 My name is Kim Hannon. I am a co-owner of Suki No Float Center in Salt Cave in Southern Indiana. My husband, the other Graham, is also there. And I also have a consulting agency and do social media, animated videos, all kinds of print marketing, and some other services that help float centers and wellness centers. I have been doing training and marketing for a really, really, really long time. We'll just say we're in the double-digit decades. So in my blood to share whenever I know something and learn something. And so I'm happy to be able to offer that to you all today. Next up, Ms. Gloria Morris from Float 60. Gloria, will you tell us a little about yourself? Sure. Hello, everyone. And thank you for tuning in today. It's so much fun. I run Float 60 and I started Float 60 in 2015. But by profession, by career, I am a technologist. So I've worked with data analytics databases and I'm totally excited about that world, which makes me, I guess, a nerd. But I love it and it's in my blood. So I still do that full-time and try to balance all of these different balls. So I do have four locations now, potentially going down to three and, you know, kind of going through a tumultuous time for those of you that tuned into the preview event. You heard my shit-so story and there's a part two coming. We can talk about that in a think tank or maybe on Discord over drinks. I was gonna say we need cocktails for that. Yes, absolutely. But I'm in a great mood today, despite all of that, because we're live and we're here and what can we say, right? So that's a little bit about me. I am a dog mom and have three real kids as well. So just wanted to throw that in. Thank you, Ms. Gloria. All right. Kyle, who are you? Awesome. Yeah. Thank you, Kim. Hey, everyone. My name is Kyle Robbins. I'm the co-founder of Maximum Floats. I do not own a Float Center, but I've spent anywhere from like six to eight months actually working with Float Centers inside of them, operating them, testing different marketing strategies, not just behind the laptop. But we've also had the opportunity to work with over a hundred different centers in the past three and a half years across the world, not just in the US and Canada. And I love marketing. I love testing crazy new concepts and I'm addicted to testing new things. So we've got some pretty crazy ideas that we'd like to roll out. Some things work really well and other things don't work at all. So I'll be here just sharing my two cents on all the different campaigns we've ran across over $300,000 in spend of what has worked and what has definitely not worked. Awesome. Thank you, Kyle. Glad you're here. And Derek, Derek joins us from Float Tank Solutions. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Derek. Thanks, Kim. Hi, everyone. I'm Derek. I've been building businesses using the internet since 1997. That gives you kind of any idea of the evolution of internet marketing in my experience. Side note, started with I built a pro wrestling news website. Anyway. Yeah. So fast forward, I joined this little company called Float On out of Portland, Oregon, and I've been doing their marketing along with Graham Talley for the past nine years. Nice. Awesome. Thank you. So we all have a tremendous amount of different experiences. And I think you'll find that there's some common themes throughout. I think it's safe to say what Kyle said, though, like, experimenting and trying new things. That is crucial in marketing because the world changes constantly. And so whatever you tried and found success with once may or may not be successful the next time. So you're constantly learning and constantly trying new stuff. So we're going to get started with Gloria talking about bringing the brand to life in the guest experience. So Gloria, take it away. Thank you. Yes. I really appreciate having the opportunity to be on the Float Conference marketing forum again. In fact, Derek put me on the marketing conference forum I think three years ago. So I've talked about marketing quite a bit. Today I thought we would talk more about, you know, kind of the branding side and then kind of our attempts to bring that into the experience, as Kim mentioned. So a lot of people do reach out about branding and, you know, I guess to kind of start branding means something different to a lot of people. When I think about branding, you know, just at its foundation and core, I think about, you know, the image that is in your mind about what your float center will look like, right? So I remember after my first float back in April of 2015, I had a vision very early on as to what my space would look like. I think a lot of people at first, when they think about branding, they think about the logo and the stuff that the logo goes on, because it's literally branding something. But to me, branding is about the feel of the space. And so very early on, after my first float, I had a vision of what I would want people to feel when they came into my space. And that's kind of the beginning of the float 60 story. And those elements included some type of shift from dark and ominous and mysterious that's related to floating to a more modern feel, a more approachable feel. And so when I went to find my designer, which I actually hired a architectural firm right out of the gate, like I'm not good at that part, right? I know what I want, but I'm not good at actually making that happen myself. I know there's much better people to do it. So I hired a firm, and I talked to them about what I felt was important to create this float 60 brand. And that included feeling like floating was attainable. And I thought the feeling of this attainable element was all about clean, modern, inviting, warm, but not dark and ominous, right? Because so many people have this fear of floating. So I met with my designers, we sat down and we kind of went through a bunch of concepts. And so that kind of lent itself to how the actual logo was created, you know, sitting around a table and looking at materials and looking at the elements that go into that feel, it was a process, right? So I'd love to when we break out into questions and answers, I'm looking myself on Cameron, gosh, do I use my hands a lot? But when we break out, I would love to get a feel for how other people went about doing this in their float center. But when we kind of brought the idea to life, and I saw some of the renderings after the vision that I had came out of my mouth. I started thinking about, Okay, when people think about float 60, what are they saying? Do they feel that logoed? Is there like movement in the logo? And of course, I have my, my little name tag, you can see kind of the flow of our logo, the movement of our logo, that kind of became important to our whole brand. And so, you know, it's, it's something that is very comprehensive. When you talk about what you pull your brand into from the wall covering to your signage to actually experiencing something on site. And one thing that kind of took off, which I didn't expect, I mean, I planned for it, but I didn't expect it to be so powerful was our main vocal wall. And so when you come into any float 60s that we have, one of the priorities that we have is this wave wall with the logo and the location indicator. So we have float 60 River North float 60 South Loop float 60 Lake Zurich and float 60 Northwest Indiana. And when you walk in, you always see that wall, and you always see that metal sign, and you always see that location. And that really became part of, you know, what people took pictures of. We didn't force that that kind of naturally happened. And when we realized that was happening, you know, we certainly made that a priority in terms of our social media and carrying that through to our brand. So I feel like that's something we did well. I also want to talk about things that I don't think we're doing as well. And that is, you know, really making every experience consistent, in terms of what somebody feels so consistency is the goal. But because you have all these different personalities executing the experience with a guest, you can't guarantee that's going to be consistent unless you really have a process in place, which we've struggled with, right? We've struggled to put together the standards that you have with every single guest experience. So, you know, we can kind of go off a little bit more, Kim, I don't know if you want me to elaborate more on that now or kind of save that. But, you know, we really are starting to be more mindful of that. And we've included mindful training as a recently to try to really bring that experience into a consistent manner across all of our team. So I think you're in such a unique position, having four locations. Can you talk a little bit more about like what that looks like to keep that brand experience consistent from one place to the next? Because, you know, I know that that's a big piece of it that you want, whether they're going to South Loop or if they're going to, you know, Lake Zurich, that people expect the same vibe, the same feel at each location. So can you talk a little bit about what you do to make sure that your team is on board with that? So, again, vision and execution, two different things. But in my last talk, the original talk for this particular float conference and preview, I talked about every single location having its own personality. And it's something that you really can't easily replicate in, you know, in a clone sense. You can pull elements, but I feel it's important for each location to have its own vibe, not necessarily the same vibe. Our Indiana location is completely different than the Lake Zurich location. And South Loop is definitely completely different than any other location and not in a good way. Right. That's a whole different story. But I think the goal is to make it feel like you've been there before or it's established. When I first created the brand, it was very important for me to make it feel like there were 100 float sixties with the level of detail we put into everything we do from the mugs to our tea guys, which I couldn't find one, which is insane because I have them hanging around everywhere and I look for them. There's not one to be found. But our brand is on everything which some people find completely obnoxious and that's okay. My way is not the only way, right? But to me, I want people to walk in and feel like this is probably part of something bigger than this location because it establishes trust, trust, trust, and credibility. Salt, trust, no. Trust and credibility. So I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah. And I think even something as simple as your name tag, you know, wearing a name tag as a part of that brand experience. And I know a lot of