The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – True REST Float Spa Founder Nick Janicki

Episode Date: August 29, 2019

True REST Float Spa Founder Nick Janicki Truerest.com

Hi, this is Foss here from thechrisfossshow.com. The Chris Foss Show coming to you with another great podcast. Certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to go to thecvpn.com and subscribe to seven different podcasts there. Always new, good, and interesting stuff. And, of course, we bring to you the best guests in the world. So we've got a wonderful guest here. You're going to learn an interesting

journey that he's been on since 2010 of starting his own company, being the founder and growing it into an amazing company. It's going to be with Nick Janicki. And Nick is the founder of the True Rest franchising. Was voted number seven best new franchise in 2019, according to Entrepreneur Magazine. So this is going to be awesome. TrueRest has 34 locations open and nearly 100 sold in 16 states. TrueRest offers flotation therapy in luxury private suites and has helped hundreds of thousands of clients with chronic pain, stress, sleep disorders, anxiety, and depression. Navy SEALs are using these float pods for super learning, and elite athletes are using it for recovery. Nick is part of several nonprofit organizations.

Focuses range from ending the 20-year persecution of Falun Gong, spiritual practitioners in China, and the brutal practice of forced organ harvesting to revival of traditional arts music and dance welcome to the show Nick how you doing bud I'm doing great Chris thank you I love the the intro of your Chris Voss show you know it's funny the high pitch that's awesome and we kind of I kind of vary it what's really funny is years ago uh uh i i was a big stern fan and and howard and howard would do the uh call letters he they used to force him dude in nbc nbc you know and you have to give it that flavor and so he was doing a bit on that and i thought you know i should just have fun with that on the chris fosh show so i did it for like a

week and then stop and like everyone started calling me going you gotta keep doing that like do it do it and i was like seriously it's stupid and what's funny is every time people come up to me at shows or wherever i'm at they always run up to me and they'll go it's the chris fosh show and you're just like okay the high note that's it you got to hit the high note better is sometimes the bit is that it breaks or you know the Chris Voss show so you have some fun so let's talk about your company and you so what began your journey back before 2010 what made you want to get in this business or well how did you get this road? I was always a twisted entrepreneur at heart. And so entrepreneurship for me was something that always appealed to me. There was a point in my

life I was working a 70 hour a week job. I would say 15 of that was in traffic in and out of Phoenix. And, you know, you just get to a point where you just go, gosh, there's got to be another way to do this. So I always kind of had that high risk tolerance. Right. So I'm the guy that'll jump off the cliff. My wife will jump after me with a parachute and just be like, hey, I'm here to support. You might want to wear this parachute on the way down. And so I discovered a video in 2008. And this was a video of the infamous Joe Rogan talking about flotation therapy. And so he had this really interesting kind of almost ego death psychedelic experience where, by the way, I doubt he was sober when he did this. It's Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan?

No. Come on. That guy's a Mormon missionary. Yeah, exactly. But he had this wonderful experience where he goes through a flower of life type pattern. He says, you know, he basically entered into another dimension, lost his ego and came back to talk about it. And having a 20 year meditation background, I thought, wow, that sounds amazing. Let me try that. So in researching it, there were only 14 locations in the North American continent. So there was one in Canada, and 1314 locations in

the United States. And that's it. That's the those were the only places to float. So it took me about six months to just find a place to do it. My wife and I, and I always say my wife at the time, which makes no sense because she's still my wife. But my wife, and now she's still my wife, tried it out. My senses were revived. You know, I think we had chicken fingers afterwards. My taste buds were accentuated. My vision was accentuated. I was in this euphoric mood. And on the way back, I just thought, holy cow, if someone made this a high-end luxury service you know this could be the next massage envy yeah was it like when an alleyway or something and you're just like hey we should go for it it was in a it was actually a

very nice place it was a private uh you know it's like a Japanese garden it was a private Japanese garden that happened to have these in Sedona um but no, I mean, that's sort of the same stigma that Massage had in the beginning. You know, it's in someone's basement, the happy ending thing, and floating sort of started in that same sort of psychedelic kind of weirdness vibe to it. Did the Patriots owner come visit?

I don't know. I'm just kidding. Anyway. Well, no, kind of. I mean, that's's a you brought up the rug so I rub and tug no it's true I mean Bill Belichick he um finally came out and you know talked about floating so in 2015 wow it came in we had 10 guys from the Patriots in every single day oh we had 10 guys uh from the Seahawks in every single day. Wow. And you know, that was pretty cool. And then Brady did get one for his house. That's awesome, man. That's awesome. So what, explain to our users

who are not familiar with what the floating thing is and the experience and what you guys do, explain what it is that the floating is, I suppose. Yeah, for sure. So floating was invented in the 1950s. And this was invented by what many consider one of the first neuroscientists. And that gentleman's name was Dr. John C. Lilly. And so the theory in the 50s was that if you close your eyes and there's no sensory input, you're going to lose consciousness. And that theory he found isn't always 100% true. What he discovered is as you start shutting off other senses to sight, to sound, to feeling, you actually get into an accelerated consciousness state. And he, you know, went down the wormhole with that. And then later in his life, he did a lot of research with whales and

dolphins. But for people that don't know, the sea is 3% salt salinity to water volume. The Dead Sea is closer to 20-25% salt salinity to water volume. So that's why people, when they go to the Dead Sea, they literally float like a cork. And it's very surprising. The float pod environment or the float tank is actually 200 gallons of water and about a thousand pounds, believe it or not, Chris, of magnesium sulfate, which is commonly known as Epsom salt. So that creates a buoyancy where you can get in, you can fall asleep, it's perfectly safe, and it's heated exactly to skin temperature. So it's not something you can really replicate at home. The temperature

is regulated, the humidity is regulated. And after about 20 minutes, you're tricking your brain into thinking you're falling asleep. So if you stay very still, you can't feel the difference between your body and the water. And this is where people with chronic pain, they get out after an hour and they go, you know, after 20 to 40 minutes, I stopped feeling my pain. Wow. You know, and so. And so it's just a tremendously relaxing experience. When in my teens, we moved from California up to Salt Lake City, Utah. And back then, they hadn't fully pumped fresh water into the Great Salt Lake. And back then, you could still go into the Great Salt Lake,

