How Do You Find Time for Hobbies? (Rise) – DSP 152

This is the last episode we recorded at Rise and it seemed fitting to close out the recordings with the organizers again, Jake and Kevin. In this episode they talk with Graham and Ashkahn to answer a question from Greg Griffin about how to manage your time after opening a float center to dedicate to hobbies.

While the episode starts a little heavy, the conversation turns and begins discussing the value of work and how rewarding it is to be in this industry.

Thank you to everyone who came and talked to us at Rise and shared your experiences. If we don’t see you at the Float Conference, hopefully we’ll see you next year. As always, float on.

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

Ashkahn: All right, great. Perfect, welcome everyone. Welcome to the daily solutions podcast.

Graham: I’m Graham.

Ashkahn: I’m Ashkahn, and we got a special-

Graham: We have a whole panel of people here.

Ashkahn: – episode. This is going to be a fun one. We got a fun one for you guys. We’re in St. Louis right now. Boom, surprise.

Graham: Got you guys.

Ashkahn: You thought we were in Portland, but we’re in St. Louis.

Graham: Home of the largest chicken ranch in the United States.

Ashkahn: Very smart chicken. They get to wheel tools. It’s kind of frightening.

Graham: I don’t know if you knew that, it’s on the Wikipedia page. If it’s not you should go out there right now if it’s not.

Ashkahn: Why are we in St. Louis, Graham?

Graham: What I just said that just explained. This is very concrete. We’re here for rise float gathering, which is an awesome float event. It’s more like we were just saying, kind of like a family reunion of the float world. Just kicking it here in robes, like they made the big mistake of inviting us out, and we just had taken over.

Ashkahn: Rise is put on by float St. Louis. We got a few of the rise gentleman here with us.

Graham: I’d say a couple of few. I think is three or more, technically.

Ashkahn: We have one less than a few of the float St. Louis gentlemen with us-

Kevin: Thank you.

Ashkahn: – here right now.

Kevin: A couple.

Ashkahn: Mr Jake and Mr Kevin.

Kevin: Embarrassingly I showed up with pants instead of a robe. I’m sorry about that.

Graham: It’s okay. It happens every time. Everybody’s through second conference in.

Ashkahn: Welcome guys. And we have a special guest, on today’s episode.

Jake: He was at the audience last episode.

Ashkahn: He was the audience. He’s moved up in the world, like he’s been promoted-

Kevin: Yesterday.

Ashkahn: He’s been promoted. Yesterday.

Jake: You have the daily, right?

Ashkahn: That’s right.

Graham: We get it confused too sometimes.

Greg: I watched these guys drink for about 20 minutes. I’m like, “I can sneak in right now,” and I just stole the mic, and here I am.

Ashkahn: Here he is.

Greg: I wouldn’t say who I am.

Ashkahn: So introduce yourself. We have a Mr Greg.

Greg: I’m the fun from the last- You guys said my name the last episode. My name is Greg. Hi.

Ashkahn: And you’re on?

Greg: Thanks for having me on your table.

Graham: What’s your center?

Greg: I feel honored. Float Madison. In Wisconsin.

Graham: Alright, and what is your question?

Ashkahn: What’s your question, Greg?

Greg: I have a question. I was going to say it’s non float related but I guess it is. I used to have all sorts of awesome hobbies, and then I started a float center. Floating was an obsession, so it became a hobby and became an obsession and that’s what I love doing, but I stopped skateboarding. I guess that was probably my only hobby outside of floating, and other things.

I guess skateboarding and this. What are your guys’s hobbies right now, and is there anything that you stopped doing to start your float centers that you eventually started doing again, or you wish you were doing, and still, and how do you make time for them?

Kevin: The first thing I stopped doing was going to my nine to five job.

Greg: Smart.

Ashkahn: I don’t know if you count that as a hobby.

Graham: Is it a hobby? You maybe generous there.

Ashkahn: Just my pastime is working a nine to five. I don’t know what I would do in my free time.

Kevin: Let me be clear. Hobbies.

Ashkahn: That’s a good question, and perhaps a depressing answer.

Graham: I spend most of my time trying to get Ashkahn to stop doing projects with me. It just hasn’t worked out so far yet.

Ashkahn: And I just spend most of the time convincing Graham to stay with it. We got something going here.

Graham: Our hobbies have really fallen by the wayside. We met in theater school, making theater and doing theater things.

Ashkahn: That was our lives.

Graham: I can’t remember the last time I did anything theater related.

Ashkahn: And so-

Kevin: This robes.

Ashkahn: This is kind of-

Greg: You dress up in robes for a conference-

Kevin: And a lot of slides.

Greg: This seems pretty much the same.

Graham: Well that’s the point though, like everything, like any hobbies that we have, I’ve had to figure out a way to be wedged into the existing float infrastructure.