float centers don't do that. Whether it's, you know, intentional or not, if they've made that decision of wearing name tags or not, my gut tells me that a lot of centers don't. They just don't think about that piece. So can you talk a little bit about what inspired that? So this is brand new. We have not done this. In fact, I was a little adverse to doing it at first. This actually came as a strategy to not have to imprint every piece of apparel we have with our logo. This is a way for our team to have their identity and our brand on whatever they have to wear that day. So if they're wearing just one of our shirts or it's still established as a brand, but as we were kind of talking in the pre-show, you and I just happen to have the unique experience of having worked for one of the most incredible hospitality companies in the world, Disney World, and everybody has a name tag. And one of the things that is cool about the Disney philosophy with name tags is they usually want you to put where you're from because it's a conversation piece, right? So to me, like having a name tag with how many times you've floated or, you know, some kind of factoid that you could change that's dynamic would be really, really cool. But that, you know, again is kind of a custom experience standard. Definitely. So, Gloria, whenever you think about the brand for your center and you talked, you touched on this a little bit at the beginning, can you just, what were some of those adjectives that you wanted people to really feel when they visit Float 60? Well, people feel like it was attainable. Like, floating was normal. Floating wasn't a weird, cryptic, one-off thing. We wanted to feel like something that they should do often, frequently, and not like a kind of a bucket list experience, right? So our approach to the brand and when I sat down with those architects on the very first consultation that I had, that was the number one thing that came out of my mouth that this needs to be normalized, attainable, not intimidating, modern, clean, brighter, not dark. So those are the things that I talked to my architects about which, by the way, they thought I was nuts. They had never heard of anything like this before and I remember sitting in that meeting in this beautiful office in a way overpriced firm that I probably should have never used. But it was important to me to go to somebody who had great experience creating amazing spaces and that's that was our approach. Got it. Thank you. And I think, you know, that experience and how people feel is crucial for every float center to really consider, you know, taking those adjectives, taking what that vision is, and then finding ways to implement it not only in your physical space but in your social media presence, in your communications, it can come through absolutely everything you do. I'll be talking a little bit more about it on the social media side on Sunday, but those are really, really important. So for everybody who's listening, if you have not had the opportunity or kind of skipped that part in opening your center, it's a really good idea to just sit down and figure out exactly what it is that you want people to feel and then make sure that everything that you're doing is touching on all of those adjectives. Absolutely. Love it. Thank you, Gloria. Kyle, Derek, I'm curious, do either of you guys have anything to share when you're thinking about how that brand experience comes to life in the actual float center? I know Kyle, you've visited quite a few and Derek, you've been around for a long time as well, so you may have some experience or thoughts on this as well. So Kyle, what do you think? Yeah, I mean my experience with branding is about a zero. You'll see that all of our branding stuff is not the most beautiful. We really focus on like ROI-based marketing, but I will say one of the things that I really liked in one of the centers that we did is they would put names on each of the doors. They had like a little pad, a whiteboard. They had like a little whiteboard on each of the rooms and then they just wrote the name of the client that was coming in. I thought that was pretty neat for making the experience much more welcoming, much more shareable in terms of social media. So I don't know if that's really a branding thing, but I thought that was pretty neat and definitely something that someone could implement. Absolutely. Thank you. Derek, what do you think? I mean, Gloria pretty much touched on it, but consistency is one of the most important things, you know, across everything you do. You know, that whiteboard Kyle talked about is a part of branding. The type of tea you select, you know, Kim, you'll talk about like social media consistency and the image you put online should also be the image they expect to have when they come into your center. So I think one of the key things is just, you know, making sure everything you do comes from the same voice color scheme, whatever the case may be. You know, if I could just touch on two, I touched on our tea guy and I'm really disappointed I don't have one out. I'm going to find one when I get off camera here for a second, but we have this as part of our experience, right? We have this mug and it's a little square mug. Everything we do is like in this square format which represents, to me, the opening of the tank door. So I really like thought that through and this little tea guy we have, we use the same tea every time and obviously with COVID we're not doing that right now, but it's part of our experience. When you are finished with your float, you come to our lounge and sit. You are served this cup of tea with the same tea every time and, you know, it just is part of the Float 60 thing and I'm loving the other float centers and kind of their little nuance and what they do. So we can all learn from each other by visiting each other's centers and kind of picking up on these little things like that whiteboard thing is awesome. I love that idea. So Float 60 team listening, let's try that. But yeah, everybody's got their little thing which is why this community is so cool. It's just neat to see all the differences. All right, so Gloria, we had a question come through the chat. Can you explain what goes into your mindfulness training for your employees? Well I can explain kind of the start of it. I've been a mindful group for the last two years and just me and a group of seven other women who really have therapy with a mindful intent. We talk about how we've used mindfulness in our last two weeks. We talk about what mindfulness means. Kind of do a little activity and we'll do a meditation as well. So just last week, I think it was, we had one of the ladies that I have in my group, she's a mindfulness certified instructor, meet with our whole staff on Zoom and we've talked about just the fundamental meaning of mindfulness. What does it mean to be present? And so the next intent is to really kind of bring that in the sense of dealing with a guest directly. What does it mean to be mindful with a guest? Most importantly, what does it mean to be mindful with your coworkers and how we talk to each other and how you create that vibe in your center. Forget about like the beautiful wallpaper and the signage. If your vibe is giving off this negativity between your team, it's game over. And this is a challenge for all of us who have employees. You literally have your team married to each other. It's like a relationship and you get on each other's nerves and by the time you work together for three months you hate each other for whatever reason. And so that's part of the experience that needs to be addressed. So that will be part of our training moving forward. But I don't have that all figured out. This is definitely something we're starting and will kind of ebb and flow from from here. I love it. Mindfulness is definitely a cornerstone of everything that I do personally. You know, I mean I named my company Mindful Solutions for a reason. And that really comes to light in the center. One of the the practices that I recommend is while you're folding towels, think of nothing but folding towels. That's the only thing in the world that matters. And if you can master that and you're not folding them to have folded towels, you're just folding towels. Plain and simple. You're not rushing to get back out to the next guest and to be fully present in the moment. You're noticing the texture of the towels. You're noticing the crease of the towels. Love it. You're just folding towels. And that alone, like it gives me goosebumps because I really do nerd out on that. But it's a life skill. It's something that comes to play when you are dealing with guests. It's something, like you said, with your co-workers. It is something that can really, really change the dynamic of your center. To be really fully present in everything that you're doing. And yes, we still have a business to run. So unfortunately, we can't stand and talk and be fully present with every single guest whenever you have a whole lot more to do. But I will say that during this COVID closure, that's been one of the greatest blessings for us is that we, because we extended our times and we have spaced out appointments, we have a lot more opportunity to be really present and have wonderful conversations with our guests. And Graham and I have been talking a lot about, do we even want to tighten that window back up? We may not, because it's just been so nice to connect with people and not to feel rushed. Right now, they're standing at our reception desk because our lounge is closed. But we want to bring that back so that people can actually have an opportunity to just slow down and be present, especially after a float. After they've come out of this really amazing experience to have to rush right back out to the real world, give them that opportunity to really slow down. And that is a piece of your brand, you know, tea, tea service has always been a big piece of our brand and we're feeling like we're really missing that right now of, you know, getting folks out. So thank you, Ms. Gloria. We're going to move it over to Kyle. Many of you know Kyle from Maximum Floats and his consultation model. And it is a really, really exciting model. Even if you haven't worked with Kyle and you don't know his program, there are so many great tips that he can give you that you can implement at your center. It's just a really awesome way of thinking about how you're helping your guests. So Kyle, you're up. Cool. Awesome. Again, super excited to be here. I think this is the, I don't know if we did a marketing panel last year or if we didn't, if we just did it two years ago and this year, but I'm excited to be here again. One of the things I want