just like you mentioned with the Israeli Dead Sea. You could go out and float and and it's crazy and i've had times in my life where i floated you know i grew up around pools in california and i used to float and close my eyes and and sometimes there's kind of a a thing there which is probably you guys probably experience more of that you know being in a environment uh where you don't have to worry but it was weird being in the great salt lake because you you just float right is you really don't have a choice i don't even know you can i suppose you could drown if you really tried um but uh so so basically it it uh you you float you can't really drowned in it uh how much water are you in when you're laying down? This is 200 gallons of water. It's nine inches. Okay. You're nine inches of water. So, um, you know what we say, we've had a several hundred thousand clients through. And if you somehow

flipped over onto your face, um, you would immediately flip, flip right back. Um, and it's actually very difficult to do. So to your point, it's actually very difficult to do so to your point it's a very strange environment because it doesn't feel like water if you push your hands to the bottom of that nine inch tank they literally shoot right back up to the surface because they're yeah i remember that in the great salt lake it was like really wild you could just sit there and float forever. And you just bob if you were standing up. That's right. It was crazy. So what you're finding is this is helping a lot of people,

vets and people with chronic pain. You know, I deal with chronic pain. I use edibles in Las Vegas to deal with a lot of chronic pain, but it always comes back. And it has like a clamshell on it where they can close the lid and it gives them that darkness of sensory deprivation as well because I've seen the ones where they do, where they go in the freezing chambers.

Oh, yes. And that doesn't look like fun to me. The freezing chambers. I've tried those and if i were going to recommend it i would say do the ones where your head is outside of the frozen area yeah i i that doesn't seem relaxing at all hey chris we're gonna put you in a frozen thing what that doesn't know i think their thing is you know inflammation injury recovery i'm not sure people are going in there just for like a good kick.

I've had a few friends that have just tried it to try it. And I'm like, I don't know, man, I've been in places where it snows and I hate the cold because I grew up in California. No, man, I'm not going to the frozen thing. So it's your body temperature. The water is. So you just become oneness with the water and and uh it's like a giant epsom salt sort of bath really when it comes it is a giant epsom salt bath so the two biggest i would call it concerns we get is one is cleanliness of water and two is uh people feeling

like they would be claustrophobic yeah so what i tell people with the claustrophobia issue is i've never had someone come in that was concerned that got out because they were concerned at the end. So that concern goes away immediately when you know you're in full control of the experience. So when people come in, this is the size of a queen size bed. You can leave the lid open, you can shut the lid. I say sarcastically, if you're scared of the dark, you can keep the lights on. No one's going to judge you.'s your experience right so you paid to play you can play ac dc in there sit in the corner and right look at the thing you can do that um i've had people do that but uh you know you can play whatever music you like it's this is your time alone so

it's an hour service and uh some people do up to two and a half hour. What we're finding for chronic pain, it's really extraordinary. We've had people change their lives that have chronic pain. And then anxiety and depression are really, really interesting. And what I tell people is go in and try this when you feel your absolute worst. So when you feel like 10% out of 100, you forgot what it feels like to feel like a normal human being because you're so overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, life, whatever it might be. That's when you go in and float. You're going to get out an hour later, 80% of that feeling is gone. I mean, it's just magic for stress and anxiety.

Wow. And how long does it stay gone usually do you find? I mean, it varies per person. You know, there's a research institute out of oklahoma called the libor institute and dr justin feinstein is actually waterproofed eeg headsets so he can track what's going on in the brain while people are floating and what he's discovered this research came out last year is that if you leave the lights on it the effects are equivalent to an anti-anxiety medication but it lasts for up to 20 hours,

where anxiety meds last for about eight hours normally. If you turn the lights off, it's equivalent to an antidepressant lasting up to about 20 hours. My wife says that if we just turn off the lights, she'll be less depressed if she sees me naked. The proof's in the pudding, right? I'm not even going to touch that with any joke, but I, and I'm not married either. So there's that. Uh, but, uh, so basically, um, yeah. And

why do you think the, the, the pain goes away? Is it because, well, I'll let you fill that in. So this is where, so if you go to clinicalflotation.com, there's all the research and it shows the brain scans and how all this works. So I am by no means a scientist. But what I can tell is what's happening is there are certain parts of the brain that are actually shutting down during flotation rest. And there's other parts of the brain that are lighting up and there's sort of a synchronization in the two brain hemispheres so what i can tell is you're essentially tricking your body to fall asleep and then it's doing it in this kind of zero gravity environment so your spine is elongating it's releasing all the pressure on your joints

inflammation goes down right and a big part of pain is inflammation. Once you can get that inflammation down, your spine is elongated. If you kind of, you know, move around at the end, you'll notice your spinal crack. And then, yeah, a lot of what athletes are using this for is concussion recovery. But, you know, that's what's happening is you're just in this really cool zero gravity environment where your body finally has the opportunity to heal. So I really think that the human body can heal itself if given the proper motivation and environment. That's pretty cool. So now you, you guys have these centers, you're, you're,

you're, you're building them out, you're franchising them all over the united states so uh you have probably your own for the company and then people can buy into the franchising and they can go to your locations as well to just use the service yeah of course so we have seven corporate stores basically um and we have 34 stores open now we'll have 40 open by the end of this year and as you mentioned we have 100 sold in 17 states. So we are growing quickly. And, you know, it's just fun to see. So we have people that come in that have some business experience, some don't have any business experience. And I think that's kind of the beauty of a franchise. You know, our passion is to grow this service. So our business is for the betterment of humans, which I wish that was the mission of more companies, right? Let's make things better for

humans. But, you know, joking aside, it's a great business model. It's nice in that a franchise comes with all the marketing help. It has the team, the franchisees we basically consider a little mini business family at this point and it's just a cool business model. So you know we started this in 2010, we actually grew our local store, we have four pods to about a $500,000 gross number and my wife and I were netting 55%. So 55% net on a business is actually pretty extraordinary. And so I didn't know any better. And that's where my business partner came from. He has 30 years of franchising experience and he said, wow, that's good. If we could even replicate this and get into the mid thirties, we have a great we have a great system yeah you're

a great margin for both sides to take and do that's awesome man that's awesome so uh so how many so when you when i go into like a company store you guys have like uh four or so of these units normally we are doing six pod centers now um and the reason is, is on the beak or the beacons, I don't know what that is, but on the weekends we're, we're usually fully booked. So if I had the choice in my four pod center, I'd definitely move to six because the weekends tend to be, you know, a hundred percent booked up.

