The Sacred Pricing Problem
Why the discount keeps your best customers from ever finding you
For over a decade, I’ve worked closely with float center owners as a consultant and business partner. I’ve seen their books, their struggles, their decision-making processes up close.
I’ve watched the sacred pricing problem play out hundreds of times—the panic-driven discounting, the revenue spikes followed by longer valleys, the confusion about why something so transformative could be so hard to sustain financially.
I understood this problem intellectually. I could see the patterns clearly from working behind the scenes across the industry. I knew the math didn’t work. I knew the psychology was destructive. I’d been talking about it and working to solve it for years.
But this fall, something shifted my understanding to an entirely different level.
I spent thirty thousand dollars of my own money creating an immersive art experience called “Dear Inner Child.” Three days. Phone-free. Solo—inspired by the float experience. Designed to help people reconnect with the part of themselves they’d lost or buried or forgotten.
The experience was deeply personal. Sacred, even. It came from my own healing journey, my own inner work. Just like floating had helped me heal and come home to myself, this art was doing the same thing for others—and for me in creating it.
And when it came time to think about sustainability, I found myself facing the exact same sacred pricing dilemma I’d been helping float center owners navigate.
But now I was in the driver’s seat. Now it was my significant investment. My sacred work. My question to answer.
How do you put a price on something priceless without cheapening its value?
In the end, I chose to keep the event free. I chose not to sell any of the art. Because I couldn’t bear the thought of turning something that sacred into a commodity, even though I knew I needed to find ways to sustain the work.
Now, I want to be clear about something: I was only able to make this choice because I spent the last two years completely restructuring my business model. As I wrote about in “Avoiding Source,” I knew I had to burn down what wasn’t working and rebuild from a more aligned place. Part of that restructuring was specifically to create space and resources for this kind of sacred work. I’m playing a very long game with my art—working to completely detach it from money—and my business has allowed me to do that. I was willing to take a temporary loss on this first event as an investment in protecting the value for the long term.
When I made this choice, I wasn’t sitting on unlimited reserves, so I understand the pressures of needing to ‘thread the needle’ and somehow make it work. What I do have is a business that I’ve intentionally designed to fund this art—but that took years of difficult changes and strategic decisions.
Here’s what I see happening in the float industry: many owners try to operate their centers like nonprofits or charities—offering deeply discounted or even free sessions, giving away value constantly—without having the funding structure of an actual nonprofit. No donors, no grants, no investment backing. Just their own increasingly strained resources.
And I get it. I see where this comes from. It comes from having a big heart. From wanting to help as many people as possible. From knowing how much floating can change someone’s life and wanting to remove every possible barrier to that transformation.
These are good intentions. Pure intentions. The impulse to give, to serve, to make healing accessible—that’s beautiful. That’s part of what makes this industry so special.
But here’s what often happens: this well-intentioned giving comes at the cost of the giver. The business owner burns out. Revenue stays too low to properly maintain the space, do consistent advertising or pay fair wages. The stress of barely making ends meet month after month takes a toll that affects everything—the quality of the experience, the sustainability of the business, the wellbeing of the owner.
Sometimes the most loving thing you can do—for yourself, for your business, for your community—is to hold firm boundaries around value. To have the confidence to stand on what you’re worth. To do the inner work that allows you to receive fair compensation for something sacred.
You can’t pour from an empty cup.
And here’s the thing: if you’re running yourself into the ground financially, if you’re so stressed about making ends meet that you can’t even maintain your own float practice, if you’re burning out from trying to give everyone else the transformation you yourself need—what message does that send?
If you don’t value floating enough to pay yourself fairly for it, if you can’t sustain your own relationship with the practice because your cup is so drained, why would others see it as valuable enough to prioritize in their own lives?
The mirror works both ways. When you honor the value enough to hold firm pricing, when you create a sustainable business that allows you to stay connected to Source, when you model what it looks like to prioritize this practice—that’s when others start to see it as truly valuable too.
