Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
In the very first episode of the Daily Solutions Podcast, Graham and Ashkahn introduce themselves, lay out the concept of the project, and share how to submit your float-related questions.
Float Tank Solutions will be releasing a podcast episode every day, with each episode focusing on a question or topic related to starting, running, or growing a float center. They’re created to be easily digestible — short and to the point, and always published along with a full written transcript.
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Get to know some of our companies
Float On – our float tank center.
Float Tank Solutions – resources for starting, running, and growing your float center
Float Conference – the largest gathering of float enthusiasts.
HelmBot – software to run your wellness business.
Coincidence Control Publishing – floatation publications.
Show Resources
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: You’re listening to the Daily Solutions podcast. This is our very first episode.
Ashkahn: Yeah, welcome, welcome. Glad to have you here starting this journey with us.
Graham: Yeah and I guess before we get started in the actual podcast, we just kind of wanted to introduce ourselves a little bit for those of you out there who may not be as familiar with us as we are.
Ashkahn: Yeah, so we are two of the owners of Float On. We have a float tank center.
Graham: Woo, we have a float tank center.
Ashkahn: We did it. We did it. So yeah, Portland, Oregon is where we reside. That’s where our float tank center is, and we opened our doors back in 2010.
Graham: Yeah, and back then we just had four tanks when first opened up.
Around 2012 we expanded to six tanks, which is what we have now.
Ashkahn: Yes, so it’s been a very exciting journey for us. 2010 was a very different place in the world of floating, and we’ve gotten to see everything kind of expand and grow and explode and all the amazing things that’s happened over the last six to seven years. It’s been really a pleasure to kind of be along on this wild ride.
Graham: Yeah and somewhere along the way as well, we started branching out beyond just running our own float tank center and kind of doing some other projects. One of the first of those was Float Tank Solutions, which this podcast is a part of. Float Tank Solutions is our consulting side of things. So once we opened up a float tank center, all of a sudden, which is unexpected, we started getting crazy amounts of emails and phone calls from people who were thinking about opening up their own float tank center and had just a bunch of questions for someone who’d kind of been through the early process so far.
Float Tank Solutions was born out of wanting to actually provide some benefit back to the float world and teach people some of the things that we’ve learned during our time running Float On. We have a lot of free resources on there. They’re definitely worth checking out, from comparison charts for the different float tanks that are on the market to whole intro guides on the basic concept of floating that you can give to your landlord or investors, or anything like that. And a really extensive blog that you can go through. It has at this point hundreds of posts. I think I counted the pages, it’s something like 700 pages at the time of recording, is in our blog.
So kind of a wealth of free info out there that you should definitely avail yourself of. We also have some paid products as well and have been helping centers open since we started Float Tank Solutions in 2012. Things like business plan template and construction plan. We do a three-day training out in Portland every month that usually has about five or six perspective float center owners that come out and learn from us what goes into a center. So a bunch of things very much centered on helping other float tank centers get open.
Ashkahn: Yeah.We’ve done a handful of other projects in the years since we’ve been open, as well. We put on the Float Conference that happens every year, which is definitely a ton of fun. We also make The Float Helm software to run your center in terms of scheduling point of sale and a lot of other kind of backend center operations.
Graham: I guess the last thing that we do is some book publishing as well. We’ve put out both some books inspired by floating and art work, and a cook book inspired by floating and also some old John Lilly books. That’s Coincidence Control Publishing, is what that one is called.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and I guess in addition to that we just do whatever sounds fun for us sometimes too. We recently went on a giant float tour where we took an RV around the United States and Canada and visited 172 float centers over the course of three months while driving around. Mostly just because it sounded like a preposterous amount of fun, and it was. It was a huge amount of fun.
Graham: The premise of this podcast is really just to continue that trend of helping out the industry and sharing what information we can. Specifically in this case, we really wanted to hear from other people who are out there either running a float tank center or thinking about getting their toes a little bit salty in the waters. So taking answers from people and actually just answering those questions in a short conversational format.
Ashkahn: We have our three-day training apprenticeship program where we get to say a lot of information in structured ways. We have our blog post, which take a lot of work to put into a form that feels like a comprehensive post on a subject. At the end of the day, when we grab beers over the float centers and we’re talking to people at the conference, or just casually hanging out with float people we end up having these really nice valuable casual conversations about all sorts of weird little topics that don’t always come up when you’re going over the grander things you need to be thinking about.
This podcast really seemed like a nice way of getting some of that information out, these bite sized attempts at talking about some of the smaller and more detail-oriented sections of open and running a float center.