to talk about, I talked about this on the Art of the Float podcast, but it's really focusing on the client. And actually just before I popped on here, I was listening to Nick Jenecki from Charest and he was sharing some of the things that he learned and that allowed him to go from the single location at Charest to having 30 plus locations in just a few years and they're growing right now. And whether or not you agree with Charest and how they do their marketing approaches, I thought that something that he shared was really valuable. And he said that you always want to think about what the client cares about. And not what you care about. So we open float centers with these ideas of how things should be. And a lot of times we kind of forget how the end client is seeing floatation therapy. And for a lot of them, they don't really understand the benefits. Even in our advertising, if we go through and read a lot of the comments that people have, it's like, is this a bathtub? Can I just do this in my bath? This seems scary. Why would I do this? What is the benefit? Why would I pay $70 for this? This is a ripoff. This is a scam. And when you read those, it goes, okay, well something is not getting communicated across correctly. And in the past, we used to really focus on just the service which is floatation therapy and marketing floatation therapy out to people who already knew what floatation therapy was. But the problem is that most people that know what floatation therapy is creates a very, very small marketplace which means that once you have your grand opening and you've been open for a few months, all of the people that know about floatation therapy that can come into your float center, they've already came in. And so now you're missing out on this huge, huge market potential of people who don't know what floatation therapy is, but could absolutely be helped by what it has to offer. So one of the things that we focus on, and it took us a long time to figure this out, is bringing people in by focusing on a problem. We call it a problem-focused offer. So instead of advertising floatation therapy, you should advertise actually solving an issue that someone has. That could be stress, that's the main one that we focus on in our company right now, but it could be stress, it could be pain, it could be sleep, it could be anxiety. You could focus on other things like meditation, consciousness, awareness, mindfulness. Those things are good, but I personally don't recommend it as a great way to bring in new business to your float center, because unfortunately human beings are motivated twice by fear, as they are going towards pleasure. So if you focus on the things that people are in pain about, like stress, pain, sleep, anxiety, then you're going to get a lot more people in the door, and then for your current customers that you already have, if some of them are expressing interest of, hey I really want to take this to the next level and I want to explore consciousness or I want to explore mindfulness or I want to explore meditation, then I would say you can focus on those individuals and ascending them to different levels inside of your float center, but ultimately what I believe is one of the best ways to bring in new clients is by focusing on their problems and not focusing on flotation therapy. As much as we love it, the general public really doesn't understand it that much at all. Like if you showed someone what a float tank was, they would be confused, and typically most people when you bring up flotation therapy they might say, yeah I've heard of it or they just pretend like they've heard of it because they don't want to hurt your feelings or they want to feel like they're fitting in. So a practical way that you can actually do this besides just saying, hey are you in pain? Come try out flotation therapy. You actually want to package an offer that is very very sexy, and to me when I think of a sexy offer it means that when I'm opting in for something or when I'm agreeing to come in for something, I'm getting so much more value than the pain associated with getting that value. So if I have to drive to a flotation therapy center and learn about flotation therapy and I've never done it before, then whatever offer that I have should be extraordinarily compelling. Ideally it's like, hey we're going to give away six free floats and we're going to give away a free journal and a free online master class and a free this. That would be ultra compelling. Obviously we can't do that, so you work from what would be the most amazing thing ever to okay what can we actually offer in our business to be able to still make money and get someone attracted in. And then you can create these really attractive offers where you have flotation therapy sessions involved and you have an online component. So if it's sleep you could interview people in your local area that are sleep experts and put it into just a simple online class and host it on a free website. It doesn't have to cost you any additional expenses. You could do it for stress too and just interview some people around stress. Same thing with anxiety, same thing with pain. And you can actually put together this nice little package so that when people are seeing your advertising you're saying hey come in for our our three week stress release program, our 21 day stress release program, or our 12 week sleep program. And it's super compelling because they have a pain point and then they see something that's interesting like an image of flotation therapy and they're reading about all these different benefits that are they're ultra compelling besides just something that they don't understand. Like they can understand information, they can understand journals, they can understand a stress release consultation, but it's really hard for them to know what flotation therapy is until they actually come into the business. And what that's going to allow you to do is instead of getting this tiny tiny slice of pie which is people who know about flotation therapy, you can actually go out into the whole market and stop people in their tracks, stop people on social media, and grab their attention because you have something that can actually solve their problem. So my biggest lesson that I've learned in the past three or four years of doing this is just your advertising has to focus on solving a specific problem and the more that you can give someone a solution, the more money that they're going to pay and the more quickly they're going to respond to your advertising. And one last example I can give of this is like if you were to go to a gym and they were offering like a free 10-day pass or something and you came in there, that is not a very compelling offer, but if you came in and they gave you a consultation and they walked through what your problems were and actually cared about solving your problem and you said, hey I actually you know I want to lose 30 pounds, I've got this big event coming up and I want to look good in the photos X, Y, and Z, then they can actually lay out a program on how they can get that result and they would be way more willing to pay money for that and on top of that there's going to be adherence to the program and they're going to follow through with that versus just doing like their free 10 days at the gym, they might actually stick around at the gym for the next 12 weeks because they have an accountability partner, they have information that's going to help them out, they have like a grocery list that's going to give them the food items that they can eat that are going to help them lose weight. And so when we're thinking about our float center it's not just thinking about okay great like I'm helping someone when they come in to the float center they float and then they leave, what is happening to our clients as they leave or before they come into the float center and how can I help them with those issues right? If they're experiencing a lot of stress after they leave and they get home and they're yelling at their kids, how can I help them reduce that overwhelm that's happening in their life? What are some actual tools that can help them out with that and give them a complete solution rather than just a partial solution which is feeling great right now and for you know about the next 20 hours after the fact or feeling great right now and having the tools to feel better during the rest of the week and then come back and do their weekly wellness session. So that's what I would say is focus on problem focused offers and you're going to be able to open up your market size a lot more and reach people who have never even considered floating because they're relating to the pain that they have and they're seeing you as a solution versus just this the service that is available at a discount. Absolutely. Thank you Kyle. I think you you really touched on something that's huge that solving problems so often we get hung up in trying to describe to people what floating is, how it works, what it looks like, all of that but you know we we often lose sight of what it is we're trying to help people do and that's just such a critical piece of marketing of communications of your customer relationships everything because if you think about what we tend to post online what we tend to post in our you know our websites and things it's often the nuts and bolts the details of what floating is but think about the conversations that we're having with people when they're in the float center we're not talking about hey wasn't it cool that you had 10 inches of water that's the same temperature as your skin like no that's not what we're talking about we're talking about how great they feel as they're walking out the door so that's just such a huge huge piece in the consultation model that you're you're describing here really does help to just kind of hone in on that particular detail I offered something similar at my center as a we piloted the program last year we're making some tweaks to it when it offered again and one thing that I found that some folks really struggled with was the follow-up so for our program it was a 40-day program and it was for women who are tired originally it was going to be tired women of southern Indiana um but that doesn't really like fit my brand the whole like housewives thing that's just not me that's not what I do so I renamed it to courageous rest and the courageous rest program included 40 days of yoga nidra practice that they did every day on at home and they ranged from five minutes to 20 minutes they came into float we also had a partnership with our acupuncturist and um I had online courses that I had created the I noticed people were really starting to fall behind and once