And if you guys want to check this out, you go to true rest.com. That's true rest, one word.com. And you can see all the different stuff. You can see the data on the float therapy, get started. You can see some of their media. And then you can also see the locations. So you can book an appointment, check it out, 60 minutes. You can kind of see they have different pictures and videos of the people in the tanks doing the floating with the clamshells up or down and uh so a lot of people fall asleep in this huh i i think a lot of people fall asleep i research when we do internal research at the stores i think it's as high as about 40 percent of people will take a power nap um and time is a

really strange thing in there um because it's hard to know if you've actually fallen asleep because if you do actually go with the lights off, music off. I've had floats that are bizarre where I get in, I'm listening to the music. It feels like six or seven minutes have gone by, music kicks back on and you know, that's a full hour. So we've had customers get out angry, come up to the front desk and say, hey, I was only in there for seven minutes and we go hey look at your watch and you literally feel like they just went through a time warp it's bizarre it's like charlton heston and so um what's interesting too is i've had a few experiences where i've entered a uh a state where i've like been between being awake and being asleep. And what happened to me was I was falling asleep and doing my normal sleep. And then suddenly I entered the state, and it's only happened twice in my life.

It happened once when I was a kid, about 16. And I was aware that I was aware. It could have been a very sophisticated dream, but I was aware that I was aware, It could have been a very sophisticated dream, but I was aware that I was aware, and I swore my eyes were open, and I was trying to move the muscles of my body, and nothing would move. It was kind of like a, what would you call it, astral planing or something, but I wasn't trying to do that. Like a sleep paralysis.

Like a sleep paralysis, yeah. And I was freaking out because I couldn't move my body. And probably instead of just relaxing and being like, well, you know, whatever, you're going to sleep, idiot. I was panicking and I was fighting. And then all of a sudden, somehow I started getting motor movement and I came out of it. But is that maybe the same sort of experience or maybe that's different?

You know, it's interesting. I actually grew up having night terrors quite a lot. And night terrors, I described the exact same way you did. And frankly, nothing scared me more than night terrors because I had no control over my body. And so your point, I would say no, definitely not a similar thing because you're still in full control. I've never actually heard of someone having sleep paralysis in the pod. But I know when I had that as a kid, it went away when I started meditating. But there was nothing more frightening, Chris, for me.

I would be 12 years old. I would be trying to wake up. I'd actually start screaming but couldn't make the sound. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? And it felt like someone was sitting on my chest. be trying to wake up, I'd actually start screaming, but couldn't make the sound. Yeah. Right. And it felt like someone was sitting on my chest, but I couldn't move. And then I would finally scream. My mom would run into the room when I was 12 and be like, is everything okay?

And by then you're kind of sobered up and you're like, yeah, I'm good. Apparently I just was abducted by aliens. I don't know what happened, but, uh, but no sleep, sleep paralysis is definitely a real thing okay so it's very different then i think that's the closest i've ever come to like hypnosis or something or at least that's my right interpretation of it whatever i don't know i i often think like what if i just did relaxed like and not really freaked out and just kind of went like okay well that's when it gets very. And so you hit it on the head. So I've done, so, you know, I consider myself a psychonaut in some regards. And, you know, I've done the whole entering into sleep paralysis and let it ride out. And what I found for me personally, not to get too crazy out there, but I would feel

this intense surge of energy kind of running through my body to a point where I felt you know whatever you want to believe but like my consciousness like shoot out of my body literally and then like I would see myself over at the bed I would freak out and like jump back in right and so I've had that experience a couple times my wife's had that experience in the pod where she opened her eyes and she saw herself floating. Is that like astral projection or something? It's like astral projection. Exactly right. And then freaked out. I've had one of my favorite stories is there was a marketing director for a pretty big marketing company that I won't mention and came in with her, like, you know, whatever, her boss or the owner of the company. And they both get out of the pod and they look at each other and they say, did that really happen to you? And the other one said, that really happened to you?

And so they tell this story where they both astral projected. They met each other in the hallway, freaked out, jumped back in, and then they confirmed it after the float. So whether you believe that stuff or not, it's a fun story. But that's their story, not mine. Well, I can see how this is really important. You know, gravity, as I get older, isn't my best friend. And so if I'm standing a lot or sitting a lot, you know,

I've got a back injury that I deal with from moving years ago. And normally I'm pretty fine with it. But if I get tired, if I don't get my sleep, um, you know, the, the crushingness of gravity and, uh, being a little, you know, pound or two overweight, uh, takes in, puts pressure on that thing. And I can see how laying in this water and stuff and letting your muscles stretch out, letting your muscles relax, having that safe environment. I haven't studied sleep or perception deprivation very much, but I know that meditation really helps a lot of people, helps deal with pain and everything else. One of my biggest things has been, you know, I kind of never really got into pot or marijuana for a lot of years.

And I lived on, you know, Tylenol, Advil, everything else with all my pain as I got older. And it became legal in the state of Nevada for recreational. And I thought, well, you know, I'll give it a try. And I don't like to smoke it, so I take edibles. And I was just amazed at how much it really helped my pain, and also just kind of reset my body for the next morning, and it also helped me sleep better, and I normally take it to go to sleep, like I don't, it's not something I do for the high, but I noticed after a while that I wasn't taking the Tylenol, and I'm like that I wasn't taking the Tylenol. And I'm like, no wonder these guys at Tylenol want this stuff illegal. And so I think something like what you guys are doing is kind of the same sort of format. It's a very natural,

healthy state. This is probably something we were doing long before drugs and, uh, you know, uh, big, uh, pharmaceuticals trying to sell us stuff. Um I've gotten peace from floating in the water, closing my eyes. I've never really done a sleep or a deprivation tank. But I can kind of get it because there were times when I would lay in the pool when we were kids because we lived in a pool in California pretty much in the ocean. And there is a certain peace and relaxation that you can get just floating. But then one of the problems you have is if you're in a pool, you can't really, you could drown.

