Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Being strapped for cash isn’t a fun situation to be in. With an operating business, you have options, fortunately.
Graham and Ashkahn brainstorm some ideas for quick cash and some they’ve even used at Float On when a surprise expense has come up. It’s worth noting that to get money in the short term, you’re likely sacrificing something in the long term.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Today’s question is, hilarious, sort of. And desperate. It’s: “I need a huge influx of cash right now, what are some things I can do to raise some quick funds?”
Ashkahn: Oh boy.
Graham: Well, first of all, we’re probably not actually releasing this tomorrow so, hopefully this podcast gets to you in time.
Ashkahn: Yeah, how urgent is this?
Drugs are a very profitable industry to be in.
Graham: I think we have at least three kidneys.
Ashkahn: You could … selling your plasma? I’ve heard that’s a … that’s a quick buck right?
Graham: Faking a fire? And claiming insurance money? Actually, that sounds really long term-
Ashkahn: Solves all your problems. That’s true.
Graham: Probably years-
Ashkahn: There’d be an investigation, and you’d have to do the jail time.
Graham: Years for insurance claim … yeah, you’d be serving time for that, yeah.
Ashkahn: Yeah, that’s hard because …
Graham: Whenever you need something specific and you need it right now, is the hardest time to get it.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: The more ambiguous your goals are, and the more that they can be done in the future, the easier it is to eventually accomplish them. So money right now is one of those things where, you’re gonna probably have to sacrifice something in order to get it. Again, toes, kidney, plasma …
Ashkahn: So there’s a few ways to do this with your float center. And they basically just involve running sales mostly, if you really need money right now.
Graham: Yep.
Ashkahn: So Groupon in one way of getting an influx of cash, although, they hold on to some of your money. But you still get a decent check within, what, a week?
Graham: Yeah, a couple weeks.
Ashkahn: Something like that?
Graham: Yeah, and running your internal sale. If you have a big mailing list, if you have a good Facebook following, just blasting out … and when I say, when I was kind of alluding to sacrificing something earlier, what I actually meant is, even something like running a sale, you’re really sacrificing future sales. In exchange for getting sales right now. Because, presumably, the people who are buying these floats at a discount could potentially be full-price float purchasers. Maybe just not right now. If you’re trying to get that money immediately…
Ashkahn: Yeah, and if you’re not sacrificing that, you’re sacrificing your perceived value and how much people are used to paying for floats. The more sales you do, the more you’re just getting people not used to paying full-price.
Graham: But, sometimes you just need that, and-
Ashkahn: You need the money-
Graham: And that’s fine. We’ve definitely run sales and treated our floats almost as a line of credit.
Ashkahn: Yeah for sure. Almost … most of our Groupon or sales situations, I think, have been originally motivated by some sort of construction cost that we needed to find money for immediately.
Graham: Yeah. Pretty much, if you’ve been following us for a while you we only run two sales during the year. One in December and one in June, and so anything outside of that … if you ever see a discount at Float On in April, it’s probably because we needed to replace a set of floors or something.
Ashkahn: Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong with us.
Graham: Yep.
Ashkahn: And that’s … those are your most immediate options. Other than that, you could go to the bank-
Graham: Yep, having a line of credit with the bank is actually-
Ashkahn: A line of credit is cool. And it’s usually the lowest interest of almost any way of lending money from a bank. It’s good to set that stuff up when you don’t need it, so that it’s there when you do.
Graham: So that it’s there when you do. Yeah.
Ashkahn: But often, if you have a few years of being in business and you have a healthy bank account history, then … from what I can tell, and I don’t know too much about this, getting under a hundred thousand dollars in a line of credit is generally not the craziest thing in the world. And often, just requires the approval of whoever’s working the business desk at the bank. So if you’re going for a low amount like that … and usually even you pay it back in a certain amount of time, I don’t think there’s any interest on it?
Graham: Yeah, for sure.
Ashkahn: So that’s definitely a good thing to have in your back pocket.
Graham: Yeah, there’s also … it depends on when you’re expecting money coming in, and what you need it to pay for. But on the paying-for side, often there’s way more leeway there than you might imagine-
Ashkahn: Right, for … especially for construction stuff.
Graham: Yeah, the ability to push back some of your costs by a month, or a couple months, is … you have way more negotiation leeway there than you might think that you do. Even for things like bills, or talking to the electric company, or things as simple as that. They’re used to dealing with such huge amounts of money, that even though a float center is not a cheap thing to run, it takes a good amount of funds to keep it going … in the scope of this much broader business world, we’re still itty bitty businesses. We are tiny, brick-and-mortar shops. And so, if you need to delay even something like 10,000 dollars up to a couple months out, you might be shocked just calling the company that you owe that money to and having a conversation … might just yield that time extension.