they start to fall behind they feel defeated so I'd love to hear your thoughts on how do you keep people accountable with a with a program like this that keeps them engaged and that way they can continue to see the results that you're really hoping that they're achieving yeah I'd say the biggest thing that we learned in the very beginning we actually the first program we ever ran um we just we called it a six-week stress release program and it was literally just floats and a journal and then we just built up the value of the conversations that were already being had inside the inside of the float center so a lot of people are already sitting down with their clients but they're not getting compensated on that value it's just like something that is already occurring inside of the float center and by packaging the six-week program they were able to actually outline that and say hey after each float we'll actually have a debrief and talk about like how comfortable you felt inside of the float session so the first time we ever ran the program was in Australia two years ago and it was just that simple it was literally your journal once a day and you float once a week and I think we took that principle and we applied it to the current program that we have right now which is we only have them add one small tiny change each week so that way they can't feel like they're getting left behind because I totally agree like I've started a workout program so it's like a 90-day program and you miss the first three days and you already feel like all right I'm just going to give up at this point because you're so far behind so I think the most important thing is like probably all of us even myself when we first started laying out how we were going to do the programs we created these ridiculous like wire frames of what people needed to do and all the different things and and it's actually less is more like less is more all the time even something as simple as having someone do a five-minute breathing exercise or not even five minutes like 60 seconds where they can just breathe in for 10 seconds breathe out for 10 seconds they do that three to five times something that is not really hard to follow and it's not like if you miss a day then everything is ruined that's not what the purpose of the program is I think that's really important is you have to keep it simple and easy and you don't want to have a lot of tasks so if it takes longer than like two hours per week to do the float and the actual things that are required inside of the program probably just going to overwhelm people and if it's stress anxiety or sleep or pain like none of those people want overwhelmed they don't want more things on their plate they want less things on their plate that's why they're coming into float so you want it to be simple like I think of it as the 80-20 it's like what are the 20% of like really simple wellness habits that they can implement that would have a huge effect on the way that they feel outside of the float center great thank you there's a question that came in on the chat so what about all the people out there who don't see themselves as having a problem arguably a larger swath of the country and how do we compete with all of the other solutions to that same problem that we claim to solve got it yeah I mean well I'd say probably the biggest competitors in pain and stress and anxiety and sleep are like medications and so there's tons of people that hate pharma and they hate medications I'd say that's that's a huge chunk of your market is people who don't want to go traditional routes or non-traditional routes which everyone you choose to call it that's one of the areas and then what was the other part of the question what about the people who don't see themselves as having a problem yeah typically that's not your market if someone's like super stressed out and they're like feeling super overwhelmed and they scroll down and they see stress like they have a high affinity towards that and they're going to come in and they're going to be way more likely to buy like you don't want to sell the people that don't feel like they have a problem there's enough people that do feel like that they have a problem that are going to come in and you can offer that to them the hardest people to sell to are the ones that don't even recognize that they have a problem so in marketing there's this book by Eugene Schwartz and he talks about awareness and advertising and there's unaware and that's like they don't even know that they have a problem and then there's problem aware they know they have a problem but they don't know the different solutions out there and this is really the market that you're hitting because you're just showing up with six week stress release program four week pain release program 12 week sleep release program or you know sleep improvement program that's getting a lot and then the smallest part of the market but the most likely to buy is they know they have a problem and they know about the solution so they know about flotation therapy is a great solution the problem with this area which is actually interesting these people are more likely to buy but they're also more likely to be price sensitive because they're shopping around for different options so these are the people that are quote unquote you're competing with with other float centers because they're aware of flotation therapy and they ultimately just want like the best price or the best vibe they're going to be shopping around the people who are problem aware they don't even know that flotation therapy exists you're not competing with any other float center for this the type of client because there's so many different options available for them so if you can just come at them with the actual problem and then say hey you have this problem this is part of the solution you've literally opened up your market by like 80% and you've eliminated or at least heavily reduced that the price competition component of it because they're just focused on solving the problem Can I just throw one devil's advocate idea out there to that question you know I think you're absolutely right in terms of marketing to that group that understand they have a problem and are looking for solutions but I don't think that we should exclude the people who might want to be like 10% happier right they don't necessarily have a problem but the consultation model can address excellence human performance optimization you know next level performance and so when we kind of went to market that was another part of our brand strategy was to have you know this modality for people to level up right and this is a tool to do that it's not necessarily problem-based but I'm just curious about you know everybody else's opinion on that knowing that the problem area is really the biggest pool of fish but what about the other side I think a lot of it and there's some disagreement happening in the chat right now which I love it let's bring it on some really really good healthy discussion that's happening there so keep those going but I think for me what a lot of it comes back to is your target audience because we all say floating is for everyone we all know that float therapy can benefit so many people in so many ways but if we start throwing out messages that say it's great for this it's great for this it's great for this you're gonna love it for this and this and this and this you're diluting your message for each segment so the people who need it for pain are hearing like oh it's cool for pain but it's also good for all these other things so it's probably not that great for pain and then all of these other clients or you know all of these other markets you're trying to reach everybody and when you're casting such a wide net it makes it really hard to pull in the people that are meant for you and the idea of grabbing and knowing your ideal client is going to help you in so many ways now this isn't to say that you can't talk about all of the other benefits of floating but I think in order to be really really successful know who your client is what Gloria was talking about before with the branding know how you want them to feel and know what problem you're solving really understanding that particular problem set and being able to speak specifically to that you become an expert on that and for most benefits of floating most segments in the market there are plenty of people to keep you super busy if you love talking to people about higher states of consciousness that's your market your market that's who you should go after if you yourself have really experienced a transformation and pain relief and you enjoy helping people in that journey to feel better that's your target market those are the people you can effortlessly speak to but if you start trying to go everywhere and be everything to everybody you're really just diluting that experience Derek did you have anything you wanted to say on that I think you pretty much wrapped up with what I was going to add to it and it's just you know those that are going to connect with you are the ones that you can kind of already connect with because you have a common bond I'm looking through some of the chat window here and seeing there was a Christian said he disagrees Kyle I think floating is great for solving problems but it's also incredible for people who want to enhance their life discover an inner realm and explore consciousness this is actually a large swath of the market so I think again that goes back to knowing your market because I can say in my area there's a few of those people and a lot of those folks are in my circle but our community at large doesn't necessarily go for that particular benefit so I think that's really just know your people Gloria question boss so just being you know a little bit more I guess confrontational in this conversation I really believe that we have to have a wide appeal and these are strategies Kyle takes a very specific strategy Kim you take a very specific strategy but I think everybody is right in the sense that you have to have multiple strategies to cast that large net right if you just focus on problems you're going to be known as the place that people come that have problems right so you can't just focus on that and your your outward branding and your marketing and messages isn't around this is the place to come if you're crazy and you have problems it's that's a campaign right you know there's different campaigns for different segments but where should you put most of your time most of your fishing pulls in I think you know addresses your your point so I'm with you who is the person that said that there's a whole other market out there Christian and I