Floating on Purpose

How to Make Six Figures in the Float Pod Industry,

Change Lives, and Make Anything Possible

By

Nick Janicki
 Introduction

My name is Nick Janicki, and I'm the founder of True

REST franchising, as well as the CEO of Float Pod
technologies.

This book was written to illustrate who I am and why I

became involved in the industry. The first few chapters
concentrate on mindset and purpose, while the latter
chapters focus more on the business and industry. I hope
you find this book helpful in some way. Anytime I read a
book or take a course, I look for the one or two gold
nuggets. If I find these, I am happy. I hope you find a
golden nugget or two herein.

I've always tried to find a business that could support the

vow I’ve made in my heart, a vow upon which I base my
entire life: to have more people gain profound relaxation
and awaken to the fact that they are sentient, conscious
beings who, when connected to higher realms of
relaxation, can actually sense that they are from a divine
source. That's one of my missions; the other is to end the
persecution of peaceful Falun Gong meditators in China.
Regardless of what your belief is, if you're agnostic,
atheist, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, a yogi, a Falun
Gong practitioner, a Tai Chi practitioner, a Chi Gong
practitioner, a meditation practitioner of any spiritual way,
we should all be free to practice and freely express our
beliefs.

Falun Gong grew to an estimated 100 million peaceful

practitioners by the Chinese governments own estimates.
Since being banned and persecuted many hundreds of
thousands have been tortured. Estimates from the most
recently released Matas and Kilgour report , as of June
2016, indicate upwards of 900,000 to 1.5 million Falun
Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs in
China, as part of systematic state-sanctioned organ
harvesting. Check out the organ harvesting report of over
100 pages, compiled by David Matas, a human rights
lawyer, and David Kilgour, a former Canadian member of
Parliament i n Canada. David Matas, a man of Jewish
faith, mentioned in a recent interview that the first point of
attack on any group that is targeted for genocide is a mass
campaign of demonization. This is precisely what
happened to Falun Gong. The form of their execution is the
actual organ harvesting. There have been several great
documentaries made about this, including Free China,
Human Harvest, and Red Reign (helpfreechina.com and
http://humanharvestmovie.com). They will absolutely
blow you away.

Thus, in harmony with my two lifetime vows, when I was

looking for a business, I tried to find something that gave
me the flexibility to concentrate on these two things. I had
dyslexia in school and always felt like an outcast with a
learning disability. I thought school was boring; I didn't
get terribly good grades and had a really tough time getting
through school. However, I am entrepreneur at heart,
although I didn't know what that meant until later on in my
life. I typically worked for entrepreneurs, business
owners, and eventually found floating.

My first float was an incredibly profound, deep meditative

experience. My senses were revived, food tasted better,
and my mood was elevated. My thoughts, worries, and
anxiety completely dissipated during the float session. In a
float, the water is heated to 93.5 degrees, roughly skin
temperature, and includes 1,000 pounds of magnesium
sulfate, enough to allow the human body to float
effortlessly on the surface. It's perfectly safe to fall asleep.
Once I experienced floating I knew, if grown properly and
responsibly, it would absolutely be the next biggest
wellness modality in the world.

And at that time, I didn't even yet know how beneficial it'd
be for people in pain, for repressed emotions, for
swelling, recovery, enhanced performance, visualization,
and cognitive enhancement, as well as ADHD and PTSD.
When we became involved in the flotation industry, I
knew I’d found the right place to be. This is the story of
where I came from to get there, where I am now, and how
you, too, can get to this place — if it speaks to you.

A massive shout-out and thanks to my family, friends, and

business associates. Without everyone's help and support,
our success would not be possible, especially my Pops.

I also want to thank everyone involved in the greater

floatation community. Without heart-centered advocates,
we have nothing as an industry. Imagine if our little
industry became the example for others to follow and
emulate. Let’s blaze a path forward together and do good
in this world — and, if nothing else, go float yourself.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 Finding Purpose

My Origins
Confronting Fear
Mechanisms for Shifting Consciousness
Genuine Cultivation Practice
Setting a Righteous Foundation

Chapter 2 Flotation Therapy

How Joe Rogan Re-ignited a Forgotten Industry
The First Float Experience
Why is Flotation Therapy Important?
An Outsider Relates to the Industry
Nearly Lost It All

Chapter 3 Make Six Figures in the Flotation Therapy

Industry
Giving Your Business a Righteous Foundation
A Sneak Peek at the Internal True REST Process
True REST Franchising
Is Franchising for You?
Collaboration and Partnerships
Memberships
 Additional Helpful Tools and Resources

Chapter 4 A Renewed Vow to Change

NET Worth and Money
What I Learned from a Cease-and-Desist Letter
Karma

Conclusion Making Anything Possible

 Chapter 1
Finding Purpose

My Origins
As a child, I was a very naïve. I jokingly tell people that I
had my mid-life crisis at around seventeen. In my early
teens, I would question my mom about the purpose of life.
“Why are we here?” I’d ask. “What's the purpose? It
seems like we are meant to do well in school, get good
grades, good grades lead to a good college degree, which
leads to working, making money, and you have a family
and die. Is that it?”

I truly did not understand the purpose of life, and I sought

after it for the entirety of my early childhood.

I often imagined meeting some mystical sage or some

mystical wizard that would one day step out in front of a
tree and say, “Nick, I have the secrets of life. I have the
answers of why you are here.”

I was obsessed with magic and mysticism, and the

possibility of other realms. I tried to read as much on the
topic as I possibly could. That would include western
religious books as well as scriptures from Eastern
tradition.

By the time I went to college, I had barely made it through

high school. My grades were typically C’s, and when B’s
were achieved, this was a time to celebrate for me and my
family. I was also diagnosed with a form of dyslexia, and
thus was constantly being pegged as having “learning
disabilities.”

In college, I started experimenting with entheogens such as

LSD, mushrooms, and MDMA. I sported purple
dreadlocks and definitely would have been considered a
hippie, though I didn't place that judgment on myself. That
being said, partying was my lifestyle. I was completely
lost in drugs, alcohol and the experience of life, I was not
yet contributing towards any purpose.

Normally, I would try an entheogen a few times, but after

the initial lessons were gained, I moved on. The first time
trying a new substance was always transformational. It
fundamentally changed my consciousness in a positive
way. Or I imagined it did!

Sometimes, I became pure joy and I became pure

happiness. I was myself and fully aware though in an
excited and euphoric state. The only way I can explain
ecstasy is it made everything I did feel new as if it was the
first time.
The first time taking Molly (ecstasy), I was alone. A
friend walked up to me in the middle of the hall in
between classes and said, “Hey, someone gave me this.
It's supposed to be really good and pure ecstasy, but I'm
afraid to take it.” Being who I was at that time, I literally
threw it in my mouth and swallowed it. He said, “It will
take a couple of hours to kick in, so you're good.”

I finished classes and went home, and that’s when it

started to have its effect.

I remember looking down and seeing a belt on the floor. I

picked up the belt. I buckled each loop individually and
was almost in tears by the amount of joy buckling my belt
gave me. The feeling was new, profound, and a
fundamental shift in consciousness. It was beautiful. I was
just in a pure state of absolute benevolence.

As I walked through the house that I lived in at that time, I

entered my roommate's room, which was very messy.
Without even giving it a second thought, I started making
his bed and felt nothing but pure joy making his bed. I
began folding his clothes and putting his socks together. I
went through his entire laundry basket, folded all his
clothes, and organized his closet, then put clothes in his
drawer, and felt nothing but pure unadulterated joy in
doing these things for him. In the back of my mind, I knew
that he would be surprised. That little thought made me
smile. I was doing something for someone else and felt joy
in the process. There was no thought of reward; the joy
felt during the process of helping was my only reason for
acting. This, too, was a fundamental shift for me.

Next, I went into the kitchen and did all of the dishes, still
enveloped in pure joy. Similarly, scrubbing every dish
almost brought tears to my eyes because it felt like the first
time I had ever washed a dish. It felt like it was the first
time I realized I was a human being. This was joyful and I
felt tremendous appreciation and grateful to be a human
being.

I didn't link any of these feelings to a divine state; I simply

just had the experience. It wasn't until much later that I
began to inter-relate these experiences to a divine portal
from which we can fundamentally shift our consciousness.

I went into the other room and started playing darts. The
darts flew through the air and would break through the
molecules in the air. Individual atoms were spinning; it
was as if the universe was being thrown in my hand, and I
myself was a larger universe. I started crying.

A friend called me at this point and invited me to watch a

movie. Happily, I walked over and enjoyed every step and
every breath and really, truly loved every moment of my
existence as I walked over. The wind, the dogs barking in
the background…everything was escalated for me, and
everything was intensely joyful.

Once I got to my friend’s house, we had a brief

conversation and watched the movie. Afterward, my
friend looked me in the eyes and said, “Your pupils are so
dilated. What are you on? Are you on something?”

I said, “I'm on ecstasy.”

She said, “How could you be on ecstasy? You're the same.

You don't seem any different.”

I said, “Why would I act differently because a state in my

consciousness has shifted? I'm still me. I'm simply
perceiving things differently. I won't ever let a substance
control who I am or what I am or how I think. I am simply
experiencing what it's showing me.”

She said, “Wow, I've never heard anybody say something

like that.”

It seems many people get washed away and lose their

main consciousness once they enter into an altered state.
Confronting Fear
Of course, I wasn’t always in “control” the way I asserted
to my friend. Other entheogens I experienced were harsh
enough that they pushed me into a state that was harder to
control and had significant control over my main
consciousness. Through it all, I began to understand I am
not my thoughts, but rather the observer of my thoughts.
This was a priceless insight in confronting and facing my
fears.

One night, a thought entered my mind, “You could die.

You could die. You could die now. You could die now.
You might die. It's possible you will die.” I didn't know
what to think of this continuous thought. All I knew is that I
had to keep moving. I came to the realization that if I were
to die, I would die, but I refused to be afraid of dying.

At that point, I began to walk at a brisk pace. My friends at

the time wanted to do other things, but I said, “I would like
to continue walking around the campus. I am just going to
walk in a circle around the campus continuously, and this
is what I want to do.” Walking for me was a purpose that
distracted and separated me from my fear. Finding a
purpose in the experience is what broke its hold on me.

I realized that fear is one of the biggest monsters. It's one

of the biggest forces that controls us as human beings. Fear
can force us to stop doing something, hold us to a place
where we're unable to move, and separate us from our true
self.

I continued to move forward, and eventually the trip began

to come down. Coming off of the trip, as I began to re-
integrate into normalcy and re-integrate into my normal
mindset, which felt artificial and very harsh.

On another night, climbing up a ladder to the top of a

building, and as soon as I got to about twenty feet up, I
didn't look down, but I felt an insurmountable amount of
fear in my heart, in my head, and covering my body. It felt
like fear encompassed all that I was, and I couldn’t escape
it. I was paralyzed.

Everyone said, “Nick, take one more step up. Nick, keep
going. You're blocking the group.”

But I couldn't. I couldn't make my way up. I couldn't do it.

I couldn't move one more foot. I couldn't move one more
finger. If I moved one more finger up, the intensity of fear
intensified tenfold.

What was that fear? That fear was saying, “You might die.
You could die. If you choose to break from me, almighty
fear, you could die.” At that moment, it was too much for
me. I couldn't break out of fear. I took fear as myself, and I
said, “I have to come down.”

They said, “But there's three other people behind you.”

Still, I insisted, “I must come down.”

Fortunately, they were all right with that and allowed me

to come down. I started to walk, and I walked for hours
around the campus. I thought about life, who I was, and
what I was doing.

A common theme for my experiences with entheogens was

my need to be in nature, to move, to reflect, and to be
alone when necessary.

I remember one particular incident when my friends said,

“You can't go outside, Nick. You must stay here in this
room. We're just going to watch some movies. You have
to stay with the group. You can't break with the group
because we're all in this together. There's no one to look
after you if you break from the group.”

But I said, “I cannot stay here. I cannot stay here and

watch movies. I must go outside, and I must walk around,
and I have to continue to have momentum. I have to
continue moving. I can't stop. If I stop, I'll have fear. If I
move, and I have momentum, my fear will dissipate and I
will continue on. I may not be able to break entirely from
my fear, but I can keep walking and I can keep my
momentum.” And I did.

All of these experiences led me to understand that reality

is perception-based and, for me, finding a greater purpose
allowed me to no longer be controlled by the fear itself.
Mechanisms for Shifting Consciousness
All through college, I appreciated all my experiences for
the lessons they taught. All experiences became part of my
ultimate path. I cannot deny the path I took, although I also
realize it’s not for everyone. I am simply explaining the
chronological process that lead me to making strategic
partnerships, being the founder of a large franchise
company, a float pod technology company, and eventually
managing employees and being responsible for their
livelihood. Without realizing it, maybe, I was preparing
myself for more stress, more pressure and more criticism
that I thought possible.

In college, I began to get deeply into different meditation

practices, and started to have out-of-body experiences as
well as intense sleep paralysis. After learning meditation
and starting ORMUS (Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic
Elements), I started to have deep cleansings on an
emotional level. I would feel emotions from what I
perceived were past lives. These weren't emotions I had
ever experienced in this life, but I had the memory they
had happened before. My being, my soul had felt these
things before.