And that’s when the sacred pricing problem clicked for me on a completely different level. It wasn’t just about economics or psychology or marketing tactics. It was about the fundamental tension between honoring something sacred and building something sustainable.
I finally understood—not just intellectually, but in my bones—why float center owners struggle so much with this. Why brilliant, courageous people who’ve invested everything into creating healing spaces find themselves reaching for discounts they know don’t make sense.
It’s not because they don’t understand business. It’s because they’re trying to hold something sacred in a world that wants to commodify everything.
This is what I’ve been seeing play out in the float industry for over a decade. But through my own direct experience with my art, I finally understood not just the what and the how, but the why.
And that deeper understanding changes everything about how we solve it.
It’s happening right now.
Float center owners across the country are sitting at their computers, staring at their November numbers, feeling the tightness in their chest that comes when cash flow doesn’t match expenses. They’re opening their email to create the Black Friday campaign. They’re debating: forty percent off? fifty percent? Buy one get one free?
They’re about to make a decision that will secretly shape the next twelve months.
I know because I’ve watched this cycle repeat for over a decade. And I know because I’ve felt that same tightness, that same panic that whispers: Just get people in the door. Just make the sale. Just survive the holidays.
But here’s what I need you to understand: the discount is not the problem. The discount is the symptom.
The real problem is that we’ve forgotten what we’re actually selling.
The Commodity Trap
Float centers are not product-based businesses. You are not selling widgets. You are not an ecommerce store moving inventory with thin margins where volume makes up for discounting.
But the difference goes even deeper than that.
Unlike a product business, your transaction isn’t finished when someone pays you. A float only happens when the person actually comes in and uses it. You’re not just selling a session—you’re responsible for delivering an experience that requires the customer to show up.
An ecommerce business fulfills the transaction the moment they ship the product. Whether the customer opens the box or not, the transaction is complete. But your business? It only fulfills when someone walks through your door and gets in the tank.
This changes everything about the economics, the psychology, and the risks you’re managing.
Let me break down why the economics work completely differently:
An ecommerce business operates on variable costs—if they sell twice as many t-shirts, they buy twice as much inventory. Their costs scale with sales. So when they discount, they can sometimes offset it with more volume, because their product costs scale with each sale. And they can sell to anyone, anywhere—nationwide, even worldwide. Their potential market is essentially unlimited.
But your costs are mostly fixed: rent, utilities, tank maintenance, staff. These don’t change whether you do one hundred floats or two hundred. And you have a ceiling—X tanks, Y hours. Plus, you can only sell to people within driving distance of your location. You can’t “do more volume” the way Amazon can.
And here’s the critical piece: every empty time slot is revenue that’s gone forever. You can’t store a float session on a shelf and sell it later. This is the core of service business economics. Your capacity is perishable.
When you discount by fifty percent, you’re not making it up in volume. You’re making half as much money on the same limited, perishable capacity you were going to fill anyway.
This also means that the real bottleneck in a float center isn’t sales—it’s throughput and attendance. Selling a session is only valuable if the person actually uses it. And if you keep selling to people who don’t show up or don’t see the value when they do, you’re slowly burning through your local market—because unlike ecommerce, you can’t just find new customers in the next state or country.
You might be thinking: if attendance is the real issue, shouldn’t I discount heavily to get as many people through the door as possible?
That’s exactly the trap most float centers fall into. And it’s why they end up in a worse position than when they started.
Here’s the other piece: floating is still so new that most people don’t even know what it is. There’s no anchor price in the public consciousness. Compare that to massages—everyone knows what they cost, what to expect. That’s a mature market.
But floating? Most people have never heard of it. They can’t compare it to anything familiar. And when you’re introducing something this transformative, the price itself communicates value.
And because customer participation is required, pricing changes behavior. Studies—and my own experience—show that people who pay little or nothing for a float are dramatically less likely to show up and use it. That’s a risk product businesses never have to manage.
