Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
In the very first episode of the Daily Solutions Podcast, Graham and Ashkahn introduce themselves, lay out the concept of the project, and share how to submit your float-related questions.
Float Tank Solutions will be releasing a podcast episode every day, with each episode focusing on a question or topic related to starting, running, or growing a float center. They’re created to be easily digestible — short and to the point, and always published along with a full written transcript.
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Get to know some of our companies
Float On – our float tank center.
Float Tank Solutions – resources for starting, running, and growing your float center
Float Conference – the largest gathering of float enthusiasts.
HelmBot – software to run your wellness business.
Coincidence Control Publishing – floatation publications.
Show Resources
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: You’re listening to the Daily Solutions podcast. This is our very first episode.
Ashkahn: Yeah, welcome, welcome. Glad to have you here starting this journey with us.
Graham: Yeah and I guess before we get started in the actual podcast, we just kind of wanted to introduce ourselves a little bit for those of you out there who may not be as familiar with us as we are.
Ashkahn: Yeah, so we are two of the owners of Float On. We have a float tank center.
Graham: Woo, we have a float tank center.
Ashkahn: We did it. We did it. So yeah, Portland, Oregon is where we reside. That’s where our float tank center is, and we opened our doors back in 2010.
Graham: Yeah, and back then we just had four tanks when first opened up.
Around 2012 we expanded to six tanks, which is what we have now.
Ashkahn: Yes, so it’s been a very exciting journey for us. 2010 was a very different place in the world of floating, and we’ve gotten to see everything kind of expand and grow and explode and all the amazing things that’s happened over the last six to seven years. It’s been really a pleasure to kind of be along on this wild ride.
Graham: Yeah and somewhere along the way as well, we started branching out beyond just running our own float tank center and kind of doing some other projects. One of the first of those was Float Tank Solutions, which this podcast is a part of. Float Tank Solutions is our consulting side of things. So once we opened up a float tank center, all of a sudden, which is unexpected, we started getting crazy amounts of emails and phone calls from people who were thinking about opening up their own float tank center and had just a bunch of questions for someone who’d kind of been through the early process so far.
Float Tank Solutions was born out of wanting to actually provide some benefit back to the float world and teach people some of the things that we’ve learned during our time running Float On. We have a lot of free resources on there. They’re definitely worth checking out, from comparison charts for the different float tanks that are on the market to whole intro guides on the basic concept of floating that you can give to your landlord or investors, or anything like that. And a really extensive blog that you can go through. It has at this point hundreds of posts. I think I counted the pages, it’s something like 700 pages at the time of recording, is in our blog.
So kind of a wealth of free info out there that you should definitely avail yourself of. We also have some paid products as well and have been helping centers open since we started Float Tank Solutions in 2012. Things like business plan template and construction plan. We do a three-day training out in Portland every month that usually has about five or six perspective float center owners that come out and learn from us what goes into a center. So a bunch of things very much centered on helping other float tank centers get open.
Ashkahn: Yeah.We’ve done a handful of other projects in the years since we’ve been open, as well. We put on the Float Conference that happens every year, which is definitely a ton of fun. We also make The Float Helm software to run your center in terms of scheduling point of sale and a lot of other kind of backend center operations.
Graham: I guess the last thing that we do is some book publishing as well. We’ve put out both some books inspired by floating and art work, and a cook book inspired by floating and also some old John Lilly books. That’s Coincidence Control Publishing, is what that one is called.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and I guess in addition to that we just do whatever sounds fun for us sometimes too. We recently went on a giant float tour where we took an RV around the United States and Canada and visited 172 float centers over the course of three months while driving around. Mostly just because it sounded like a preposterous amount of fun, and it was. It was a huge amount of fun.
Graham: The premise of this podcast is really just to continue that trend of helping out the industry and sharing what information we can. Specifically in this case, we really wanted to hear from other people who are out there either running a float tank center or thinking about getting their toes a little bit salty in the waters. So taking answers from people and actually just answering those questions in a short conversational format.