think that goes back to how we started this conversation with experiment experiment try it be successful fail learn from it and try again and so you may you got it yeah absolutely and that's just such a big piece of marketing and marketing is such a big piece of running your center in some way you are doing marketing whether you realize or not the decision not to do marketing is marketing itself so you know you have to figure out what works for you and don't be afraid to experiment and to try different things yeah can I say one more no on that can I think that this is something that Eric Anderson touched on I didn't interview with him last week he runs a float center here in Austin Texas and post COVID he's he's growing he's doing great right now they just had a record month last month and he was telling me that he started focusing on this like improvement market like people who want to use floatation therapy not as like because of a pain or stress or anything but like there are unlimited members that are paying $350 a month to float and it's more of a development tool and I think that if you take that approach you just need to understand like who you're marketing to so if you're doing the self-development approach you might not get as much of the wide appeal as you would with like a stress offer a pain offer that maybe you can get people that are going to spend $100 to $200 a month but with the self-development you might get less people in but you can actually charge more and they're willing to float more frequently and pay more money so I think that yeah at the end of the day it comes down to who do you want to attract into your float center and do you want to have like more people that are paying a little bit less on a monthly basis or do you want to have less people that are paying a little bit more on a monthly basis that's how I would look at it yeah I just wanted to wrap things up like I think we all kind of hang on the word problem like I don't want to attract a bunch of people to my center who have problems but if we switch the word problem to need so whatever someone needs I have a solution so if they need performance enhancement I have that solution if they need stress release I have that solution and so you can have a different approach using Kyle's strategy not to like try to defend Kyle or anything here but you can have you can have a different approach using the same strategy but just kind of spin it to whatever that audience perhaps needs for a solution you got it and I think that's you know a big piece that trying different things knowing your market finding what your target audience is but kind of what Gloria said though there are other opportunities that are out there and that's where campaigns are really really important because you've got your target market and you can really start to segment and try different things especially when you're talking about Facebook ads and some of your outreach marketing campaigns and things like that you can really start to niche down and see what works there but you still want to know kind of who you are what your brand is your core values and then branch out from there all right that was fun I love it thank you all very much all right so next up oh there's the T guy tilted a little bit you got a little reflection there he is hopefully you guys can see the little team and he I had to share it so hopefully you can see all right so thank you Kyle and next up we have Derek so Derek's going to talk a little bit about the importance of cold calling and doing some email follow-up so shifting gears just a little bit take it away thanks Kim um so you know when Kim reached out to talk at the marketing forum I thought back to like what's been covered and like what's going to be covered and I kind of wanted to switch things up to address what I've witnessed over the nine plus years of working with float on float tank solutions Helen bought in like how the industry approaches one of the strategies so you know in the past we've talked about social media Facebook ads pricing membership all that stuff but one of the biggest factors in the growth and staying power of float on was the numerous community programs that they've done you know they've done the artist program you know we won't go into the reasons or benefits so the different types of community programs around there you know we've covered that and passed it previous marketing forms that you can actually go to floatconference.com and look up the float conference podcast and those were all listed up there so you know feel free to have some homework after this talk but one of the things I think that's a stopping point for a lot of people is that initial response so I want to talk about like that painful part of community building that first point of outreach and in most cases of community building it's going to be cold outreach you know you're going to ideally look at that niche or that target that you want to serve and you're going to start looking at people in your community that fall within that and you're going to reach out to them. Now Kyle talked about approaching individual floaters through ad acquisition and so forth what I'm going to talk about is more cold outreach to build partnerships within your community so more of a business to business approach instead of a business consumer approach you know if you think about the outreach you might have received from other businesses or even some outreach I've witnessed through the years in the float industry you know a lot of the emails kind of go like in this format Hi insert business name here I'm so and so and I own blah blah blah float center in our town followed by a paragraph describing what floating is followed by a paragraph about the benefits of floating followed by another paragraph and how it can parallel with their business followed by a business proposal that you would like their thoughts on after only knowing you through the four previous paragraphs like who's going to read all that so you know I personally don't read anything from anyone I don't know who's trying to sell me on something without getting to know me first you know the saying kind of goes like you know long-term relationships aren't often formed after the first encounter however it takes a first encounter to begin forming a long-term relationship you know I kind of alluded to at the beginning of the marketing form I've been using the internet to build businesses since 97 how we've communicated over that time has changed you know I've made far more than my fair share of mistakes or learning opportunities and I've changed my opinions over the years on how I view certain approaches in marketing sales and so forth so you know fast forward to 2020 in March right before everything hits the fan I started a real estate company why not knock on wood thankfully real estate has been somewhat COVID proof but when I approached that industry there was a lot of existing sales approaches that I didn't quite resonate with spending nine years in the float industry we're a service first industry we like to serve others that's why we're in this business and we're not looking to just get any other floater in the tank we're looking for the right people who are interested in floating and get them in the tank at the right time of their life so I approached the real estate industry in the same way I would approach something in the float industry service first then you earn the right to sale that's why I like Kyle's maximum floats approach it's consultative you're serving them first you're helping guide them to the right solution based on their needs you know when it comes to community building we have a plethora of ideas like I said already out there to how you can start forming partnerships in your town but I kind of want to harken back on how to maybe make that stopping point that salesy feeling when we get to go reach out to someone reduce a little bit you know I'm not the biggest fan of cold outreach myself when I personally go to it I got over real quick you know when that's your only method of reaching out to someone you know what else you got right so I like to have everyone kind of consider this different approach that I've taken and it's really been working fantastic you know I start every new connection with a single sentence question you know I'm not looking to tell everyone my life story why they should work with me and how we're going to be great partners because that's just going to get filed under spam you know I in the very least try to keep it short to like one to three sentences to start my two way conversation you know before you begin you want to do your research who you're talking to what offers what do they offer their client that's different or unique who they're connected to you know kind of really know the person to reach out do a little bit of homework the internet makes that super easy use that information to guide your conversation to show how the partnership between you and that member in your community as ideal so here are a couple of examples that I've seen work and I've tailored them to the float industry one for example instead of asking them directly to partner with you asking for advice you know it goes back with that old adage if you want money ask for advice if you want advice ask for money or something like that so I've heard you know here's a little script if you want to use a script I've heard from my friend you're well connected in the massage industry whatever the industry you want to go after do you know anyone who is looking to co-market their business you know if you ask somebody in the massage industry that question they might ask you a few questions to kind of you know get a better understanding of what you're looking for but it also gives them the opportunity to raise their hand so instead of saying hey you know would you like to partner with me it's like whoa I don't know you you're just looking to them for advice like do you know anybody within your industry I heard from a friend that you're well connected that is looking to co-market their business and if they say that sounds like something I'm interested in great now you can start the conversation now you can kind of go into if they've even heard a floating etc you know and they actually might have some connections for you so now all of a sudden your cold outreach turned into a warm introduction that doesn't make your further outreach quite as cold so it really just takes that first simple step when you do that first simple step be confident in the language you use on your first contact so in email it's pretty easy to be clear and concise but when all of a sudden you pick up the phone and you get a little nervous like I