“When should I start making money?” is a deceptively simple and anxiety inducing question that every business owner has to face. Sometimes the answer is straightforward. There are lots of franchises that have near endless amounts of market research and profitability trends that point to a sensible timeline of when and how much you can expect versus a given investment. 

Float centers aren’t like that, unfortunately. There’s simply not enough data out there to create predictability in a market. The good news is that given the relatively low overhead excluding opening costs, float centers have the potential to be profitable almost immediately. Graham and Ashkahn break down this question and provide some tips on the issue.

When opening any small business, you want to do what’s best to gain an edge in marketing and make sure that you’re doing your best for your flowering company. The new trends and changes can be daunting if you’re unfamiliar with technology or the marketing world. 

Float centers are no exception. So when you get a call from someone claiming to be able to boost your SEO standing, it can seem like a really good deal. How do you tell if these companies are legit? And do float centers really need SEO help? Graham and Ashkahn break this down and simplify it for the uninitiated. 

As it turns out, there’s no certification program to running a float center. You buy these big expensive machines that require constant, technical maintenance and you’re on your own for how to accomplish that. There aren’t float tank repair persons that you can call (yet) and just have them show up and do it for you, so making sure you’re knowledgeable and prepared for this maintenance is a really good idea. 

Graham and Ashkahn lay out the Float On best practices for how to plan for maintenance so that it’s the least disruptive for your center if something goes wrong. 

Getting a tank in your house and floating some people is a great first step on the path to opening a float center. It helps you figure out exactly what the maintenance is going to be like, along with just the experience of floating other people and introducing them to this neat salty practice. 

There are things to consider and there’s a right way and a wrong way to run a home based float center. First thing to consider is your local laws for small businesses and making sure you comply with those. Additionally, you need to decide if you’re just floating friends and family or if you’re going to have paying customers. This is also going to impact what type of float tank you should use and the demands you should consider on your house. Graham and Ashkahn have seen plenty of these and share the best practices as they’ve seen them laid out. 

Running a float center is hard work. Especially if you just opened up and dealt with months of agonizing, crazy construction, and then go straight into pulling long hours keeping your center open. Even with the reward of seeing floater’s post float glow can fall short of satisfying in some moments. 

It’s important in these moments to take time for yourself so as not to get devoured by your work. Ashkahn and Graham share some of the things that helped them stay sane working long, thankless shifts at Float On in the early days and get through the hard days so that they could thrive. 

Hard water is something that comes from having too many minerals in your water source. It can cause a lot of problems with plumbing if it’s too hard, and most buildings will have resources for dealing with this to help avoid calcium buildup in pipes and along tubs or pools. As for how it interacts with a float tank, specifically, it seems like the larger issue is going to be how it impacts the rest of your building. 

Graham and Ashkahn break down what they know about how hard water affects float tanks and the differences you’re going to have to look out for if you’re using well water over municipal water sources.

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. 

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. 

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.