As I used ORME matter, I left my psychedelic teachings

behind. The divine connections I experienced were things
I had never felt before as a human being, though I know I
had felt them before as some kind of being. I realized I
was breaking through dimensional boundaries, and I was
having cosmic shifts — - very, very similar and as intense,
if not more intense, than psychedelics. As I reflect back, I
now believe entheogens are gateways into other
dimensional levels of consciousness. From a cultivation
standpoint, the Fa or Tao, based on my understanding, is
all-encompassing, and all realms are achievable without
these substances. They are merely tools and, at a certain
level, they may even act as a distraction.

At times, I would pause, reflect, and cry, releasing

emotion on a deeper level. As a young man, I would start
looking inside myself and literally start analyzing every
second of the day and every conversation. Every intent and
every minute was open for analysis.

I would ask myself questions: “Could I have done better?

Could I have helped more? Could I have given more?
Could my tone have been better?”

Self-reflection for me, was extraordinarily painful. This

was when I was 19 and 20. I'm approaching 40 now. The
emotional cleansings have continued, over the course of
many years.

One particular night sticks out prominently. I was testing a

technology sent to me by a Russian scientist. He was doing
research on devices that he invented by discovering
something he coined “places of power.” He said that in
these places of power, it was possible to charge the human
being as well as inanimate objects. From my
understanding of magnetism and electricity, these energy
fields can be considered a type of radiation. They’re now
what some scientific studies call the bio-electric field or
the bio-energy field — the energy field of the human body.
These things are also present in nature. These energy
fields are present all over the earth, with spots on the earth
that have more concentrated fields. As we interact with
them, they interact with us.

Anyway, this scientist had sent me some Chalcedony rods,

oriented with one specific for the left hand and one
specific to the right hand. Being who I was at that time and
wanting to push the limits of my own consciousness —
more interested in exploring consciousness and less
concerned about possible harm — I was game for
anything.

With the rods in my hand, I sat down in a relaxed state.

The recommendation was to hold the rods for no more
than one or two minutes. I did that for a few days, and the
tingling and energy in my hands became very intense.
(Actually, this was my first introduction to chi, and sort of
my first introduction to qigong before I knew what chi and
qigong were, though at that time I wouldn't have conveyed
it as such.) As I began holding these rods, the energy
became very, very intense in my palms. As I lifted my
hands above my head and came down slowly and made
different patterns, the energy would intensify. It would
tingle up my arms, in my elbows, move into my shoulder,
and then start moving and circulating around my entire
body.

This was me learning how to regulate chi without knowing

anything. I had no book, no teacher, no master, no mentor. I
was just self-regulating. There are certainly forums and
there are certainly information on the Internet now about
this, but at that time, right around 1998, sources of
information weren’t so plentiful.

Feeling what I was feeling, I wanted to delve deeper into

the regulation of energy, so one day as I sat with the rods, I
held onto them for a longer period of time. After about
five minutes the energy got very, very intense. I kept my
hold on the rods and began to sit in a meditation position,
holding these rods, moving the energy around, and then
continued to fifteen minutes. In that fifteen minutes, I
started to get a very strange, very powerful energy in my
head and actually had a metallic taste in my mouth. I just
felt very, very strong energy. I continued holding them for
about another five minutes before I put them down. That
was enough. I was very, very, very charged.
I tried to go to bed not too long after that; I lay in bed on
my back and closed my eyes. But my consciousness was
not going to shift into a sleep state; it absolutely was not
going to shift into sleep.

Staying very still, I allowed the experience to happen,

feeling my mind not shifting to sleep along with my body.
In the moment before falling asleep, I would hear and feel
intense energy. It felt almost like someone was shaking my
bed with energy. Of course, I would then open my eyes,
shocked and surprised at how much power I felt rushing
through my body.

I tried again to relax: I breathed deep, shut my eyes again,

and started drifting into what would be considered a sleep
state. But once again, extremely intense energy blasted
through my body. A freight train of energy, exploding
through every vein, every pore, every hair; just exploding
through my body. Fully awake again, I was a little bit
frightened, but tried it a third time. This third time, I let the
experience happen and was able to stay calmer. I let
myself float, feeling like I was floating in the air above my
body, and had a massive and powerful feeling of energy.

My eyes opened, though I wasn't in my body I was about

seven feet or so from the bed. Shortly thereafter, I shot
back in my body. That was my first out-of-body
experience.
Various substances thus allowed me to experience a shift
in what was normal. My perception of normalcy was
replaced by something else, something new. These
substances were simply machines or mechanisms that
shifted consciousness. They allowed my main
consciousness to experience different perspectives.

I have an employee, partner, and friend who’s been with

us nearly since the start of our True REST journey. I
remember one day very well, this young man called me in
tears and said, “I don't understand this state of
consciousness I am in. I don't understand what's going on
with me right now.”

I remember responding, “You are in a state that you've

forgotten normalcy, and you're in a state of consciousness
that's shifted. This will likely dissipate over time. As I've
experienced, consciousness never stays stable. It's always
moving and shifting. You're entering into a state to learn a
specific lesson. Right now, you're fearful of something.
You're scared because of the state you're in. The first thing
you need to do is let go of the fear you're experiencing and
learn from the experience, because this experience will
end and you can reflect on it later. Give up the fear, my
brother, and move through the state. Just know that I love
you very much and this state will dissipate.”

One time, he entered into this state and it lasted for nearly
three or four days straight. He said, “I've never had a state
of consciousness shift that has lasted three or four days.
I'm very, very scared because I don't think it'll ever end.”

I laughed at him.

He said, “Why are you laughing at me?” I said, “I've had a

state of consciousness last for months. I've had a state of
consciousness last for nearly a year. That state of
consciousness would shift and change, but I never returned
to a state of normalcy.”

I've returned to a state of normalcy now, but fundamentally

my state of normalcy is now not what it used to be. It's
fundamentally, completely different, so those things that
I've cultivated through never return. They return in minute
substances. Massive things like fear and lust and jealousy,
I've cultivated away or whittled down significantly.
Things such as emotion in general, I've whittled down. I
still experience varying states of emotions because I'm a
human being, after all, but the state of emotion I
experience is far less than what someone else might.
That's not to say that I don't have great moments of anger
fear, love or joy, but my baseline is different now.

I said to him, “Just know that whatever you're

experiencing is good, and whatever your experience is, is
positive. Don't be afraid and just move through it and
you'll be fine.”

He’s now learning to speak his own truth and not live in a
state of fear.
Genuine Cultivation Practice
In my last year of college, I discovered a book called
Falun Gong, which resonated with me deeply. I started
feeling like this was the truth I had been looking for. This
was the culmination of all the things I had experienced.
This was teaching me about Qi/Chi, cultivation energy
Gong, karma and virtue, and cause and effect.

I read the book quickly, then read it again. I then read the
main book of Falun Gong practice, called Zhuan Falun.
As I read this book, the energy circulating around my head
was extraordinary. I've never felt anything quite like that.

It's quite a long book, over 300 pages, and I read it for
several hours the first time. As soon as I put down the
book, a flood of curse words and some terrible things
entered my head. I quickly realized they were not my own;
I began reading the book some more, and they went away.
The perception that these thoughts were not mine, but
passing through me, was extraordinary — another first for
me at that time.

As someone with previous experience with altered states,

the only thing I can relate reading this book to was an
incredible, euphoric high. It felt different, however, in that
I was high on something purer than I had ever experienced
before. It felt like I was high on the universe as an
expression of myself — or, alternatively, high on myself
as the receiver of a cosmic energy and understanding. I
have no other way to articulate this, but the purity and
clarity of that feeling was what I had been searching for. I
continue to re-read this book, even fifteen years later. I
have no doubt I have read Zhuan Falun many hundreds of
times.

The very next day when I woke up, I was taking a shower,
and very severe thoughts entered my head. The thoughts
were telling me to pick up the razor — the razor I used to
shave my face —and cut my wrists open. These thoughts
were telling me to kill myself. I was shocked by them. As I
observed them, they got stronger and stronger. But with the
knowledge I’d gained from the book, I knew these thoughts
weren't mine. I began quieting my mind, breathed deep,
and strengthened my own main consciousness.

I said, “No, no. I will not pick that up.”

Even as I spoke, I had some fear that these thoughts would

win, that I would kill myself So, I strengthened my
resolve, declaring, “No, you are not allowed to overtake
me. Fear is not allowed to overtake me, and you will be
defeated.” I stood there with powerful, strong, righteous,
and tranquil thoughts, and solidified my main
consciousness.
Eventually, I was able to overwhelm these thoughts of
wanting to cut myself, and they dissipated entirely. After
that, I've never had such thoughts again. Never.

I felt like I had found my path. I had found the meaning of

why I was a human being — to relearn this Fa and relearn
this Tao, and fundamentally embody it and live it.

At that time, I could feel my energy field getting

significantly stronger day after day. As I meditated, as I
did the qigong exercises, I felt very light. I remember, one
day, I got to a state where it was very pure and I had no
substantial thoughts and was just joyous. I felt this state
nearly all day long.

Now, as a CEO and founder of a company, sometimes I

lose that joy. I do experience it at least a few times a
week, but it's not consistent. It's something that dissipates
and I have to consciously bring it back, unlike that earlier
time when I was in the state of joy nearly all day long.

I remember one time I saw a tree trunk that had fallen and
was blocking the road. Without thinking, I stopped my car,
got out, moved the tree branch, and felt happy. I got in the
car and drove away, thinking about karmic relationships.
If karmic relationships existed, the tree branch had been
arranged for someone to interact with, and now I may have
just potentially ruined an arrangement for another being.
Confused by this, I felt my joy start to dissipate, and
anxiety to move in. I drove back around, got out of my car,
and dragged the tree branch back into the road, then drove
around again.

I have to admit, I did think, “I may be overanalyzing this.”

And I knew that was true. I’d allowed anxiety and fear to
override a natural ability to understand a choice I made in
that moment, and this wasn't against the cosmic
characteristic as I was doing it in a moment. I wasn't
seeking out. I wasn't pursuing. It was just something I
wanted to do to help in the moment.

So, I drove back around and picked up the tree branch, put
it on the side of the road, and drove home.

My consciousness was in a different state, because I was

now living and experiencing things with a different
awareness. What was once obvious to me, what was once
normal to me, now in this new state, had become
irrelevant. I was living with a new set of laws and a new
lens of perspective.

One of Buddhism tenets is, “No Dharma is definitive.” In

Zhuan Falun, it’s explained that this simply means “In
fact, Sakyamuni was saying that there are different Dharma
at different levels, and that the Dharma at each level is not
the absolute truth of the universe. Yet the Dharma at a
given level assumes a guiding role at that level. Actually,
he was telling such a principle.”

As we shift our consciousness, we have a new set of laws

that regulate how we interact with society, and what's
common to others becomes irrelevant. As I began
cultivating, I again began to fundamentally realize that I
had no way to understand a past perspective, as these
things had fundamentally been cultivated away. As my
cultivation continued, I began to enter into different states.

At one point, I had a large expansive energy field and

could feel other beings that had strong energy fields as far
away as several miles. If I drove into a city, I could
literally drive to where someone had a strong energy field.
I could follow the energy of other beings. I could literally
feel their presence; within ten feet of their fields, I knew
where they were. That was an extraordinary state. It was
also a little uncomfortable, as I became aware of several
miles of energy fields.

Oftentimes, my consciousness would expand past the size

of a room. I'd feel the room as if it was myself and if other
people were in the room, I felt like they were inside my
own consciousness. When people talk about barriers of
space, if someone gets too close, you feel as if someone
has entered into your space. Imagine if your space was as
big as a room and someone had entered it, not next to your
space but literally into your space. You would feel like
you knew everything about them and that they knew you. I
felt that when I looked them in the eyes there was nothing
to hide.

This state of enhanced awareness is a process of

cultivation. As a young man, 21 or 22, these interactions
were even more difficult with attachment substances, such
as lust. When a pretty woman walked into my field, giant
rushes of lustful energy would come out of me and be
directed at her. It felt like I was throwing something at her
without her consent. I would look her in the eyes, and I
couldn't hide it. I felt fear for exuding this energy and I
became very reclusive and very careful.

Lust was one of the biggest mechanisms for shifting

consciousness that I encountered. If someone was driving
down a road at this time, even an arm or a finger could
send ripples of lustful energy all around my body. It would
shift my main consciousness. I'd be enveloped by the
feeling of lust. I couldn't get out of it. It was so much
stronger than I was, much like fear back when I had been
testing LSD. It encompassed me and paralyzed me, and I
couldn't escape it.

I thought lust would be the end of me. I didn't know how to

escape it. How do you escape something that envelops
you? How would I break free from something that felt like
it was me?

Finally, in a similar way to realizing the perspective that I

was not my thoughts, I realized that I am not what I feel
and I am not how I perceive. Now that I was cultivating, I
had been free of drugs for several years, but the
experiences I was encountering at a daily basis were far
more intense than any psychedelics. They were never-
ending, constant, 24/7 perspective shifts.

One time, two attractive women walked into my

workplace and, again, they walked into my space and my
space seemed very big, indeed. They walked within 30
feet or so of me, and I had an attraction toward them. The
field of lust increased; it went through them and around
them.