Which brings us to what actually happens when you discount something people don’t understand yet.
The Vicious Cycle
Let me show you the math.
Let’s say you normally charge $89 for a float, and you want to generate $10,000.
At full price, you need to sell 113 floats.
At 20% off ($71), you need to sell 141 floats—28 more sales.
At 40% off ($53), you need to sell 189 floats—76 more sales.
At 60% off ($36), you need to sell 278 floats—165 more sales.
Did you catch that? To make the same ten thousand dollars, you need to sell twice as many floats at 60% off compared to 20% off.
Twice as many conversations. Twice as many objections. Twice as much work.
And here’s the real cost: every single one of those people is learning that a float is worth thirty six dollars. Not eighty nine. Thirty six.
When January comes and you need to sell floats at full price, what happens?
They wait. Because you taught them to wait.
And it gets worse...
If I see your emails and social media posts regularly putting out deals, why would I ever become a member? Why would I stay a member?
The discount becomes addictive. And like all addictions, it’s hard to break.
The Desperation Trap
Here’s the lie that keeps float center owners stuck in this cycle, and I’ve heard it from countless clients:
“I don’t have the luxury of playing the long game. I need revenue now. The discount is my only option.”
This is the most dangerous place to operate from.
Because when you believe discounting is your only option, you make decisions from desperation instead of strategy. From scarcity instead of abundance. From panic instead of Source.
And here’s the lie within the lie: that the long-term game doesn’t bring short-term revenue.
That’s not true. It will. Sometimes it will actually bring in more revenue in the short term than discounting.
If you’re willing to do a moderate discount—twenty percent off instead of sixty percent off—and invest more energy, time or money toward education rather than just relying on the deal to do the selling, you’ll make the short-term money you need. And you’ll avoid the negative consequences.
Now, I understand that if money is very tight, if you literally don’t have the cash flow to invest in paid advertising, that feels impossible. But here’s what you do have: time.
If you don’t have money to invest, invest time. More time creating content. More time sharing your story. More time recording videos (it’s simpler and more powerful than you think). More time educating instead of discounting.
If you stick to your value, if you’re willing to be honest and share your story authentically, you will make the short-term money you need. And you’ll also gain the compounding effect of true customers, not just deal-seekers.
Here’s what most float center owners don’t realize: you don’t need thousands of customers to be profitable. You need a few hundred really loyal members. Kevin Kelly calls this “1,000 True Fans,” but for float centers, it’s often closer to 200-300 members who float regularly.
Once you have that core base, anything else—packages, gift cards, additional floats from members—is profit.
I’ve worked with centers in this space. I’ve seen it work. But here’s what happens when they keep hitting the discount button instead:
They get negative compounding.
Instead of loyal customers who rave about floating and bring referrals, they get people who don’t come back. People who don’t value the experience because they never understood it. People who treat floating as a commodity instead of a transformation.
And here’s the pattern I’ve seen over and over: float centers send out those big discount campaigns. They get the revenue spike. It feels like it worked. But then something confusing happens.
Their reviews are incredible. Five stars. People raving about transformations. Describing how floating changed their life. Helped their anxiety. Relieved their pain. Gave them clarity they hadn’t had in years.
And yet... they’re struggling financially. Month to month is tight. They can’t understand why this thing that so clearly works, that gets such powerful testimonials, is so hard to sustain.
Why aren’t people coming back? Why do we get these amazing reviews but struggle to get by?
The discounting has created a gap between the experienced value and the perceived value. Between the transformations happening in your tanks and the motivation people have to prioritize floating.
The low-profit sales combined with unmotivated customers means fewer opportunities to upsell or win back regulars—and your cash flow spirals down.
So you are stuck staring at the discount button again… Sooner than you thought you’d be.
And here’s the part that’s especially dangerous for local businesses: you’re going to run out of people.
