“After my first float, I had complete pain relief for 17 hours.”

Tina Graham of the UK talks about how floating in an isolation tank has helped her deal with the immense physical pain she suffers from Fibromyalgia (FM). As a result, she was eventually able to stop taking some of her medications. Tina also explores the psychological side of floating, her personal odyssey and how floating ties into her own PhD research. Here she is being interviewed at the Float Summit Conference in April 2012.

Time markers
1:10  Talks about PhD research, “flare ups” and pain
2:22  First float
4:03  Pain relief from first float
4:52  Second float
5:13  Third float
7:46  Pain relief from third float
8:08  Fourth float
9:09  Describes PhD, clinical work, synchronicity, etc.
13:17  Addresses concerns of first time floaters

Do you like experiments and new ways of thinking? Good. Think of this as an experiment. As a float center owner, try to go beyond being satisfied with hearing “It was great!” or “I feel so much better”. If you’re anything of a data nerd, you’ll probably already appreciate the need for feedback which is more quantifiable.  First, know that you’ll need to experiment to make this work, and second, remember to start off simple. Keep it voluntary and don’t annoy people.

How much better do people feel after floating?

Okay, a simple truth: all float centers are different. Some spend a lot of time with clients before and the float, others would like to but simply don’t have the time. Some prefer a laid back or laissez-faire approach that avoids interfering with the client too much. Equally, all clients are different: some engage the float center staff and other patrons, or quite understandably, some don’t want to talk after a float or think analytically about how good it was. I usually don’t. When I’m “in the zone”, thinking about it too much can rip me right out of it. But there are ways to document a floater’s experience without disrupting the flow.

Here’s one quick, easy and unobtrusive method you can try. Before each session, ask the client to report his or her “pre-float” status on a scale of 1 to 10. This is similar to what doctors, nurses, coaches or psychologists do. You can ask about sensations such as happiness, stress or pain. (If you include pain, ask people to identify the area and type of pain). Just pick a few sensations – they can be a mix of positive and negative ones – and use the same ones for all your clients. After the client has finished floating, ask for the “post-float” status update. Did the measurements go up, down or stay the same? If up or down, then by how much? Repeat this every time that person comes in for a float and record the data in a standardized way. It’s a great way for clients to put a number to how they feel and explicitly quantify the benefit, even if it is in simple terms.

Over time you should be able to nicely graph any changes and present this to your clients so they can see the results as they reported them. This data is also great to have on record when attempting to reactivate customers who have not floated in a while. You simply remind them how great they said they felt! And remember … studies show that over time people do not accurately recall how good they felt during an experience such as floating. That’s one of the real-life reasons why you have to keep marketing the benefits of floatation even to people who have already experienced great floats! And measurements like the ones we discussed are easy to obtain, and in many ways are more powerful than things like verbal testimonies – which float centers often ask their customers to provide. Certainly, the before and after measurements of mood and relaxation level will have more meaning to the customer whereas testimonies are usually extracted for the benefit of the float center.

Try it out and let us know how it worked. It’s kind of fun for both you and the customers and it becomes a great way to market floatation once you’ve accumulated a lot of data. Here’s what one float center did with their results.

1. Word of mouth

Without doubt the most powerful medium for promoting floatation and raising awareness and is interestingly also the cheapest to administer. Two-thirds of your referrals should come from word of mouth. Here are a couple of books which we believe make essential reading:

• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
• Talk is Cheap: Promoting Your Business Through Word of Mouth Advertising

2. Facebook / Social Networking

Again another wonderful device for promoting your floatation centre, and unless you enter in to pay per click advertising on Facebook it’s a free service. Set up a fans page and make sure you write something relevant to stress relief, pain control, relaxation etc., or perhaps run competitions for free sessions. Encourage your fans / followers to “like” your posts and watch your following grow. Encourage your customers to join in and get people talking / interacting.

3. Business to Business promotions

There are lots of businesses in your area – such a gyms / hotels / estate agents etc., who have their own customers – speak to these businesses and offer their customers a discount at your floatation centre and you might find in turn that they will offer your customers a discount too. A win win situation for both companies. Invite people from the local area: (for free) people who connect / talk with people – such as hairdressers / bar men / post office delivery guys – they talk to the local community, if they like it they’ll tell their friends, colleagues and customers.

4. Write letters to Radio / TV and Newspaper journalists:

The cost is only a stamp and an envelope (cheap) do this every month and try a find a new angle each time – write down every health editor and journalist address that you can gather from all the publications you can find. Keep the letter to one page and always include a picture. Journalists are usually lazy and look for something unique and interesting to write about… floatation ticks all the boxes – Invite them in for a freebie and if you supply them with relevant information in a concise and clear manner then chances are they’ll do a story.

5. Bloggers

There are literally millions of people who write commentaries on their lives, descriptions of events, reviews on health, wellness and local activities. These blogs often have thousands of followers. Invite the writers of these blogs in for a complimentary session. If they like what you do they’ll write a review and more importantly recommend what you do to thousands of people.

6. Youtube / Vimeo

Make a video post in on YouTube and other video sharing websites – and then drive people through to look at it – include links on your website and all your emails. Once posted online a video will stay there for ever making for another free advert for your business.

