Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
It’s no secret that Graham and Ashkahn are shutting down the podcast (check out the resources for details on how to call in for the finale), but why?
Today, Graham and Ashkahn talk about all their projects that they’ll be dedicating themselves too now that they don’t have a daily podcast to rush to, everything from the mundane to the insane.
Show Resources
An Important Announcement from the Daily Solutions Podcast
If you’d like to sign up to ask a question on our two-hour call-in show, November 29th at 3 pm PST, go to floattanksolutions.com/dsplive.
HelmBot.com for more details on the HelmBot.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: So concludes the Mr. Epsom saga.
Ashkahn: Quite a tale.
Graham: I am Graham.
Ashkahn: I am Ashkahn.
Graham: And together we are Grashkahmn.
Ashkahn: We can answer your questions.
Graham: We are answering another question today, but before we get to it, quick announcement.
Ashkahn: Yeah, you probably heard by now, so we’ll just the highlights.
Graham: Yeah, we’re winding down the podcast, we got our final episode on the 29th.
Ashkahn: It’s from three to five o’clock PM Pacific time. It’s a live call-in show.
Graham: Be there or be square.
Ashkahn: We’ll be videoing it. If you don’t know what we look like, it’s gonna be …
Graham: We’re not just illustrated for starters.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: We’re real people. You could find that out if you-
Ashkahn: You’ve probably been picturing in your head one of those statues of Greek gods.
Graham: And you’d be right.
Ashkahn: Yeah, prepare to be even more impressed.
Graham: All right, today’s question is, “What else do you have going on that’s so important you gotta end the podcast for, huh?!”
Ashkahn: Getting some guff, okay.
Graham: Yeah, and we got a lot of write-ins of congratulations and how much people have been liking it, and also some, not hate mail, but questioning emails. So this is pretty representative, I think more on our side ’cause I thought this was a hilarious question.
Yeah, I don’t know man, probably finally start my-
Ashkahn: We’ve got lives to live.
Graham: Start my dream of actually creating all-terrain animal feet. I really wanna have animal slippers that you can go hiking in.
Ashkahn: Slippers, okay. Not feet? I thought you were talking about genetically modifying animal feet.
Graham: No.
Ashkahn: You’re just talking about slippers.
Graham: Animal feet slippers, yeah.
Ashkahn: Yeah, we’ve talked about this. There’s basically, we think, a very underserved market out there of people who want fun things typically made for children in much more robust adult form. Like really nice animal slippers, or I’ve wanted a really nice bow tie that squirts water out of it. But if you go to get a bow tie that squirts water out of it …
Graham: White tie umbrella hat.
Ashkahn: Yeah, they all look super hokey and cheap and you can clearly see where the squirting is. It’s like, come on.
Graham: Yeah, bring it.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: And we will, we will bring it, so.
Ashkahn: So.
Graham: That’s where we’re gonna be spending most of our time on from here on here on out.
Ashkahn: Yeah, adulttoys.com I think is what we decided …
Graham: I think that one might be taken.
Ashkahn: We’re still trying to figure it out.
Graham: Don’t go there, we’re not gonna put that one in the show notes. Yeah, that would be awesome, that is actually one of my dreams, that was not a joke but that is not what we’re immediately spending time doing.
Ashkahn: No we’ve had this plan for a while of really wanting to make sure that a properly well-established moon colony exists.
Graham: It’s true, it may sound silly.
Ashkahn: It’s time, we can’t keep putting it off.
Graham: It sounds silly to me.
Ashkahn: The moon’s just gonna keep getting further away, we gotta act now.
Graham: One potato chip of weightless per year is what you weigh on the moon. Yeah, so that’s … If you have money, a lot of it and you wanna contribute to-
Ashkahn: Yeah we’re missing that part.
Graham: The development of humanity, then this is your freaking chance.
Ashkahn: But we have a name already.
Graham: You could be a hero.
Ashkahn: It’s, I’mgonnagetmooned.com.
