 Good morning, well that's very, very loud, wow, good morning, as Ash Khan said, my name is Jim Hefner, I'm the co-owner of Just Float in Pasadena, like you said, we're the world's largest float center, we have 11 tanks, or in our case we have 11 cabins we have there. And what I would like to do is I'm going to share how I got to this point in just three and a half short years since my first float, and now standing before you, this is really kind of a dream come true, so thank you for letting me be here and share my story. So, little vision board here, kind of inspiration, fellow on the left there, Mr. Joe Rogan, can I see a show of hands, how many people first heard about floating through Rogan, or somehow other through Rogan, or at least one of their close friends through Rogan then got you to go do it? Okay, that's kind of what I thought, like maybe 20%. Yeah, just a great advocate for floating, UFC commentator, comedian, and podcaster, and has a float tank in his house, and just been a big advocate for the float industry, he's based down in LA, and about 20% of our new business comes because he referred them, or they heard him talk about it, so. And I'm very grateful to him, because through him is how I heard about floating for the very first time. It was about six years ago, heard him talking about it, talking about it, talking about it, never got a chance to do it, no float centers around me, what a surprise, how to drive an hour one direction to go float in this little lovely float center, and suffice to say that first float was profound. I stepped out of the float tank and was completely convinced that this was something that people needed to have access to. My personal development and sort of transformation along the way since I've been floating, and it's whatever sort of word or superlative you're going to try to come up with to describe floating, profound, and whatever, there's sort of consciousness, sort of connection, source, all these things. It's all of that, but the language really doesn't do it justice, and those of you that, of course, are running this room float sort of knows that, so. But anyway, so my background, how I got here just because I had my first float and I was blown away, I know I'm not the only one that's had that experience. My background, serial entrepreneur, my entire career, entire life for that matter, I was the kid in the neighborhood that was cutting lawns and babysitting and perhaps in high school, slung a bag of weed or two, but that's a separate conversation. Yeah, so over three decades, entrepreneur owned lots of different businesses, created them, beginning to end, ruined a couple of them, some gone sideways, but that's the story of the entrepreneur, of course. My education, both my degrees and business, including I have an MBA, getting into this space, sort of the wellness space or floating, totally new thing for me, not what I was doing before. So a little bit outside the box, but like I said, for my very first float, it was very obvious that this was something people need to have access to, and that's what we set out to do. Also on that day, my wife and I on the right there, as you can see, she's very pregnant. The time I was having my very first float, she was in a joining room, seven months pregnant with our daughter. While she was listening to her own heartbeat and baby's heartbeat sort of in sync with hers, I was in the joining room having this very profound moving thing, got out of the tank, and she was very moved with her experience, slightly different than mine. And on that moment, I mean, as we were driving home, called one of my business partners, Michael Rusko, and said, dude, I found this thing, he of course never heard of it, found this thing, there's a box, there's water, it's dark, oh shit, you go in there, it's so awesome. I'm telling you, I am going to do this. And I didn't know what or how, we didn't set out to build the biggest float center, had no idea what that looked like. We sort of, you know, the early stage is kind of this fact-finding thing, we're all over the place. But knew I was going to be in the float industry, I knew that was going to be the career for the rest of my life, and I remained completely convinced that it is, I'm not doing anything else other than floating people for the rest of my life. So it's quite an honor. Thank you. Yeah, it's, you know, it's an honor to be in front of all of you and the, yeah, it was a long, long process. You know, besides the baby up there, as you can see, there's sort of a couple of other sort of action things. I didn't realize till after right about the time we opened, so it took about two and a half years from the time I had my first floats at the time we opened, we manufacture our own tanks now, we went, and you'll see some more of that. But it took me about two years right around the time that we're opening that why did I fall in love with floating so quickly? And I'll be brief, because it's a little bit self-indulgent, but I've been in sort of action or adventure sports my entire life, very attracted to these things. Used to think maybe it was the danger thing, you know, the adrenaline thing. But came to realize after about, you know, sort of two years and a couple hundred floats that the reason I fell in love with it so quickly was that there's very much about the flow state. These activities are, they require complete concentration and focus and never really, you know, sort of piece it together. But that's why I fell in love with floating, you know, from the very beginning. It felt very familiar to me. I was home. I was home without the activity though. I was home without the danger. It was very accessible. So yeah, just I still so the journey begins. What does it look like? What are we going to do? My my first float top center there float lounge people down Laguna Beach. Two tank float center, the loveliest people that you'll ever meet that run a float center. And to this day, we've modeled everything that we do at Just Float. As far as the customer interaction and how we deal with people, we are we are appreciative of the fact that they are there. We welcome them. We love them. We want to help them with their practice. We are authentic. And they set the model for us on that. And I still think about them all the time. Of course, the float on boys, everybody knows about those guys within a week of my first float, had discovered who they were on the phone, what's going on. Probably three or four weeks later after that, my business partner and I, Mike, we're flying up to Portland, what the hell's going on going to meet these guys? What's their deal? Float away, Colin Ginny. And you'll see Colin's coming on