Personal background, training, education for float center owners – DSP 104

Every new float center owner brings something different to the table. A former accountant is going to have a different skill set than someone who spent the last 15 years in construction. Now, it’s likely that they’ll both find ways to succeed in very different ways, but it’s possibly that one could be better suited to running a float center than they other.

Graham and Ashkahn get asked about their personal backgrounds that led to them starting Float On and, by extension, what the ideal background might be for running a float center.

While they have very non-traditional backgrounds themselves, they both have worked diligently through Float On’s lifetime to make sure that they learn the skills necessary to get the job done.

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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: Our question today is more about us, which is great. I love talking about us.

Ashkahn: Yeah, great. These are the type of questions people should be sending in.

Graham: “What are your backgrounds? Is there a background that makes an ideal business owner?” … I assume she means on our computers. Well, mine’s a New Yorker cartoon.

Ashkahn: Yeah, and mine is like a dinosaur.

Graham: Alright, thanks. That was an interesting question. Ideal business owners, pretty much anything but the default background. I think is a good thing to use there.

Ashkahn: What is our background?

Graham: Different people.

Ashkahn: My background is I’d say pretty relevant to business. I had a background in theater through college. It was the main thing I focused on, and pretty much immediately afterwards came and opened this business, so that’s kind of where I’m coming from.

Graham: My background was I got a bachelors in experimental psychology, and then I actually started up my first business right out of that, and then went back to grad school for theater, which is where I met Ashkahn.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: I started another business after that, and then got into the float tank world. A little bit of psychology, a little bit of theater, a little bit of serial entrepreneurship.

Ashkahn: Jake, one of our other business partners, has a background in road construction. He did a lot of road construction out in the Midwest.

Graham: He also graduated college.

Ashkahn: He also graduated college, but with political science I think it was his major was.

Graham: Yeah, I think so.

Ashkahn: He probably doesn’t want us saying any of this. He’s a very private person. This is kind of fun.

Graham: Forget that we even said his name.

Ashkahn: Yeah. His middle name is Weston.

Graham: His favorite color is orange. Actually, I don’t know if that’s true. Don’t start sending Jake orange things. His personal mailing address is …

Ashkahn: Social security number.

Graham: Ideal backgrounds. I mean for running a business is different than running a float business. Possibly. In the sense that there’s not a ton of training in a float business, right? If you’re opening a restaurant, obviously a background actually having culinary experience, and things like that is really nice to have.

Ashkahn: There’s no float university.

Graham: F.U.?

Ashkahn: Yeah. It doesn’t exist yet.

Graham: Although, I do want to make Float University sweatshirts just to have the acronym on there.

Ashkahn: The thing is, you’re going to get our perspective on this, and none of us have been to business schools. It’s not like half of us can be like “I went to business, and I really thought …” or like “It was useful” or “It wasn’t as useful as it costs” or whatever. We really only have the perspective of not going to business school and running a business despite that.

Graham: Yeah, and I’d almost say there’s certain skills that make it more likely that you’ll succeed running a float center than an actual set of background training.

Ashkahn: Sure.

Graham: But that said, if I could just imagine what training I would’ve had ideally going into this, a background in water care. Whether it’s recreational water, drinking water, something like that where I just understand water sanitation already would be awesome.

Ashkahn: Mm-hmm.

Graham: A background in actually having run a business with employees before. The previous businesses that I had started, it was mainly me and some independent contractors that I’d pull on occasionally, so less managing a whole staff, and I found that to be a really steep learning curve. Just how to keep everyone who’s working in your business kind of organized, and happy, and for that not to blow up. Experience managing bigger projects whether that’s in business, whether that’s in theater for example. Managing a play is actually a good experience I think. It’s managing and working with people is a great skill to have going into it.

Ashkahn: Float specifically like a construction background is definitely worth its weight in gold?

Graham: Yeah, for sure. Even if you’re not doing the construction. Just being able to talk intelligently to the contractors, and hold your own, and not have them toss out crazy terms that don’t mean anything or getting fleeced on negotiations or anything like that.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Pretty much the biggest investment in your business is in your floors, and walls, and HVAC, and stuff like that. Knowledge in that arena is great to have.

Marketing, that was one of the backgrounds that I had that I think actually really helped early on in filling our tanks, and that we hear other people struggling with is they don’t come from a background of actually getting people excited about things or really know that much about marketing, or advertising. Yeah, some skill sets to be able to actually fill up your tanks from day one is good too.

Ashkahn: Yeah, definitely. A lot of running a float center is getting people to know that you exist, and that float tanks exist, and it’s not like a type of business where someone is going to have a specific problem, and know they need to go to a dentist or something like that. You have to be a little bit more in front of people, and get yourself out there.