This isn’t New York City with eight million potential customers. Even if it were, you’d eventually burn through your market. If everyone in your community has bought a discounted float, if they all have gift cards sitting in their drawers unused, if they’ve all tried floating once without understanding its value—who are you going to sell to next year?
The more you press that discount button, the more outstanding credits you create, the harder it becomes to sell to anyone. Because everyone has “already tried it” or “already has one” that they haven’t used and don’t see value in.
This is how small local businesses go out of business. Not because there isn’t demand for what they offer, but because they trained their entire market to devalue it.
The Devaluation Effect
Here’s what the research shows, and it’s more damaging than just the math.
Studies consistently demonstrate that free events see 40-60% no-show rates, while paid events see only 10-20%. Even more telling: when event organizers charge just five dollars, no-shows drop to around 15%, and when they charge ten dollars or more, no-shows drop to less than 5%.
The psychology is simple: when someone pays for something, even a minimum value, they see higher perceived value and are more likely to show up.
Think about this: if you saw a car listed at 50% off, would you immediately buy it?
Probably not. You’d be suspicious. What’s wrong with it? Why is it so cheap?
The steep discount doesn’t make you want it more—it makes you question whether it’s worth having at all.
The same psychology applies to floating, but it’s worse because people don’t know what they’re buying yet.
I saw this firsthand with my art experience. Most people who got free tickets ahead of time and didn’t know me personally simply didn’t show up. We filled those spaces with people who came the day of the event, but the pattern was clear: when something is free, people treat it as disposable.
And here’s where the real damage happens to your float center.
Let me give you a scenario that plays out differently based on how someone discovers floating:
Scenario One: Someone with chronic pain comes across your center because you’ve been consistently sharing education about floating. Stories of people with chronic pain who found relief. Explanations of how sensory deprivation allows the nervous system to finally rest. The effects of reducing inflammation on the body. Testimonials from real people describing what it was like to be pain-free for the first time in years.
This person reads those stories. Watches those videos. Something clicks. They think: This could help me. This could be the thing. They book a float—at full price—and they come in within the week. Why? Because they’re motivated. They understand how this addresses their specific problem. The value is crystal clear.
When they float, maybe they get significant relief in that first session. Maybe it’s subtle. But because they came in educated and motivated, they’re primed to notice the shifts. When you talk to them after about starting a float practice—coming in regularly to build on that relief—they’re ready to commit. They buy a package. They start floating weekly and are now a member. Within a few months, their chronic pain is manageable in ways it hasn’t been in years. They become one of your most loyal customers because you changed their life.
Scenario Two: That same person receives a gift card from a friend who saw your Black Friday sale. 60% off seemed like a great deal, and their friend thought “this seems like a fun, relaxing thing to try.”
But the friend didn’t really know what floating was. They couldn’t explain the benefits. They just knew it was a “good deal.” So the gift card sits in this person’s email. They’re vaguely curious, but there’s no urgency. No clear understanding of how this could help their chronic pain.
Weeks pass. Months pass. Maybe they eventually book, maybe they don’t. If they do book, they come in with minimal expectations and minimal education. They might get some relief in that first session, but without context for what’s happening or why, they don’t recognize the significance. If the staff feel uneasy about having sales conversations, they may not ask important questions to uncover that this person is dealing with chronic pain. They don’t understand that regular floating could build on this. That this could be the solution they’ve been searching for.
When they leave, you try to talk to them about packages or memberships, but they’re non-committal. “Maybe I’ll come back sometime.” And then they don’t. Or they wait for the next sale.
You just lost the opportunity to help someone with a life-changing problem because the way they discovered you—through a discount—taught them the wrong value and created the wrong motivation.
And here’s what I need you to understand: this isn’t just a business loss. This is a service loss.
That person with chronic pain? They could have been your ideal client. The one who floats weekly. Who becomes a member. Who raves about you to everyone they know. Who brings in referrals that create a compounding snowball effect because they’re so passionate about what floating did for them.