after me. Very, very smart man loves floating knows a lot about building float tanks got to hold him with immediately and trying to pick his brain anybody that knew anything about floating. I wanted to know all about it. I knew I was going to be in it a little bit compulsive, perhaps, but that's me. Kevin and zero gravity. Thanks to him. Awesome. Same thing. Awesome float center down in Austin. Been around floating for a really long time gets it same thing, you know, really focused on the customer experience from the beginning to the end time they walk in the door to the time they leave your responsibility to be awesome at what you do. I know there's lots of probably perspective and new float center operators in here. So stay stay focused on your clients. That's gonna be a recurring thing. Float float float house boys. I'm sure they're here somewhere. You know, thanks to you for the inspiration for going big. Without you, we wouldn't have done it. We certainly did not try to one up you with your nine tanks in Vancouver just happened to be the size building that we got how many tanks we could get in there. That's how we ended up with 11. Nothing more than that. That's it. So thanks to you for the inspiration for doing it because we saw you guys doing it before us and we follow right behind you. So thank you. And the character on the bottom there, Justin Feinstein. Lots of you here to see him. He actually had his first float about the same time as I did. He's based based out of LA. And he and I struck up a fast friendship has I guess similar to me very big picture vision thing loves floating and really wants to push this along. So yeah, Justin has been a very dear friend and colleague since then and we while he was building his center in Tulsa, we were building in Pasadena and along the way we collaborated on just about everything and for that I'm very grateful how we do the soundproofing and how are you going to do your doors and how are you going to do the threshold when you go into your room. All of these details are important and he like me sweated every damn detail and that's why he has an awesome research play. So anyway, so moving into a new space like any good entrepreneur I'm going to evaluate risk. What are my risks? What's happening here? And the water quality was the one thing that struck me immediately as being a big concern. There was no data to support how people were disinfecting float tanks. What's happening here? Besides the disinfection and the client safety concern of risk. There was also the risk of the health regulator coming in and preventing us from opening our business. That was real risk. I was very concerned about that. I spent a lot of time trying to learn and I have zero scientific background, but spent a lot of time trying to learn about water quality and what what we were going to do about it. We hired we went through three different water sort of whatever recreational water consultants to help us understand what was going on. The first two we hired bromine chlorine you have to do it what like and I was just adamant from day one like I can't I can't do it and I can't do it not because what I learned later about the disinfection byproducts that are very dangerous to inhale. But the reason I didn't want to do it early on was just because the odor it was very simple. It can't smell in my float center. It's not going to smell like an indoor pool. I refuse to do that. I'm not going to do it. So of course UV you know UV peroxide was our solution or the thing that everybody would seem to be using the most and certainly with no reported health incidents that seem to make sense. Okay, we're going to go that direction. In that pursuit found Bob Crandall. Bob Crandall he's here somewhere. I'm sure he too has been an awesome mentor and teaching me about water quality. But what Bob's Bob's history and background he back in the 80s pioneered UV peroxide in the use of hot tubs and actually did a lot of research back on it back back then in the 80s and he was successful at getting I don't know like 150 regulators around the country and their jurisdiction to allow UV peroxide in the use of recreational water. So this was the guy and I happened to sort of and I found him. Yeah, it was through 15 people. I finally found him. He was in retirement and up in Sacramento and I you know get him on the phone finally and float tanks the thing and he's like what what what what what is all this I'm like well and so but now Bob's here for you know for a second year and he too has been a really great ally and advocate for the UV peroxide and yeah so for him I'm very grateful as well. Supportable CO2 meter measure CO2 in the atmosphere. A little bit geeky totally not my thing to be geeky or techie at all but a little bit a little bit here. CO2 is a byproduct of your own human respiration. It's not good in high concentrations. Ambient level in this room right now is about 400 parts per million. Put people in small enclosed spaces breathing for hour or longer CO2 levels build up toxic levels this is a problem probably one of the most controversial things I'm going to say all morning. How many of you have had float experiences around the 45 minute mark have had a feeling that it's getting stuffy in there. Holy shit that's what I thought by my whatever fifth float I'm thinking about what's happening in the float tank what's happening in the water what's happening in the air bought a portable CO2 meter and just drop drop it in there what I found from 400 ambient within 45 minutes at 10,000 parts per million within an hour 15,000 parts a million those are near toxic levels. This is not unique to that particular float tank I was in. I it I feel a little uncomfortable delivering this to the you know sort of the industry collectively but this is something we have to do better. I traveled around my partner and I actually he floated a bunch of different place well but we took CO2 loggers and we floated in a bunch of different style tanks out there and there are virtually none out there that handle the air effectively. So in my opinion this is a very dirty little secret of the people in this room so if you manufacture float tanks or you're opening a float center please buy one of these learn how to use it understand it the air quality is important we have people in there for long periods of time pay attention to it. Float cabin nothing really to see here as I mentioned we began manufacturing our own tanks. Wind cabin style seem to make the most sense for us. The huge percentage of the clients that come to us are all first-time floaters want to make it very accessible to them step right into it certainly I have floated and everything that looks