Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Graham and Ashkahn finally take the time to answer the most anticipated question of the year. Now their ever loyal and patient fans will finally get the answer they’re looking for.
Show Resources
The Float Conference – Buy tickets, see dates, schedules, get accommodations, maps… everything you need to enjoy this special event.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: And today’s question, we actually had coming in from a few hundred different listeners. So, I thought it was about time we addressed it, which was, here, let me pull it out here. “Tell me more about your magical and enchanting float conference for 2018? How can I go? How can I give you all of my money?”
Ashkahn: Wow. That’s a great question.
Graham: Yeah, well, and we really appreciate it.
Ashkahn: It’s on everybody’s mind. Yeah. So, thank you for that genuine question from people out there. So, we got a Float Conference.
Graham: Woo!
Ashkahn: Yeah. It’s pretty exciting. It’s been happening since 2012, so this will be-
Graham: I was gonna say since 1901. You really jumped on my joke there, you know?
Ashkahn: This will be our seventh Float Conference that’s coming up here, and it’s in Portland, Oregon. We’ve always done them in Portland, Oregon.
Graham: That’s more than you can count on one hand, plus an extra thumb.
Ashkahn: Yeah, which is, I mean, that’s the real milestone that most people are going for. It’s good. For those of you who’ve never been to the Float Conference before, it’s basically kind of like a giant party where everybody from the float industry from around the world comes out and gets to hang out together.
Graham: And some confused people not from the float industry, too.
Ashkahn: Yeah, very, very unaware that they’re in the middle of a float tornado. But there are sometimes we’re in different buildings, and people are like, “what is going on here?”
But yeah, it’s super fun. People come out from all around the world who run float centers and are generally kind of in the float industry, and they come all out to Portland, Oregon and we have a couple days worth of talks from things like researchers presenting their newest data, Justin Feinstein always brings his crew with him from his lab and they get to share kind of the newest information they’ve been researching over the year.
Graham: Which is always really exciting. It’s actually, I think that’s a lot of people’s favorite part is actually getting got see the data for what floats are doing to people, you know?
Ashkahn: Uh-huh. So, yeah. That’s cool. Big float centers around the world. We usually invite a few people like out to give talks, generally kind of cool, interesting people somewhat related to the whole kind of float universe.
Graham: And a handful of really boring speakers that we just sort of sprinkle in-
Ashkahn: We pepper in. Make the other people look better, you know?
Graham: Yeah, yeah.
Ashkahn: That’s the goal.
Graham: It’s all about dynamic range, I think is what they recommend for conferences, you know?
Ashkahn: So, it is, I like this about all conferences, is just that you really get to go and learn about the absolute newest information happening, which is always cool. We go to a bunch of conferences and that’s always my favorite part. You just really feel like you’re on the kind of leading edge of information. That’s true of the Float Conference, too. I go there and I learn a bunch of stuff over the course of the weekend. I’m like, wait, what’s happening?
There’s a bunch of, especially nowadays, crazy stuff happening in the float world. There’s some serious research being done through the Air Force, and those people who are just starting to enter this world last year came out and presented what they were working on and where they were planning on their research going, and it’s cool just to see the stuff that is otherwise a little bit hidden in the float world, that you don’t know is happening behind the scenes and see where it’s going.
Graham: Yeah. New float tank launches every year at the float conference, which is always exciting to see what people bring out. Often times, we don’t even know ahead of time-
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: People will just tell us, “We’re debuting some kind of new float technology,” and we get to be surprised along with everyone else when they roll it out.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Also, it’s just pretty much the greatest group of people you can gather into a room together. Everybody is super chill, they’re super relaxed, they’re really happy to be there, and they’re super happy to talk to each other and share information and help each other out. It’s a really community focused group of people, and this is the time that everyone actually gets to be together in one physical space.
Graham: Derrick Wyatt always describes it as a big float family reunion, but without any creepy uncles, and better food.
Ashkahn: So, it’s super fun. It’s a super fun time. If you’ve never been out before, obviously we recommend that you come out.
Graham: What are the dates this year? We just set them, right?
Ashkahn: The dates, yeah. So, August 18th and 19th-
Graham: I’m glad I didn’t say my dates I had in my head. I was wrong. I was wrong.
Ashkahn: Marchvember … August 18th and 19th, 2018 is the main conference, that’s a Saturday and Sunday. We also put on a workshop called the “How to Start a Float Center Workshop,” which, as you can imagine, is all about how to start a float center. That’s the two days beforehand, so that’s-
Graham: We’re not very good at coming up with clever names for things.
Ashkahn: No, it’s just very direct.
Graham: “Float Conference”, “How to Start a Center workshop”. Yeah.
Ashkahn: It’s a very just literal sort of thing. So, yeah. If you’re in the planning stages or thinking about opening up a center and you want a bunch of information, that’s the thing you want to come to. How to Start a Float Center workshop.
Then what’s becoming a bigger and more awesome part of the event every year is the Friday activities.
Graham: I thought you were gonna say the CPO training.