Ashkahn: Or especially if you need this money because you need to do some sort of construction fix. You can usually negotiate … they call them net-terms, like net-30’s or net-60’s, and that’s just the amount of days after something is done that you need to actually pay the bill. So you could have someone do a plumbing project for you and it’d be two months before you actually have to pay them for it.
Graham: Yeah, and so in the past when we’ve had to do emergency repairs on our walls or our floors or something like that, we’ve done a combination of that. Find the contractors that you can do the net-terms with, or the materials providers, push that out as far as you can. Take a little money from a line of credit, run a sale, and kind of all those things combined ends up being more of the solution that we’ve implemented.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Or you … I’ve also heard crippling credit card debt can be a useful thing for people.
Graham: And I do know float centers who have used credit cards to get past very similar experiences. That one of course is just terrifying because the interest rates get so high if you wait a little too long to pay them back.
Ashkahn: So then you just pay it off with another credit card. That’s the key.
Graham: And if you do it right, you can just get non-stop rewards during the process, so … sort of like, you can’t see, but I’m drawing a triangular-shape thing.
If you sell credit cards to other people, and then they start using them, you get a bonus for every charge that they do.
Ashkahn: Yeah, you should really get into some financial business.
Graham: So there are some ideas. What else? Child slavery?
Ashkahn: Yeah, those are the real ones.
Graham: Yeah, for sure. There’s only so much you can do to really generate that money in the short term.
Ashkahn: Maybe asking your friends and family for a loan is the next option?
Graham: Yeah, I just really, I don’t even … I didn’t even want to say that one.
Ashkahn: Uh, yeah …
Graham: Yeah … I was going to make a joke about going to your rich uncle or something, and I was like, “Eh, that’s not even good as a joke.” Because it’s so … then if you can’t pay your uncle back it’s awful …
Ashkahn: It’s just …
Graham: You’re going into-
Ashkahn: You pay him with a credit card, you know?
Graham: Pay off your uncle with a credit card.
Alright, anything else to add over there?
Ashkahn: I think that’s probably it.
Graham: Alright, good luck.
Ashkahn: Yep.
Graham: Good luck out there. Hope you raise some quick funds.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: And if you have any more emergency questions, definitely go to a professional.
Ashkahn: Don’t send them into the podcast.
Graham: If you have more slow-paced questions yeah, go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and shoot them off there.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Tank Topics – All About Research
The holidays are a busy time for float centers and it often means lots of new customers asking questions. This means it can be a really great time to brush up on the facts about floating. Fortunately we’ve formed a folio of fantastic studies for you to fancy. Feliz Navidad!
Tank Topics – Handling Difficult Customers
In every service business, there’s a running joke that someone likes that’s usually somehting along the lines of “this job would be great if it weren’t for all the customers!” (*cue laugh track and uproarious applause*), well, the boys have not shied away from talking about the difficult sides of running a shop like ours. We’ve got episodes about handling negative Yelp reviews, customers too intoxicated to float, and even what to do when it’s time to 86 a problematic client.
The 2019 Float Conference Recap – OSP 09
You can tell this episode was recorded a little while ago, really close to after we all got back from the Conference. The boys are a little tired today, but they still have lots to talk about.
Grashkahmn share their initial reactions to the Conference now that it’s being run by the industry as a non-profit. This is a nice episode especially if you’re looking for some insights on their behind-the-scenes perspective on this big industry event and how it has changed this year.
Tank Topics – Health Departments
Something in the world of floating have you stumped? Show Highlights Hooo doggie! This is a big one! This Tank Topic is filled with useful information about what you should know before talking to health...
The Russian Float Conference – OSP 08
Graham and Ashkahn are back to give their recap on the Float Conference. No, not THAT Float Conference, the Russian Float Conference.
The guys got to go speak at the float event on the other side of the world and are reporting back on what that was like, how their industry is shaping up, and some of the lessons we can learn about their industry over there.
Additionally, Graham and Ashkahn lied to you. The show notes will not have a puppet show in them.
Latest Blog Posts
How to Safely Reopen your Float Center
As our communities begin reopening amidst this pandemic, float centers are straddling a line between wanting to run floats and making sure they’re keeping their customers and staff safe. The collective social fatigue and stress are palpable, and it’s apparent to many...
Float On’s Open Sourced Resources for Launching a Buy One Give One Sale
In the first episode of Improving Your Float Center from Home: the Bathrobe Chronicles, Ashkahn and Graham covered the special deal that they're running at Float On during their closure. Watch the full episode below:For the deal, they're offering 25% off floats, and...
Checklist for Temporarily Closing Your Float Center
These are challenging times for all of us, and many float centers (ourselves included) have decided to temporarily shut down to help stop the spread of coronavirus. Our team got together yesterday to figure out what we need to do to put our shop into hibernation mode,...
Can Epsom Salt Kill Coronavirus?
NOTE: This article was originally published March 13th, 2020, last updated July 14th, 2020. While we want to make sure this advice is current, it is not definitive. We want to recognize the limitations of advice during a pandemic where information is updated by...
