Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Customers who color or perm their hair might not want to let it get wet while floating. While Graham and Ashkahn are sympathetic to those issues, as far as they know, there isn’t really a great solution for them.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: And our question today is, “is it possible to keep your hair dry during a float?” Like, I assume, for customers who want to handle their hair treatment and stuff like that. I guess the most often reason why people want dry hair is they have coloring in it, or they got it professionally permed or styled or something else that either will mess up the water or mess up their hair. And the answer’s no.
Ashkahn: And the answer’s no.
Graham: Yep, absolutely not. It does seem like having waterproof swimmer’s caps will contain the water from getting in and mixing with hair color and getting back in the tank as much. So as far as the tank is concerned, swimmer’s cap seem to help out, but for anything that won’t get your hair wet at all. And we played around with different levels of tightnesses and things that really try to bill themselves as water won’t creep in, but just the process of laying in there for an hour, an hour and a half, like moisture is pretty bound to leach through whatever system you’ve set up.
Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s a tough one. There’s many different styles of swimming caps and stuff like that out there. And they all seem to let water leak in. It’s just really hard to create that tight of a seal.
Graham: So try this, try this. What you need to do is take a garbage bag.
Ashkahn: Okay, not where I thought that was going to start.
Graham: And get some Gorilla tape. And actually create a whole seal, maybe some Elmer’s glue as well. And what you want to do is you want the bag to go across your forehead and then down and around the back of your neck. And get good contact with your skin there. And just tape. It’s not going to be fun coming out, but you know, and tape it on over your face.
Ashkahn: If you just tape the bag over your entire head, that’ll give you a real nice seal.
Graham: I did not think of that, but I like the concept.
Ashkahn: And if you pump some air in there, works as a neck pillow, double whammy.
Graham: And probably stops you from suffocating if you pump air in there too, so that’s nice.
Ashkahn: Yeah, well usually you have to poke some holes to deal with that.
Graham: What have people done when they want to keep their hair dry? We have at least one customer who comes into float with us, right before they get their hair styled. So they do a monthly hair treatment and trip to their hair stylist person. I use a barber so I get confused sometimes. But anyways, to make they’re not totally messing up their hair, that they just paid a bunch of money to get styled, they’ll go into float, often the same day as their hair treatment is going to be. So they get to ride out the past month and then go in and not worry about messing up their hair for one day. So I thought that was kind of a clever way to still have it as part of your routine, despite also having a more regimented hair care routine as well.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and I do think if you get some serious swimmer’s caps, your hair is not going to get as soaking wet as it would, just being completely loose in the float tank.
Graham: Yeah maybe, I don’t know, water just slowly gets in there and all of a sudden you just have a cap that’s keeping in water as opposed to keeping it out.
Ashkahn: Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be slightly better, but I don’t think it’s something that, if there was a reason you don’t want to get your hair wet, this wouldn’t solve that problem.
Graham: Yeah, yeah. And certainly for customers out there, this is a good answer to know for them, if they are worried about messing up a really expensive do that they got. I tell them not to. That’s when you take out the Gorilla tape.
So I think this is a pretty short episode.
Ashkahn: Yeah, let us know if someone out there has a swimmer’s cap that they actually think really manages to keep your hair dry. Let us know.
Graham: A modified like astronaut helmet or something like that they can go in with.
Ashkahn: Yeah, that sounds great.
Graham: All right, if you have any other easy questions for us, go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast, and shoot them over.
Recent Podcast Episodes
How do you Know What to Delegate and When? – DSP 164
The eternal small business challenge. You can’t be everywhere at once, but how do you decide what to delegate and to whom? Unfortunately, there’s not an easy solution, but there are some philosophies behind how you run your business and operate that may be helpful to review.
If you’re reaching this wall and you’re not sure what to do, think about how your work is laid out and what is required of you. Some things are naturally going to be more repetitive and have more built in redundancy. That’s a good place to start looking for delegating responsibility, but it doesn’t have to end there. It all just takes time.
Graham and Ashkahn get into the Float On way and how it’s come about that they’re the owners, but don’t run the shop and are no longer making the major decisions in running it as a business. Worth a listen even if you’ve never even seen a float center before.
Float Room Construction Costs Specifics – DSP 163
In this episode, Graham and Ashkahn succinctly breakdown the cost of float room construction. The average float room cost per the industry survey is $75,000 per room. How much of that is float tank cost and how much is construction? There are some variables to consider based on geography and types of tanks, but the guys lay out the average and clarify some of the numbers we’ve released previously.
How to Delicately Handle Difficult Customers – DSP 162
Sometimes there’s just that one customer. The “Problem Child” customer that you don’t like having to deal with. The one who totally know is definitely (probably) making things up to try and get a free float. And they’re such a nuisance! What can you do about that? Obviously you don’t want them getting vengeful if you tell them to kick rocks and spread lies about you.
How do you handle that situation? Well, Graham and Ashkahn lay out some nice ground rules for how they handle people and it comes down to setting clear boundaries that at least appear rigid on the outset. Then, if those boundaries are crossed, the reactions you have are totally expected.
What’s the Difference Between a Residential and Commercial Float Tank? – DSP 161
Ashkahn and Graham break down the differences between float tanks designed for home use in comparison to ones intended for a commercial setting. Depending on how it’s intended to be used can drastically affect the construction of the tank. Most home use tanks, for example, aren’t made of fiberglass, because those large, rigid structures are difficult to move by yourself or just with one other person. Likewise, the filtration demands for a home use tank are a lot different.
Listen in and check out all the differences and which tanks are more intended for use at home as opposed to commercial use.
Do Floaters really Go into a “Theta State”? – DSP 160
Sometimes it’s difficult to differentiate the claims of scientific benefit of floating from those that are just anecdotal. The idea that floating causing greater theta brainwave activity is one of those things that sounds right, but what does the data say? And how can everyone else find out?
Fortunately, Graham and Ashkahn have done the legwork and even talked to the researchers who do this kind of stuff. They break down exactly how true the Theta claim is and what, if any, real research corroborates it.
Latest Blog Posts
Prepayment for Floats
Do you make people pay when they schedule an appointment?
We at Float On always strive to be as easy to deal with and non-intimidating as possible, so from the very beginning we have allowed people to book floats over the phone without payment. READ MORE…
The Difference Between Night and Day
We've all heard the expression, “It’s like the difference between night and day.” The term is used to draw extreme contrast. How much different is our experience of nighttime and daytime? How does it affect how we live? How we work? How we interact with our...
A Peek at the Float On Renovation
Well, we did it again. We've been closed for 2 weeks of construction already, and we still have another week to go. We're installing two new flooring and shower systems to test out, a new lobby wall for soundproofing, and we're replacing one of our Ocean Float Rooms...
The Best Time to Start a Float Center (response)
I usually don't share the responses I get from our posts, but they always spawn great conversations. After this last one, I got hit with more emails than usual, and I wanted to share one of them with you which is representative of many of the others. I've been...