But more than that—they could have had their life back. The pain that’s been controlling their days, their sleep, their relationships, their quality of life... floating could have addressed that in ways nothing else has.
And they’ll never know.
Because the way they found you didn’t communicate that possibility.
This is the difference between truly serving your community and just servicing them—running them through check-in and check-out, going through the automatic interactions, never getting to the heart of what they actually need.
I know many float center owners avoid sales because it feels icky. I know marketing can feel uncomfortable, even manipulative. I know the idea of investing more in advertising or content creation or storytelling feels like adding more noise to an already noisy world.
But here’s what I want you to consider: when you avoid proper education, when you hide behind discounts instead of standing on the value, when you don’t invest in sharing honest stories and clear messaging about what floating can do—you’re not protecting your integrity. You’re actually doing a disservice to the people who need you most.
That person with chronic pain is out there right now, searching for solutions. They’re trying things that don’t work. They’re spending money on treatments that provide temporary relief at best. They’re losing hope that anything will help.
And you have the answer. You have the space. You have the experience. You have the testimonials from dozens of people just like them who found relief.
But if you’re not investing in reaching them with that message—if you’re relying on discount campaigns instead of education campaigns—they’ll never find you. Or they’ll find you in a way that doesn’t communicate the true value, and they’ll treat it like just another thing to try when it’s convenient.
This is what’s at stake. Not just your revenue. Not just your business sustainability. But the actual transformation of real people in your community who are suffering and who you could help.
Standing on your value, investing in proper marketing and education, sharing your story honestly—this isn’t about being salesy. It’s about being in service. It’s about making sure the people who need what you offer can actually find you and understand why it matters.
The discount lets you avoid that harder work. But that harder work is the real work of running a healing business.
The Return to Source
Here’s what actually needs to happen.
You need to go back to why you started.
Think about it: you likely discovered floating because you were in pain. Maybe physically. Maybe emotionally. Maybe spiritually. Something wasn’t working, and you tried floating, and it changed you.
The value you received was priceless. Completely priceless. So priceless that you decided to dedicate your life to it. To invest hundreds of thousands of dollars building tanks within a space that removes light, sound and all of the pressures of the world. To navigate permits and construction and equipment failures and all the technical nightmares that come with this business.
That took courage. Serious courage.
And somewhere along the way, you forgot. You got caught up in the noise of running a business. You stopped floating as much. You stopped connecting to that original experience that called you here. You started making decisions from spreadsheets and fear instead of from Source.
The sacred pricing problem isn’t about finding the right discount percentage. It’s about reconnecting to the pricelessness of what you offer.
And the doorway back is your own float practice.
The Mirror
Here’s what I’ve noticed: how you run your business mirrors your float practice.
During the holidays, when you’re most stressed about hitting revenue goals, you’re probably not making time to float. You’re not practicing patience. You’re not practicing surrender. You’re scrambling. You’re reacting. You’re reaching for the quick fix.
Just like someone who gets uncomfortable in the tank and gets out early.
But what you teach your customers—what you preach to your customers—is to stay in the tank. To trust the process. To let go. To surrender to what emerges when you stop controlling everything.
The same is true for your business.
The holidays can represent 30% or more of your annual revenue. That’s enormous. The stakes feel impossibly high. Every decision feels critical. And the noise is deafening: discount! promote! hustle! Black Friday! Cyber Monday! everyone else is doing it!
But you’re not everyone else.
You’re asking people to trust you with something sacred: their silence. Their stillness. Their nervous system. Their inner work.
And if you can’t trust the process yourself—if you can’t practice patience and surrender when it matters most—why would they?
The Leadership Gap
Here’s the other piece that needs to be said.
Beautiful, life-changing transformations are happening in your float center every single day. People are healing trauma. Breaking through creative blocks. Finding relief from chronic pain. Reconnecting with parts of themselves they thought were lost.