But this time, instead of fighting it or being fearful of it, I

walked up to them and I embraced the feeling with no fear.
I looked them in the eyes and I had my truth at that moment
which was lust. I wasn't afraid of it, and I just talked to
them. Looking them in the eyes I simply experienced all
feelings and thoughts. No fear. I wasn't trying to come on
to them. I wasn't trying to consume them. I realized that
their beauty was triggering my own state of lust, that they
themselves weren't necessarily exuding anything. I myself
was exuding it toward them. We talked about pillows for
about five minutes, and then they both left the store.
As soon as I could look them in the eyes and accept what I
felt, I wasn't afraid of it any longer; I actually started to
gain control over it. Much like any psychedelic drug
experience, I started getting control over it instead of
letting it control me.

This was one of the biggest lessons I learned as a young

man and as a cultivator of the Tao and Fa. I am not my
emotions, but I cannot force myself to overcome them with
willpower. Willpower alone cannot break from emotion.
The true state of letting go is about experiencing without
judgment, without fear. As I continued on my path and
started learning more in my shifting perspectives, I felt
like I was being teed up for something else, something
greater that would require more of me.
Setting a Righteous Foundation
Meditation is the core of setting my personal foundation. I
do the meditation in full lotus. When I started meditating in
full lotus, I could do maybe 20 or 30 minutes, and that was
very difficult. Then at 30 to 40 minutes, it was almost
nauseating, and the pain was so intense that my body
would shake. It took me a long time to get through that.
What would happen is that around 45 minutes to 50
minutes, the pain was so intense that I had only a few
choices: I could pass out from the pain, throw up from the
pain, or endure it.

At that point in my meditation, pain began to replace all of

my thoughts... It would induce me into an extraordinarily
deep state of tranquility, so much so that if I was able to
endure it long enough, I would transcend the pain. My
body would feel like it was a mountain; I would feel like I
was the thousands and thousands of miles above my body.

I also felt like there were particles between myself and my

body that still linked me from my escalated perception to
my body below. These particles felt like light and energy,
and when I opened my eyes in that state, towards the end
of the meditation, I felt nothing but blissful peace, more
peace than I'd ever felt with any psychedelic. When I first
started meditating and after reading Zhuan Falun, this
peace came from within me — like a part of me was
home.

This was me developing my own Gong, my own energy.

This was the universe and a characteristic of Zhen-Shan-
Ren — truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance —
expressing itself in my own body and rectifying my own
body. As I began to learn how to have the state on a more
daily basis, I would experience things like extreme
lightness in my body.

There was one time I was at candlelight vigil in

Washington, D.C., with thousands of practitioners trying to
raise awareness to stop the persecution in China. I sat in
double lotus meditation, full lotus meditation, for nearly
two hours straight. During that time, I rehearsed the book
in my mind, because I had memorized a significant portion
of the main book, so I went over this in my mind for two
hours. What happened was I began to understand the
fundamentals of how long I had been waiting to become a
human being.

These things can be described in words, but it was simply

a feeling and a remembrance of the millions upon millions
of years of waiting for this one moment of sitting here, in a
candlelight vigil, waiting for this persecution to end, for
others to obtain the Fa, for the shift of cosmic awareness
to occur. It was the deepest and certainly most profound
state I've had so far. I cannot fully express it in words.
When I opened my eyes, I had no normalcy; I felt as if I
had no “self,” even though I was still me, as the observer
of myself. The ego had seemingly left at that moment. I
began walking around in a state so intense that it could not
be equated to any entheogen state I've ever had, though I
was completely sober. As I talked to others, I could just
see them and sense that they were waiting for the Fa and
they were waiting to shift, but they were so far away from
the consciousness I was experiencing. I had no way to
explain these things in words, and if I tried to explain
these things in words, I just sounded like a crazy person.

That's the day I fundamentally realized that we can't

explain cosmic encounters to most people. If the
discrepancy is too great, you actually push them away. I
think as humans we tend to think that what we perceive is
the truth about others, but the fact is what we perceive is
just that. It's what we perceive; typically, our assumptions
are always perceptions. To assume we know how
someone else is feeling is actually selfish.

That is the day I fundamentally realized that, as

individuals, it’s possible we can reach a state of non-
judgment for others. As more people begin shifting, it can
effect a global consciousness, a global field we are all a
part of. The moment I start pointing fingers at others or
start judging others, I myself have fallen into the trap of
perception equals reality, and I myself have stopped
looking inward.

My consciousness moves in and out of different states. I'm

never maintaining a single state.

Setting my personal foundation is very important for me. I

actually call it setting my righteous foundation, because
we all set foundations throughout the day, whether we're
conscious of it or not. Some of us set a foundation by
drinking three beers in the morning. I wouldn't consider
that a righteous foundation. Some of us smoke meth in the
morning. I wouldn’t consider that a righteous foundation.
It's certainly building a foundation, but it's not the
foundation for the life you want to live in the future.

Your righteous foundation sets up the day, the week, and

the fruits of your future. My righteous foundation is based
on what I want to accomplish most in this life. Time is a
very limited resource. It's a finite resource. We only have
so much time; what do you choose to do with it? Wealth
can be created, and many resources have renewability to
them, but time is very limited. Time is the single most
important resource that we cannot waste.

Knowing time is limited, I fundamentally figure out the

legacy I want to leave behind. Actually the terminology of
legacy came from Dr. Jeff Spencer's The Champion's
Blueprint. (Check this program out; it’s phenomenal.)
To use my own terminology, that legacy is the vow I made
in my heart once I became aware that I was a human being
who could choose what I wanted to do with my life. That
vow is the core of my being. It's why Falun Dafa
meditators in China will be tortured before giving up their
belief.

What is the vow in your heart? If someone tells me it's

against the law to think and believe what you want to
believe with your heart — and we're not talking wanting
to go out and commit horrible crimes, but cultivate myself
according to truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance —
what is that? There's nothing but love in my heart for all
people. If a government tells me I can't believe in that,
then you bet your bongos I'm not going to go for that. You
bet your bongos I'll die for my belief and my vow in
loving others.

In the morning, in order to live the vow that I created in

my heart as a human being, I meditate for an hour. Then I
get in the float pod for a good half-hour, sometimes forty-
five minutes or even an hour. Then I will do forty-five
minutes of QiGong exercises. I'll read a lecture from my
spiritual practice, Zhuan Falun (Rotating the Law
Wheel).

I read that every single day. I've read that book probably
over 700 times, yet I still get something out of it. It is a big
part of setting and keeping my righteous foundation. The
reason that's so important to me is the righteous foundation
for me has a physiological and a psychological effect.
When I meditate, after thirty to forty minutes in double
lotus, which is a very hard position, I begin to truly
concentrate my mind and thoughts. If I truly let go of the
thoughts I'm having and the things I'm attached to
throughout the day, I'll enter a state of relative bliss and
relative tranquility and it's very, very enjoyable (although
that’s not necessarily its ultimate purpose).

In that state, I feel like I'm thousands of miles above my

body, though I encompass all of the space in between that
space. My body feels thousands of miles tall. That little bit
of pain in my legs is literally nothing. I sit there like a
mountain, proud, and nothing can faze me. My thoughts are
very still. If I have one thought, it races through, but I'm
able to catch it and calm it down and enter back into a
state of stillness.

When I open my eyes after an hour, I feel very large. I'm

not talking in an egotistical sense; I'm feeling my physical
body in the microcosm is large. That's just what it feels
like to me. That's the best way I can describe it.

That's a very powerful feeling. So, when I stand up and my

righteous foundation is set, I'm ready to go. I could take on
the world. That's my righteous foundation. No matter what
I do, I'm in a flow state for the entire day. I'll walk into a
room and I'll feel my energy beaming off of myself. I'll
feel that I'm changing the environment.

I feel like I could even change other people. Imagine that.

Imagine if we as human beings had the ability through a
righteous foundation to change our environment AND
other people physically. Actually, this is not unbelievable.
I remember a particular day and I was in a very good
state, and I set my righteous intent and my righteous
foundation for the day. I walked into work and my co-
worker had a cold. I walked by him, came back, and he
said, “Whoa, the minute you walked in, my headache went
away.”

I've talked about that with other people who also have a
really strong righteous foundation in the morning. They can
walk into a room and they're absolutely beaming. I think
what we deem as “electricity or charisma” could relate
back to this strong energy field. This is not “woo-woo.”

Science is constantly finding that things exist in other

dimensions. This is cultivation. It's something I've
experienced myself. It's like I'm a scientist of my own
body, and so I test these things. I'm doing research on
myself. I'm trying …cultivation research, ascension
research, whatever it is. That's setting the righteous
foundation.
I think a lot of people in life don't have any foundation.
They get up in the morning and do “whatever.” They go to
work. There's just this whirlwind of non-intent and not
setting a foundation.

The key here is not to duplicate someone else’s path but,

rather, find your own. Once you set the righteous
foundation, what will you do with it? This goes back to the
vow.

Now, if your goal is to be an entrepreneur, if your goal is

to start a company, you’ve got to set a foundation like a
champ.

You’ve got to be a champion. Maybe you need to research

every single company like yours. Research your
competitors. Start writing a business plan. Figure out what
it takes to break even financially. If you're looking for a
physical location, like I did with the Tempe True REST
after we moved, it can be a tough time. It was for me; I
basically just drove the streets looking for a place.

I would drive probably about a four-mile radius and write

down every single vacancy in it. Every day I did this —
drive every single street and talk to every single landlord,
every single person. Eventually, we started learning the
values of real estate and really, truly becoming experts at
that. Setting my foundation for having my store be
successful was doing the research and doing the work, and
really figuring out, first of all, where I wanted to be —
figuring out and tracking what was happening in
Scottsdale.

The reason we moved was twofold. First, we had a

couple of problems with the facility. Frankly, it smelled
like sewage gas the entire day. It was awful. We were
trying to raise our first baby business with our
surroundings smelling like sewage gas all day long! Guess
what? People who are floating don't like the smell of
sewage gas. Go figure.

So, as we prepared to move, we started doing

demographic research. We researched every single person
that came in and where they found us. We found that less
than 5 percent of all clients came to us because of our
location. We also found out, believe it or not, that 70
percent of our clients actually lived in the Southeast
Valley, not in Scottsdale.

The population density in Tempe is actually higher than in

many areas of Scottsdale. Scottsdale's actually a very,
very spread-out place. We had to do the demographic
research to find out that people were actually coming from
our direct advertising, from our direct marketing efforts.
They weren’t coming in because of the location.
Not only that, but we found out that that first group was in
the age range of 35 to 45, on average. Now, the
demographic has shifted a bit. Now it's more like mid-20s
to maybe high 40s, maybe even 50s now. We're actually
seeing floating’s demographic getting a little bit wider;
it’s even attracting younger kids, like 13- or 14-year-olds.
These kids, if they research floating, typically find it cool.
Some of them find it weird, true, but society as a whole
still finds it kind of weird. That's going to shift, but once
we start seeing 15-year-olds who are interested in
floating, and that in ten years or so are going to be college
kids. Five years further down the road yet, those are going
to be the people that have the revenue and the jobs to be
able to afford floating. If we can penetrate the minds of the
young, obviously the demographic's going to spread. We’d
like to see older people trying it, too, but we see it
happening more with the 15-year-olds than the Baby
Boomers.

That demographic research is absolutely critical when

you're starting a financial foundation. We researched
everything. We found the perfect location. We executed
the lease. We got it right, knocked it out of the park, fully
booked first month we were open( September, 2013)..
That's when we started clocking in at mid-$400K range.

Then last year, we did just over $500,000 gross, with a 55

percent net profit off one store. Imagine, then, if you have
three float spas, you're netting close to a million bucks.
That's a good little business, not overly hard to start.
That's why the franchising is so awesome. What the heck?
Might as well pitch my own thing, truerestfranchising.com.
Take a look. Phenomenal business model, absolutely
phenomenal. (Toot toot! Tooting my own horn. Ha!)

Setting that foundation is the key. That has to do with

research, writing a business plan, getting all your ducks in
order, and tracking everything. Really understand this: you
have to track, track, track.

That's really the key with setting a financial foundation, or

any foundation, for that matter. Going from setting your
righteous foundation to setting the foundation that you want
for the rest of your life. For me, I said a righteous
foundation, but maybe you want something else in your
life.

Maybe your goal isn't to cultivate into a state of tranquility

and bliss. That’s OK; that's my thing. Maybe your
foundation is something different. Maybe you're setting a
financial foundation every day. Maybe you get up the in
the morning and you read a financial book for an hour.
Then you maybe work out for thirty minutes, or something
like that. As you can tell, my righteous foundation is three-
plus hours: three and a half, sometimes four hours. That's
my pre-work day. Likewise, you can set a financial
foundation where you're researching your business for an
hour, then doing something else — reading a book,
blowing off some steam, working out, whatever you need
to do — and that’s your foundation.

Imagine if you're doing that stuff in a concentrated, focused

fashion. What are the priorities for your business? Boom.
Then you actually go into your business and you aren’t in a
reactive mode.

Or if you're building a business, you're really figuring out

the nitty-gritty. What are the actual things, the main things I
need to do? How do I learn about this, and how do I
become an expert at this?