Ashkahn: We can’t do hobbies unless we find some sort of clever ruse to integrate floating into it.

Graham: It’s like, “Do we get to put on a hamlet play, or like a Shakespeare play?” Hamlet play. If we make-

Ashkahn: Just play in the Hamlet so you can-

Graham: That’s true.

Ashkahn: Its various versions the play in hamlet.

Graham: Anyway it’s like, we can make hamlet references in our float talks. It’s like the closest we get to being able to put on hamlet. Right?

Ashkahn: But we can do more serious thing. I mean I like to travel. Traveling is really fun, and we just forced it to make business sense for us to go on a three month road trip around the United States and Canada. I’m like, was that what was going to add the most profit to the bottom line of our business? Definitely not.

And never did we think that, that was the case, but it seemed really fun. Like we love traveling, we love visiting places, and we obviously just couldn’t casually take a three month road trip and stop working and stop running our business. We found a way to merge the two together. Going on a float tour.

Greg: Me starting my basements at my float center into a skate park is probably the way that it’s a great idea.

Ashkahn: That’s just like every time you-

Greg: And I’m going to do it.

Ashkahn: – you empty your float tanks to refill them, just do a couple of like Ali’s in there. Skate on down the float tab.

Graham: It’s just really-

Kevin: Water is great for skateboards.

Graham: – I mean it’s like there’s a huge incentive to not crash and burn at that point, right? Because you’re going to be refilling all the float tanks with all the salt water, like you have some elbow rash from-

Kevin: Salt stings.

Graham: Yes, salts stings a lot.

Ashkahn: But it’s true. It’s difficult. I think it’s difficult for any small business. You open a small business-

Graham: This isn’t just.

Ashkahn: It’s all consuming like you’re doing everything you can. I mean, usually what happens is you don’t have a lot of money, but what you do have is every waking hour of your day. That’s what you do in exchange for money, is you spend every waking hour of your day hustling, because you can’t pay people to do the things for you.

Graham: There’s an old joke that goes, the nice thing about being a small business owner, is you get to work whatever 18 hours a day you want to. And that’s like, it’s very true. There’s a certain amount of freedom in that, but mainly, you work a lot, a whole lot.

Ashkahn: And it does get better. I mean, like we again, like I’ll use myself as an example in travel. I really love to travel and that’s hard to do when you run a brick and mortar business, and it was a lot of encouragement for me to get our business to the point that it wouldn’t really was running with managers and I didn’t have to be there on a daily basis, and we have other things that we do like making software and stuff that I can do remotely.

There was a lot of motivation for me to move our business and our work to a place where I could work remotely, so that all of a sudden I could travel again, and now I can travel and just work on my computer. My hobby is what pushed the company in that direction to try to get me all. That’s what we all love that it’s like, so it was like a mutual desire for us to all go that direction.

Greg: I guess those who like to travel, and I opened a float service so I can’t travel. Well attend the float conference, attend the float gathering. I got to come to St. Louis this weekend. I closed my float center for the weekend.

I’ll have staff next year so it can stay open, but hey, I get to hang out in St. Louis for the weekend, which I didn’t think was going to happen when I opened the float center but now there’s different conferences going out. We get to travel to these new spots. It can still happen in some sort of a capacity.

Graham: And that said like, I mean I think some form of incorporating your hobby back into your life is eventually necessary, like during construction and stuff like that when you’re building out and when you’re getting started, there is a point where it really does feel like your float center requires almost every waking hour that you have to give it, and that’s a lot of how people get burnt out on things.

If you’re going for, now it’s the year after you’ve been open, now it’s two years and three years and you still haven’t picked up a skateboard or a guitar. I would encourage you to maybe try to budget that time into your week, and actually try to pick it up for even if it’s just like an hour or two. Like I think of Mark from on Flint in Nashville.

He said after one of his early floats and then kind of what made him want to open up a float in Nashville was, he went and floated and he has a music studio just on permanent, rent down in Nashville, and he was just walking by it. And he found himself walking over there after his float. And for some reason he was just like, “I should go into my music studio, and just spent the entire night, like the next six hours or something, just recording music,” and hadn’t been in there in over a year.

There’s something about floating I think that actually lets you tap into that creative side. And it’s a loss if you don’t take advantage of that. If you’re just too busy running your business, you don’t get to enjoy the things that you used to.

Greg: It’s like you’d need to float at your float center of course, and I’ve definitely had floats, where during the float I go, “Holy shit, I haven’t skateboarded in three months. Tonight after this float I’m going to go skateboard even if it’s for 30 minutes.” When people are floating I’ll sneak out back and I’ll skateboard for a few minutes, and do some flip tricks. It will be awesome.