Graham: I don’t know if that’s probably taken. We’re not gonna put that one in the show notes either. Now that I think about it. Yeah, what should we … That’s pretty much it, right? That’s the big ones.
Actually, what we wanted to spend some time doing, we hoped, was a petting zoo. but instead of animals … No, so we … Part of the weird thing about being Float On is that we immediately started five companies instead of just running a float tank center.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: And turns out they all take time and attention and –
Ashkahn: A full amount of time each.
Graham: Yeah. So we work five full jobs each, which is crazy and we switch back and forth and really focus on different projects. And fortunately a lot of the things we’ve been doing are stabilizing and able to run themselves a little bit more. We’ve hired androids to take up our role on this podcast for example.
Ashkahn: Yes.
Graham: I am Ashkahn. And the thing that we’re going to be focusing on, at least for the next couple of years probably, is trying to transition more into spending some time on the Helm, and both improving the software for existing clients in the float industry and branching out into some new other industries outside of just floating.
Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s been seven, six years, something like that. It’s been a lot of years since we started Helm.
Graham: Feels like lifetimes.
Ashkahn: So it’s developed a lot, it’s got a pretty nice foundation and it’s really fun for us to work on. We love working on it, and so when we were talking about the work we really enjoy, we kept coming back to the Helm, because I think we’ve been really satisfied with programming and how magical it feels to do something once that then prevents you from having to do the same thing a million times. Making buttons for things.
Graham: And it’s cool. Yeah as we do it, it’s saving everyone in the float industry time. We can add these features that not only benefit us in Float On, but immediately upon implementation, are available to every single center out there. And hopefully can help people save a little more of their time and actually fill up more of their tanks. So in terms of important work and satisfaction per hour spent, it’s also, the Helm feels very productive in that sense for being useful.
Ashkahn: And it’s not just… When we first started, it was like, “Yeah, this is fun. Get a couple of float centers.” And now there’s a bunch of float centers using it, and so it feels really powerful to be able to work on it and improve it and really impact that many people. And hopefully, have other people like massage and stuff like that save people from some of the other generic spa software that they’re using out there.
Graham: Yeah, so things like eventually developing software for escape rooms and all kinds of different silly things like that too, yeah. But yeah, that’s probably gonna be the future for us, is a lot of Helm work and of course, we’ll still be around, we might even pop back on, do Occasional Solutions Podcasts.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Is a rough idea. But yeah, we might do some special broadcasts every few months and hop on and see if there are new questions coming in, answer them or just chat about important developments in the industry too. So don’t think we’ll be totally gone.
Ashkahn: Yeah we’re still here.
Graham: Yeah you’re stuck with us.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Like it or not.
Ashkahn: We’re just gonna be having these conversations at each other without microphones. But we’ll still get together every day and answer a question that I come up with from now on.
Graham: Or if you have other ideas for not just float related questions you’d like to hear us answer, let us know. We’re open to more general solutions. All right, I think that’s pretty much it-
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: For this episode.
Ashkahn: And yeah, if you’re on the Helm, get pumped. We’re gonna be taking it to the next level-
Graham: Yeah, you’re about to see some-
Ashkahn: In the next year or two.
Graham: Yeah, pretty cool improvements coming your way.
Ashkahn: Yeah we’re shipping every single float center a real Helm robot to do tasks for them.
Graham: Don’t hold us to that, that might be …
Ashkahn: Helmbot is going to be alive.
Graham: All right. Don’t forget to tune in, coming up right around the corner, November 29th.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Live two-hour call-in extravaganza, three to five PM, Pacific time.
Ashkahn: Yeah, buy a couple of extra phones just in preparation.
Graham: All right, we’ll see everyone there.
Ashkahn: Right.
Graham: Everyone. Bye.
Recent Podcast Episodes
How to Deal with Employee Conflict – DSP 324
Graham and Ashkahn address the unenviable task of dealing with disagreements between staff members as a small business. This is an area that Float On has needed a lot of help with in the past. The best practices of Human Resources aren’t very intuitive in interpersonal relationships, so hiring a professional is almost always a good idea.