Graham: I guess so much of the knowledge base out there for float tanks is so wishy-washy. We’re still in the early stages of this industry, even though it’s really popping and growing at this fast rate. So we try to make our blog as comprehensive and thorough on different topics as we can, but so many of the topics out there, you just can’t even do that. There’s almost not enough information, and so the idea of having something that’s just a little more conversational, where we can really quickly go over how we don’t really know what’s going on, and what you can look into a little bit more, and where things might head just sounded appealing to us.
Ashkahn: I have a suspicion that you’re going to hear us say we don’t really know, probably a number of times, in many episodes to come.
Graham: So thanks for tuning in to listen. That’s the basic premise of the show. We’re planning on releasing one of these every single day, so get ready for a load of Graham and Ash content.
Ashkahn: And please send us your questions. This show will all be focused on answering questions that people have so let us know what you want us to talk about.
Graham: Yeah, and you can do that online at floattanksolutions.com/podcast. Feel free to also just shoot us an email. Our contact information is up on our website as well.
Ashkahn: Yeah, I mean if you want to send us Morse code messages we can accept those, and carrier pigeons.
Graham: I’ve heard that if you put stamps on a watermelon and actually send it through the mail, it will arrive at its destination. So if you want to send us a watermelon-based question, you’re free to do that as well.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and mail it, made with the seeds inside. I mean that sounds great. Yeah, anyway you send it to us, we’ll try to answer it.
Graham: All right, and other than that, thanks for listening. We’ll be talking to you again tomorrow.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Being the First Float Center – DSP 320
What’s it like to be the first float center to open in an area? How do you handle it?
Graham and Ashkahn explain what it was like opening Float On, being one of the first dedicated float centers in the United States. The exciting thing is that creating awareness is really fun, but it can be a little stressful since your float center will represent floating as a practice for people.
Many of the tips here are the same for anyone opening a center: focus on awareness, be prepared to educate, and make sure your floats are the best they can be.
Are Light or Dark Colored Float Rooms better? – DSP 319
Is it better to have a light colored room that hides salt, or a dark colored room that easily shows it?
Graham and Ashkahn dish out some strong opinions on this idea, especially the idea that dark colored rooms and tanks are good for maintaining employee accountability.
What you Need to Know About Algorithms – DSP 318
Ashkahn and Derek talk about algorithms, those pesky bits of code that push your posts up or down on social media and search engines and leave you scrambling for ways to get likes and clicks, constantly mixing it up to just be seen.
The duo discusses how algorithms affect everyday posts for small businesses and how to keep up on information about the constantly changing nature of these systems. The main takeaway is, if your content is fresh, non-repetitive and you aren’t trying to game the system, you likely have nothing to worry about.
Commissions for Memberships? – DSP 317
Any sales related business knows that commissions are the gold-standard incentive program for drumming up business, but how does it work in a float center for memberships?
Derek and Ashkahn talk about the mixed success they’ve experienced at Float On each time it’s been tried.
Getting Members to Float More Often – DSP 316
Single float memberships have become increasingly more common in the float industry, typically with the option to purchase additional floats for the month at a discount. But how do you properly incentivize those members to float more than a single time per month?
Ashkahn and Derek talk marketing tips to keeping your float center top of mind and making sure your members are active regularly.
Latest Blog Posts
How Many Float Tanks Should I Have?
Intro If you’ve crossed over into the sacred realm of “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna open up a float center,” an obvious question arises — “How many tanks should I have?” Now, if you’re like me, you’re creating a 90 tank float community where everyone who buys in...
The Construction Secret to Soundproofing: Storage Between Float Rooms
If you’ve ever taken a look at our construction materials or gotten advice on soundproofing, you’ve probably heard of the importance of including “air gaps” when building out your center. What that means and why it helps can be a bit of a technical question, and the practical implementation can seem daunting and unreasonable.
Float Conference 2017 Recap
Now that the salt has settled, I’m sharing some thoughts from “The Great Gathering of People Who Really Love Being Alone Sometimes in a Dark, Briny Room,” also known as The Float Conference.
The conference has always been an amazing opportunity to connect with the pulse of the broader float industry and, if this year’s gathering showed us anything, it’s that our collective heartbeat is as strong as ever.
2017 Float Conference Program Introduction
Every year, I have the great pleasure of writing the introduction for the Float Conference program, and every year we share it on our blog so that members of the industry who weren’t able to make the journey out to Portland are able to check it out. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
From all of us at Float Tank Solutions, where our time is measured as the space between two conferences, thank you again for a wonderful year!
– Graham Talley