Ashkahn: It’s true. I’ve had a lot of times like the float tank … Being in the float tank is the main time I think about how much I’m not doing my hobbies. I’ve had a lot of float time, it’s like, “Why don’t I drum anymore? Like what is going. I got to get on that.” That’s true. You just float in that, and that’ll motivate you. What about you guys? Kevin, Jake, what was your life like before float tanks and do you still do any of those things?

Jake: A lot of my hobbies were hanging out with people, and not saying much. It was just working out great. I cannot relate to you guys very much. This feels good.

Ashkahn: All right. No problem over there. Kevin what do you got going on?

Kevin: Some of my biggest-

Jake: Wait, I’m just kidding guys.

Kevin: I’d say you had your turn and you try to. Really go ahead Jake, tell us.

Jake: Well I mean one of my hobby, I like to woodwork.

Ashkahn: That’s pretty cool. That’s now I’m being serious, like that sounds cool.

Graham: He has like a serious face right now.

Jake: Curve thing and make things. The big thing was with tools, right? Being a business owner you start to not have much money anymore to be able to. A lot of hobbies are expensive-

Ashkahn: That’s why people open businesses. To get rid of money.

Jake: But in very similar ways, like what’s one of the roles that I took in the float center is working with my hands mechanically. Fixing a lot of things, always being there to do that sort of hands on which has been really enjoyable.

It’s anonymous in that way, but also traveling. A huge traveler. But that’s something that Kevin and I’ve always worked out because of our partnership is being able to like figure out ways where we can cover for each other to be able to go and travel and do the world scenery type of thing.

Ashkahn: I think I came to visit. We were in float St. Louis on our road trip-

Kevin: That’s right. I missed you guys.

Ashkahn: – and none of you were here. I showed up and literary like all the owners are gone. Like Kevin is in Peru. I’m like, okay.

Jake: I think I was nursing at that time. So I was probably sleeping.

Kevin: It’s kind of like right when we opened, and we’re like, “Hey, we got to get really good at training our employees, because we’re not going to be around.” I think for me, I love … There’s something that’s like really luxury … It’s so simple, but it’s so luxurious about just sitting down and reading a book, like undisturbed. That’s all I’m doing, it’s just me and the book. In a similar way that’s had to shift a little bit. Just the content of what I’m reading now.

Graham: And that’s you and like your staff and the book.

Kevin: The book is actually on the shelf and sometimes I look at it-

Ashkahn: You’re reading your float tank manual.

Kevin: It’s like while I’m washing the towels.

Ashkahn: Red light means.

Kevin: A little tear goes down the side of my cheek and I think about what reading used to be like. What I have done to your point, Greg, is that I just scheduled those reading times, and I’ve had to be a little bit more intentional about it, and also intentional about which types of content that I’m reading because, it’s easy to get into just wanting to consume a lot of literature on a topic around business and around floating, and there’s a lot of other nice fiction books out there, and sometimes-

Graham: Sometimes those contain floating.

Kevin: Sometimes they do. And Jake actually recommended fiction. We actually had this conversation, I’m like, “Jake, why would I read that fiction book right now that has nothing to do with what we’re working on?”

Ashkahn: There’s enough in the real world.

Kevin: “Why are you trying to tease me with those?” It’s easy to get away from those things that just are simple and pleasurable and maybe nonsensical.

Ashkahn: I mean the nice thing is that I really feel like when you go through the process of opening a small business and a float center especially, it totally makes you evaluate how important your time is. Like before being this busy, like I was very loose and lackadaisical with what I was doing with my free time, and now I’m very conscientious of it.

Graham: Buy 10 watermelons and get a Katana and just try to slash, and slice them all in half? Sure. Whatever, I’ve got an afternoon free.

Jake: But now you just incorporated it. It’s probably going to be like an–

Graham: How do we slice the 10 watermelons on stage.

Ashkahn: Well your customers to come in, and-

Kevin: We need those-

Ashkahn: – everyone bring a watermelon.

Greg: 10 bucks, it’s just only members.

Graham: $10 just canned for watermelon, free float for a Katana.

Ashkahn: But it’s true, like I feel like even float on were to collapse and I go back to eating ramen and doing nothing with my days. I feel like I would take that with me. I would take this idea that like time is precious, and I should be thoughtful with what I’m doing. I’m going to take that with me for the rest of my life.

Jake: It’s like the most sacred resource there is.

Ashkahn: It is. like at this far-

Jake: And we forget that so easily.

Ashkahn: Everything else is kind of slightly fictitious. Like money, the society, houses, material goods like-

Jake: All of it.

Ashkahn: All that’s like slightly a human construct and then there’s a time.

Greg: Time is also a construct.

Ashkahn: Well, but it’s like-

Kevin: It’s true.

Ashkahn: – it’s something that we haven’t figured out how to get around.