Float Tanks in the Military – DSP 323
The military is famously tight lipped about the research it does in general. No less so than when researching seemingly benign practices like float tanks.
Graham and Ashkahn give their scoop on what they know about the military’s use of float tanks in their research and training programs.
Best Cleaning Practices without Burning Out Employees – DSP 322
Every float center has to compromise somewhere on how much cleaning to do between transitions. Where do you draw the line and how do you make sure that you’re keeping your employees happy without sacrificing sanitation?
Graham and Ashkahn remind everyone that “perfect” sanitation doesn’t exist and that making solutions collaborative in a work environment can do wonders for morale and problem solving in situations like this one.
Good Website Copy for Float Centers – DSP 321
Most websites you visit are filled with words. And that may seem simple, but if you build a website, you’re going to have to be the one to come up with those words. How do you decide what to put up there and how much is too much? What should you focus on?
Graham and Ashkahn tackle the elusive web copy problem for float centers and provide some helpful tips for anyone who’s feeling a little overwhelmed at the concept.
Being the First Float Center – DSP 320
What’s it like to be the first float center to open in an area? How do you handle it?
Graham and Ashkahn explain what it was like opening Float On, being one of the first dedicated float centers in the United States. The exciting thing is that creating awareness is really fun, but it can be a little stressful since your float center will represent floating as a practice for people.
Many of the tips here are the same for anyone opening a center: focus on awareness, be prepared to educate, and make sure your floats are the best they can be.
Latest Blog Posts
Timeline for Opening Up a Float Center
Opening up a float center is a lot like climbing a mountain. Even if you can see the peak, it’s a lot further away than you think, and when you finally get there, the journey and the destination usually end up being different than previously assumed.
In this post we’ll lay out a general process and timeline of what you may encounter on your path, from initial idea to actually operating a center.
Can you have volunteers at your center?
So you’re thinking about using volunteers in your float center?
Before we clarify what a “volunteer” actually means, we’ll first explore why a float center might be considering them in the first place. While it can be a way to provide floats to people who are otherwise unable to pay, the impulse to bring in volunteers can also stem from a desire to get some sort of free labor (later in this post we’ll dive into why you can’t actually do this, but it’s important to recognize that the instinct is understandable, especially when you have someone lined up and willing to work for free).
In addition to a desired boost in overall productivity, it’s also a way to invite more people into your center to experience what you do. Some customers actually want to help out and see what happens behind the scenes at a center.
Floating and Athletics, a Strong Relationship
One of the beautiful things about the float tank is that it serves to rejuvenate the whole person. — the body, mind, heart.
Broadly speaking, it’s a tool for homeostasis, an ideal environment that supports balance, health, and growth. This piece will look specifically at floating and athletics. For anyone who defines themselves as an athlete, or as a general pursuant of athletic endeavors, the float tank can be a powerful asset.
In this post, I’ll discuss individual athletes who float and how to look at this from a marketing perspective. I’ll also discuss past and present research, and share some thoughts on how the relationship between the athletic and floating communities might continue to unfold.
A Skeptic’s Guide to Floating
I think it’s time we addressed the giant metaphorical elephant in the salty metaphorical room — there are lots of exaggerated and untrue claims about the benefits of floating being spread around the industry.
Some are anecdotal, some are only half true, and some are just patently false. Floating has historically had a strong oral tradition tied to it — the practice has survived through word-of-mouth, one passionate floater teaching another everything they know. The unfortunate thing about this is that the information disseminated can’t be reliably tested or shared with others on a broader scale. You can’t use “my buddy Chris” as a source for a health benefit of float tanks in a newspaper article, much less for a research paper.
Now that we’re becoming a bit more mainstream, we thought it would be nice to add some clarity to what we should and shouldn’t be telling people about these difficult-to-understand, saliferous containers.
