Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Sure, this is a great podcast, but it’s over after ten minutes in the day. What other podcasts are out there for you to get your fix once the high of listening to Graham and Ashkahn wears off? Fortunately, Graham and Ashkahn have solved this problem too!
So this episode is all about other podcasts. This one isn’t the only one in the industry, and there’s tons of other podcasts that are great for any startup, so they talk about some of their favorites as well. Graham also throws out some philosophy podcasts for those who want to flex their mental muscles too.
Check out the resources on this episode for some great suggestions!
Show Resources
Float Industry Podcasts:
Jeremy Warner’s The Escape Podcast (offline)
Podcasts that Talk About Floating on Occasion:
The Duncan Trussell Family Hour
Business Podcasts:
The Seven Day Weekend (Not a Podcast, but a good book nonetheless)
Philosophy Podcasts:
History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
Good Podcasting Apps:
Overcast (iPhone)
Player FM (Android)
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: And today’s question is … “Thanks for the great episodes!” Exclamation point!
Ashkahn: Oh, nice. Good question.
Graham: Oh, “I was wondering.”
Ashkahn: I was wondering, okay.
Graham: “I was wondering what podcasts you guys listen to?”
Ashkahn: Oh. I … this is really the only podcast I listen to.
Graham: On repeat. Usually it’s mostly I have it … you know, one headphone bud in and I just sort of have that day’s episode on repeat, looping, during most of the other things that I’m doing.
Ashkahn: Yeah. So that’s my main recommendation for anybody out there.
Graham: And I have a nice podcast software that actually cuts out Ashkahn’s voice so it’s just me, kinda talking back, which is really nice.
Ashkahn: Really?
Graham: No, I wish, man.
Ashkahn: Me too. It’d be great.
Graham: Make a fortune. So I guess yeah, you know big shout-out to the other float center centric podcasts that’s out there.
Ashkahn: Yeah
Graham: Art of the Float. Which is phenomenal and I listen to every episode that comes out.
Ashkahn: There’s a few other float podcasts out there too.
Graham: Yeah, for sure.
Ashkahn: There’s The Escape Podcast (No longer available).
Graham: Yep, Jeremy Warner. I think he might have taken a break recently or at least yeah for a period of almost a year, I think.
Ashkahn: Oh okay. Well, it was kind of like a library of older episodes.
Graham: Yeah, and they’re great too. They’re really fun to go back and listen to.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: And these other ones, I guess Art of the Float is the only other one that’s really geared towards float center, kind of owners, and then kind of tactical tips and things like that for people.
Yeah, The Escape Podcast. There’s the Tom Wunk, has the Floatcast, which is very like a lot of those are interviews with floaters, so if you’re into kinda hearing the personal story side, if you wanna hear experiences from people who have just hopped in the tank, that’s a great one to go back and listen to.
Ashkahn: We have another podcast. Highly recommended. It’s for the Float Conference. It’s kind of a seasonal thing. But in the kind of months leading up to the Float Conference, we’ll interview each of the upcoming conference speakers and it’s pretty cool actually. It’s me hosting it, so I obviously like it.
Graham: And if you download that software you can actually just hear the guest …
Ashkahn: And cut my side out. It’ll be much better. But it’s a really cool way to prepare for coming to the Float Conference. You get to listen to who the people are, learn their backgrounds, and get some context before you actually, you know, watch their talk, and it just makes their talk, I think, a lot more enjoyable to see.
Graham: Other podcasts I guess that I personally have gotten a lot out of and have listened to, if not right now, then in the past. Mixergy was a big one for me when we were kind starting up our business. And that’s just a kind of, I think it’s five days a week podcast. About an hour per episode. And it’s a interview with a different business founder every single day. There’s a lot of kind of founder interviews podcasts out there. And I specifically like this one because it gets a lot into nitty gritty details. Again, kind of actual useful tactics that you can implement in your business. Andrew Warner, the host, is really good at kinda getting down to those tidbits of actual use that you can take out.
Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s good. He’ll just stop people and like drill further into questions.
Graham: “Wait, what do you mean? What are you talking about?”
Ashkahn: Which is nice.
