?
Graham and Ashkahn remind everyone that “perfect” sanitation doesn’t exist and that making solutions collaborative in a work environment can do wonders for morale and problem solving in situations like this one.
Good Website Copy for Float Centers – DSP 321
Most websites you visit are filled with words. And that may seem simple, but if you build a website, you’re going to have to be the one to come up with those words. How do you decide what to put up there and how much is too much? What should you focus on?
Graham and Ashkahn tackle the elusive web copy problem for float centers and provide some helpful tips for anyone who’s feeling a little overwhelmed at the concept.
Being the First Float Center – DSP 320
What’s it like to be the first float center to open in an area? How do you handle it?
Graham and Ashkahn explain what it was like opening Float On, being one of the first dedicated float centers in the United States. The exciting thing is that creating awareness is really fun, but it can be a little stressful since your float center will represent floating as a practice for people.
Many of the tips here are the same for anyone opening a center: focus on awareness, be prepared to educate, and make sure your floats are the best they can be.
Latest Blog Posts
Timeline for Opening Up a Float Center
Opening up a float center is a lot like climbing a mountain. Even if you can see the peak, it’s a lot further away than you think, and when you finally get there, the journey and the destination usually end up being different than previously assumed.
In this post we’ll lay out a general process and timeline of what you may encounter on your path, from initial idea to actually operating a center.
Can you have volunteers at your center?
So you’re thinking about using volunteers in your float center?
Before we clarify what a “volunteer” actually means, we’ll first explore why a float center might be considering them in the first place. While it can be a way to provide floats to people who are otherwise unable to pay, the impulse to bring in volunteers can also stem from a desire to get some sort of free labor (later in this post we’ll dive into why you can’t actually do this, but it’s important to recognize that the instinct is understandable, especially when you have someone lined up and willing to work for free).
In addition to a desired boost in overall productivity, it’s also a way to invite more people into your center to experience what you do. Some customers actually want to help out and see what happens behind the scenes at a center.
Floating and Athletics, a Strong Relationship
One of the beautiful things about the float tank is that it serves to rejuvenate the whole person. — the body, mind, heart.
Broadly speaking, it’s a tool for homeostasis, an ideal environment that supports balance, health, and growth. This piece will look specifically at floating and athletics. For anyone who defines themselves as an athlete, or as a general pursuant of athletic endeavors, the float tank can be a powerful asset.
In this post, I’ll discuss individual athletes who float and how to look at this from a marketing perspective. I’ll also discuss past and present research, and share some thoughts on how the relationship between the athletic and floating communities might continue to unfold.
A Skeptic’s Guide to Floating
I think it’s time we addressed the giant metaphorical elephant in the salty metaphorical room — there are lots of exaggerated and untrue claims about the benefits of floating being spread around the industry.
Some are anecdotal, some are only half true, and some are just patently false. Floating has historically had a strong oral tradition tied to it — the practice has survived through word-of-mouth, one passionate floater teaching another everything they know. The unfortunate thing about this is that the information disseminated can’t be reliably tested or shared with others on a broader scale. You can’t use “my buddy Chris” as a source for a health benefit of float tanks in a newspaper article, much less for a research paper.
Now that we’re becoming a bit more mainstream, we thought it would be nice to add some clarity to what we should and shouldn’t be telling people about these difficult-to-understand, saliferous containers.