Ashkahn: That happen, they’re activities that happen on Friday. They go with our general theme of extremely blunt naming. Basically, people in the industry who are coming to the conference who want to organize their own little activity or event will put these on. So, we do a couple of them. We usually do a bus tour-
Graham: Beer bus tour.
Ashkahn: A beer, yeah, drinking-
Graham: Craft beer-
Ashkahn: Craft beer-
Graham: Double decker-
Ashkahn: Double decker bus tour.
Graham: Bus tour.
Ashkahn: It takes you around to the different float centers in Portland while you drink beer on the second story of a bus.
We put on a marketing forum last year, which was super fun. Had a bunch of panels from various float center owners talking about their marketing advice.
Then a bunch of people just put on all sorts of cool stuff, like maybe 10 to 20 independent-
Graham: Floatlympics this year, was one of my favorites.
Ashkahn: Community events. Yeah, the Floatlympics was very silly. So-
Graham: Salt bag tosses, and …
Ashkahn: That’s the day before the main Saturday/Sunday. So, that’s the Friday. Which is usually, I kind of consider it the start of the conference at this point. You come on that Friday morning, you do a whole day of activities, and then you start in on the main talks on Saturday.
Graham: We have a special program, too, where you can actually come and live in our float center for three months leading up to the conference and volunteer and help us out, and occasionally Ashkahn and I will actually let you come sleep in our rooms with us, and sort of have a little sleepover, braiding hair kind of thing.
Ashkahn: Have the scraps of our food.
Graham: That’s maybe once every two weeks, yeah.
So, if you’re interested in that, definitely reach out.
Ashkahn: Yeah. That’s it. It’s super fun. It’s super fun time.
Graham: Yeah. It’s really fun. Come on out and say hello. Let us give you big hugs.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Floatconference.com is the website. This is good. I think this was a very genuine question, and thanks for … I hope this information was a really tactical and pragmatic-
Graham: Yeah, and maybe now you’ll stop pestering us every day with all those emails asking us to cover this on the podcast, you know?
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: If you have any more totally genuine, legitimate questions that are actually submitted by users, or you’re users. What are you guys again? Listeners?
Ashkahn: Submitters?
Graham: Sub, by you, submitted by you, go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast, enter them in, and yeah, we’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Recent Podcast Episodes
When is it Time to Open a Second Float Center? – DSP 115
Okay, so… Float On only has one location (not counting Float On Hong Kong) and there’s certainly a reason for that. Graham and Ashkahn have toyed with the idea of opening up another center multiple times throughout the years but something else always came up. As they’ve met more people in the industry, they’ve seen some of the pitfalls and successes from people opening additional locations, franchises and whatever else. They share their thoughts on when they think it’d be best to open and why they say to wait a little bit.
Choosing the Hours to Staff Your Float Center – DSP 114
How do you figure out how many people to hire? What’s the ideal hours for a float employee to work? Is there such a thing as too many hours? Too few?
Graham and Ashkahn share their insights with staffing Float On and what their staff looks like to cover all their shifts running a six tank, 24 hour float center.
Tips for Creating an Inviting Float Center Lobby – DSP 113
Not all of us are interior designers, but we all want to have a space that is welcoming to our customers.
Graham and Ashkahn definitely have an eye for this, especially after visiting so many float centers. They share some of their favorite designs they’ve seen, as well as common tactics to help make your center comfy and inviting without necessarily breaking the bank on furniture. They also share some of their pipe dreams for their ideal designs that never came to be.
The Weight of a Gallon of Saltwater – DSP 112
When Graham and Ashkahn get to definitively answer a question, it’s like Christmas. Birds sing and the guys bust out their “Answering a question definitively” dance, which has the added side effect of better crop yields during the coming harvest. It’s an exciting time.
There’s a very straightforward mathematical equation for measuring the weight of salt water based on specific gravity, which is excellent. And useful!
Also, whoever wrote this question needs to contact Graham and Ashkahn ASAP!
Tips on Structuring Your Service Menu – DSP 111
There’s a lot of nuance to how you structure your service menu that can have a significant impact on how your customers spend their money. The size of prices, how they’re ordered or arranged, what price you put first on the menu, etc. all make a difference. Given all these small details, it can seem daunting and make some business owners unsure of where to start or who’s advice to take.
Fortunately, Graham and Ashkahn have been at this for a long time and really dig marketing psychology, so they have lots of advice, tips and even some of the psychology behind why we do the things we do.
Latest Blog Posts
Slowing Down, Letting Go, and Stepping Up to iFloat
My intention for this first blog post is to give you some background into my life, and how and why I ended up running a float center, and teaching courses about metaprogramming in float centers. For as far back as I can remember, I have been fascinated with exploring...
We’ll All Float On
This is the introduction that I wrote for the Portland Float Conference program. I wanted to repost it here, so that all of my zany predictions for the future of floating could be recorded for all time. It also seemed like a good piece to kick off this month's topic...
The First Post (in which the nature of the project is revealed)
There is not enough content out there about float tanks. There is certainly not enough for those of us that are actively running, or trying to start, a center. Float Tank Solutions was launched in an attempt to crush this problem. We've already put up a good amount of...