You know this. You see it. You hear about it.
But are you sharing it?
Because there’s a leadership gap in this industry. Float center owners are scared. Scared to show up on camera. Scared to record themselves. Scared to tell their own story or their customers’ stories. Scared to be vulnerable and authentic in their marketing.
That fear creates a void. An emptiness. A lack of message.
And when there’s no clear, authentic message about the value and worth of floating, what fills that void?
The discount.
The discount becomes your message. The sale becomes your story. The “deal” becomes the reason people should care.
But you didn’t build a float center to be a discount merchant. You built it because you believe in the pricelessness of this experience.
The courage you need isn’t just the courage to hold your pricing. It’s the courage to step into leadership. To champion the message. To share your story—authentically, vulnerably, honestly—with your community.
People need to hear from you. Not from some polished marketing agency. Not from a generic social media template. From you. The person who believes in this enough to have invested everything into it.
That’s what sells floats. That’s what builds sustainable businesses. That’s what creates customers who understand value instead of waiting for deals.
But it requires you to show up. To be seen. To speak the truth about what floating has meant to you and what it could mean for them.
The fear of doing that is real. I get it. But the cost of not doing it is watching your business slowly train people to devalue the very thing you’re trying to build.
The Choice
Before you launch that 50% off campaign, before you hit send on that Black Friday email, I’m asking you to do one thing:
Go float.
Really float. Not a maintenance float. Not a “squeeze it in between meetings” float. A real one. The kind where you let yourself drop in. Where you stop performing and just... be.
And while you’re in there, ask yourself:
What is this actually worth?
Not what your competitor charges. Not what some ecommerce guide says. Not what you think people will pay.
What is this actually worth?
What would you have paid for this experience when you first discovered it? When it saved you? When it gave you back yourself?
Hold that. Feel that. Remember that.
Because here’s the truth: the same courage that led you to open a float center in the first place is exactly what you need now.
You need to practice what you teach.
You need to surrender the need for the instant revenue spike. You need to trust that positioning floating as a gift rather than a discount will work. You need to have patience while everyone around you is panicking and slashing prices.
You need to hold the value even when it’s uncomfortable.
And you need to step up as a leader. To share your story. To record that video even though it feels awkward. To tell people why this matters. To champion the message instead of hiding behind a sale.
Yes, there are strategies that work. Yes, there are ways to increase holiday revenue without destroying your pricing integrity. (20% off is very different from 60% off, as the math shows.) Yes, you can learn from people who’ve done this successfully.
But none of that works if you’re operating from panic. None of it works if you’ve lost connection to Source.
This is the sacred pricing problem: it’s not actually about pricing at all.
It’s about whether you can hold the tension between what the world tells you to do and what you know is true. It’s about whether you can make decisions from Source instead of noise. It’s about whether you have the courage to practice what you preach.
The courage is still there. You haven’t lost it. You’ve just forgotten it’s available.
Go float. Reconnect. Remember.
And then make your decisions from there.
The business fundamentals matter. The systems matter. The strategies matter. But they only work when they’re built on the foundation of why you started.
Not copying. Not panicking. Not reacting.
But returning to Source and letting it guide you.
That’s the real work. That’s always the real work.
And it’s the only thing that actually solves the sacred pricing problem.
This week (and every week), you have a choice to make.
Will you reach for the discount button one more time? Or will you go float first, reconnect to why you started, and make your decision from Source?
The answer will determine not just your holiday revenue, but the future of your business and the lives you’re here to change.
Thank you for taking the time to slow down and read or listen.
I hope it resonates and helps inspire you back to Source. It would mean a lot if you shared it with someone you think needs it.
→ If you’re ready to talk about what it actually looks like to build a sustainable float center without destroying your pricing integrity, I’m here — reach out to apply.
Excellent read dude and very relatable in my space ❤️