Right. It doesn't have a lot of salt in it. So that's pretty cool. So they can book a 60-minute appointment and they can try it out, see how the pain and stress works for them. They definitely can. So all the stores individually owned and operated, but if you mention you're a new client, you will get $20 off. So normally it's 79 for an hour. So you can get it for 59 if you just mentioned kind of you're a new client.

And so, yeah, I mean, it's an interesting thing. And you know, what's interesting for me is I kind of feel a natural high after the float. I mean, it definitely has a narcotic almost impact for me psychologically and physiologically as well. So, I mean, when I get out, I really do feel sort of that effect of, wow, I'm, I'm good. no one talked to me for half an hour and go about my day so depending on what kind of person you are i like to do it at night when i have nothing else to do afterwards a lot of people like to do it in the morning if they feel that they want that relaxation to kind of go into their day with and i think there really is a thing to this you know what i was alluding to earlier uh about the edibles and pod is i really

think there's a i mean we need to get back to the natural state of how we do things and and uh the more natural ways of relaxing i think we i think we too often go to these pills and these drugs and you know and then we just become addicted to them um and and to me it's pretty relaxing if you go to truerest.com you go to trurest.com, you can also sign up for their exclusive offers and free download of the top 10 questions about flotation therapy. You can read about it,

understand what floating is and I guess this is working really well for veterans as well. Oh, absolutely. And we actually, across the brand, on the 11th of every month, we give away a series of rooms to veterans. So if you call a center and you haven't been in and you're a veteran, just let them know that you want to try the veteran float. And we actually give away free floats to vets every single month across the brand.

We see so much benefit for pain relief and PTSD that we just want people to try it. I was going to say, I've had a lot of friends that are vets and the PTSD can really get to them. I had one friend that people were just flying recreational drones around his house and the sound of it would set him off and trigger him from his experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. And so you find it really helps with that too as well, huh? Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's amazing. And that's why we're, like I said, we're willing to even have people that are experienced that come in for free. Just come in and try it. I mean, there's just, the risk is immense. Immense relaxation is the side effect, right? I'll come in if I can bring my rubber ducky. No, I'm just kidding.

You can bring your rubber ducky, whatever makes you feel comfortable. You know, the rooms are private. We say come in your birthday suit. You know, you don't need to bring a swimming suit. There's private changing area showers. Okay, whatever works. Whatever works. I mean, I usually try and fall asleep during a massage because I find that makes me relax even more and makes me feel more refreshed.

Now, float therapy is all natural, totally holistic approach. Oh, absolutely. It can reduce anxiety, stress, and depression, if you've got anxiety, you've got stress and depression, maybe taking a pill from Big Pharma isn't the right way to deal with your problems. I've been down that road. Maybe try this sort of stuff, and it's all natural. So there you go. And let me ask you this.

Do you find a lot of people that are in the meditation field that really love meditation do you find that this maybe takes them to the new next level of the meditative benefits they get for meditation I would say absolutely yes you know it's a it's a super interesting thing in that we have people that come in that don't have a meditation background at all and then they'll float and what I tell people is basically the environment meditates you. So without any prior meditation background, you're entering into a deep meditation experience. And so I would say one of the most common, I wouldn't say complaints, but people are very hard on themselves, as you know. And so people will get out and say, you know what, I couldn't shut my mind off. And that kind of makes them angry. And what I tell people is like, look, whatever you need to do in the pod, it's going to be accelerated. So if you're trying to

work through a problem, if you're thinking about something, let it play out. You know, no one, you don't need to go in there and be a Zen meditation master immediately. So let it play out. I've gone into floats and I've written what feels like novels in my mind. And I've had awesome creative flow state ideas that I've worked through. I've worked through problems that like super speed, you know, so don't feel bad if you're not going to go in there and have no thoughts and be a Zen master. Now to your question, people that are on that path, right? And they go in and float,

they find that they're able to drop into it just that much quicker so where you know you might need five six years of meditation to get into kind of a tranquil state where you lose awareness of your body maybe you're you know doing astral projections your point earlier that all can be done in the pod and kind of hyper speed pretty interesting and it says here on the website it can reduce blood pressure as well. That's important for a lot of people. Oh, absolutely. And anxiety is a tough thing.

I've dealt with anxiety and depression all my life in my old age. Now I'm dealing with physical pain. You say you're old age? Yeah, I feel pretty old. I'm like 50. What am I, 51? That's the new 25, right? Yeah, you're good. I'd love to have the body of a 25 year old let me tell you with my ability to have my experience and brains what what's left of it for now but

i had a lot of fun in my early days and yeah feeling it i didn't think maybe yeah i didn't think it would uh i didn't think it would kick in this soon. I figured like 65, you'd start feeling it. But, you know, it's a world that's crazy. But the more I've moved to holistic medicine, the less I can get off the Tylenol bottles because that stuff just is so horrible for your kidneys and your livers. And then, you know, I know people that are addicted to

all the different depression medicines that are out there. There's a lot of people that get addicted to opioids. There's a lot of people that get into hardcore drugs because hard turn down suicide road sometimes and this might be a way if you're out there suffering and and dealing with issues and you can't find what what's working for you and helping you i i'd definitely recommend it because holistically it's good we didn't talk about this but if you you have people that are seriously having trouble with addiction, we actually have started integrating addiction recovery courses into the pod. And that's going to launch in September, which is in a few days. And we'll launch it across the brand in a month or so. But these are specific programs and music tracks that you can play.

Some are eight hours long, where it's literally a recovery course for addicts. And so for me, I have a very good friend, Joe Polish, who has a company called Genius Network and Genius Recovery. And he always says that addiction is simply a response to trauma. And I really love that definition because then it doesn't make that person by default of being addicted a criminal. Yeah. Right. They're simply responding to a trauma and they're building a foundation with how they eliminate that trauma. So if we can just, you know, think about it and change the conversation, I have tools that can help people through this. Being a human is traumatic. You know, you don't have to go through a war times to feel, you know, traumatized. So. So, you know, so we definitely have options there for people that want them as well.