often do as I'm speaking here I get nervous and when it comes speaking to groups little and one on one you know you sometimes go is Jim there and that like reeks of sales uncertainty like you know if you know Jim you know if he's there or if Jim picks up the phone you know Jim's voice this is Jim it's like you know you're already lost right but if somebody picks up the phone you say hi Jim it's Derek from float on you know most people have cell phones now you know unless it's the business phone that's on their website assume whatever number you got is going to reach them directly you know a couple of the things that kind of help me stay motivated through cold outreaches be absolutely okay with hearing no you know across all the different industries out there you know the biggest fear a lot of people have when they try to go make that cold outreach is the fear of rejection you know it's painful it's like asking somebody out to prom and them saying no and then you just go alone or not at all you know not saying that's ever happened but you know be grateful they told you know up front so you don't have to put in further effort and energy and the chasing and to try to convince them to partner with you spend your time growing your business with those who want to be around you you know if they say not at this time maybe sometime in the future that gives you an opportunity or an opening to find the best time you know when does the right situation or time look for you you know if they give a timeframe like six months from now cut that time in half because you know you want to stay relevant and top of mind and reach out in three months and see how they're doing if they give you a situation now you have a mission to help them reach their goals like you know I would love to partner with you at this time however my manager quit and we're just kind of shorthand it's like great awesome I have a couple of friends that have experience in what you do would you like to talk with them perhaps their management material you know this kind of those little things that kind of help you keep the conversation going another couple of sentence conversation starter I've used that that works really well is ask them for a discount on a couple of sessions to their practice because you're looking to refer some of your clients to a practitioner you can trust you know it's kind of like I don't want to refer anybody unless I've experienced it first you know you can sweeten the deal by offering them free floats you know I always go yeah I kind of have half off of this I can throw in a float but I just want to kind of experience multiple massage sessions continuing with the example before you know I feel comfortable referring to someone and then I just oh yeah sure I could do that what's floating and then you're starting a conversation I call it like the reverse referral instead of asking them for referrals you're asking them to experience what they do so you can give them out as a referral you know moral of the story is like just show them attention provide them value don't always make it about you first just a couple of closing tips to kind of make a system complete for you if you decided to go through the cold outreach cold email is use all methods of communication you know some prefer phone over email I absolutely never answer my phone so email's best for me some prefer text messaging some you know if you ask a question hey it's Derek from float on do you know anybody blah blah yeah sure do you know they might you might have a whole conversations or text messages I've actually text message more strangers in the last five weeks than I've ever have in my entire life and it worked miraculously you know it's just like I think this day and age we want short conversations we want Facebook posts and tweets it just kind of falls in those lines keep track of everyone you've contacted you know sometimes you're not going to reach them on the first four or five tries keep it in a spreadsheet a piece of paper and mark your small wins like if you do get somebody on the phone they said yes but it took you five attempts to get to them know that and so when you're on like the third attempt on someone you're feeling discouraged just look at and go wow I got this partnership and it took seven attempts keeps driving forward you don't have to use a CRM like I said a simple spreadsheet will work or you can use a CRM you can actually track outrage through tasks and helm bot quick plug but you know for those failed attempts you know the ones you have to keep going after don't quote checking on them or circle back or follow up people are busy with their lives you know we check in on leads we follow up and monitor children and these are like functioning business owners that don't need us to monitor them you just have it connected with them in the right way so you know instead of making another circle back to see how you're doing three months later provide them with value you know if they had celebrated something on Facebook an article is written about them celebrate that say hey congratulations saw you in the business journal keep going just remind them you exist because they still remember the first conversations other than that be open to trying anything especially during these times you know when something seemed like don't really want to get into sales you know sales might be the one thing that provides you revenue so thanks everyone for your time and open it up to questions yeah thank you Derek I think some of your tips here are crucial whether you're talking about you know marketing outreach with other business providers and even your own clients you know something as simple as keeping some sort of a communication log a lot of us have great memories and once we get to know our people we really know their stories we know all of that but if you're not the one who's there with them every single time it's nice that other people can pop in and see notes and ask about how such and such is going it really makes people feel you know special like they're they're wanted they're needed or you know if you have a conversation with someone being able to just pick up that conversation even if it's been a couple of months take it upright where you left off that's excellent like you know the employee who hasn't had the direct conversation with him was like how's your back oh my back feel much better thanks for asking like they never knew exactly Kyle did you have something to say I just I really like that approach Derek I think that the the single sentence question is really really awesome and also reaching out like from that angle of hey do you know anyone that can help me out with this right or hey do you know anyone that's interested in this and then maybe that person that happens to be the guy that you know wants to connect with you I've also done a good amount of cold messaging and just like different business relationships obviously inside the float industry I would say like another couple pieces of advice is one other strategy you can do is just lead with value is like another approach like value and curiosity so one floats that I actually watched one of our webinars couple weeks ago and they just sent me it was like one sentence it was like if I could show you how to do what you're doing but 10 times better and you know with much more attraction to your market like would you be interested and then I just like called him immediately because it was it was curious and it was focused on the benefit to me and I think that that can be a really good approach too so it's like hey if I could show you how to get you know more leads and more shows for consultations this week would you be interested it's like absolutely so it's it's curious what is it like I don't know what this person was talking about but I really like the short benefit driven angle or the angle that you mentioned which is just hey do you know anybody else I think and I particularly love just the notion of you know starting by trying to build a relationship first I think that's a you know a foundational aspect of any customer service sales relationship is building that relationship and I think about you know lots of our local business owners that I've talked to any of anybody that I've actually ended up collaborating with for anything for our center has been if I started with a relationship you know a networking meeting or you know meeting up for coffee or just someone who popped in and said hey I heard about you guys and just wanted to learn more and we just kind of got to a chance to like fill each other out is this like do we even like each other do we jive and you know I've had people that like we connected instantly super excited ready to do some work together and it takes a little while to figure out what it is that we can do and how it's going to work but I think having that patience to to stick it out and figure it out will will help Gloria did you have something to say there so again you can count on me to be poking the bear uh-oh that's what happens that's what happens when you poke the bear you get frozen oh that would happen sorry can you hear me now yes you're right okay um it could feel my ooh no the text messaging outreach so talk to me about that and you know what what are some cautions people should take before they start texting people because to me personally texting is you know very popular from a marketing perspective and I hate it as a consumer me too unless you feel an intimacy with me you shouldn't be texting me right so I I don't know just want to throw it out there and see what everybody has to say about that well that's kind of like what I said like be open to any approaches like I personally like my my phone number is sacred like texting me is kind of like now I'm obligated because you know I'm going to see it but it's like some people just prefer that it's not how I prefer to be communicated it's about how the other person prefers to be communicating so it's like that's why you try the many different approaches that's why if you didn't get them on a phone send them an email and then maybe two days later you send them a text hey it's Derek from float on just wanted to make sure that you have time to read my email or what did you think about blah blah blah I make some go back to something else you know and then maybe don't text unless you hear back you know again I feel like text will get you like match it like if you give you they give you a one word answer probably don't continue texting them but they give you a paragraph back you can match that that tone what does everybody else feel about that you know I I agree like texting is really intimate phone calls it's easy for me to ignore and if I don't