Kevin: Well, I think when you attach it to a very passionate project, you then begin to really understand that value. Because you’re so engaged with it, and every minute and hour you spend on it is very worthwhile and the minutes and hours that are away from it, you feel like you’ve lost, and so you start really managing, where those minutes and hours are going and really try to put them in the place does that help maximize your experience.

You don’t want to lose any of those because those moments pass by. I think that’s what I really enjoyed about floating. We talked about in the beginning when we gave ourselves titles, we were time gravity deconstructors. That’s actually we put on our business card and it totally freaked-

Jake: Like the old TGD.

Kevin: It totally freaked people out. We’re like, “We’re TGD and over here,” and we were knocked down with it. But it expands your time and it gives you more moments, and that’s been really fun to play around with.

Ashkahn: There’s something cool about, this is going to get a little into the weeds here, but like-

Graham: A little end of the weirds.

Kevin: Though weird it.

Ashkahn: There’s something like when you start running a business, when you start producing things and putting time towards things like this. Like being a conference, it’s like rise gathering that you guys put together. You get to see the real world effect of what you’re putting your time into, like you put time in and they get to have such awesome event, stuff comes out at the other end.

I feel like the school system does a terrible job training you about that. Like you go through school and you spend all your time writing a paper that a person reads, writes a letter on and then you throw it in the garbage. And you’re like, “Okay, cool. That’s done.”

Graham: What was the real world significance of that.

Ashkahn: It really just made you feel like, it really put a lot of like a devalued your time. I felt like when I was going through school, me having everything feel like it had no consequence, and as soon as I opened the business, realizing that everything I did had an actual real world consequence was like enlightening to me. It totally changed my perspective on what, I mean I used to be a huge procrastinator in school. I don’t think I ever finished an essay before-

Graham: I almost said that earlier to you.

Ashkahn: And like, now in the real world I don’t do it, like it just stopped happening because all of a sudden things that are important and matter, and when you do things it’s cool and then you end up helping people in the world.

Jake: Well that’s it peoples time.

Graham: We read our speech last night.

Ashkahn: And partially this morning.

Kevin: That’s what happens when you’re in the zone though, you just flow, you’re in that flow state.

Ashkahn: I think it’s good. It’s a really nice perspective on realizing that, like there is a link between putting your time into something and what you get out of it. It’s cool to keep that in mind and it’s cool to like see what comes out the other end too.

Kevin: Totally cool.

Ashkahn: It’s like the greatest form of motivation.

Graham: It is a good reminder of this, I mean what like almost how do you define what a hobby is, right? A hobby is something that you’re not doing almost for that real world interaction as much or real world gain, and at least for me I mean part of the reason that hobbies fell by the wayside it’s not just because I’m so busy with the business, but because I got totally addicted to seeing that change that you effect by doing real things in the real world.

Like, I mean me playing guitar by myself in my room is awesome and I love it and I get a lot out of it internally. But then, things like working on float tank solutions and releasing things out to the world that are going to save like hundreds of people, thousands of dollars. Somehow you look at the impact of that, and you’re like, “Maybe I should like not play guitar for an hour and work on the things-

Ashkahn: I’m the worlds greatest guitar player. I understand, I get it.

Kevin: This is-

Graham: Give up this float tank hobby.

Kevin: But it’s like this is creative expression. I mean this is putting your energy and attention towards something, and it’s attaching it to a vision and it’s putting it out there to the world in the same way that playing the guitar would be. Right?

Graham: Yes.

Kevin: It’s just, I find it even more enjoyable, and being able to see how it moves people just as you might with a concert. It’s looking around and people are happy and I’m sure it flowed con like, we just watch people get excited and the value that they get. It’s amazing.

Jake: Well we keep talking about creating moments, and the idea of like spending your time to create moments, not only for yourself but like the people around you, that you remember and those stories that are created like–

Ashkahn: I don’t know what that means, but yes, that is definitely the lesson to take away from this. Well this is good.

Jake: This is all about favorite stories.

Ashkahn: This whole conversation started out very depressing and we moved into a very positive space with all this.

Graham: There you go. That’s what our hobbies are like. Thanks for the question Greg.

Greg: You’re welcome. Thank you.

Jake: Thanks Greg.

Graham: And if you have your own ambiguous questions you’d like to send our way or about how we don’t do the things we used to do anymore. You can one, I guess just-

Ashkahn: We put them in a tank castle-

Graham: – keep it to yourself or something.

Ashkahn: – set a date, will come by in about 50 years and when it’s supposed to be open and we’ll reach out in the region and read them, and I guess at that point we’ll probably be rerecording onto like holograms or something.

Kevin: I think Myspace is coming back.

Ashkahn: Then you can follow us on Myspace page at that point. Then you’ll hear our answer.

Graham: That’s good. Yours is much better. I was just telling them to keep it to themselves. That’s a way better answer. Alright, burry that time capsule and we will talk to you tomorrow. Have a good one.

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