Graham: Yup, so that’s a great one. Another one on the business realm was Smart Passive Income podcast. I don’t know if you’ve listened to that at all, Ashkahn.
Ashkahn: I don’t think so.
Graham: That’s really good. It’s less relevant to float centers just because it focuses a lot on business models where you can kind of set things up and it just sort of runs in the background, which ideally a float center can do, but that’s not its greatest value, I guess, as starting up as a business is that. So, very interesting though. Some good online tips especially. A lot of online marketing strategy for that one. I also have a couple of philosophy podcasts that I listen to. So The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps and Philosophy Bites are kinda my two… yeah, just staying a little bit in touch with modern philosophy things that I go through about you know, a couple times a week.
Ashkahn: Yeah, you know, to be honest, I listen to a lot more audiobooks than I listen to podcasts. I find like business books specifically to be really enjoyable to listen to as audio books because they’re usually full of so much fluff that like it’s really nice to turn them on and put them on like double speed and kind of have them in the background as you’re walking somewhere, doing dishes or something like that. So to me it’s almost like, I end up listening to those a lot more because they kinda have like these very built-in arcs to them being kind of a concrete book rather than an ongoing thing.
Graham: Yeah, totally and yeah, I think both of us end up doing that a lot too, listening to audiobooks. I mean especially if you own a float center and you’re going in there and you’re cleaning salt and doing things like that. Having an audiobook or a podcast going on in the background is an awesome way to both absorb information and better yourself while you’re kind of making use of your physical body.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: So there are some that are kind of self-contained, little, like 10 to 20 episode, almost like podcast mini-series as well that I’d recommend. How to Start a Start-up is one. Again, great early stage business kind of information. Leading Wisely was another one by one of our heroes, Ricardo Semler.
Ashkahn: Right, right. Yeah.
Graham: He came back just, I think, last year and recorded this mini-series of interviews with a… again, this is like a podcast that’s very in line with our weird, weird, Float On alternative business structure ways of doing things.
Ashkahn: There’s this great book called The Seven Day Weekend. Way back in the day, he wrote this book and it’s probably one of the most like foundational pieces of business philosophy that Graham and I have read. So definitely pick up that book. It’s super awesome. And the dude is super great. Ricardo Semler is like definitely one of our idols.
Graham: Yeah, one of our heroes. Like 100%.
And Seth Godin’s Startup School. Very much in the same kind of line as How to Start a Startup. Seth Godin, if you don’t know him, he’s one of the most prominent and famous marketing writers that’s out there. And he’s kind of sharing his information from decades being in the business world and coaching people and just talking about what it takes to start a business and how to vet it out ahead of time and things like that. So, also again, a great little kind of mini-series but in podcast form that we’ve liked.
There’s more I have on here, but that’s a really good start. And I think that’s a lot things that are useful to people. There are other podcasts out there, of course, worth mentioning that I personally don’t listen to on a like every episode kind of basis. So the Joe Rogan Podcast really highly influential for a lot of float tank centers out there. Duncan Trussell Family Hour.
Ashkahn: Right. Christopher Ryan’s Tangentially Speaking. These are all kind of favorites in the float world.
Graham: Yep. And all things that mention float tanks on various episodes too. So yeah, also directly related to what we do.
Ashkahn: So yeah, and I like industry-oriented, but … or business-oriented but kind of in the general philosophy of float tanks.
Graham: And all hilarious guys who are great storytellers with awesome content, so worth giving a listen and see if any of those actually speak to you.
And for specifics, again, those are kind of the big ones I’d recommend. Then there’s just the act of playing these and the … I guess, building the habits and how we go about listening to them. So, for the most part, I never listen to podcasts from my computer. It’s almost all just straight from my smartphone.
Ashkahn: Yeah, definitely.
Graham: And, you know, from there, there’s usually like a podcasting app if you’re on the Apple phone. You can have Overcast, is great.
Ashkahn: Overcast is … yeah, so if you haven’t figured this out, we’re fans of efficiency of time, so Overcast is a really cool app. You can get your podcasts through there and not only does it have you know, one and a half speed and double speed and triple speed, but there’s also a setting …
Graham: Sextuple speed.