I think becoming the expert is absolutely key. I talk about

that in another podcast, but that’s where you’re going with
setting your foundation. You’re becoming an expert,
you’re building, and you’re knowing how to get what you
want from that foundation. It works.
 Chapter 2
Flotation Therapy

How Joe Rogan Re-ignited a Forgotten

Industry
As I started researching other opportunities as an
entrepreneur, I stumbled upon the Joe Rogan video in
2008 explaining floating, aka sensory deprivation. At that
time, I had a strong intent of “I need a more flexible life to
help more people and change more lives.” That’s when I
found floating, and when I found the Joe Rogan video.

Joe Rogan is a comedian, most well-known for his role as

the host of the TV show Fear Factor. He is now a MMA
commentator and the host of the Joe Rogan experience
podcast. He discusses the use of the float tank and his
experiences during the float sessions. His video was
apparently filmed by one of his house guests, seemingly
with no director or intent. This video was one of the few
pieces on floating on the internet prior to 2008.

After watching the Joe Rogan video about floating I

thought, Wow... he's experiencing something spectacular
and he's connecting with higher dimensional states of
consciousness. Even though he's still using drugs as the
gateway, he's still doing tremendous things that could
help humanity. I believe all these states can be achieved
through genuine cultivation, though that is not the purpose
of genuine cultivation. But I knew Joe was onto something.

My understanding was that Joe Rogan was able to pierce

this veil of illusion and push through into other
dimensional realms. He described his process of passing
through geometric patterns. Once he pushed through the
geometric patterns, he felt free from ego and free of self,
and was completely at one with the cosmos. This is an
extraordinary experience and could be described as
psychedelic or mystical in nature. This is something that
— as a cultivator of the Tao, as someone who's sought for
a deeper understanding of a cosmic characteristic his
entire life — I found completely resonated with me.

Joe Rogan has talked about floating for nearly a decade.

His video and podcast were some of the only forms of
media on the subject for many years. I truly believe Joe
Rogan re-ignited the entire flotation therapy industry.
Kudos to you, Mr. Rogan.
The First Float Experience
In 2008, there were only 14 or 15 locations in the entire
country that offered flotation therapy, and many were not
operating as businesses, with normal business hours.

After a few months of searching and calling on various

centers, I finally found a location a few hours from me that
offered the service.

My first float was in Sedona, Arizona. We went in. There

was a very nice man there whose first name was Kevin (I
forget his last name). He had a great facility and a great
introductory video to floating. My wife and I both were
able to float.

I quickly began to relax, and my first float just felt like

going home. It felt like a part of me was returning home. It
was very akin to being in the womb. As I lay in that water,
it felt very luxurious, extraordinarily relaxing. It was
really unlike anything I had ever felt before. As I began to
sit there and relax, deeper and deeper, it began to remind
me of very profound, lucid meditations that I had
experienced. I got into a fairly tranquil space and, frankly,
then the music came back on, so the float, for me, went
very fast.

When I got out, I felt euphoric. It's very hard to describe

the state, but it was as if my ego left and I was just
tranquil. I was just sitting there. It felt like my body was
gone, my arms were gone, my legs were gone. Only my
head was left, with the thought that I, myself, was floating,
much like in meditation. This was very, very euphoric. My
wife had a similar experience. I can say after the float, my
senses were revived, my vision was better, my mood was
notably escalated, and afterwards, we ate at a café and we
just talked about our experience. We ate some very basic
food, but even my taste buds were enhanced.

On the two-hour drive from Sedona back to Tempe,

Arizona, where we live, we just talked about our
experience.

“Oh, my gosh. I feel incredible. I feel light and warm and

energetic,” I said. I thought it was something that the
masses, as a whole, could resonate with much easier than
trying to meditate. I related it very much to returning to a
connection with the divine. “If this is done on a mass
scale,” I finished, “if this is done like a Four Seasons, a
Four Seasons of floating, I think this could be something
that becomes as big as the massage industry. I think this
could be the next Massage Envy of floating.”

After that day, I was absolutely, completely obsessed with

starting a float center. I started writing a business plan and
just started researching Massage Envy and other franchise
systems. I always had in the back of my mind that this
could be something that could easily be expanded into
multiple stores if it took off. I was very clear about that. I
also liked the Massage Envy business model. I liked how
they greeted people; I liked how the spas were clean; I
liked how everybody was very professional. The systems
and processes were all buttoned-up. They had a recurring
revenue stream with memberships. We basically
borrowed that model as our template and we made
modifications from there. I started pricing the floating at
$79, intending to leave myself room to discount down so
new clients could always come in at a cheaper rate. Most
people would come in and actually pay usually $59.
Sometimes, we would even have $49-deal specials. We
are membership-based, so memberships start at $59 a
month for one, $99 for two, and a $180 for four floats.

All of these things just started coming to me, even on that

first car ride back.

After that, I spent about six months writing a business

plan, compiling data. I went over to the UK and started
looking at different centers and trying different pods and
products and was really blown away. From what I saw in
Europe, floating had really started to take off in the mid-
90s. In the US at that time, there were only fifteen stores in
the entire country. Fifteen stores in 2009. When we
opened, I really felt like we were on the train or on a boat
on something that was going to move very fast. I just knew
this was going to take off. I knew this was good for
people. I knew this could help people relax. We really put
our hearts and souls into making that first spa work.

What really struck me the most is when we started the spa

is that nearly everyone liked the float. There were only a
few negative comments. We had fans, and people wanted
to come in regularly. Actually, our first member was our
first client, and that person is still a member to this day. I
witnessed and felt that this modality was something
special and extraordinary.

All this has come from my first float experience. My first

float experience really was something I needed to do to
just know that this is something I wanted to stand behind,
something that could do great things for humanity.

In my first float, I relived many of the profound states from

my past, but moving into these states of stillness was
easier than spending all that time in a full lotus position.
Floating is a tool anyone can utilize, no matter your yogic
or meditative background.

From a business perspective, my first float seemed very

“edgy,” and the location still had a basement feel to it. It
hadn't been elevated to a spa level. The rooms were not
heated, so I was also cold upon getting out. Nevertheless,
the float’s external weaknesses notwithstanding, on the
way home I was energized, aware, and incredibly
motivated. I realized deeply how important floating is to
the world.
Why is Flotation Therapy Important?
Through the sensory isolation experience, it became clear
to me that others would be able to experience and
accentuate other senses outside of the five senses we
associate with this human form. That's why I began saying
that flotation therapy is more about sensory acceleration
than sensory deprivation. It's accelerating those senses that
are important in other-dimensional realms, and turning off
those in this realm, those associated with the brain
antenna. That's what allows you to break through to the
other realms so easily. You're turning off the senses in this
one-dimensional plane, and you're starting to tap into the
senses that exist in other dimensional planes.

That's a fundamental truth for me, and one of the reasons

that floating is important. Floating is an environment that
“meditates” you. It allows the conscious mind to shift, and
whatever that new perspective becomes for that individual
is something they will learn from and integrate into their
overall being. This new perspective can then allow the
participant to feel a sense of well-being. This is true even
when chronic pain overwhelms the majority of their
everyday perceptions.

My first float allowed me to remember and experience a

state of pure joy, a state of blissfulness, a state of
euphoria. My senses were revived, and my mood was
elevated. This is a very, very powerful tool. If this tool
was given to humanity as a whole, it could help shift the
overall consciousness of the planet. I believe that floating
will become a part of what is needed in the future, and
will be become a part of the ascension of consciousness
on a mass scale. That is the fundamental purpose of
floating for me.

This is why I started a float business. Once your

consciousness begins to shift, you never look at things the
same way. No matter how you experience the original
perspective change, even if it’s through entheogens at first,
meditation or genuine cultivation are all available without
the need for external substances.

Basically, every employee at True REST truly feels like

it's part of their divine mission on Earth to spread floating.
At least that's my knowledge of Tempe; I can't say that's
the case for every franchisee or all the people who are
coming in, but I can say definitively that that is the case in
Tempe —that every single person feels like it is this
divine part of their life and something divinity has
bestowed upon them to fulfill in a vow they've made..

I've actually interviewed employees at other True REST

locations, and many convey similar ideologies. It's an
interesting component of True REST that the people there
are inherently passionate. We're talking passionate to the
point that this is part of their mission in life to fulfill. This
is no small thing, and it’s the culture we've created.
An Outsider Relates to the Industry
Once we started the business, we were very much heads-
down, although we did go to a float conference in 2010.
This was the first float conference that had been held in
nearly twenty years. I was 29 at this point. I had chopped
off my dreadlocks, I'd gotten rid of my earrings, my purple
hair was gone, and I’d started dressing nicer. In college I
was definitely someone that looked like a hippy, spoke
like a hippy, and applied myself like a hippy. Ironically
enough, when we went to the float conference, the majority
of the attendees were still very much of the “hippy-like”
variety.

I talked about growing the business, reaching more people,

the value of memberships, as well as new float pod
technologies. I definitely felt like I was looking five to ten
years into the future, while everyone else was talking
about the past.

My observation was that we were not accepted, that we

were outsiders. But, knowing myself as a cultivator, I tried
not to perceive or to assume. I began trying to become
friends with people that I met, but I still felt like an
outsider, though I couldn't grasp why. This hurt me deeply
at the time, but it reminded me of a state experienced at a
Falun Gong conference.
There, I fundamentally lost feeling of my body from the
standpoint of being able to perceive the difference
between cold and heat. I also felt light, as if my Heavenly
Circuit was opening up (an energy system that can be
developed through QiGong exercises).

It was a cold day, and I was wearing no jacket, and other

people would come up to me and ask if I was cold; I didn't
realize it. I said no. In fact, at that point, I wasn’t cold nor
warm, nor did I feel much of anything at all other than
benevolence, energy, purity, joy, innocence, love,
truthfulness, and compassion. I felt like I was becoming
one with the cosmic characteristic of Zhen-Shan-Ren —
truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. I had no feeling
other than a sense of lightness. In this state again, at the
float conference, I lost the sense of normalcy. I lost the
sense of time.

I walked into one room where two practitioners were

talking to each other. One practitioner, though his words
were not overly harsh, was berating the other person. His
words came into my body and they started disrupting me at
a cellular level. The energy was negative; I left the room
and went outside, where I fell to my knees, and I began to
tear and I began to cry. I could feel the intensity of his
other practitioner's words inside my body, interacting with
me.
In this state, I had experienced how vulnerable I could be.
In this state, I was more vulnerable than I'd ever been. I
experienced what it meant to have a tone, to be negative.

Dr. Emoto in Japan did a lot of great work in this area —

that the intent of one's thoughts can manipulate and interact
with the environment around one. His studies specifically
dealt with water and the crystallization of water. Your
intent can have a unique effect on the shape of water, once
the water is stabilized through being frozen.

Not until recently did someone say to me, “Nick, you wear
nice clothes, and the manner in which you speak is
different from the majority of the industry. You are being
judged based on your outward appearance.”

What I realized is that some people in the industry only

wanted “their” people to float. Deep down, this wasn’t a
tool to help humanity; it was a tool to help only those they
deemed “similar enough to them.” Once I realized that, I
stopped looking at the existing industry for support or
advice.

But I still wanted to grow like any other successful

business. I took Massage Envy as the template for our first
store in terms of operations. I started growing the
business, learning marketing, understanding consumer
psychology, interacting with and figuring out how to track
ROIs (return on investments). True REST started day one
with memberships. As far as I know, we were the first
float spa to introduce memberships to the Flotation
Therapy industry.

My perspective on everything has shifted over the last few

years and I no longer feel like an outsider. I am now trying
to collaborate with everyone in the industry and be a part
of all efforts and initiatives. I believe collaboration is the
key moving forward.
Nearly Lost It All
When we began growing the business, it took us between
six and eight months before we walked away from the
day-to-day operations. And that was all those months at
fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. We ate ramen
noodles, we maxed out credit cards, and we were afraid.

Anytime my wife would cry or be scared, I would say, “I

know this is hard, but I also know this is what we're meant
to do. It will all work out as it should.” I strongly believed
that.

There came a point for several years in which our rent

was very expensive, and we started borrowing money
from family to just break even. We needed others to help
us, and we couldn't do it on our own. This was a humbling
lesson. I thought I could do everything on my own, but I
couldn't. I needed others to help me, and without their help
we would not be where we are today. But we also made
an important discovery: we were being swallowed by
rent. So, I began looking for another place to rent. I drove
around searching for nearly six months. It came to a point
where I looked inside myself and said, I'm getting very
stressed. I'm getting very fearful that we may lose
everything we have built, however, I'm not attached to
the business. If we are meant to lose this business, I am
ready to lose it. If it is time to lose this, I'm willing. If it
is time to go get a job, I'm willing. I'm no longer afraid.

On one particular day, I drove into a new complex that had

a “for rent” sign. I called the number, the broker met me
right away, and I told him our story. I told him why we
were doing what we were doing and how we were trying
to help people. I told him that we didn’t have a lot of
money. We spent $100,000 building out our other spa; the
landlord hadn’t given us any money towards tenant
improvements, and we would lose it all when we moved.

He said, “I think I can help you. I think that the landlord at

this location will be willing to give you a significant
amount of tenant improvement allowances.”

Sure enough, within four or five months, we were actually

able to build out the entire facility for less than $100,000.
The landlord at that time paid for nearly half of that, so we
had to come up with $40,000 to $50,000 out-of-pocket to
open a second store —which now, I'm realizing, was
almost a miracle. Our Tempe location is 2,280 square
feet, which meant our build out only represented $40 or so
a square foot. This is extraordinarily cheap, and while we
did do a lot of work ourselves to save money, a more
reasonable cost for construction would be $90 to $120 per
square foot.