I get traumatized every time I open my mailbox and see the bills. No, I'm just kidding. Taxes always do it for me. They're not hard to do, but for some reason they're so anxiety ridden that my wife has to literally help me. Because I'll say, if I have to get up 10,000 times to get my, you know, pieces of paper I need, I'm going to go crazy. So she has to help me because I'll say if I have to get up 10,000 times to get it to get my you know pieces of paper I need I'm gonna go crazy so she has to help me out so this would be interesting to see how this turns out in help with rehab people because you know rehab rehab people do experience trauma usually is uh and and a lot of addicts for uh drugs and and stuff, they experience trauma as a child.

And that trauma haunts them. And the brain won't shut off. The brain won't let it go. Sometimes it's sexual. And it just eats away at them and chases them down. And so what they do is they turn to drugs or other things. I've known people that cut. Crap, I've known.

I've had girlfriends that I've dated that are still cutting in their 30s, almost to their 40s. And they have kids and they've been married. For some reason, they're still cutting to fix whatever sort of issue there is. And so I'm a big believer in stuff like this where it's holistic, it's healthy. It's not run by big pharma yet until, I guess, Bear buys you out. I'm just kidding. But I'm a big believer in this stuff. And, you know, I haven't fully done what you've done,

but growing up in pools and laying and closing my eyes and just floating in the pool being in the great salt lake of course you couldn't drown and we used to do that we used to test it we're like let's see really float and uh it is a relaxing peaceful experience and there's something about the water and our connection to the water you know you can you can decide on what your own sort of pathway is to where we came from. But there's a lot of theories out there that we walked up out of the primordial soup. And, and that's why we have this connection with water. And of course we're mostly seawater, right? Or we're saltwater, I think mostly. So I

think we have this connection with water that, that is peaceful. Like, you know, I, I think like most people, when I go down to the beach, for some reason, there's a piece of being in that water and hearing the waves and feeling them against you. I don't know why, but it does it that that that does medication, medication, meditation, medication for me when I go to the beach. Well, that's right. I think that's just a huge key is water. You know, I'm in the desert, right? So I'm in Arizona. and we kind of say it's an oasis in the desert. It's the only place you can really feel that other than a bath. But, you know, the zero gravity is very bizarre.

I would say if you haven't tried it yet, Chris, there's one close to you. We'll get you a free one to go try. But gosh, try it out. I'd love to hear what your input is after trying it yeah we can do a review on it on the chris fosh show because we review a lot of products we can go down there review it there you go you might need more than nine inches of water though i'm a big fat guy 300 pound you might need like i might hit the bottom nine and a half nine and a half will suffice whatever whatever works i imagine it all just kind of whatever but uh to the surface

but uh it's interesting our bodies can do so many different things and and i think more and more people are tapping in the holistic um markets and and understanding how to be more peaceful i i know a lot of people have been really helped by meditation and i think this takes it to the next level because you're not i like when i look at meditation and all the weird stuff, they're like, let's do downward dog. I'm like, that looks painful. Like, I don't want to do that. And I'm not going to hold that pose for five hours or whatever the hell. And then, you know, I see the yoga thing they're doing.

And I'm like, that looks like work. I just want to can I just sleep eating a donut and be healed so this looks like it's a whole lot sort of easier thing for someone like me because I just got to lay there and float you do absolutely nothing and you get the benefits it's there used to be a center in Vegas called I think it was called lazy yoga or lazy yogi or something like that um but yeah it is, it is. It's just, it's Savasana with, with, you know,

no gravity and you can just do whatever you want. So I think, I think lazy yoga is what my wife calls it on the, when I'm on the couch watching Netflix or something. I don't know. Right. I think lazy yoga is when I'm sitting in the beanbag chair, naked eating the Cheetos.

Um, so there's that. so you can go to truerest.com you can learn a whole lot more stuff about this you can find locations near you if you're interested in franchising you can also click on their website get in contact with all sorts of stuff uh you guys are on twitter facebook all that sort of good stuff um what else do we need to know about you guys uh what you do and how you do it well you know uh if someone's interested in the business model um just go to truesfranchising.com we'll send you all the information um uh everything's audited every year

so our financials are public information uh so it's called the item 19 so this is you know accurate real numbers these are not projections uh if you really want to dive in that's all there for you yeah if you guys were having a what was it 55 percent um i was doing that in my first store yes yeah i mean that leaves a whole lot of room for people to make really good money i've known people that have bought franchises and and they're just making really slim, especially like nowadays you got multiple stores. But I know guys that got into franchising earlier like Subway and stuff and they just made a killing. I knew guys that own car dealerships and they started investing in Subway back when it very first started their franchising operation like 30 years ago and they were making more money

off of getting in early and franchising than they were off of their big car sales things. And so this is probably a good time to get into it. So what do you see the future of this business being over the next 10, 20 years? What's your projections going out as to like, I mean, I imagine you see locations all over the world, or at least all over North America, etc, etc. Absolutely. You know, for me, I've been in this 10 years, believe it or not. And it's a really odd thing, because we still have not reached a mainstream tipping point, I would say it's still very much an early adopter industry. So my guess is, when we began this, I said there was 14 locations in 2010.

We now estimate there's about 500 locations. And of those, some have one pod, two pods. And so for stores that have four pods or more, you may be looking at two, 300 locations. So in Tempe, Arizona, if I draw a five mile radius around my store, there's one float pod place, you know, my true rest. There's 86 chiropractors, about 63 yoga studios, you know, 50 massage places and 100 or so physical therapy places. And so I think if we're even 10% as impactful as any of those modalities, you know, we could go from 80 stores open to 1200 in the next couple of years. And frankly, there's states that don't really even offer this. So we've had people open up in Ohio and they are booked for weeks out instantly instantly just filling the demand. It really is incredible from a business standpoint. And I've been seeing a lot more of my friends doing this.