like this I have absolutely nothing against them but if you're going to buy style tanks like this please keep in mind that will limit the audience that you're going to get. Percentage I won't even speculate but I see this all the time in our center I have people come in they're talking to me about their first float and their first float experience and they see our rooms then we open the door in the cabin and like wow and they're like oh yeah I saw pictures of all those other ones and I couldn't do that there's just no way I hear this all the time and this is not a knock on any of these tanks I love floating all but just be aware if you're going to buy them you're not going to reach as wide as audience as you could. Electronics whatever guys build float tanks you know what these things look like my business partner Mike jumped in with automation engineer consultant that we hired knows way more about the stuff than me all I know is this stuff is magic and the shit works but so this kind of looks like a float center this is our building when we got it you know long long hallway lots of rooms look at some float tanks will fit just fine in there right well kind of not really take it all down our building is actually a big L shape so this is just the front part of our building here but as you can see and if you've already built a float center there's really nothing to see here it's not really that remarkable it's just knocking a bunch of walls down it's just dirty nasty hard work so there now it's all cleaned out shiny again the front part of a building the back part goes to the right there we have four tanks up here in our lounge and break room and reception everything is in the front now anyway so it's all cleaned out we're ready to go and so now we have to put some holes in the floor because that seemed like to make a lot of sense those of you that have built centers or are going to be building centers the showers are very difficult what are you going to do with the drains how are you going to get the water out of the room and down the drain from the shower so I wish you I wish you luck in that I have not figured out the perfect way to do this this is horribly expensive but a great way to do it we have big sloping changing rooms sloping showers and the big trench drain in the middle it's awesome works beautifully well horribly expensive walls going up whatever drywall going on the curvy wall there first group of six float tanks arriving of course they don't come assembled especially when you manufacture them so my partner Mike there 15,000 pounds of salt our first order pretty exciting again that stuff doesn't move itself our families families lots of sacrifice my partner Mike is wife Sarah on the left there my wife Annalisa our daughter Sierra over there everybody here in that picture great deal of sacrifice commitment for them I'm very appreciative especially my dear wife who tolerates my crazy ass ideas all the time and provides my compass for doing the right thing always there we go we're almost ready to go opening and that's what our float center looks like reception area so go there we go okay hallway nothing too remarkable there lounge nothing remarkable just kind of quick run through boys at helm thank you for the awesome software we looked at all the other ones out there you know spa booker and mbo we actually opened with front desk found them horrible unreliable the helm stuff for running a float center absolutely look at it very carefully because it's we found to be a godsend for us okay so I'm gonna have to wrap up and seem getting a little bit lower on time than I expected sorry for the ramblings so challenges for the industry in my my business going forward is things that I see three C's first we have consistency consistency in service delivery make sure your water is perfect make sure your air is perfect make sure you greet your clients warmly and all the time from beginning to end do a great job your business will do much better because of that communication how we talk about floating is a very interesting thing to your clients to the press in your marketing communication it's float therapy it's floatation therapy sensory deprivation isolation tanks please let these words go they're not doing us any favors anymore they really aren't they're far too almost for you know if we want to take this to the mainstream which is certainly my vision is to float everybody I want it that that has to be addressed also rest the acronym rest scientists guys love it I totally get it it's fine it's you know it's clumsy it's clumsy in your marketing it's clumsy to your clients if you are going to use rest sort of get rid of the restricted word and just use reduced that's actually Justin's advice we of course talk and sweat about all of these details competition competition has arrived it's all here it's okay nobody knows what floating is yet news so when float center opens near you don't get worked up call them greet of course I haven't called the float center that just opened her up so I apologize I'm going to talk to you guys later been busy it's inevitable it's going to happen again nobody knows what floating is reach out with them collaborate on what you're going to do collaborate on your communication on your marketing efforts expand the pie don't get worked up in your little the little slice of pie that you've already developed that's not going to help we're not floating enough people yet we're just getting going this is the beginning of all of this think big think long term think float everyone big percentages before I get too far off I just had of course I'm going to totally freestyle and the whole thing and I'm not even looking at my notes I'm sure I left something out but one thing just occurred to me also in the communication I'll be very brief on this things that are very controversial the things also I think should be removed from our our language we use describing this and I apologize for the people I'm going to offend Mr. John Lilly awesome thank you for the invention very beautiful I am incredibly appreciative for the gift that you gave us however far too controversial for us to touch let it go please do yourself to favor so in closing many of our clients are in need of healing not just relaxation floating is not just special it's sacred we are able to be transformed through floating and we might get and we get to share that gift with others the most successful float centers are infused with this idealism from the top down it's become part of their culture focus on your own floating practice and be present love your clients that's why you're there support their well-being and your business success will follow thank you