Ashkahn: I don’t think it goes that high. There’s a setting where you can … it’ll actually detect gaps between people’s words and cut them out.
Graham: Which sounds absurd but actually ends up being kind of nice for being able to get through things faster.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and you like really can’t even tell. Like it doesn’t harm your ability to listen to things at all as far as I’ve been able to tell through it. So, if you have something on double speed and you turn listening on, it’ll get up to like two and a half times the normal rate of things, but it’ll be still really easy to listen to. So Overcast is awesome.
Graham: If you’re wondering why our word per minute count on this podcast it’s so high, it’s ’cause we wander around listening to double speed audiobooks and podcasts all the time, with all the silent spaces cut out.
Ashkahn: Yeah, so hopefully someone’s listening to this on double speed and get an extra challenge.
Graham: I’ve tried listening to our podcast on double speed. It’s really intense. Like we get going sometimes and I have to slow …it’s our voices. And I remember saying this and I can’t understand what we’re saying.
Ashkahn: Yeah, we have no gaps between our words.
Graham: So that’s great, and whatever it is, just subscribing to the podcasts on there, usually keeps them automatically downloaded so you can listen to them even when you don’t have Internet or Wi-Fi connection if you’re going on road trips or something like that. And they’ll usually stop downloading if you haven’t listened to ’em in a while. So you just kinda get a little backlogged. So, yeah, for us, it’s you know, I have Overcast and kind of subscribed to my list of podcasts on there as my own preferred way of listening to them. So, there you have it.
Ashkahn: Great.
Graham: And again, you know, just going back to basics, I highly recommend that strategy of just sort of putting today’s episode from the Daily Solutions podcast on repeat. Keep that in one ear and …
Ashkahn: Nonstop.
Graham: You know, although there’s a lot of recommendations here that should pretty much set you, I think.
Ashkahn: All right, well, yeah, we’ll go ahead and end this episode so you can start it over again. If you have any other questions you want to send us, you can hop over to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Thoughts on franchises vs. mom and pop float centers – DSP 135
As franchises become more common in the float industry, it’s natural for people to start wondering what the benefits and drawbacks are to opening one of them as opposed to simply starting your own center.
Graham and Ashkahn delve into the nuanced differences between each approach, which both have very tangible benefits and drawbacks and whether or not it’s a good idea definitely depends on what kind of business a person wants to run.
How to handle floaters getting out early – DSP 134
Sometimes… floaters get out early. That’s just what they do. But how often should that be happening? And how early? Well… it certainly depends on the length of your floats. If it is happening a lot and you run hour long floats, maybe there’s a common issue that people aren’t telling you. This is where those soft skills come in really handy. It doesn’t hurt to ask, but it also might not be anything to worry about.
Graham and Ashkahn share their experiences with this and what they see as regular floater behavior and what might be a little suspicious, along with some tips to suss out exactly what’s going on if you think it’s happening too frequently.
Thinking about safety and security for offering overnight floats – DSP 133
Being open constantly does come with its challenges, even for float centers. What do you do when the rest of the world goes to sleep but you’re still operating? Doesn’t it get dangerous? What sort of precautions do you have to make to protect your business and your employees.
Graham and Ashkahn discuss security for Float On for the twilight hours when things can go wrong as well as some of the general challenges of running a 24 hour business.
Problems with using certain types of soap – DSP 132
When dealing with the carefully constructed micro-environment of a float tank, any tiny addition can really throw off the appearance or chemistry (just ask anyone who’s had to deal with their water turning orange or green!). The types of soaps you use in your float rooms, along with shampoos, conditioners, and lotions can and will enter your tanks, so it’s important to consider what impact they’re going to have.
Graham and Ashkahn walk through troubleshooting water chemistry problems for this question, to help solve a particular issue.
Methods for filling weekday float sessions – DSP 131
This is a challenging issue for any service based industry. The world still operates on a 9-to-5 schedule, often Mondays through Fridays, finding people with the availability to zen out in those hours can be a challenge, but Graham and Ashkahn have been there and have some insights to the experience. They share what they do at Float On to counter this and when to accept the margins where you’re just not getting people in to float.
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