I mean, they're doing more yoga, they're doing more, uh, transcendental meditation, but I've seen more of them do like the, uh, freeze chambers, uh, these flow chambers there. And they're experimenting more with this. Uh, you know, years ago I had a, I had a lot of stress and I had so much stress. I was throwing my own back out because of my anxiety, my HD, ADHD. Um, and I would literally go to the chiropractor, he'd pop me and I'd, you know, feel like human being again. And then he would, and then I would get down the road and you could just feel my back just go crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. And I complained to him one day, I said, you know, I don't know why I keep doing this. I mean, I feel great after this, but within,

you know, a few minutes of driving home, I can just feel everything cinching up. And what was interesting, he explained to me, he said, well, I'll probably teach you this trick, but you'll never come back to me again if I teach you, but I'll just teach you because you're really suffering. And so he taught me how to use a tennis ball to rope against the wall and how to push against pressure points in my back and pressure points in my body. And he taught me this trick where if you put pressure on a bound-up muscle that's hurting, the reason it's hurting is because the blood flow can't go through there. And so you put pressure on it, and it releases it, and the muscle releases, and then the blood can get through, and then you're out of pain. And so what's true is he told me that trick, and I've never gone back to a chiropractor before.

And what I realized from that experience was it was more about the muscle and my muscles in my body and how I was treating them and weight, anxiety. Gravity, of course, was one of the factors. And so I can see if you're floating in one of these things, you're weightless, you got zero gravity, you got zero deprivation or deprivation chamber. So you don't know what's going on around you. You can kind of get to peace and your body can fully relax. And then you can, you know, like you said, you can elongate. Certainly when my back's hurting, you know, I lay down and I kind of try and stretch out. And usually if I can, you know, relax the right muscles in my back, you know, I'll pop back into place and everybody's happy. But, and usually I lay on the floor to pop my back. I just kind of have a way of laying and rocking and crossing my arms and my back will pop in the right place sometimes.

But I can see with this, it's a whole lot less, more stressful, especially since you're taking away that gravity pressure on your muscles and your body and stuff. And so, um, just a lot more peaceful experience. And it's definitely not competitive with those other modalities. I think that's the beauty is all of this is collaborative. So I think holistic wellness isn't about picking one magic thing. It's about finding what works for you as an individual. And so once you kind of find that magic formula, and everyone's magic formula is going to be different, you now can go about your life kind of like a normal human being,

to your point, without necessarily, you know, overdosing on pharmaceuticals. I mean, we've had people come in that at the very least,'ve cut them down drastically you know 20 less 50 less 80 less and that alone is is tremendous on your organs you know yeah and i mean i i went through a period of my life where to get rid of the pain and stress that i was having i was turning to vodka at night to go to sleep um and uh i was an, but I was definitely abusing my body with alcohol. And getting away from that, moving to a more holistic approach, just that stuff was so destructive to my body and what was going on. And then there's times where I've been on antidepressants and tranquilizer pills pills and those are highly addictive and scary.

I remember the doctor telling me, you know, we're going to give these tranquilizer pills because they seem to calm you down and relax your muscles. Because I was having these anxiety fits that were almost like heart attacks. And he goes, but this is really addictive. And I'm like, holy crap. And you know, it might be interesting with this product. And I imagine you probably thought of this as people that are coming out of surgery and stuff. And, you know, making it less traumatized for them. I know people sometimes have babies floating. And, I mean, that's probably different what you guys are doing, of course.

But, you know, I mean, this just speaks to the essence of the float experience. Oh, yeah. Anything that's recovery wise i wouldn't recommend necessarily having um you know a childbirth in a in a pod because of the salt water i think that would oh that would be bad huh i know there's people that do it in a bathtub and that's probably fresher i've even heard of dolphin assisted births wow it's kind of like the primo where they shoot their sonar at you, I guess. And it helps with the pain relief. Really?

Wow. I've heard of it. Maybe I was just dreaming. It could have been a lucid dream. I don't know. So let me ask you this. Is there an age range? Like I know my mom's in her 70s and I kind of want to be interested in her

trying this because she's, you know, she deals with anxiety. She's got a CPAP machine, you know, and she's, you know, she's at the age where she deals with a lot of aches and pains. She's got a replacement knee, and she's got to have the other knee done, and she's down just the bare tendons in the knee and stuff like that. Is there an age range that you guys find that's capped off, or is it pretty much just for anybody? It pretty much is for anybody.

What we definitely recommend, though, depending on how able-bodied you are, is to bring a friend that's available. So for liability purposes, we can't really help people in and out of the pod. But we've had a lot of people come in with their friend, their son, their daughter, kind of make sure they can help them in and out.

Because it is a very sensitive environment. Obviously, you can wear a bathing suit. That's no problem. But getting in and out can be harder for older people. So just make sure you have someone there that could potentially help you. There's no diving, I guess. No diving. We don't recommend scuba gear.

I've had a couple people come in with snorkels. Ser which cracks me up i kind of want to try it but i was not recommended oh it's really interesting i mean and and like i say i remember the experience of floating at this great salt lake and and stuff and i suppose if anybody's ever been to the Dead Sea, it's a similar experience. But yeah, just crazy. And if you can get your body to relax, you can bring peace. Now, that's the biggest thing is if you can bring peace to your mind, your mind can resolve and heal your body. And that's basically what you do every night when you're relaxed to sleep is your body heals itself. And so... This is a huge topic. I mean, and you hit something really interesting, which is the mind is the key. And so we've found with people that come in,

let's say with a specific ailment, for example, and they've had that ailment for a long time, they'll get out. And even if it's helped, we'll see that they don't necessarily want the help because their identity is now associated with that ailment, let's say. And their friend group and their peers, it's all about that thing. And so we've had people that we, in the beginning stages, we used to give 10 floats away for free, believe it or not, to people that had chronic pain just as sort of a test. And what we found is by float six or seven, people would have a huge relief. It was kind of a loading period.