As we started growing our business, I learned more about

marketing, ROI, and membership conversions. We're now
doing 15 percent to 20 percent conversions of first-time
visitors to monthly members. At last, we got to a point
where we started working only five to eight hours a week
and were able to begin helping more with my human rights
mission as well.
 Chapter 3
Make Six Figures in the Flotation
Therapy Industry

Giving Your Business a Righteous Foundation

Talking about making six figures always gets people’s
attention. That’s why we offer this, after all: we want you
to pay attention here! But there’s also a trap in phrasing
things this way: we know that in the float business as in
most businesses, promises of excellent income will draw
a lot of people who are clueless about running businesses.
That’s not a problem, if they’re willing to learn how
BEFORE they jump in. It’s only a problem if you try to put
the cart before the horse, as the old saying goes, and go
into this business with a wrong idea of how things work.
Here are a few common mistakes “newbies” make in the
float business.

1. Having a “Field of Dreams” Philosophy.

Many float centers open their business very much like

Kevin Costner built the baseball stadium in Field of
Dreams. If you’re not familiar with this movie, it’s worth
watching. Costner plays an Iowa corn farmer who hears
voices saying, “Build it, and they will come.” He
interprets them as a command to build a baseball diamond
in his fields; he does, and the ghosts of old Chicago White
Sox come.

Unfortunately, this isn’t how a real business works.

You can certainly start with your own “field of dreams,”

but then you must treat this venture as a business. You
need to do your due diligence, research, demographic
studies, pricing structure, operations flow, marketing
analysis, pro-formas, ROI tracking…you get the picture.
Everyone in the float industry is passionate — I am not
discounting this — but not everyone understands how to
convey to and educate their target market. We are at the
cusp of a relatively new industry, and I have seen several
businesses in the flotation therapy fail, and many more
have been sold off at a fraction of what their realized
value could be if a realistic plan had been used from the
start.

So this is one thing that will cause you to fail in the

industry: improper planning.

Don’t make the mistake of projecting a regular float

business without demographic research: no projections of
possible numbers of floaters in the area, no projections of
potential income and/or memberships, and no plan to work
backward from those points. I’ve seen too many instances
of passionate people who do just that. This doesn’t mean
they’re not diligent workers or willing to put in effort.
They are! So many of them work fourteen-hour days to
open a center, but then don't have a solid plan or strategy
to implement what their actual goal is…which is a number
of potential customers they can convert.

You built it; now, how do you get people in the door, and
what do you do with them once they are there?

With True REST, we have a very solid plan and a

streamlined project management tool with critical path
analysis during the build-out process, the leasing process,
and then, the first six months of marketing. We believe that
the first six to twelve months is absolutely the most
critical for planning and implementing, and you must have
a clear-cut plan for both the opening of the store as well as
marketing it. OK, so you have your pricing structure, you
have your demographic research done, and your
market/marketing analysis is complete. Now, you have a
target market. We use your target market to develop
internal business processes and marketing systems.

So basically your business has a look and feel, and you

have informational materials targeting the type of people
YOU have determined would be interested in floating in
YOUR AREA…
Do you see how that works? You are now in control of
your business. We can help you to this step, but this is
NOT what we are truly providing. You must do your own
research. We show you how to “direct the water once it’s
flowing.” We simply give you the keys to the shiny new
car, train you on how to drive it, and then give you tune-
ups if needed.

2. Tripping Over the “AA+ Location” Hurdle.

The second biggest pitfall I've seen with newbies is the

belief that you need an A++ location. Truth is, you don’t.
What I have absolutely learned is that you do need to be in
a nice area, but you don't need to be in the A+ complex. I
believe a B+ or even B- complex will suffice.

Nor do you need an “anchor.” We get only a small

percentage of our overall clients from walk-ins or from
anything related to the location. I would say less than 5
percent of our client base actually comes because of our
location. People searching for floating referrals make up
30 percent of our business; the remainder of our marketing
makes up the rest of our floating clientele. You do not
need the high-end location.

You’re actually much better served saving the $3,000 a

month on the rent and putting that same $3,000 into a
strategic, trackable marketing plan that you analyze,
reevaluate, and tweak until you start getting positive return
on investments for all of your marketing dollars spent.

You DO need, however, to be in a location that will

actually allow you to operate. That’s why one of the first
things you need to do, if you haven’t done it already, is to
CALL YOUR HEALTH AND SANITATION
DEPARTMENT, and make sure they allow flotation pods
in your area. Seriously! (Yes, we mean it. And yes, we
have some good ammo and research documents that can
help you with this, too.)

3. Seeking Out Too Narrow a Niche.

The third mistake I see newbies make is appealing to only

a small niche crowd. Much the same way we discovered
at the float conference that some folks only wanted people
in the business who were “just like them,” some people in
the float business want only CUSTOMERS who are also
“just like them.”

Now, let’s be clear: If your goal is simply to do what you

want to do, you’re not necessarily overly worried about
expansion, and you literally are doing this to make friends
and receive hugs — no sarcasm meant — this is fine.
There are plenty of people who literally just want to run a
business, make enough to make ends meet and get by, and
they're perfectly happy with that. I’ve got no problem with
that, if that’s what your goal is.

In that context, I've seen several centers focus on a

particular niche crowd. They focus on “their people,” on
the New Age or hippie crowd, and they ignore mainstream
society. Depending on where you're located, that may
make sense. If you're in Portland, Oregon…or perhaps
Vancouver… or if you're in an extremely, extremely
health-conscious community…you might have plenty of
clients even with that focus. But personally, I'd be very
cautious about integrating your own belief system, your
own spiritual modalities, into the center if your goal is to
reach more people and, frankly, make any sort of money to
be able to sustain the business, pay rent, and expand.

Through the years I've had many mentors that have been
marketing analysts who have let me know that stripping
dogma or overly spiritual concepts from the brand will
attract more people. I need to think about things from the
standpoint of who may this possibly repel? Is there
someone that could have gotten something out of floating,
but who’s now turned off on it, because it comes across as
being connected to my own belief system? And can I
afford to repel people in that way?

Most of the time, if I’m trying to make a “go” of a

business, I really can’t. And neither can most owners.
What I've personally learned over the years is that my
business is an entity of its own right. My creating it is
much like a birthing process: it’s allowed to grow and
become its own individual with its own consciousness. By
this point, it’s basically in its teenage years, and it's
continued to grow. Of course, I continue to direct it and
put my own values in to it, but I do consider it its own
entity outside of myself. The bottom line is, your business
isn’t the only avenue you have to channel your own beliefs
or values…at least it probably shouldn’t be. And that
applies to floating, too.

Floating in and of itself doesn't need to have a belief

system tacked on to it; it absolutely does have a wider
appeal for people in terms of pain relief, relaxation, and
sleep issues. In fact, it can benefit the world much more by
being expanded to mainstream clients, too.

If you truly want a livelihood that can sustain your family

for years to come, then, my suggestion would be to appeal
to a broad audience. This applies to many things, even
down to little details like setting the ambience of your
pods. Currently, 50 percent of our clients prefer music
over silence when they’re floating; it's not up to me as a
business owner to determine what's right or wrong for
them. Thus, we give clients what they want…within
reason!
4. Thinking You Need to Do It All Yourself.

Another pitfall you’ll want to avoid is the conviction that

YOU have to personally run the store, all the time. This
was one of the biggest lessons I had to learn, and most of
us have to find out the hard way how true it is.

At True REST, we pay employees $10 to $15 an hour,

depending on where they are in the country and the amount
of responsibility they have as an employee, whether
they’re a float assistant or an assistant manager. We
discovered very quickly that I personally needed to get
only one person floating within literally a three- or four-
hour period to actually make up the cost of having myself
work in the store rather than spending my time more
profitably.

I think it's important to work the store for the first three to
eight months; after that, you need to realize that your time
and your value in bringing more customers in is worth
more. You need to focus on higher-level tasks such as
marketing the store, improving its reach in the community,
and finding new customers. Hire the best people you can
to replace you in other individual roles.

If in three or four hours, you as the owner can get one

person to float, that's making you $50; I know for a fact
that if I’m the owner and out there marketing all day long,
I'm going to get five, maybe ten or even fifteen people to
float within that time period.

From there, take it one step further: analyze your efforts

directly. Say to yourself, OK, now I'm spending all day
marketing. How can I create systems and processes that
do it better? That’s how you begin streamlining, becoming
more efficient.

In business, I consider things always unstable, always up

for improvement. If you look at things this way, eventually
you'll have a business that doesn't need you — the systems
and processes have taken over. Don’t worry about this:
typically, if you formulate the systems and processes well,
those will do a better job than you would trying to do
everything by yourself.

You will notice many of the centers popping up in the US

use pricing, language, websites, and systems eerily similar
to what True REST does. But do they know WHY? A
copy always looks worse than the original, right? If you
are simply copying from someone else without knowing
why, you will always be one step behind and your
competitor will always be one step ahead!

True REST Franchising has this flushed out to a science.

We show you with map overlays where you need to be,
provide ongoing training and support, and give you access
to the True REST University in person and online, as well
as hands-on training in Tempe and at your new location,
once it opens.

We are constantly testing, tweaking, and making

improvements to our business, marketing systems,
marketing collateral, image, in-house scripts, client flow
(how they progress through the spa), etc. We are
constantly evaluating ROI and customer interactions,
making improvements, and these improvements are what
drive the business forward. If you are only copying the
surface of a pricing structure or marketing system, you
won’t get the same results. You won’t grow. You’ll only
be a follower.

So why am I telling you this? Because we want you to

grow — but we want you to know why you are growing.
We want more people to experience floating, but that
cannot happen without you working on your business first.
It’s similar to the expression, “You cannot help others
without first helping yourself.” The deeper meaning of this
is not based on being selfish, but rather correcting those
things inside yourself that need work before attempting to
help others.

Shouldn’t this same principle apply to your business? Of

course it should! That’s how we’ve done what we have so
far. We’d love for YOU to make a success of it, too.
A Sneak Peek at the Internal True REST
Process
True REST is the fastest-growing floating franchisor in the
world, and Float Pod is a leading supplier of commercial
float pods. I've been in this industry since 2009. In 2010,
the first float conference in decades was held, and there
were 25 to 30 people sitting in a room in San Francisco. It
was a great pleasure to meet Glenn and Lee Perry, who
were the creators of the original commercial float tank
called the Samadhi tank.

Samadhi is a Sanskrit word. Buddha Shakyamuni, one of

the historical Buddhas, taught precept, samadhi, wisdom.
Precept is about giving up everyday attachments. Once this
is achieved, one can achieve a state of samadhi, or
entering into concentration and tranquility. Once one has
entered into samadhi, one can achieve wisdom and
enlightenment. Therefore, as the name for a float tank,
Samadhi is quite brilliant.

Floating has grown from a $4 million-a-year industry to

what rounded out in 2015 as a $100 million industry.
We've gone from 15 or 20 centers in 2009 to over 350, so
it's grown incredibly fast. In 2010, my first center opened;
this time period was a giant current with many centers
opening. I truly believe this industry is a tidal wave; we
all fall together, and we all rise together. We caught it just
at the right time, when it was being reborn. We were on a
large tidal wave of floating, entering into the mainstream,
and as of now (2016), the wave is still increasing in
intensity and strength.

As far as I know, we are one of the few float spas with

four-pod centers that operate with only one employee at a
time. Based on an hourly pay rate of $10, this generates a
whopping payroll savings of $3,500 per month. We are
open six days a week from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. (We now
have larger five- and six-pod model that utilize more
employees, but our original model worked with one
employee.)

What I’m about to share with you will save you $42,000
per YEAR, and it’s only one small piece of our internal
business process. How are we able to do this? It’s truly
about the flow of traffic/customers. How can you put your
customers in your center and have the center work for
you?

Here’s How It Works.

We schedule all floats at 90-minute intervals. So that

means the schedule runs 10 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 1 p.m., and
so on. That is the foundation right there!
We make it work through communication: Our system
emails people 36 hours prior to the Float and reminds new
clients to arrive 20 minutes early. We also call all
customers in the morning, and if they are new, we remind
them to come in 20 minutes prior to the float time. The
next float time is 11:30 a.m., so that means people start
trickling in at about 11:10 a.m. or so. As they come in, the
one employee will have them fill out paperwork with
legal and medical disclaimers.

As part of the initial tour, we also bring people into our

“Oasis Room” with free water, freshly brewed tea, and an
oxygen bar. We tell them to come into this room after their
float, too, to relax for a few minutes

We set the flow of clients early in the process. At seven

minutes before the float, 11:23 a.m. in this case, we start a
video about floating. Right about this time, people begin
coming out of the shower and start using the restroom or
going to the prep room or Oasis room. At that point, one
employee is able to clean the rooms and pods and make
them ready for the next group.

Our online booking system is even more expedient, in that

it cuts phone calls in half (we show you this in the
Business System). If someone wants to check out at 11:30
a.m., we tell them to give us three minutes to start the next
group. The employee sets the flow, not the customer. So at
this point, four of the previous groups’ float participants
are in the Oasis room or prep room, and four are waiting
in the media room. The one employee will take any new
floaters into a float room and give a brief two- or three-
minute tour of the room and basic operations. Once they
are finished, they go back to the front desk and begin
checking people out. We’ve got a process set up that
allows this to work.