Graham: This is going to sound a little silly, but I would say general technical competence. Maybe like spreadsheets are actually two really useful things too.

Ashkahn: As a small business, it’s kind of a force multiplier or something. The amount that you can get done as an individual, and save yourself money, and be scrappy, and that sort of stuff. The more technical know-how you have, the more you’re going to be able to help yourself do things that people in your position or small businesses usually can’t do. We’ve benefited a lot from being able to build our own websites.

Graham: Make your own podcasts.

Ashkahn: Make our own podcast. Being able to run around on social media and stuff like that. Having kind of the technical know-how to do stuff like that means we don’t have to pay web designers, we don’t have to pay graphic designers. Or at least when we started. Now it’s like we can decide, “Hey, I’m going to do this” or “Maybe it’s not worth my time and I’ll pay someone else to do this now.” But being able to do those things yourself especially in the beginning is a great way to make your business look way more professional, and feel more professional, and not have to pay the money to do it.

Graham: Again, like for all of those skills too, even if you’re not the one who’s using those skills immediately working on your business I think that just being knowledgeable about them, and understanding what’s going on in certain specific arenas definitely helps with managing the people who are working on them. Like graphic design or web design is a great example too, and make sure again that you’re not getting fleeced when people are quoting you different amounts because you know what actually goes into stuff. It means that when you’re talking to them you can actually save money on time that you’re paying them just because your communications are better as well. Alright, so there’s that.

Ashkahn: Here’s the other nice thing about all of this is that as a small business owner, for any of the stuff that you don’t know, you’re pretty much forced to learn. That’s just what life is. We went into this. I mean I didn’t know anything about water sanitation going into opening a float center, and even I’ve been handy with tech stuff before, but I wasn’t nearly as competent in terms of graphic design, web design, actual web coding, stuff like that before starting our business. And there’s a lot more motivation when you have to do something to learn how to do it. When you’re sitting at home being “I’m going to learn how to build websites.” You’re trying to follow some sort of online tutorial or something that. It’s just really easy to get distracted and bored. When you’re sitting at home you’re like “Oh man, I need my website up by Friday.”

Graham: It’s the first Float Conference. We need to sell tickets.

Ashkahn: That’s right. Yeah. You just have to. You have to do it. You have to learn, and you have a drive because there’s a very clear goal, and a definite purpose. It’s a really, really good way to learn stuff. Don’t let this make you feel nervous. Any of the stuff that you don’t know. That’s the stuff that you’re going to get to learn.

Graham: Yeah, definitely. Sometimes from the school of hard knocks, but you’ll definitely get to learn it.

Ashkahn: Yeah, which is great. To me, I mean that’s my favorite part about running a business is being forced to learn things.

Graham: Yeah, or I would say getting to learn things.

Ashkahn: Yeah, and being able to sleep until whenever I want, and no one telling me when to be somewhere. I like that part about running a business too.

Graham: Man, you must’ve really disliked this morning then. Lots of meetings. In a much more general sense too, outside of these kind of skill sets going into it or technical skills that you might have, just having worked on big projects in the past, understanding how long something like this will take, and having the patience to get through it, and just being a hard worker is so much.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: I mean if I were looking for someone else to come on board as an owner of a new float center we were starting up let’s say is a component. Still, just on the word part of that huh? Yeah, so I’d be looking for that “hootspah”. Did I say that right?

Ashkahn: Chutzpah.

Graham: It’s pretty good.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: But I’d almost say that’s more important than everything else that we’ve been mentioning. If people are willing to put in the work, and the hours, and they have the experience doing that for several years in a row on a project that is a bigger determiner of success to me than a lot of these other technical skills that you might possess.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: I don’t think that we needed the fact that I’ve run a couple of businesses going into float on in order for us to succeed or I don’t think I needed an experimental psychology background in order for us to succeed, but I do think that I needed to know how to work really hard, and sacrifice a lot of free time and social time in order to get this thing off the ground, and again I think that’s true. Ask any float center out there, but that’s going to be true of almost anyone in the field too.

Ashkahn: Yeah, you’ve got fire in your belly.

Graham: Alright, anything else to add for backgrounds?

Ashkahn: I think I’ve said everything I needed to say.

Graham: synonyms for dedication, diligence? Did you say that one?

Ashkahn: Yeah, no. I don’t think you need diligence. You just need that oomph. You need that … Yeah.

Graham: Alright. If anyone has other questions they want us to answer, go to FloatTankSolutions.com/podcast. Fill out the very simple form there, and we’ll answer them.

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