So float two, three, a lot of people would actually have more pain sometimes because the body has nothing else to concentrate on. So what happens is as your body relaxes, your mind starts to focus on the pain points. So I've had people that have literally said, wow, I experienced an injury I had 10 years ago that I didn't know was still injured, but clearly it is because I felt it while I was floating. And so it's kind of bringing all that to the surface again. So what we found is once you can get through that, once you can get six, seven hours

of floating in, your body then really starts to focus on that stuff and sort of heal itself but then we've had people that have had chronic pain so long it's it's just almost unbelievable to them so they'll kind of go back into their mentality so you can hit it on the head the key is changing your mentality yeah getting out of your comfort zone probably too and and of course letting your body heal itself in in ways that can and of course epsom salt baths i mean you know they've been known for the history of man of being a great way of healing i think the romans who did roman baths yeah roman baths and sulfate um you know magnesium people in america in particular are very magnesium deficient and so it's a great

supplement magnesium is required for a lot of the body functions, sulfate, of course, as well. So, you know, these are things that people should be uptaking anyway. And so there is research being done. We do believe it can pass the skin barrier. And so, and then there's confusion on what happens in terms of a detoxification. So your body isn't detoxing back into the pod as an example. And earlier I mentioned cleanliness. You know, the detox usually happens a little later. So in very, very rare instances, some people will get nauseous.

That's just a sign of your body kind of undergoing a detoxification process. You kind of experience the same thing when you have a massage, like all of a massage and the massage therapist would be like, you really stress out. You need to, here's a, here's a thing of water and you need to drink a lot of water. And sometimes you first get up and your head spins, you go, Whoa. But so you got to clean all that out. But that's actually a,

like a good thing because your body is you know expelling all that crap and poison that it's built up into your muscles and systems and uh healing itself so healing is good that's what that's what i love healing is good you know i i gotta tell you when i when i well you know started holistically moving away from alcohol and into, um, uh, edibles. Um, just what a difference it made. I got off alcohol entirely. Have you pretty much, uh, pretty much. Yeah. I mean, I've, I have 51. My biggest problem is in being a little overweight. Uh, well, I'm overweight. Let's put it that way. Um, one of my problems is, is I've, I've reached the point where I can feel it for three days. So I can have a fun night.

You know, I don't have to paint it on or do anything too extreme like you would do when you're 20. But just, you know, having a fun night, you know, a couple beers, a few beers and stuff. If I don't hydrate, you know, before I go to bed and maybe have some food with it and stuff. But even then, I can just kind of still feel my body drag for three days. Cause that's, you know, stuff's still in your system, your body's still

processing and trying to get it out and you can just feel it. And I finally reached a point where I'm just like, I'm tired of feeling like crap for three days just so I could, you know, have a fun Friday afternoon. And so then I moved into recreational pot with edibles and it totally freed me from alcohol that I was using. I mostly would use it to go to sleep at night. You know, I have a nightcap, so I knock myself out so I could go to bed. And I always was the opinion, I'm like, I'm sleeping really good because I, you know, take a couple shots of vodka, but you don't, you're horrible for your body. And then Tylenol, you know, Tylenol, aspirin, all that stuff is really rough on your kidneys and liver. And, um, and so moving to more holistic sort of medications and

stuff, uh, just a real help. And your body's built, I think, you know, we sleep every night and our body repairs itself. It's built to naturally do its stuff, but you've got to be able to give it the conditions by which it can achieve that stuff. And so, yeah, I can see the whole holistic thing of it. I can see the medication or meditation part of it being really great as well. Isn't that fun? The aging process. My wife now has a phrase,

which is the midnight hangover. And so my wife's 37, I'm 41. And if she stays up to 1206, she has what she would equivalent would be equivalent to a hangover when she was 20. And that's just staying up six minutes past midnight. Wow. The midnight hangover. So I'll stay up a little later, but she she's in bed by 1030 to avoid the morning hangover. So I'll stay up a little later, but she's in bed by 1030 to avoid the morning hangover. I think part of it was too, I went on a journey of veganism and I tried to change my diet and I tried to live better. And I think what I found was I started eating better, but I was still, you know, drinking vodka. And, you know, every other night or so, I'd, you know, have some vodka. When I was younger, I think in my 30s and 40s, you know, I could easily pound half a bottle of vodka.

And for some reason, it turned to sugar in my system. So it would actually juice me. So if I had, you know, stuff I need to work on, I'm like, I want to stay up a couple hours later and finish this project. You know, I drink some vodka and I actually have energy from it. It just would turn to sugar in my system. And, but the problem was, is, you know, you just get older and just can't do it. I mean, I've had times where if I'm not hydrated, uh, I can have a couple of beers and I can wake up the next morning with an headache. And you're just like, that was just a couple of beers. Now I'm curious,

since you switched to cannabis, do you find that there's any hangover reaction or just dissipated entirely? You do find a little bit of the mind, a little bit of mind numbness in the mornings because I'll take it before sleep. But it's the kind of thing that you get when, like I remember when I first started taking antidepressants, I believe it was Zoloft that they had me on,

and I was really ADHD. I was out of control. And they said, you know, we have to keep adjusting the dosage. And when, when we finally get the right dosage, you're going to know because it's going to be night and fucking day. I'll never forget that moment when that dosage kicked in. And suddenly,

instead of being a slave to the madman in my head, I could pick up thoughts and I could put them down and I could be like, okay, I'm not going to think about, and I can not think about anything, which I couldn't do back then. And so I find that that's the same sort of effect. Like a lot of, you hear a lot of people that have high anxiety, if they get on antidepressants, they're like, it slows me down. I feel kind of, but what you have to do is you have to work through that with your body. That's your body going, this is what normal is, idiot.

And so sometimes I find that in the mornings, but I usually have a lot more calm. It's kind of like a post-meditation where I just feel more in tune with my world and I can process it like everything isn't coming to me at once. So it'd be kind of interesting to me at once. So it'd be kind of interesting to get hot in, in one of the pods. I'm going to say that that happens very often. There's many people that come in to do that. Absolutely. And again, it just accelerates everything. So no matter what you're going through, the pod is just going to speed it up.