know who it is calling I'm typically not going to answer it but texting just feels like whoo you just like you're you're right up in my face you know this is personal that's how I talk to my friends but if I have an established relationship with someone I prefer texting of course so I think it's like you're you're leaping across a boundary that it's pretty big in my mind and that's why you know it's almost like I would rather give you my email address than my phone number because if you start texting me without my permission or without my acknowledgement maybe I technically gave you permission somewhere but that just feels really intimate I'm curious too if anybody else who's listening has anything to say about texting you know as a form of communications and you know in this aspect we're talking specifically about relationships with other businesses and kind of those collaborations more so than with our customers the only other thing I'll add Derek I think it's great to be consistent in trying right and to quantify it somehow keeping track of it and whether you're using a spreadsheet or whatever like you said because at some point you'll have a breakthrough right you'll either have a breakthrough with a no which is temporary temporary right eventually it could be a yes that's the salesperson in me right it's no means maybe in most contexts but keeping track of that and knowing that it took you seven times to get through and it turned into this amazing relationship like that should encourage you right and you shouldn't take it personal if it takes six or seven times to get through because people are busy and it's not all about you right so I really like that advice thank you Derek thank you all right so I'm going to wrap it up here with just a couple of quick sort of tips I shared some stuff already throughout the session but I wanted to take just a minute to share a little bit about the art of soft selling and I'm just really going to throw out a couple of little pointers here and there for you but the the art of soft selling itself sales feels I don't know to most of us in the float industry most my husband would disagree he's an amazing salesperson it's no problem whatsoever for him to approach folks and see what their next step is but what really helped me over the years and especially as I was writing training programs for sales agents was really getting out of that mindset that it's sell that you're trying to sell something and we talked earlier about trying to solve a problem you're trying to help someone with a solution and if you're thinking about it that way it really does make it a lot easier to help and to be a helper versus trying to be a sales person those are very very different things and if you can get into the mindset of understanding this person has this situation and you have something that can help them in that situation and that could be you'll get better results if you come back again an example that we do before we even offer memberships to anyone we have an intro to floating package and that that package invites them to come back in for a second float and if they choose to do so we give them the third one for free we all know it's all about that magic three floats and so about 80 to 90 percent of people will take this up on that offer and it's a nice way to say you know hey there's no pressure if you enjoy this and you want to experience it again if you purchase your second session today I'm happy to give you the third one for free and you have up to three months to use those and that's it most people will take us up on that there's always a few folks who are like well I don't know can I think about it and really we don't want them to think too hard but we also know that most people feel better after they get a really good night's sleep they realize like wow that float helped me to sleep so one of the things that we have implemented recently and have gotten some pretty good results with is a an email template we haven't set up in our system that if someone declines whoops if someone declines the offer in person then later that day it's not immediate later that day we'll send the email to them that says hey we hope you had a really good time we hope you sleep well tonight if you happen to change your mind just give us a call and we'll still honor this option for you to upgrade to our intro package we've seen you know some really great results of that people will either call us or they all just respond to the email and then upgrade the package from there another way that you can kind of soft sell is with layering your messages I talk about this a lot it's reinforcement of messages and there are ways to be really really really subtle there are ways to be really really obvious about it but the nice thing is if you can automate it in some sort of a system it feels a lot better you don't have that like salesy kind of feeling and that can be something like setting up an email but if they have one package or one float left on their package as soon as they get to that point it sends an email to say hey just wanted to let you know you only have one left and here are some options should you want to continue leaving that there you could also do something like having flyers or having brochures one of the projects that I'm working on right now is having rack cards and thinking back to the our discussion earlier about all of the different benefits of floating and knowing who your market is are we going after everyone or not I know who my target market is but I also know that there are other people who can benefit from floating or my target market comes to me for this but their friend has this other situation and floating could really help them and they want to help their friends and so these rack cards just have specific conditions and has information about how floating can help with that condition it could be for athletics it could be for stress for pain management for anxiety for all of the different things that we know floating can help with and having those rack cards is a very hands-off approach that people can just see them if you have a rack or something that's mounted on the wall somewhere or some brochure stands that people can take I'll be honest I bought my rack stand it's a big one right when our center opened but I haven't filled it yet it's it's happening slowly I'm creating those rack cards and I'll get them out to everybody eventually but we've also we haven't needed those as much because we're having such good conversations with people and having those conversations with people can really serve in that way as well um I think that's it for some of the just soft sell pieces I'm going to bring all of the panelists back up and see if you all do any of those things or if there's anything that you have an idea of something different that you found to be really effective for kind of more soft selling approach I'll go ahead and chime in thank you so first of all I think those are great strategies and I love the layering I think that is something that we've tried to do and again we always have room for improvement but I love the waiting period and the the reinforcement and it also brings some credibility I think to you presenting the offer as kind of a intro offer right because the reality of it for us is we offer that intro package all the time we don't penalize them if they wait a week so I like that strategy of actually putting a real value and expiration by having that delayed email so I just you know kudos on that and that's something that we may try at some point we in the past when we first opened we did not focus on membership at all when we first opened my philosophy was well people that was a mistake I think offering the membership option right away was a really good idea am I freezing again a little bit you're back okay but I have to give a shout out to Kyle with the structure of weekly memberships it's something that I did not think we would embrace and I do like it I think you know we're going to try some things organically to bring that model to life but some of the things that we do is we do frame our thinking in the sense that we're helping people I don't want my people to feel like salespeople selling seems slimy to a lot of people right but the bottom line is we have to sell to sustain and grow our business right so we have to stop thinking of that the reality is we are selling but we're doing it with a wonderful service and we should feel good about being in the framework that we're getting the person in front of us the best option directly they don't have to go hunt for a group on right we're doing this to these people if we don't communicate the promotion we have going on right how frustrated would you be to walk out the door and not get that message and then find out that your friend got it and you didn't or that you could get a group on so I feel like we have to really hone in on the fact that you're doing someone a favor by telling them what the promotion is do you feel my passion? yes and I agree completely you know and and that's also a really nice thing is if if they're coming out with flow brain and we see that a lot they just can't think they can't make a decision having that email to follow up is a great way for them to later when they're back you know into themselves to say like oh I really want to do that again it makes a huge difference and I want to address there's a couple of things going on in the chat about the the intro package I know a lot of float centers do a three float package it's very popular and we intentionally did not offer that and we don't call it a three float package we call it an intro to floating number one that gives us a chance to say it's only available in the beginning we can put that time cap on there but one of the follow-up questions always comes with well can I share it and because we've worded it is you buy your second we give you the third for free it's their third visit and they don't come back with the well I paid for it and you're not going to let me give it to somebody else well you didn't pay for that one if you want to give your second one to someone else you can but you lose your your your third visit for free and so we have some flexibility with you know how people are using it if something happens and you know they suddenly have to go for surgery and can't float for five months or whatever we work with people on that you know we really try to be decent humans so that everything that we're doing but that intro package the majority of folks who finish the intro are then primed and ready for our membership program and we encourage people to use those floats in as short a time as possible whatever scheduling works best for them but