Ashkahn: We have our three-day training apprenticeship program where we get to say a lot of information in structured ways. We have our blog post, which take a lot of work to put into a form that feels like a comprehensive post on a subject. At the end of the day, when we grab beers over the float centers and we’re talking to people at the conference, or just casually hanging out with float people we end up having these really nice valuable casual conversations about all sorts of weird little topics that don’t always come up when you’re going over the grander things you need to be thinking about.
This podcast really seemed like a nice way of getting some of that information out, these bite sized attempts at talking about some of the smaller and more detail-oriented sections of open and running a float center.
Graham: I guess so much of the knowledge base out there for float tanks is so wishy-washy. We’re still in the early stages of this industry, even though it’s really popping and growing at this fast rate. So we try to make our blog as comprehensive and thorough on different topics as we can, but so many of the topics out there, you just can’t even do that. There’s almost not enough information, and so the idea of having something that’s just a little more conversational, where we can really quickly go over how we don’t really know what’s going on, and what you can look into a little bit more, and where things might head just sounded appealing to us.
Ashkahn: I have a suspicion that you’re going to hear us say we don’t really know, probably a number of times, in many episodes to come.
Graham: So thanks for tuning in to listen. That’s the basic premise of the show. We’re planning on releasing one of these every single day, so get ready for a load of Graham and Ash content.
Ashkahn: And please send us your questions. This show will all be focused on answering questions that people have so let us know what you want us to talk about.
Graham: Yeah, and you can do that online at floattanksolutions.com/podcast. Feel free to also just shoot us an email. Our contact information is up on our website as well.
Ashkahn: Yeah, I mean if you want to send us Morse code messages we can accept those, and carrier pigeons.
Graham: I’ve heard that if you put stamps on a watermelon and actually send it through the mail, it will arrive at its destination. So if you want to send us a watermelon-based question, you’re free to do that as well.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and mail it, made with the seeds inside. I mean that sounds great. Yeah, anyway you send it to us, we’ll try to answer it.
Graham: All right, and other than that, thanks for listening. We’ll be talking to you again tomorrow.
Recent Podcast Episodes
How to Deal with Humidity in Float Rooms – DSP 185
Humidity can be a subtle, difficult, and persistent challenge for a lot of float centers. Aside from just the massive amount of humidity that a float tank can create, showers also generate a lot of humidity. This can be a challenge for your construction, your soundproofing, and your floater’s comfort.
Fortunately, everyone has to deal with this issue, so there’s a lot of tips out there. Unfortunately, there isn’t an exact science on the best humidity for float rooms as of yet. Graham and Ashkahn unmuddle this quandary a bit before muddling it back up again.
What to do if your Float Center Loses Power – DSP 184
What do you do with your float center if an emergency happens? What if your center loses power for several days and there’s nothing you can do about it? Float tanks rely on having a well regulated system to stay functional and we know that if it gets out of whack, everything can get pretty messy. So if you know this is happening, how do you prevent the worst of it?
Graham and Ashkahn work through this problem and come up with some solutions to prevent things like salt crystallization and upsetting your tank chemistry too much.
How to Handle Business Partner Disputes – DSP 183
It’s often said that having business partners is a lot like having a marriage, and just like a successful marriage, having a successful relationship with your business partner (or partners, we’re not here to judge) requires effective communication, patience, and compromise.
Float On has 5 owners, and they haven’t always agreed on the best course of action. So naturally disagreements happen, but how you handle them is the worthier part. Graham and Ashkahn share their experiences and what’s helped make Float On a success 7 years and counting.
Float Center Name Suggestions – DSP 182
There’s enough float centers out there now to have some established naming conventions for centers. It can feel like all the good names are already taken. Fortunately, Graham and Ashkahn have taken the time come up with a list of a few floaty sounding names that are so far not taken but totally awesome.
What Benefits of Floating have been Proven Scientifically? – DSP 181
Most float centers have to deal with the difficult problem of describing the benefits of floating to those who haven’t tried it yet or are just starting their float journeys. What is safe and accurate to say? Obviously, you don’t want to be advertising false claims if you can help it, but it can be difficult to find accurate information that tells a full story about floating.
Graham and Ashkahn dive into the resources available and clear up some of the confusion surrounding our salty practice. Check out the show notes for a list of great resources!
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