Right. And so, um, so whatever state you're in, it's just going to intensify it. Yeah. I'll kind of leave it at that. Um, but we have, you know, we have waivers where you're not supposed to be on anything. Yeah. For sure. But yeah, people doing the thing, but it's interesting to me just the holistic nature of it. I mean, like, uh, I, it was, it was so eyeopening for me because i'm like wow there's all these

people that want to sell me vodka and there's big farmer that wants to sell me tylenol that's that's actually destroying my liver and kidneys along with the vodka and here's this thing that's you know if you study cannabis it's it's part of the uh you have all these receptors in your body for it cannabinoid receptors ready to go. Absolutely. And, uh, it's just so relaxing. And I, I, for years I just kind of looked at people that would be like, yeah, it really helps me with pain. I'm like, yeah, man. So does my vodka. Yeah, sure, buddy. Yeah. And I, I just always looked down and I never liked smoking. I never liked hanging out with my friends. And one of my problems actually is I have a high tolerance for everything. I have a high tolerance for aspirin, high tolerance for alcohol, everything I have a

high tolerance for. So it really, you know, holistic healing really helps me. My father had some other holistic devices that he used like infrared that would go in and break up your muscles and stuff. And I was like, wow, man, maybe taking Tylenol and, you know, oxytocin, you know, we're seeing some of the fallout from, from, uh, this, uh, legalized heroin that, that going on with lawsuits and stuff and how addictive and destructive and a lot of people that die from that sort of thing. Uh, and this is stuff that's created by big pharma. And, you know, I just looked at

my Tylenol bottle that I hadn't touched for months and I went, wow, this is why they don't want to legalize it. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I, you know, and I started this earlier. I started meditating when I was 19. I'm 41 now. I haven't taken an aspirin since I was 20. Wow. So, you know, I just believe fully that your body will heal itself if given the right environment and the right nutrients and the right stuff.

Yeah, if I can get a good sleep, man, my body will heal itself. I'll wake up like a brand new baby and that's usually what I do with edibles. I wake up like a brand new baby. When you say high tolerance, I'm curious, how many milligrams

do you take for yourself not much i respond to it for some reason with the edibles it's about 10 to 15 okay so the normal dosage yeah and if i want to have like a really deep sleep maybe 20 if i'm in a lot of pain like recently i did some moving up to utah to write a book if i'm in a lot of pain i take like i'll take like 30 milligrams uh i have friends that they have a lot of pain they've fought what's that you have a new perspective when you take it i'm curious like i know a lot of people talk about the creativity depending on the strain do you find yourself thinking about things you wouldn't have otherwise uh aside from avoiding

the munchies which you can mentally teach yourself not to do, and giggling sometimes, like in video games. Like a lot of times I'll play video games with my friends and I'll giggle a lot. Because right now I'm imagining you naked eating Cheetos on a beanbag chair. Yeah, I'm sorry. I don't do that when I'm gaming, but yeah, you don't want to have that image in your head. That Cheetos actually sounds good right now. But early on, I got over the munchies, but it's just so holistic. I mean, you can feel this, and this is probably the same that people feel in your pools.

You start to feel relaxation tingling on like your fingertips and stuff. And people told me the high is very different than smoking. It's like, it's kind of a fun high, like drinking. But when you take edibles, you start to kind of feel tingling and relaxation kind of moving up your arms and up your legs. And then eventually it kind of comes up into your chest and you just feel like you kind of feel like there's a little bit of weight on your chest but it's really peaceful kind of goes weight blankets and then your face goes peaceful and you basically just feel what's

happening is it's just it's just relaxing your muscles and you just kind of become this blue this putty blue and and it's probably a lot the same sort of experience in your guys' pods. And there are times, if I take about 30 milligrams, I can lay there and I'm just at complete peace with the world. And for me, childhood trauma, shutting off that brain and getting the madman to shut up, leave me alone, not stalk me with stuff like, you did in 1984 you're an asshole you know the one thing I studied a long time ago was recently in the last couple years because

I had problems with shutting off my brain was the power of now I forget his name Eckhart yeah and and so I think that's why a lot of people need stuff like this with what you guys are doing with the flow pods because the deprivation and stuff kind of helps shut that brain down that ego mind that's always at you going you know judging you and throwing stuff at you and being like you know you're you're a jerk and you know that that that self-defeating brain stuff that we sometimes have i'm not worthy the imposter syndrome right yeah there you go there you go eckhart tolle um and so that really helped me i do it like tarjay though see so i like eckhart tolle so it's like tarjay just it sounds more fancy it's like the french version of it right fancier yeah and and that really helped me listen to those videos but i always have to go back to

him one of the great things is his voice is so calming he's like and you're in the you know now you will be relaxed yeah you can tell he really he really does it himself like you know he believes it. He's not like Anthony Robbins barking at you. Right, right. Like, it's hard to relax listening to Anthony Robbins. It's like, this isn't relaxing at all, Anthony. I don't think you should run meditation.

But, you know, he's there for a different thing to get you pumped up. Yeah, it'll be interesting to try this. If you guys want to try it out, check out their website. Give us the website again. People can look you guys up at. Sure. It's very simple. It's just truerest.com.

And you can book an appointment if you're interested in being a franchisee. Check that out. I would highly recommend getting into companies like this really, on in their franchisee experience because usually as they fill the franchise fees get more expensive and the cuts uh that you get uh between you know what everyone gets paid for gets thinner and of course they become bigger and you know everyone wants to be first to market exactly exactly you want to catch it when it's early definitely most definitely so uh anyway i appreciate you being with me, Nick, and I'm going to get a chance to try this in Provo. I'm interested in also having my mom try it to see if it will help with her pain and stuff.

Well, let me send you over a couple ones to try out. I'd love for you to do a review on it. We'll do a review on the Chris Voss show, so stay tuned for that. Watch for that, guys. Anyway, thanks, Nick, for being with us today and sharing some of that information. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys being here.

Be sure to refer the show to your families, friends, neighbors, relatives. Get them involved in the podcast. You can go to the CVPN. That's the Chris Voss Show. No, hold on. Chris Voss Podcast Network.com. You can see all seven podcasts there and subscribe and of course you can get

us on spotify our radio uh itunes google play there's the new luminary i think it is podcast which is kind of cool you can check that out as well player fm spreaker streaker we're everywhere anyway thanks for tuning in and we'll see you guys next time