Sounds simple, huh? Few spas operate four pods with

only one employee, but doing things this way, being
willing to do little bit of tweaking, will save your center
thousands of dollars.
True REST Franchising
I'm asked very often about the benefits of franchising.
Franchising is the ability to clone yourself and/or your
processes or your brand into subsequently successful
brands, or books, or whatever it may be. In cases of
celebrities or motivational speakers, very often they
themselves are their brand; they are the franchise. For us,
franchising means creating systems and processes, layouts,
guidelines, marketing collateral, value systems,
membership guides, and how-to-hire protocols. All of
these things comprise what we call our Float University.

Float University, with its internal team of operators,

basically is a system that can be replicated on a
nationwide scale. You can go open a float center
anywhere in the country with certain research, key
demographic triggers, and analysis to allow you to open in
multiple different areas of the United States. Franchising
gives you all the tools needed.

When Holly and I first began our business, we made a lot

of mistakes. We actually ruined our first store. We
destroyed it because of the salt damage. It took us a little
while to understand the metrics of how to go from a 5
percent conversion of membership to an 8 percent t
conversion to a 12 percent conversion to a 20 percent
conversion. Whereas now, 15 to 20 percent is our
average, and it's not uncommon for us to have weeks that
are in the 30 percent conversion rate, from new clients
walking in the door into monthly recurring members.

All of these things took time. It took time for us to analyze

what kind of marketing worked and what kind didn’t work.
We still work on how to structure the calls to action and
social media and online ads and radio ads, the value
systems that each float consultant should have.

A great story regarding franchising is what happened with

Amir Adib.

Basically, in our first year, we hired the man who is now

our director of operations, Amir Adib. Amir started as a
float consultant who then worked his way up into assistant
management and became a manager. Then he advanced
into corporate and learned how to be a director of
operations under our ex-director of operations. Through
learning every individual step of running a business and
running a franchise, he was able to take the reins on the
business in a big way. Becoming the director of operations
is coming to his full fruition of understanding every key
aspect of running this business.

That's about a two-year learning curve — but a franchise

system jump-starts you on that curve.
You get the materials that took us years to learn. You get
the marketing collateral that took us years to learn. You get
the membership scripts. You get everything that took us
years to learn and you really, truly jump-start yourself.

My sister, Jill Willhoite, and her husband, John, opened a

spa and within their first six weeks they sold 80
memberships. Six weeks, and they sold 80 memberships! I
know businesses and float centers that have been open for
years and haven't gotten up to eighty memberships yet!

At True REST we have 75 to 100 members per float pod

per center, per float spa. This is something that took years
to come up. It's very likely that a store can just open and
be that successful, but franchising really does give you all
the tools, the team, and the collaboration that drives
everything forward.

That's something brought about by the experience of the

brand. Where franchising really begins to shine is now that
we have multiple locations open, and True REST
franchising becomes the facilitator more than the sole
teacher. Franchisees start putting their own twists and
creativity into the brand and into the systems and
processes, which is great.

As the facilitator, we are now learning from our

franchisees and then re-implementing what we learn as a
franchisable system to all of our new franchisees. The
bigger we get as a franchise, the more streamlined we're
going to get the faster we're going to learn, and the more
successful we will be as a whole and as individual stores
who are able to learn from each other. This is the core
component that franchising brings: massive insight and a
massive head start, then undeniable creativity and
collaboration that leads to more success for all.
Is Franchising for You?
The question we get the most often about franchising is
“Why should I franchise instead of going at it alone?”
.Here are some key points to consider.

Memberships: THIS IS A BIG ONE!! We’ll talk

about this more in the Memberships section here,
how we went from converting 5 percent to 8 percent
and then 12 to 15 percent. We now convert 1 out of 5
people that walks into the spa into recurring monthly
members.

Even allowing for normal attrition, this equates to an

income bump of $400 to $700 per month, month after
month, depending on your customer volume. An
average True REST is able to generate up to 75 to
100 members per pod. (*Results vary between
locations) If members pay an average of $65 that’s
$19,500 to $26,000 per month for a four-pod spa,
without a single person stepping foot in the door.
That’s a great way to start a month. Now we are
working on keeping attrition down and referrals up;
as part of franchising, you get all of our knowledge
up to this point and continual tweaks, so your
performance is directly linked to ours. We as the
franchisor are the facilitators and our franchisees are
 the stars.

Referrals. True REST franchisees get 50 to 80

Referrals PER MONTH. Referrals are a huge part of
our overall business.

Plus, a great (and constantly being refined) referral

package, franchisees can also take advantage of
membership scripts, client intake forms, membership
forms, ROI spreadsheets, board of advisory
alliances, ambassador programs, a strong brand
following, marketing collateral and marketing
systems, policies and procedures, training manuals,
system configuration and booking integrations,
mobile app, and automated email strategies.

If that sounds like literally everything you need to start,

operate, market and run a Float Spa business — it is.

We have been joined by many incredible entrepreneurs; I

recently sent a questionnaire out to our franchisees to find
out what they thought of the experience. Below are just a
couple of responses.

Alden and Laura Witte: Gilbert, Arizona

What first captured your interest about floating?

I had heard about floating from a new friend of mine I had
met at a meditation retreat in 2001. The idea really
intrigued me so I set out on a search or the service in the
phoenix area. It was difficult, but I found a man that
offered the service from his home. Even though I had a
strong pull to want to try floating, the fear that I might be
naked, locked in this guy’s basement, overwhelmed my
desire to try it.

What is the best part about running a float spa?

Bumping into people in my community who find out what

we do, then telling us miraculous stories of how just one
hour of floating stopped problems that hundreds of hours
of searching for fixes couldn’t. All the doctors,
specialists, and experts could not help what 60 minutes of
relaxing in a peaceful salt water experience could do.

What was your first float experience like? How have

you integrated floating into your life?

Life-changing. It's like I knew floating would alter my

perception of stress and feeling peace, and actually, I was
scared to try it! Silly ego. I remember sitting in the oasis
room, feeling as though I never needed to go anywhere
else but the seat for eternity. Then, the most beautiful
blonde angel floated into the room and softly offered me
some water to drink. I had no interest in answering her
with words, but just smiled and nodded my head. When it
was time to leave, I noticed I started to ruin my experience
by thinking that driving my car would stress me out enough
to lose this feeling of inner peace.

I was wrong. I realized that nothing could shift this feeling,

and that the feeling was a deep remembrance. I even
imagined seeing a nuclear bomb going off in the distance
and not reacting to it but instead thinking about responding
to it instead. Does that make sense? Like, I think I'll turn
my car away from the bomb, that’s it! That feeling was
palpable for about a week, and honestly, I don't think to
this day I have ever lost 100 percent of the first float I had
back in 2010.

As far as integration goes, I now know that I can life more

full-out. I know I can push my mind body and spirit farther
than ever before because I have a tried & true recovery
technique that will bring me back not just to normal, but
bring me to new levels of performance. I now am a VP of
sales for Float Pod Technologies and am blessed to share
the love of floating with my brothers and sisters from
around the world.

======================

Pat and Heather Gerle: Ohio (Multiple locations)

What is the one piece of advice you could offer
someone thinking about opening a float spa?

If you partner with the right people that understand

business, marketing, and most important how to run a busy
float spa, you will be rewarded with a lifetime of
memories knowing you have been responsible for healing
your community to a degree you never dreamed possible.

What first captured your interest about floating?

Pat heard about floating as a possibility to help with some

PTSD-related anxiety and relaxation. He started to
research it, and we flew to Chicago to try it out. We
noticed that the Float Center was packed, with a waiting
list. We became enthralled with the idea, and Pat
absolutely loved the float. We decided that we could
market it as a spa and began to research it. We called Nick
Janicki in Arizona and asked him for his business plan.
This is where we found that True REST was now
franchising as a spa and we wanted in!! Now we float as
much as possible, and Pat is taking NO medicine for
anxiety and PTSD.

What is the best part about running a float spa?

The people. It doesn’t matter what mood they are in when

they come into the spa, when they leave it’s all smiles and
amazement!! If we are being “frank,” we also love the
challenge and spreading the word to people who have
never heard about it. We are very competitive.

What was your first float experience like? How have

you integrated floating into your life?

My first float was great. I floated for the first time in an

older Samadhi Float Tank. The experience was awesome,
I slept so soundly that night and during my float. I sleep
during every float. It’s weird and frustrating at the same
time. I think being a business owner, my brain will not
shut off and this causes my sleep to be interrupted at night
time. In the pod, you have no choice. I zonk out. Floating is
our life, whether it’s floating to chill out and do “nothing”
or to make money!!

What is the one piece of advice you could offer

someone thinking about opening a float spa?

Be involved. Do not be an absent owner. It’s a very

vulnerable thing you are asking people to do. Having the
owner involved in day-to-day things, I believe, shows
your customers and staff that this is more than a job. This
is a lifestyle that they need to get on board with to change
their lives like it has ours.

======================
Rene and Chuck Russell: Sedona (Multiple locations
pending)

What first captured your interest about floating?

Floating, which I never heard of, kept showing up in my
life. I believe in paying attention to the signs around us so
I purchased a Groupon, drove 100 miles and floated in
Tempe.

What is the best part about running a float spa?

Connecting with those special clients that emerge from
their first float forever changed. My eyes fill with tears,
my heart swells as they desperately want to share each
detail of their float with me. We are forever connected
after sharing such a remarkable step in their personal life
journey.

What was your first float experience like? I arrived at

the float knowing absolutely nothing about floating except
not to shave my legs that day LOL. To my surprise I had
the most remarkable meditative experience. Laying in that
warm dark salt water made it easy to simply move through
the veil nearly immediately. I was hooked and researched
and read everything ever written about floating.

How have you integrated floating into your life? Before

I found floating I had been for many years on my own
personal spiritual journey which included energy work,
past life regression, meditation, yoga, acupuncture etc.
searching for something anything to help me cope with
daily challenges. Floating has become my absolute
favorite personal work to do. The phenomenal benefits
physically and mentally have improved my quality of life
to such a degree I am absolutely not the same person I was
before climbing into that first float in Tempe. I continued
floating to deal with my emotions from a tragedy but to my
surprise it cured very serious physical ailments I've had
for years. I was able to replace a weekly shot and 32 pills
per week with one hour of floating instead.

What is the one piece of advice you could offer

someone thinking about opening a float spa? As an
owner you must have a love of floating to insure that your
employees carry that same love and can share it with your
clients.
Collaboration and Partnerships
To financially deconstruct how we became successful, it's
important to understand that we were able to go into
different verticals of the same industry. The store is one
vertical, franchising the other. Once you enter into the
franchise business, you're no longer in the business of
selling floats; you're in the business of selling businesses
that then, correspondingly, sell floats.

I consider owning a store as one primary business; selling

the franchise system another primary business; and
manufacturing the distributors’ tank, a third business. It's
very possible we'll get into a fourth business, which will
be the analytic data collection of the actual sensors that go
into Float Pods. That will be about creating the software
that tracks all of the sensors and whatever and reporting
on them in a cloud-based system. That would be
potentially a fourth company.

We're essentially creating an enterprise within the float

industry, seeing the gaps that the industry currently has and
filling them. When I entered the industry in 2009 and
opened my first door in 2010, I saw that there were many
gaps. Other people have seen this as well: one is Float On
in Portland, whom I look up to. I think they are doing a
tremendous job in the industry. They've created a product
called FloatHelm, they’ve re-published anew some of
John C. Lilly's original works, and they're also behind the
annual Float Conference. They’re doing miraculous,
miraculous things for the industry.

This has begun as an industry that was not profitable.

Flotation started as a $5 million industry in the United
States in 2009. You could call that North America, $5
million industry. Now, some individuals make more than
$5 million a year in the U.S. alone…so a $5 million
“industry” isn’t really an industry at all yet! Indeed, it had
all the markings of a hobbyist field when we entered. We
entered with fifteen stores open on the entire North
American continent. Can you imagine the gaps that needed
to be filled? Can you imagine the potential the industry
had?

We started the first store, and we were the first to have

memberships. I basically analyzed the massage market
comprehensively, and I also analyzed the chiropractic
market comprehensively. I began to learn marketing
specifically from the chiropractic market. Chiropractic as
a whole has had similar learning curve to what we had to
learn in floating. Chiropractors as a whole have always
historically been considered like quacks. They're going to
break your back, they don't have any value, all this stuff.
Of course there is good practitioners and bad practitioners
better, but I don't think it's fair to say the entire service or
industry as a whole is just a non-beneficial.
When we began running the Float center, I started
examining other niche markets for inspiration, among them
things like dentistry and chiropractic. Much of what I
learned at that time came from a marketer named Ben
Cummings. As we grew from a mom-and-pop store to
having multiple locations and manufacturing float pods,
we began interacting with some of the best marketers on
the planet.

Joe Polish, founder of the Genius Network, is a great

resource and is on our board of advisors for
Franchising.

Michael Fishman is a consumer health mastermind

whose brain is exploding with expertise and wisdom;
it’s insane. Hearing him talk is like listening to a
consumer health and marketing sage.

