Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Ashkahn and Graham have developed a bit of a reputation over the years within the industry as party animals. Anyone who has met them can confirm this to be true. But how often to the throw parties at Float On? What are good occasions for float center parties and how do you throw one?
The guys share their party philosophy and offer some nice tips and tricks for throwing a sensory deprivation shindig.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Ashkahn: Okay. Welcome everybody.
Graham: I am Graham.
Ashkahn: Throw your arms up. The crowd goes wild. I’m pretty sure that’s going on in everybody’s house right now.
Graham: And that’s Ashkahn.
Ashkahn: Oh yeah, this is Ashkahn.
Graham: And, today’s question is, it’s a pretty good question, “How often do you guys throw parties?” Every chance we get.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Some of you’ve been to the Float Conference. You know that we have a love of parties.
Graham: Even this podcast is just like half party right now. Yeah, we have little hats on, there was cake earlier.
Ashkahn: Children’s birthday party I guess is the main style of party we go for.
Graham: Yeah, I mean what else would someone need?
Ashkahn: So I guess I’m gonna go ahead and assume that they’re talking about at our shop.
Graham: Sure.
Ashkahn: Not just in general.
Graham: That’s at least for the beginning of the questions, fair assumption. We’ll see how long it takes to answer that one.
Ashkahn: We throw parties at our shop and-
Graham: It’s great.
Ashkahn: Yeah. It’s really fun and we try to throw them for most things that seem justifiable to throw a party for. We definitely every year do one for our anniversary.
Graham: Yeah, absolutely. It just feels like the right thing to do and also very cathartic.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Okay so, before we get into when we do them, the cool thing about throwing parties is not that you get to show off your tanks finally to everyone or that you get to kind of celebrate in your space and have this mingling of people in your community who fundamentally just come in to be by themselves and the nice dichotomy there. It’s that you get to make a bunch of noise, in a place that you normally have to use indoor voices and it’s awesome.
Ashkahn: That’s true, there is something great about that.
Graham: Nothing like a live, amplified band to play inside your sensory deprivation tank center is just such a rewarding feeling so, I highly recommend it. Yeah, parties are very worthwhile, for that reason, if nothing else.
Ashkahn: Yeah, it is pretty fun. So, you’re gonna have to cancel some floats probably or something of the sort. You usually just have a full amount of free party time in your schedule every week that you can fill in to the party.
Graham: But the good news is, you’re probably also not open 24 hours like we are. So finding a good time to have a party might not be as difficult and easier for you.
Ashkahn: And they’re super fun. Your regular members and stuff like that get to come and enjoy free wine or drinks or whatever and they get to have a good time feeling like they’re getting to know, on a more personal level, the business that they frequent. We often get new people. It’s very rare for us to throw a party without some group of new people that come in and like to spend that time learning about the float tanks. We also throw pretty fun parties. I think people bring their friends too. They’re like, “Oh we should, there’s a party at this float shop,” and they bring people with them to go party because it sounds like a fun party and those are the people are the new people that’ve never experienced floating before. That’s how we get them to come in.
Graham: Yeah and at this point it doesn’t us too much organization or too much money to throw a good event. I think, other than the cost of actually shutting down and canceling floats for the period we throw a party, it’s pretty simple and painless.
Ashkahn: Yeah. We basically move our couches outside, so all of a sudden we have outdoor seating and more space indoors. We have some fold up tables. We bring out some snacks and we have alcohol and some of our staff members become the people kind of serving the alcohol. And you know you’re rules will vary state by state and stuff like that for the legality around all that stuff.
Graham: Yeah and we bring in live music, usually a couple to three different bands. Often we’re paying them a very minimum amount, we’re just trading floats. And it’s great. It works out really well. You can get some really nice organic food of all different kinds for not that much money when it comes down to it. We have leftovers every single time too and it costs maybe a couple hundred dollars in food and snacks. We’re not talking about a huge amount of money here. So other than paying your staff, paying for some snacks, maybe paying for a custom cake. We’ve even bartered for custom cakes. The cost is incredibly low.
Ashkahn: And it’s super fun. You get to have a good time. Your staff gets to have a good time. Your customers get to have a good time. I guess back to when we party, so we definitely do one every year for our anniversary. That’s just super fun and a very easy excuse for throwing a party. And people come and they’re really happy that you’re another year older as a business. It’s great. It’s basically like a birthday party. We’ve done one for John Lilly’s birthday before, which was fun. That was a fun party. We’ve often done one if we go through a huge renovation and we do a lot of upgrades to our business. We’ll often throw a party afterwards a kinda like “Hey, new remodeling party,” or something, as a great chance for both to celebrate and to let our customers know. It’s a really easy way to spread the news that you’ve done cool upgrades to your business. You’re like, “Hey, we’re throwing a party because we’ve done this awesome remodeling.” So it’s a nice way to showcase that and spread the word on upgrades to your business.
Graham: Yeah and just let people know you’re done upgrading now. “Okay, it’s time to get back in the tanks.” We do one just for fun projects that we put out. If you’re doing anything outside the float world, but related to floating. When we, for instance, publish books or have musicians do a bunch of music based on their floats, we kind of do a book launch party of a CD release party. Kinda like, “we did this exciting thing, come celebrate with us and explore with us” kind of celebration. And we do one every year for the Conference. So, if they float conference is in your town, maybe consider having a party for that.
Ashkahn: Which is very fun.
Graham: We do one for my birthday.
Ashkahn: That’s not true.
Graham: I’m sorry, that’s just me. I do one for my birthday. That’s right. That’s right.
Ashkahn: I think that’s pretty much the scope of why we’ve thrown parties in the past.
Graham: Yep. No reason at all. Also a great time to party.