7. Pick up the phone

Speak to human resources departments at large local companies and invite them in for free session. Lots of firms have staff off on long term sick leave  whom they have to pay and also cover their positions with temporary staff. Promise them that you will get their staff well again make them a no win no fee offer – you can afford to do that because as you probably know and empty tank costs just as much to run as one with someone in it.

8. Have an open day

In fact have many open days .. Invite different groups of people from your local area.  Do all the people in your street know who you are? If not invite them down now. Think groups – business people / sports people / meditation practitioners / therapists / doctors etc.

9. Website

Pay as much as you can afford for your website, use lots of good pictures and positive comments from the press and your customers. Update the information on your website on a regular basis as the search engine love this.

10. Leafleting

A relatively cost-effective way to get lots of information across to your customers, again use good pictures, good feedback and press quotes. Print 10 of thousands and get them distributed everywhere: through doors, on windshields, outside train stations – just get them everywhere you can. When The Floatworks first started out with 2 tanks and we used to print between 75,000 to 100,000 on each print run, distributing the leaflets by hand!

11. Advertising (Don’t do it)

We don’t recommend advertising as it’s expensive and also it’s difficult to monitor just how effective each campaign is. Advertising in our opinion is a sure fire way of losing a lot of money without too much to show for it.

12. Groupon, Living Social, etc.

A great form of getting the word out there, good for cash flow and good for getting people to talk about your business. Don’t do it too often as you can end up undervaluing what you do and you can also become too reliant on that revenue stream. You might find it difficult converting these bargain hunters in to regular customers, but remember they will talk to other about the wonders of floatation.

13. Google Maps

Make sure your business gets listed. It not only helps people find you but increases your search engine ranking as well.

14. Pricing

Be brave and set a high hourly rate, at the top end of what you think your prospective customers can afford, the higher the hourly rate the greater the room you have to offer discounts for bulk purchases and memberships.

15. Courage

It takes at least a year of very hard work to build your floatation business, once you have passed the first 12 months you’ll find the word of mouth really starts to kick in – you really should get at least 65% of all new customers via word of mouth.

16. And last but not least … Float!!!

The more you float the more creative you will become and the more relaxed and energized you will be, your customers will notice this and will want to be just like you. If you employ staff then you should encourage them to float at least once a week too. New customers sometimes tend to be a little nervous and apprehensive and if they’re shown the tank by someone who loves the floatation experience then they’ll buy in to the idea and concept much more quickly.

© Floatworks / i-sopod. Reprinted with permission.

Gothenburg, Sweden (PRWEB) May 22, 2012

International scientific and business experts discussed the benefits of floatation therapy at a recent conference hosted by Floatation International and the Swedish Floatation Association. Participants listened with enthusiasm as representatives from the Nordic nation talked about their efforts towards making floatation therapy a medical treatment covered by Sweden’s national health insurance program.

“We now have over 120 floatation centers here in Sweden”, says Catharina Jakobsson, Director of the Swedish Floatation Association. “This would not have been possible without the important scientific and medical research completed during the past decade”. Dozens of clinical experiments were conducted at the large universities in Kalmar and Karlstad, and researchers from both institutions spoke at the conference.

Scientific research into “floating” began in the 1950s at the US National Institutes of Health with the pioneering work of the American physician Dr. John C. Lilly. Isolation tanks (also known as floatation tanks and sensory deprivation tanks) were first produced commercially in the 1970s in the United States and surged in popularity during the 1980s. This was also the peak of earlier scientific research into Floatation REST (Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy), a clinical term which highlights the float tank’s ability to shield users from the daily stresses of light, noise, movement and even gravity.

“We’re experiencing a major rebirth of interest in floatation therapy”, stated Mark Frickel, founder of Floatation International and the conference’s coordinator. According to his company’s website there are now over 25 manufacturers of float tanks and rooms, with commercial units located in over 500 public float centers and in dozens of countries. On top of that, Mr. Frickel estimates that hundreds or even thousands of tanks are located in private homes for personal use.

Based on the scientific evidence and instant appeal to customers, many entrepreneurs are rushing to enter the float spa business. An hour-long session in the float tank is an ideal service for medical practitioners and non-practitioners alike to offer clients seeking a safe, non-invasive treatment for everything from stress relief to pain management.

For many in the industry, owning a float spa is all about helping other people. Tina Graham, a participant from the United Kingdom who suffers from fibromyalgia (FM), stood to speak after listening to Dr. Roderick Borrie and Dr. Tamara Russell report additional findings from a fibromyalgia study conducted last year. Ms. Graham said she was incredibly impressed by what floatation did for her and confirmed the testimonies of patients in the study. She plans to open a float center of her own and focus on clients with physical pain problems.

About Float Summit Conferences and Floatation Therapy research
Float Summit 2012 was co-organized by Floatation International and the Swedish Floatation Association, with sponsorship provided by the German Floatation Association and float tank manufacturers Float Concepts (Germany), i-sopod (UK) and Restingwell (Sweden).