Other notable marketers, mentors, and experts

include Brian Kurtz and Paul Colligan.

Jim Rowe is my franchising partner, with 30 years of

experience as both a franchisor and franchisee.

David Humphrey is the ex-CEO of Massage Envy

and a key advisor to us.

Mark Lambert is one of our water experts; he’s often

 on national television as a desalination expert and
consulted to create the largest desalination plant in
Carlsbad, California.

JJ Virgin has helped us with product placement and

marketing expertise. (Eventually, we plan on bringing
in nutritional supplementation to floating.)

Jim Kwik, with Kwik Learning, is an expert at

learning, reading, and memorization. He is a leading
consultant to Hollywood and many name brands, and
is also on our advisory board.

The point here is not to name-drop, but give credit where

credit is due. We may sell isolation, but nothing we do is
in isolation. Everything we do is about collaboration.

Over the years, I’ve become a student of marketing and

branding. I’ve become a student of psychology, learning
and reading everything I could possibly get my hands on.
I'm not the kind of person that reads a book a day; I simply
don't. I read very fast, choose the relevant sections from
books, get what I need out of the book in that specific
moment, and put it down. Nearly every book I've ever
been given becomes a reference book for me. When I pick
up a book, my task is to find the one or two implementable
ideas or systems, then move on.
That's also why I love courses. You could give me a book
that broke down every single thing that I needed to learn,
but I would actually pick it up much better in a workshop.
In a two- or three-day intensive workshop, with no
distractions, I can learn an entire system and implement it.
That's easier for me than reading a book. I like workshops,
too, because I personally need the hand-holding and
accountability, as I lose focus easily. Others help me stay
on track.

I have now three companies that either I manage or for

which I’m part of the management team. We've gone from
zero employees, in a couple years, to nearly twenty. It can
be difficult to focus, and much of the day I’m in a reactive
mode instead of a proactive mode. These are all things I'm
learning and trying to resolve.

Prior to starting True REST, I had several opportunities to

obtain the knowledge to make True REST successful. By
the time I started True REST, I had a marketing
background and experience in real estate sales, business
analysis for a software development company, and several
other key positions. Without any one of these skill sets and
knowledge bases, it’s possible I would not have
succeeded.

Focus on what you want and gain the skills and insights
needed. In a previous section, I wrote about driving
around miles and miles of retail space just to get an
understanding of the market, pricing, possible deals, etc.
After all of this research, the right opportunity dropped in
my lap, and I was able to take advantage of it.
Memberships
Some of my biggest breakthroughs have been in
discovering and learning about membership conversions,
the psychology of sales, and how — as Joe Polish puts it
— everything coming out of your mouth is either meant to
repulse someone or influence someone. Everything is
either repulsive or attractive.

If I recommend a movie, I'm trying to attract someone to

watch that movie, and that is a form of sales. Everything
coming your mouth is sales. It really comes down to being
that simple of a message.

The first thing I learned when talking to people after their

float was trying to make their experience an affirmative, a
“yes.” The simple thing that we started — something that
actually doubled our conversions — was simply asking
people, “Would you consider trying this again?” It's a very
simple question, but people as a whole in the industry are
not using this. But this doubled our conversions
overnight. I can’t stress that enough.

People often don’t believe how simple changes can affect

your business. A simple change can mean a 5 or 10
percent increase in conversions over the baseline. Doesn’t
sound like much, right? But if we’re converting 10 percent
of people normally, and I generate a 20-percent increase
in that response, our conversions go up to 12 percent.

So, I went from a 5-percent average to a 10 to 12 percent

conversion with a simple change in words: “Would you
consider trying this again?” The vast majority of people
say yes, or they say maybe. What you've done is you've
created a psychological agreement in their mind that this is
beneficial, and this could and should be something used
again. It got to a point where our conversions were
averaging 15 percent, and our goals became 20
percent...from asking one simple thing.

This is not trickery; it's simply talking to people in a way

that makes them able to respond to their experience in a
positive light.

One of the most common expressions we get in floating is

“That was weird,” or “I have to think about how I feel
before signing up for future floats.” But if we go a little
deeper, we can deconstruct what they're feeling and why
they feel it’s weird. Every float consultant in the spa is an
expert; we make sure of it. From there, the memberships
became a core driving force of our business.

We don't have long-term contracts. We make it very

flexible to get out of the membership. We try to make
everything fair. One of the things we noticed is that people
who started using floating more, despite any initial
apprehension about a membership, would get more pain
relief, more relaxation, more benefits, deeper realizations,
and greater change. The more you float, the better it gets.

This is important, though: we're not selling them in order

to take their money. We're selling them in order for them
to understand the value of what increased floating can do.
Generally speaking, consumers don't appreciate products
and services unless they pay for them; otherwise, there is
no perceived value.

Memberships now represent 45 to 55 percent of our

ongoing revenue stream. Think about that for minute. Fifty-
five percent of your total revenue is coming in without any
need for future sales, without any need for anybody to
even float. That's huge. If you can elicit a 50-percent
revenue stream from memberships, you're golden,
absolutely golden.

There are plenty of models around for this principle.

Gyms, of course, do it the best. Gyms are nearly 100
percent membership-based, and it’s a fantastic business
model. Once we saw that, we were the first to implement
it in the float industry. From there, we just kept tweaking
and refining the processes. Every month and every year,
our processes are getting more refined and better.
Additional Helpful Tools and Resources
Besides franchisee help, of course, there are a lot of tools
and resources out there you can take advantage of as well.
For me, the top tools that contributed to my success were
the business plan and then, later on, the ability to track
profit and loss statements as well as marketing return on
investment spreadsheets.

The business plan software I originally used, which I

highly recommend, is called liveplan.com. It will take
you through all aspects of writing a business plan, and it’s
relatively cheap. There is even an online version that I use
now for multiple businesses within my enterprise. I use
this for the True REST store and Float Pod, as well as a
human rights museum and café concept that I'm currently
starting.

The business plan obviously is #1, and I would spend

quite a bit of time on the business plan stage. When I first
started the True REST Spa, I spent between three and six
months continually writing and re-evaluating, and really
understanding the market prior to entering. This even
included on-site research such as flying over to Europe,
visiting other spas, seeing how other people ran their spa.
Planning is paramount in the process.

The second tool I mention above is the ability to analyze P

and Ls, which can come from the business plan, but then
also having a more dynamic spreadsheet that you can
update no less often than quarterly; I recommend doing it
on even a weekly or monthly basis to really understand
what your expenses are. This is how you determine, Can I
cut out $1,000 here? Can I cut out $1,000 there? You'll
find that as the owner, typically you spend much more than
you need to, and you're going to be running a lot of
expenses through the store. (There may be tax advantages
to doing that but, obviously, I'm not giving tax advice. You
need to talk to a tax accountant or CPA.)

Analyzing the P and Ls are absolutely essential for you to

understand how money flows in and out of the business.
Understanding the flow of money is going to give you a
better understanding of how the business works, where it
needs to go, what goals would you like to achieve, and
how you’re going to get to them. I'm a big believer in
looking three to five years into the future, and then
planning backwards. Cameron Herold calls this the “vivid
vision,” which I've just begun implementing more
specifically. I highly recommend the book Double Double,
which has great topics for CEOs as well as COOs: if
you're starting your own business, you're basically both of
these at the start.

The next most useful resource I've had is basically a

spreadsheet that tracks all of my marketing and intake
forms. When people come into the store, they fill out an
intake form telling us where they came from or how they
heard about us. That field is then tracked and put into a
spreadsheet so every month, I can look at how people
heard about me. This is where we get all of our analysis
and understanding of how “word” is getting out about us.

Of course, you're going to have to play with this a little

bit, and there are going to be a lot of “miscellaneous”-type
entries — probably 5 to 10 percent — that you're just
going to have to narrow down based on research. Based
on our internal research, we get about 30 percent of our
clients from referrals. We get another 20 percent or so
from social media. We get 20 to 25 or 30 percent,
sometimes more, from Groupon and Living Social,
depending on the month. Then we also get some from TV.
Across the brand we use magazines, radio ads, and many
different modalities.

I recommend having about 10 marketing “fishing poles” in

the water, and continually testing, trying, and analyzing
new things. Some things are going to work, and some
things aren’t. But if you’re not tracking them, you certainly
don't know what works and what doesn't work.

Very often, if you can get close to or break even in the

marketing practice, there's always a way to then create
something a little different that gets you a 10 or 15 percent
bump. My goal usually on launching a marketing package
is to simply break even — meaning if someone's coming in
for a $49 special, and my cost of acquisition per customer
is $49, in the first few weeks or the first month I'm testing
it, I'm not unhappy: I spent as much money as I made in
generating those new customers, knowing that 15 to 20
percent of those customers then turn into monthly
members, on which I'm actually going to get a return. If my
marketing initially breaks even, I know that my lifetime
value of that customer is actually going to raise money,
and the outcome overall will be a positive ROI.

Next, I analyze what to do in terms of increasing the

retention. Once I have that number, my focus is then trying
to get a customer down to about a $20 acquisition cost. At
True REST, we have the rule of thumb that once marketing
rolls out, once marketing is tested, we try to stay about at a
$20 or under cost per customer acquisition.

It's very easy to find out what your lifetime value of a

customer is. You simply need to analyze the difference
between a member-based customer (which, in our case,
accounts for 55 percent of our total revenue), and the non-
member-based customer. You're going to see the
difference between a lifelong member and a non-member
... how many months each of them stays in your system.
Track over six months to a year and start figuring out the
lifetime value of a non-member versus that of a member.
You then can, again, work backward to figure out what
your cost of acquisition per customer should be.

Finally, a constantly available resources is studying what

other successful people are doing in the industry, then
borrowing and tweaking to make those things your own.
Certainly, as far as I know, True REST was the first foot
spa to offer memberships, and that was absolutely one of
our keys to massive expansive growth and success.

See what your competitors are doing and emulate them.

It’s one of the best tools you’ll always have!
 Chapter 4
A Renewed Vow to Change

NET Worth and Money

Let’s talk about worth for a minute.

Your net worth is not your NET worth.

No, this isn’t double talk. There are two different terms
we’re referring to here.

What’s your “NET” worth? If someone ever asks you what

your NET worth truly is, you can tell them that your net
worth is the quality of your character, the quality of your
heart nature, and the quality of your spirit.

So your NET worth is not what most of the world calls

your “net worth”…or, money.

I was thinking and reflecting on the mindset of money and

how our culture has been formulated, and I've noticed is
that there is a portion of society that will talk openly about
how much money they make, how much money they don't
make, how much money they've lost, the things they have,
what they buy. Typically, these are people who have
money and have gotten to the point or built something that
has allowed them to create true wealth. What I've noticed
about that is there could be an air of ego about them when
they talk about these things, but we're all human. None of
us is perfect, but at the end of the day a lot of them actually
don't have an attachment to wealth itself. They may be
attached to themselves or attached to other things, but
many of them don't actually have the attachment to wealth.

There's a perspective among those without wealth that

those that have wealth have gotten it through dishonest
means, or done something wrong, or don't deserve it. On
the flip side, if they do have wealth, they're admired or
looked up to. It all boils down to the fact that we're all
living essentially the path that we're meant to live. One
tier of society views wealth as something to be talked
about and shared, and they help each other, and give each
other advice and create more wealth. There's another tier
of society that's afraid to talk about it.

I remember when I used to work at an office building. In

the early stages, I wasn't in a managerial role, and it was
actually considered rude to even ask someone what they
made. Talking about money was something people
frowned upon, and it was personal. I never really
understood that, but I did respect it.

When you get into management, you start talking about

what other people are making, and that can give you a
sense of superiority. Then, because you're making more
money, you feel like you have more power than others, or
that others’ ideas are not as great as yours. That typically
happens to people who are just obtaining wealth, not
creating it. Obtaining wealth means you're getting a
paycheck. Creating means you've done something that
generates wealth for you. You started it; you were the
creator of the project, not just the participant.

The other mindset is one of an entrepreneur who sees the

opportunity to create something, or change something, or
create a company or create a position, or a service or
product but then offer that to the general public who then
exchanges it for money. That person has a very different
relationship with money than someone who is given
money. They're typically not entitled. They're very
appreciative. They've worked for it. They've seen direct
effort being put in for it, and it's just a different mindset.
It's not to say that W2 employees don't have that mindset,
but entrepreneurs in general, once they've created
something that generates virtue, have a different mindset.

There is a mental barrier created by wealth, requiring

those without it to not see it as something overly special.
Only if we see it as something special, something so
sacred that we can't talk about it, do we consider it
special. Isn't that funny? Those who make millions of
dollars talk about it very openly, and they're very happy.
They're actually very proud because they've created that.
It's that emotional response — in this case, potentially
jealousy — that actually blocks people without that
mindset from obtaining it, because now they've associated
it with something negative.

People that have wealth make them feel jealous. People

that have wealth make them feel angry. It's that emotion
that blocks them from being able to manifest it, from my
understanding. As society what we have to do is start
talking about wealth openly “Hey, I make this much,” but
someone across the desk from you makes this much. We
need to start talking about it openly but without the
emotion. If we can start talking about it openly without the
emotion and be proud of what we're doing, there would be
a fundamental shift, and people will start realizing what
they're lacking in order to create more wealth for
themselves.

