Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
In this episode, Graham goes solo again to answer a particularly loquacious listener who sent in a question about how to logistically handle your changeover when a floater comes out early.
It can be tempting to start your changeover as soon as possible, especially if you have a few of them to get to, but Graham lays out some helpful things to remember before flipping that switch and running your pumps before the allotted time.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: All right, hello everybody. I am Graham, once again holding down the fort here alone in the studio. I guess not alone, Jordan is also here, but he’s just not in front of the mic, he’s behind the mic. He’s actually making some really animated faces right now. What’s that? You’re giving every listener $10? That’s really generous of you. Just go to floattanksolutions.com/jordanowesmemoney.
Getting back to the actual episode, boy is there a question today. It’s a really long one, and it takes a little explanation too, at the very beginning. So, it’s a long question with a footnote. Let’s just go ahead with it.
“Hi”, first of all. Hello. “What do you encourage your tacos and taco supremes to do when someone wakes and starts showering in a time of limbo?”
First of all, instead of managers and regular level employees, we call them taco supremes and tacos, is the background there. Time of limbo, I assume he means that time after you die but before you’re actually in your assigned afterlife. So, when you’re actually in this beyond living and death state, or just maybe a transition between floats. Not exactly sure.
“By that, I mean five to ten minutes before the scheduled time to start playing the music.” Okay, so I guess it was time between floats. “I understand that short floats can be good, and I’ve found that, especially for the first time, a 50 minute float can be the norm, as people’s minds start wondering about the wake up music. Thinking they are done with their floats, I wish to start their pumps so that the water can filter and thus start getting the room ready for the next client. However, my concern is that they are showering for excessive salt in the face or they just wanted to check their phone and intend on hopping back in until they hear the music. Just trying to find the balance for myself and recommendations for staff between being efficient in the workspace while not being totally invasive to the person and their session”
That was a big one. Basically, it’s just coming down to someone gets out of their float early, before the scheduled wake up music to come on to actually end their float, what do you do? Do you turn on the music early? Do you assume they’re getting out and run the pump so that you can actually get the next person in, maybe with a little more time? What is the right ethical and moral answer? I’m not too divided, and I’m the only one here so that’s really all that matters. I would say just don’t turn on the music initially. Turn it on at the scheduled time. Don’t turn on the pump early. If they come out of the room and they say yes, I’m totally done with my float, I’m not going back in that room, for sure turn on the pump or anything else, assuming that it doesn’t interfere with anyone who’s still in the tanks. At Float On this is another level to this problem. Even if people get out early at our shop and we know that they’re out of the room, our rooms are still right next to other rooms that usually have other people floating in them, so we can’t really turn on our pump equipment anyway, just because it would pass right into the tanks next door.
So, in our case it’s not a bonus even if we know that they have come out, but again, the customer is paying money to come in, or even if it’s a free float, it’s a free full length float, whatever that means for you, an hour or an hour and a half. So, if someone is out and showering, especially if it’s just 10 minutes beforehand and you think that they’re getting out anyway, don’t assume anything. It’s way better to, yourself, just have to rush a little bit more during transitions or again, get the next customer in on time as opposed to early. Way better to do that than to anger a customer by assuming that they’re done with the float. If you weren’t actually done with the float but the pump turns on while you’re in the shower, just getting salt out of your eyes, I’d feel a little bit rushed or almost that my calming experience was being pushed on a little bit excessively from the outside.
In things like this, I think, especially as a business owner, it’s important to really think of the needs of the customer ahead of just your own, or even the customer who’s coming in next. In this case, again, don’t worry too much about whether they’re coming out early or not. Your reaction should just be the same, which is assume that they’re staying in there full time. Turn on the music once they’re actually out, or turn on the pump again if you are able to run it, once you know for sure they’re out of the room. That’s it. Good, I hope that was satisfying.
If you have your own short or lengthy questions to send our way, cruise on over to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and I’ll be joined back in the studio in just a couple days with my co-host Ashkahn. Have that to look forward to. All right everyone, have a good one out there. Talk to you tomorrow.
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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.