It is part of our “Best of Float Talk” series which includes posts made on the Float Talk discussion board.

After many years of handling customers with crystallized salt in pumps and tanks, I realized there is a better way than dealing with salt crystals freezing up pumps and tanks.  The following is what I have come up with:

The density of the solution needs to be appropriate to the coldest the room ever gets.

This is because the solution in the filtration system is generally at room temperature.  A cold solution will not hold as much salt as a warm solution.  So salt saturation is less at a colder temperature.  If you keep the density at 1.25 or below, you can have the tank in an environment that drops to 50° F or 10°C without doing anything or worrying about anything.  We have not noticed anyone having trouble floating well at this density.  So why bother with a higher density?  If the environment sometimes goes to 40°F or 4° C then put the density at 1.24.

The density of the water should be set according to the coldest the room ever gets, not how cold the tank gets

How do you make sure it stays at that density or below?

Keep measuring the depth of the solution with a ruler, and keep it near 10″ or 25 cm.  Eventually, after maybe 700 floats and adding water every 200 floats, the density, while floating, will seem too low to float well, and you will want more salt.  Then add salt and use your hydrometer.  But until then, I find a ruler a lot easier to use, than a hydrometer.

A bit of history on the subject…

By the way, John Lilly never floated in a solution that was above 1.035 until 1973, (that’s 19 years of research before “floating” actually started).  When he gave me the specifications for how to make a tank in 1972, he suggested, if I wanted, I could add 3% sodium chloride to float better.  (He had the ocean flowing through his tank in the Virgin Islands.)  Up until 1973, the water was 20″ deep and we would bend our legs at the knee and do dolphin breathing.  That is, fill our lungs and hold our breath, then when we needed to breathe again, we would exhale quickly, and inhale right away, before we slipped under the water.  I didn’t float as well as he did. So when I set up my tank I added 10% sodium chloride instead of 3% like he told me.  That worked well and floating was born.  So when I set up one of my tanks for him at a workshop he was giving, I made the solution 10% salt. When he experienced that, he said, “Lets try saturation”.  (Later, he suggested epsom salt, as it seemed less abrasive to the skin than sodium chloride.)

So, there is no reason we can’t try 1.24 or 1.25. If you want to have a density of 1.30 for some reason, then just keep your room temperature at 95°F or 35°C or ABOVE.  In other words the saturation point for epsom salts, you need to concern yourself with, is the saturation point of the solution in the filtration system which is at room temperature NOT at tank temperature. Is this clear?  I think it is important to make this clear, to save a lot of people a lot of grief.

It is part of our “Best of Float Talk” series which includes posts made on the Float Talk discussion board.

 Read the updated and expanded version: “16 Simple Marketing Tips“

Don’t spend money on marketing. Really.

I do not recommend anyone to spend any money with anyone for any form of advertising, as I do not do that here at my centre. Here’s what I do:

Post flyers and leaflets – I distribute many thousands of leaflets, which allow you to get over a large amount of information cheaply. I put my leaflets through doors, on car wind shields, I leave them in bars, I put them everywhere and anywhere. I do this again and again and again. Remember that sometimes a prospective customer will hold on to a leaflet for 12 months or longer before they decide to visit.

Invite people in the media to float for free – I write to people and invite them down for a free session, I write to local business owners, I write to newspapers, I write to magazines, I write to radio stations, I write to TV companies. I add new addresses every week and I mail out once a month with a new angle. A stamp, a envelope and (only) one sheet of paper cost nothing but your time.

Make personal follow-ups with clients – I communicate with my existing clients, by email and by letter, I encourage them to come back with offers, such as bring a friend and get yours half price. Give your customers something to talk about, get them to communicate. Identify the customers that will be your disciples, the ones that will promote your business to their friends, their work colleagues and everyone they meet. You’ll be surprised how much mileage you will get by giving a free float session to the right customer.

Present your centre as a place for anyone to come and float.

Make sure your centre is clean, uncluttered and above all professional.  If your float centre looks like an ashram and you burn incense all day long, then I guarantee that you will turn off more people than you turn on. If you go down the new age, green or esoteric route then this small group of people are the ONLY people that you are going to appeal to.  I prefer to try and appeal to everyone — young and old, black and white, male and female, rich and poor — and that is why I believe my business has been so successful. Of course, many of my customers have profound spiritual and uplifting experiences, but I find the less preconceptions a customer has, the more they are likely to get from the floatation experience.

Rethink your networking.

From my experience you are not going to get many customer referrals from yoga studios, massage therapists, new age stores, salons or spas.  The reason is twofold. Firstly, all of these types of businesses are in some form of competition with you and are offering a similar type of service. Secondly, these are not mainstream activities and these businesses do not service the general population.

Make your business to business relationships with companies that cater to everyone, such as hotels. Dress well, arrange a meeting and make some deals. I do not promote my business as a new age esoteric experience. I promote my business to the main stream by presenting floatation for what it is: an enclosed bath like area of water that will reduce stress and pain and make you feel good, nothing more nothing less.

Presented at Float Summit 2011 in San Francisco
Find out more about Float Summit Conferences
This video was recorded and produced by Sound Photosynthesis