For the lower class of society to realize that their net

worth is not their net worth and to not have any emotion
for those that have money, you'll start seeing that you look
at things with a different perspective. The most important
thing in this world is a mindset. The most important thing
in this world is how your heart and your thoughts align
themselves. It’s very true that the harder you work, the
luckier you get, but actually luck obviously isn't the cause.
The work itself generated the result.

Money is a topic that many “spiritual people” have

difficulty understanding. For those that fall into this
category, think about it as simply a mechanism for shifting
consciousness. Money is part of the machine. Money is the
fuel for the machines we're creating. Money is the
substance that allows the machines to run that then shift
consciousness.

I think of money as liquid creativity. The money itself can

be used for incredible blessings; it’s just a matter of
fueling the right machines.

The other day, a long-time employee said some of friends

were criticizing him for working for a franchise. They told
him, “Now you're a part of the machine. Now, you're a
part of Monsanto.” In essence, they were telling him he
was a bad person because he worked for my company.
But, in fact, I see the company I created as a separate
entity from me. It was birthed with my collaboration, my
focus, and my energy, but it is not me. It has its own
identity, its own values, and its own mission. It’s possible
it will not need me in the future.

My teammate told his friends, “Wouldn't it be great if all

the people like us, all the people that understood these
things deeply, had all of the money? Wouldn't we go and
change the world?” That's a very deep thought. He's
fundamentally shifting his truth.

Don't be afraid of money. Don't think that money is the root

of all evil. Money is a fuel, and you get to put it into
whatever machine you want. Just make sure you're putting
it in the right machine.
What I Learned from a Cease-and-Desist
Letter
For a while, we forgot — maybe I should say I forgot —
that human beings are human beings, so we started to
operate the machine of a business, which is what all
businesses do.

When people forget that other people are people and they
start using the machine they've created to do things for
them, the humanity is stripped from that machine. This
happens not only with business but with any large entity,
be it a corporation, an educational institution, a
government…the list goes on. People create these
machines, and then they don't have any sensibility or
humanity left because the machine is doing the work for
them.

We start losing the emotional connection to what the

machines are accomplishing— ironically, something that
tends to get praised in business circles! But then it
becomes very easy to “hide” behind that machine, too: we
just make the excuse that the machine did it, and so we're
not held accountable.

On fundamental level we started to send out letters to

people or started to do marketing or opened stores with
less than ideal management, and people began to see the
shortcomings in the machine. It's the reason why many
people dislike big corporations and franchises as a whole
as it loses its humanity and it loses its heart. The most
important thing about keeping a franchise system operating
is running it with a culture that is based on heart and
running it with a culture that's based on mission and
purpose. By remembering these lessons as a cultivator of
the Tao, I'm no longer controlled by joy, anger or
sentimentality. I may experience these states, but I can
make decisions based on a more general understanding of
how what I do is either in alignment with a higher purpose
or not. I'm not longer controlled by the entity that I've
created as the founder and CEO of a company. If we as
individuals can understand that the machine we're creating
can become a “drug-like” mechanism that shifts our
consciousness to do certain things, we can start separating
ourselves from that entity in order to be able to control it
as a human being. Much like a pen or a piece of paper the
company becomes a tool that we use. The machine we
create, the franchise we create, the business we create is
something we have control over. We can't let it control us.

Below is a copy of the letter I sent out.

Thank you for your personal response back to our rather

impersonal letter.

After receiving your letter I looked inside, reflected and

owe you a personal response.

I will start out saying that my intent was never to do

harm. Our core values at Float Pod are to not speak
poorly of anyone including our competitors. We will not
throw mud nor instigate or incite negativity towards
anyone or any entity. The tone of our letter to you is
absolutely against our core values and certainly against
my own values. The letter itself was reviewed rather
quickly before it went out, but we didn't stop and ask,
how would we feel if we got this? How will people react
to this? Is this trying to make ourselves “bigger”by
making others “smaller”? Are we being a bully? These
are core questions that we did not ask. I did discuss the
issue with my team and there was a fairly lengthy
conversation regarding whether or not we should try to
protect this term or not. We agreed as a collective that
we should protect the term and in fact we were all
wrong.

We have decided to not enforce our rather weak

trademark, and also offer you a sincere apology for
striping humanity from the essence of our
communication. One of the first policies we implemented
at True REST when it was a single store was, “we treat
all people as people”. We still hold onto this as a core
value. There is a lot implied in this statement. We will
introduce ourselves, shake everyone's hand, look them in
the eye and genuinely treat everyone as a friend. All
float consultants at True REST are people first, then
experts, and they must love floating.

As I personally grew from being responsible for one

store to now having nearly 25 corporate employees,
nearly a dozen open franchises and over 100 centers
using our pods, my personal stress levels have raised in
untold multiples. I understand this is no excuse, but we
are now having other people hang their success on us.
We as a company are personally responsible for other
people's families and their livelihood. We don't take this
lightly and all our franchisees are family. You will see
that at the float conference. We truly do love each other
and we are all here to spread the love of floating.

I thank you for treating me as flawed human being who

still has the capacity to listen. After receiving your letter
and speaking to some friends in the industry, I sat down
and began documenting my purpose for entering the
industry and my realization that businesses are
mechanisms for shifting consciousness.

We are all brothers and sisters in this venture and I am

always open to communication. We may not always
agree but I will always listen with an open heart. My
most sincere wishes go out to you and your family. This
is my vow to you and others to spread nothing but
truthful and compassionate messages and will do what I
can to support you and all others in our blossoming
industry/movement.

I am a divine being in a human body, I am flawed, I will

make mistakes, I will lose friendships, I will hurt people
both intentionally in emotion and unintentionally, but I
am still seeking a deeper understanding of the Fa, the
Tao or the Way and wish to do good in this world. I have
not lost hope in myself, I do not hold grudges for others
and will continue to reflect and improve.

With gratitude and admiration,

Nick Janicki

As someone who’s learning these things as his

consciousness is shifting in and out of profound states, it's
very hard to sometimes keep everything in perspective. As
a person, I tend to keep my head down in order to try to
break out of the mold and break out of what had become a
relatively stagnant industry in order to reach more people
and fundamentally have people shift their lives into a
greater space of awareness. Part of me needs to start
kowtowing back toward the past, still respecting the past,
but still being brave enough to see the future and excel
towards it. I can do that while keeping my humanity, and I
can do that while keeping the humanity in my companies.
These are the biggest lessons I'm learning as a CEO and
founder. If something is not in line with the values we’ve
created, if we're going to hurt people, if we're going to
make people angry, even if we want to hold on to a term
we've trademarked, we need to do it with respect and with
humanity. No matter what we do, not everyone will agree
with it, but they should at least feel that we disagree kindly
with humanity.

There's no way that everyone will ever like you and agree
with you, but at the very least, if we can try our best not to
hurt each other and treat each other as human beings, we
can fundamentally shift everything. As one of the
controllers of the franchisee machine, we now get to
choose how that machine is going to shift people's
consciousnesses. Does our machine make you angry, or
does our machine make you feel joy?

The mechanisms currently in place throughout the world

are getting very worn out. People are getting dissatisfied.
Companies — big companies especially — are making
people feel angry or fearful, shifting people's
consciousnesses towards the negative.

On the other hand, if we can build a giant machine, a giant

business, and are able to elicit positive responses through
it, we will shift people's consciousnesses for the greater
good. This is the goal we need to achieve as founders and
CEOs. Is our company shifting the global consciousness
towards an ascension? Or are we, the CEOs and founders,
simply replicating a downward spiral of demoralization?

These are the giant questions that every CEO and founder
must ask. Is your company allowing people to shift their
consciousnesses towards good? Is your company pushing
the mainstream consciousness toward ascension, or is
your company simply spiraling downward or maintaining
the status quo? If you’re not moving forward, if you’re not
advancing, you’re contributing to decay and deterioration:
there’s no middle ground. But we get to control that; so,
when we make mistakes, we need to quickly rectify those
mistakes and move forward.
Karma
A few years into making pods, we were helping expose
the genocide of Falun Dafa practitioners in China. At the
same time, my wife and I were expecting a baby. But then
one night, in the midst of a large-scale human rights event
my wife woke up screaming in absolute horror and pain.

Shocked, I said, “What's wrong? What's wrong?”

She said, “I don't know,” and just continued to scream.

Anyone who loves someone and sees them in pain can

relate to the sense of hopelessness I had. I did everything I
could, but she continued to scream and cry in pain, until I
had no choice but to pick her up and drive her to the
emergency room.

At the emergency room, the doctor did an examination and

said, “You need to have emergency surgery. You have lost
a great deal of blood.” As they took her back for surgery, I
sat in full lotus meditation for an hour, just sending
righteous pure thoughts, and trying to enter into a state of
tranquility the best I could. I was trying to master my mind
and not think about the present situation.

When the doctor came out, he had my wife's blood all

over his surgical gown, but he had a look of relief as well.
“Your wife had an ectopic pregnancy,” he told me. As it
turns out, my wife had a baby growing on her Fallopian
tubes, and the baby still had a heartbeat. He continued,
“I'm sorry, but we had to remove the baby. But the good
news is your wife will be fine.”

At that time, we thought about our life together and talked

about it in depth. We knew we may have done things to
hurt others, and that hurt may have come back on us as a
result. So we renewed our intent to do good in this world
and not hurt others. For my part, I made a vow to not speak
poorly about anyone and relieve all karmic debts that I've
ever encountered.

Another time, my wife had one of her ovaries twist and

swell up, necessitating its removal. She says this is the
worst pain she has ever experienced. Then, a year or so
later, she began to feel what felt like her other ovary start
to twist. Although she was in a great deal of pain, she told
me she was not afraid of death — but she wanted to do
more good in this world. She was here on a mission, and it
wasn't time for her to go.

So, I told her, “Have righteous thoughts. You're in charge

of your body. You're in power over your body. You're a
divine being in a human body. You have control over this.
This arrangement for your life can be changed.” She
closed her eyes and stilled her mind. After a few minutes,
she opened her eyes and looked at me. I asked her how she
felt and she said, it felt like someone had twisted her
ovary back... and the pain was gone. She was fine.

This was a miracle!

In the interim, we’ve come to adopt a beautiful young

African-American girl. We immediately saw the divine
light shining in her eyes, knowing she was ours and that
she was meant to be with us and learn with us on this
plane of existence as a human being. (Her favorite joke is”
banana toot.” Great kid!)

I tell you this story because it's important to know that we

want to do nothing but good in this world. I appreciate the
community for making me and my company live and
embody a higher standard. Publicly, this is my vow to do
good in this world, and this is my vow to be part of our
community.

Here is the question to ask: does your business anger or

frustrate anyone, or does your business bring joy and
happiness? Let's all step up our game, change more lives,
and be an example in the world.

At some point there will be people in the industry that are

in this just for money and don't care about others. How do
you know who these people are? How do you know whom
to do business with?

The easiest way to figure out whom to do business with, is

by asking one simple question: how do you feel when you
are in contact with them? Not what do they say, not what
are the facts they're presenting. The key question to ask is,
how does this person or company make me feel?

If I'm talking to a person and the person makes me feel

anger or hatred, that's what that person is putting into the
industry and putting into the world.

Now, I've been guilty of that in moments, now and then.

Most of us have been guilty of that in a single moment. But
I’m talking about a constant manifestation here, not just a
momentary failure.

I believe that a person, entity, or company is not who they

are in any given individual moment, but who they become
after rectifying, reflecting, and collecting themselves. If I
get the impression, after a time of dealing with a company
or person, of continuing anger or hatred?

I don't do business with that person.

And, it may seem like it should go without saying, but I’ll

say it anyway: I don't hang out with people that are
negative all the time. Certainly not. Why would I do
business with a company that's putting out negative
messages?

When I've been guilty of a negative moment, I look inside

and go, “Oh shit.” And I correct. It’s as simple, and as
profound, as that.

Our company is a mechanism for shifting consciousness; at

times, we've shifted people's consciousness into a state of
fear, or anxiety or hatred. That's not who we are, but that
is who we have been in some previous moments. In the
future, we must rectify ourselves and do better.

I’ll finish this with a great thought I heard at a Mike

Koenigs and Ed Rush event. There, Ed advised us all,
“You do not owe the future any time for a mistake you
made in the past.”

Do you need to hear that, too? If so, listen quietly now, in

your heart. And believe it.
 Conclusion
Making Anything Possible

Once you have passion — or once you discover what your

passion is — and you can build something, maybe even
become a leader or CEO of an industry or a movement,
and you start generating revenue, you open up
possibilities. You can now have the voice, influence, and
experience, as well as the machine and the money, to elicit
direct change. That's what “possibles” are.

Some of the wealthiest people in the world realize this on

a very fundamental level. Some of them realize that they're
in control of a massive machine, a massive mechanism,
and that they have a voice others don't have; they can elicit
tremendous change. Wouldn't it be great if all the
billionaires in the world, all the CEO's in the world,
understood that they're in control of machines that could,
within days, change the entire structure of the planet?
Social media makes it possible to reach billions of people
with a single collaborative message. With the right
message, imagine what they could do.

You can make anything possible, with a vow that comes

from your heart. Your vow will be unique to you. But you
have a purpose. All that remains is for you to have the
courage to embrace it!