Ashkahn: A good time to party. Yeah, I mean have fun out there.
Graham: Yeah. This isn’t all hauling salt and customer complaints and stuff like that.
Ashkahn: Yeah. For no other reason even if it’s really not necessarily making you a ton of money, it’s just fun. It’s fun to party in your space. It’s fun for all the staff to get together and have a chance to party.
Graham: Really fun to make a lot noise.
Ashkahn: It’s fun to make a lot of noise, yeah. One time we actually got a noise violation.
Graham: Oh my God. I was hoping that we’d tell that story.
Ashkahn: It’s gotta be one of the most hilarious letters you can get in the mail as a float center. They send it to you in the mail a couple days later and we literally got a letter saying, it was from obviously a day we had a party with an amplified band playing deep into the night. Not deep, like 11. Deep for the neighborhood that we’re in. And, we got a thing saying your neighbors had a noise violation and they threatened to spontaneously come by and check on our business to check the noise levels.
Graham: Yeah, sometime in the next couple weeks or month or something like that and we just framed the letter and we’re just like, “Oh my God, I hope they come by.”
Ashkahn: Please, someone come by from the city to check on the noise levels in here.
Graham: Walk in, they’re just like, “Excuse me, what are you?” “Shh, shh, be quiet please.” “Why are you here?”
Ashkahn: So we did get a noise variance permit now, so we’re a little bit more on top of it.
Graham: Which in itself is kind of hilarious to me. So, have fun out there, but not too much fun.
Ashkahn: Party on.
Graham: Or what the heck, have too much fun. And, when you have your own questions that you want to submit, go to floattanksolutions.com
Ashkahn: /party /podcast
Graham: Podcast. Party podcast. Alright. Bye everyone.
Ashkahn: Bye.
Recent Podcast Episodes
How Marketing Strategies Evolve – DSP 230
Graham and Ashkahn wax nostalgic in this episode tracing back the history of Float On to its origins. They were younger, bright eyed and the world felt full of possibility. How they advertised floating was a whole different beast back then, too. Part of it was how different the industry was, part of it was how different awareness in Portland was, and parts of it were just about Float On still being a young business.
The guys share their successes, lessons, and bold faced mistakes they made along the way in learning how to deal with the idea of filling tanks, as well as some of the constants that have remained throughout the years.
Future Proofing Float Tanks – DSP 229
Float Tanks are expensive. Purchasing tanks can easily end up being half of your opening costs when starting out, so it makes sense to want to purchase tanks that have a long lifespan.
Thinking about which float tank manufacturers might last the longest, though, is probably not the way to think about this issue. For one, it’s impossible to tell what manufacturer is going to be around the longest. What’s more, if anything does break, the vast majority of the time you don’t need to go to the manufacturer to get it fixed in the first place.
Ashkahn and Graham share their thoughts on proper float tank care and the steps any float center owner should take when considering a tank.
How to Run Experiments with Floaters – DSP 228
It’s important to acknowledge that float center owners without a scientific background probably shouldn’t be running experiments on floaters willy nilly. It should also be noted that Graham and Ashkahn aren’t scientists, despite being huge fans of self-experimentation.
There has been a lot of talk recently, however, of float centers collaborating with student researchers to help run experiments, though. Graham and Ashkahn discuss (with a fair amount of levity) what it might take to properly run experiments in a float tank, which they understand is no easy task.
What are Good Plants to Have in a Float Center? – DSP 227
Plants give life, both aesthetically and literally, to any room they’re placed in. The environment inside a float center, however, can be the absolute worst place for certain plants, even ones that would normally be considered fine for your local area.
Graham and Ashkahn pull in Jordan to talk about different plants that thrive in a humid float center environment and some tips on how to take care of them.
Getting Salty With Speakers: Roy Vore – DSP 226
With the Float Conference coming up, Graham and Ashkahn are talking with lots of really smart people who will be presenting this year. It’s not every day that they get to ask molecular biologists questions about float tank sanitation, so they decided to take the opportunity to ask the experts the questions that the industry needs answers to.
Today Roy Vore is taking time to share some of his knowledge about microbiology and water sanitation, along with his work in the pool and spa industry.
Latest Blog Posts
Choosing a Water Heater for Your Center
You may not be surprised to hear that a Float Center is a business which has a hefty water requirement. You may, however, be surprised to hear that the majority of the water demand you’ll be facing day-to-day is going to be in the form of showers and (if you’re doing any laundry on-site) a washing machine.
The factors of energy usage and cost over time should also be taken into consideration when deciding upon your water heater…
Float Fund – NSF Magnesium Sulfate Test Results
I’m happy to announce to first results from the Float Fund testing. This experiment, run through the NSF, was to see how salt water, with no other form of disinfection, actually effected harmful organisms. We ran tests with two different microorganisms, and in this post we’ll talk about how one (Pseudomonas) got its ass kicked by salt-water and how the other one (Enterococcus) didn’t seem phased in the slightest.
If you want to skip straight to the test results, you can download them in their entirety. Since they have a lot of fancy laboratory lingo, we’ll spend the rest of this post breaking down the different aspects of the testing.
Float Memberships and Packages
Customers are great, but getting those customers to commit to returning on a regular basis is even better. There are a few different schools of thought in regards to encouraging return customers, but they’ll generally fall into two main categories, Memberships and Packages.
We’re going to provide a little insight into how to utilize each of them at your center.
Marketing is all About Relationships
Marketing is one of those words that has a lot of different meanings from one person to the next. Personally, I’ve studied marketing in one way or another for the past 20 years. I suppose you can say I’m a marketing nerd (I’ll wear that badge proudly). I even annually budget myself a different marketing conference to go to… for fun.