they're going to see the most benefit by using them in as short a time as possible we've had folks who've done three days in a row three weeks in a row or they'll space it out do you know monthly and we really let people under you know let them decide what's best but we follow up with an email that says it's best if you do this in this short time span so we are also educating and not in a way that is like preachy while we're sending they're talking to them but they have that information to fall back on a little bit later on so Eric love that yeah he said if you have a product or program you know will improve someone's life or provide a transformation transformation they would benefit from and you don't offer it or sell it to them you're doing them a disservice absolutely you know that this can help someone especially if you see that huge before and after shift if you don't offer for them to come back again wow you want to leave that up to chance you know that person just had a really profound experience and and think about what can happen if they continue like how life changing it might be for them any other kind of soft sell tips yeah I think when I you want to go ahead Derek that's fine okay all right one of the things that I think of when I think of like soft selling versus hard selling I think a lot of it is based around like permission I feel very very uncomfortable when someone is talking to me and then you just start hearing like that sales language and you're like okay what are they are they about to sell me something and I think that getting permission and setting the right frame is really really important and it's really really hard to do that if somebody is floating and then they just they come out and they feel amazing and they're this in this awesome post float experience stay in mind so that's why I like doing the consultation before the float because they already know what's going to happen like they're literally coming in here to learn about what your offering is and then you're just presenting it to them and they already gave you permission and if you can have like scheduled times where you can have those conversations that the client already knows what's going to happen it's just like with us we have an application and then we do a call with all of the float centers that we work with and it's very clear what we're going to be talking about I will not be selling anyone at our booth like that is something that I would consider a hard sell and it would be very uncomfortable for everyone but if you have a scheduled conversation where the person is here to learn more about what you have to offer and how you can benefit them it's in my opinion so much better experience for the client and they can also make the best decision too because they're not their head isn't you know going a million miles an hour because they're trying to float be in their post float zen and then you're just like pitching them on something I love that and that's one of the things a lot of times when people are checking in if we see because we require payment up front and if we see that they've only purchased a single session we throw it at that point and say on your way back out if this is something you enjoy we have an option that can help you to come back in for free for your third visit so just keep that in mind and then if they don't come up and approach us about it we don't have to say anything else we also have a couple of little flyers and little touch points like where our water cooler is there's a tri on top so if you stop and have a glass of water you put your glass down and there's a sign there that says enjoy your first float here's our deal you know and it mentions it there and it just says come see us at the front if you want to take advantage of this so again really soft messaging that people can see we don't feel salesy at all and it's been very very effective let's see here I'm looking to see if there's any other little tidbits or questions coming in through the polls I think we're good on that so I want to wrap it up we're going to move into a think tank in just a minute but I'm going to throw the panelists on the spot here because I did not warn them this was coming but I would love to get just a couple of quick hits thinking about all that we've covered today we've covered a whole lot of different areas of marketing but a couple of really really quick hit tidbits of advice that you can offer we talked earlier about not being afraid to experiment trying one of my tidbits coming from the design world especially in the instructional design world we used a model called adi ADDIE and adi stands for assessment design development implementation and evaluation and everything that I do is in that adi model whether or not I am conscious of it like it's just so ingrained in me but assessment is where you're really planning you're trying to figure out what problem you need to solve if there is a problem to solve and then how are you going to measure it how do you know if you create something if that's going to work design is where you're really diving in trying to figure out exactly what you want to create this can be your social media strategies this can be your packages what your consultation model looks like it can be anything development is where you're actually creating it you're putting together the graphics or you're writing the communications or you're talking to the people and actually arranging all of those partnerships whatever it is you're actually doing the work of getting it ready implementation is where you've released it into the world implementation you're inviting guests to buy those packages that coming in for your consultations or that's where you know you have those signage everywhere you've set up your emails and you're starting to use those emails and then evaluation this is such a key piece is to go back and look to see what worked what didn't work and what do you want to try again what are you going to shift what are you going to change and it's okay to keep kind of iterating on there give yourself a chance to really study and learn but keep iterating until you find something that feels really really right in one piece within that I love the saying of fail forward fast because it's okay to fail it's okay to take the wrong approach but do it in a way that's going to bring you forward that you're learning from it and try to do it as quickly as you can okay you don't want to fail over a really long period of time because that could cost you a lot of money it could cost you a lot of relationships with your guests and your members so fail forward fast now you had time to think about your tidbits who's next all right what's the question again some quick hit pieces of advice for people well you know I definitely believe that we a faceted approach to our marketing right so you cannot just focus on one thing at a time unfortunately you have to kind of come at it in two or three ways and kind of be testing along the way so that's my advice expect to be multitasking in terms of your approach but focused in the intent of the objective in the outcome and I got to you know take my advice the second thing is you say fail forward fast I've got a three-year failure in progress right now and I'm ready to chop chop it off and be done with it so I cannot agree with you more that you have to be prepared to let something go and ignore your emotional tie to it as much as possible just have a plan B all the time that's my advice thank you Gloria that's a hard one especially right now but sometimes you get a rip the bandaid yep Derek Kyle any nuggets to leave you know I wholeheartedly agree on the fail forward fast and you know experimenting and all that to kind of wrap up what I talked about earlier with that sentiment do the things that are uncomfortable you know sales are uncomfortable for a lot of people and when things are salesy find what makes it feel salesy and make that better or don't do that you know just just realize that these strategies that sometimes live in the corporate towers that you know well it won't work for my business it might you just gotta make it your own so I think that's kind of if we're in a test and you're having an A B test make B the thing you normally wouldn't do but give it conscious effort don't you know cripple it and say well it didn't work but you didn't put your heart behind it so A B testing man that's a whole other session A B testing is so important and ask some marketing folks read some books, google it A B testing you have to do it absolutely yeah my biggest tip of advice would just be to charge more and to recommend what you actually think is going to benefit the client not what you think is best for their wallet so a lot of us make decisions like someone comes into the float center and we think oh they couldn't afford four floats a month most people would benefit the most from floating on a weekly basis it would be the best for their life not everyone can afford it but it's not up to you to make that decision you're not a financial advisor you're a float center owner and you are there to provide them the best recommendation for them and if you think about it if a float center has an average churn of let's say like 20% on a monthly basis for your memberships if you're charging $50 a month and people are floating once a month and you have a hundred members you need to sign 20 new members every single month right just to stay where you're currently at but if you have a weekly membership and they're floating four times a month you have 25 members and you have a 20% churn you only need to sign five new people a month and you're at the same level so I think that if you just look at those you increase your pricing that's one of the biggest levers to immediate and it doesn't necessarily mean like increase your pricing but increase the frequency that you're recommending to your clients because that's actually what's going to be in their best interest for most people it will fix your recurring revenue and your clients are going to see better results that's my biggest recommendation thank you I say something slightly similar I'm sorry I was gonna say I usually just tell people like I don't shop with other people's behaviors with my pocket book so it's a similar thing like I'm a cheapskate but I'm gonna see everybody else out there as a cheapskate so I love it thank you all so much this has been so much fun we could sit and talk about a million other things for another hour or week for sure a blast for us and to my fellow panelists thank you all so much for being here and for sharing your expertise and wisdom I appreciate it and to everybody else who joined along we love you guys thank you much