The best in the world

One of my favorite business people is Seth Godin. He writes daily on his blog, has published loads of books, and gives great talks. His advice about marketing, business, and a host of other things is extraordinarily valuable. In one of his books, The Dip, he writes about how every business that succeeds goes through the difficult times, and that knowing when to stick with it and when to quit is the key to success. But beyond this, he talks about being the best in the world. He wrote this on one of his blogs a few years back:

If you’re doing your best, only your AYSO soccer coach cares. If you’re the best in the world, the market cares. The secret, if you have limited resources (don’t we all) is to make ‘world’ small enough that you can actually accomplish that.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because as I’ve been talking with people about Tula, whenever I tell someone that we’re making software for yoga studios, they almost instantly tell me how we could probably expand into other types of fitness studios. Places such as martial arts studios, pilates studios, gyms, etc.

But here’s the thing, and I’m being completely serious when I say this: we are striving to be the absolute best software in the world for independent yoga studios.

The best in the world.

Yes, in the entire world.

And in order to be the best in the world, we need to make sure we’re keeping our ‘world’ small. And our world is, you guessed it, independent yoga studios.

I have absolutely no interest in making the third or fourth best software that can also be used to schedule hair appointments.

I could never have predicted that today I’d be making software for yoga studios. But I love it. I love how this product was born, I love our customers, and I love that there are people just like my wife running their businesses with our software.

The typical belief is that in order to grow, you need to expand and widen or wither and die. But there’s a second option no one ever talks about. You can go deeper. You can more intimately understand the needs of a particular business so well that no one else can possibly compete with you.

Diluting our attention away from yoga means that we’d be serving our core customers less effectively. It’s true that other types of places find our software useful, but that’s a happy accident.

Our focus on yoga isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength.

If you own a yoga studio, you should check us out – we just might be the best software in the world for you.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room

I often laugh when watching presidential contenders refer to the sitting president as ‘my opponent’. Um, yes, we know who your ‘opponent’ is – THE PRESIDENT for crying out loud. It’s in this spirit that I’d like to talk openly about another software maker – and a company you’ve almost certainly heard of – Mindbodyonline. If you’re shopping around for yoga studio software, you’d have to be hiding under a rock not to know who they are.

Now, it’s normally considered taboo to talk about a competitor, but let’s face it, they’re huge, and we have to answer the question ‘why should we use your product over theirs?’.

So let’s do it. Let’s talk openly about the elephant in the room.

The question I often get from people when I talk about our product is something like: “…oh man, do you just totally hate mindbody?” The answer to this is No, not at all. In fact, as someone who owns a small software company in Chicago, I have enormous respect for them. I know first hand that building a product, marketing it, and getting people to use your software is not easy.

On top of this, they often get ‘best places to work awards’ so it’s not like they’re some big bad evil nasty factory. Oh, and to top it off, their CEO used to be an Officer on a nuclear submarine. WTF man!?!

Actually, I do kind of wish it was easier to hate on them. ;)

But here’s the thing, and this is central to my belief as an entrepreneur. We don’t live in a world where in order for one company to succeed, another has to fail. This is true for yoga studios, and it’s true for software companies.

Your small yoga studio doesn’t have to try and take down Bally’s or some other huge gym in order for you to thrive. There’s enough room in the market for both of you to succeed.

You’re different. Your customers are different. And for some people, your small studio is better than a corporate studio or a gym membership.

And it’s in this same way that our software is different from MindBody.

The type of software you use is directly dependent on who it’s makers are trying to please. And if you’re using the same software that’s used byCorePower, and martial arts studios, and spas and Health Clubs, and is also a point of sale system and also does accounting………you are going to feel it.

Our software was made originally for one person. My wife Maile and her yoga studio. And there is a very good chance that your studio is a lot more like my wife’s yoga studio than it is a large health club.

And if that’s the case, there’s a great chance our software is going to be better for you, your studio, and your customers.

MindBody was originally bootstrapped just like us, but has since raised over $20 million in Venture Capital funding.

And because of this they have a lot of people to please. Their software has to please investors, spas, health clubs, gyms, and places that process hundreds of visitors a day. They have to grow, expand, and go international. Every single one of these realities influences their software, and the decisions they make. This doesn’t make them bad – it’s just the reality of the situation.

You know who we have to please? Maile, her instructors, and her students. This reality is baked into every decision we make. And as a result we’re able to please a lot of independent yoga studios that are a lot like Maile’s studio.

It doesn’t make either of us better or worse than the other. It just means we’re different.

Instead of having a two week merchant account application process, we integrated with Stripe so people can take credit cards with our system instantly. Instead of building out a full point of sale system, we say, you know what – you should probably just use Square Register. They’re awesome.

The only thing that’s ever bothered me is that a lot of people thought they didn’t have a choice. They thought they had to use MindBody or nothing. That may have been true at one point, but it’s no longer the case.

Yoga is only getting more popular. New studios are opening up every day. And for many of them, we’re the best option out there.

To our customers that have chosen us, we’re grateful for your early support. And to those who have been looking for a better alternative, don’t worry, you don’t have to start hating MindBody to love us.

There’s room enough here for everyone.

Connected but alone

I came across this TED talk via Dan Martell, one of the people I follow on Twitter, and just loved it. There are so many great quotes I couldn’t pick just one to share here. The central them: Technology isn’t just changing what we do and how we act. It’s changing who we are. As a species.

It made me realize one of the things I love about Yoga is that, outside of sleeping, it’s probably the only time I spend 90 uninterrupted minutes completely and totally unplugged.

And the time spent before and after class hanging out with people who have become friends is just as valuable as the yoga itself.

This video is a reminder that what is scarce is valuable, and in an ever more connected world where technology and interruption is all around us, yoga studios are one of the few refuges where we can find solace.

There is extreme value in that. If you can find 20 minutes to watch this video, I highly recommend it.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7Xr3AsBEK4&w=560&h=315]

Introducing Payment Center

Last night we released a major new feature to Tula. It’s called Payment Center, and I’d like to tell you a little about it, what it does, the philosophy behind the decisions we made, and why we think you’re going to love it. What is Payment Center?

At it’s core, payment center allows you to store your student’s credit card information, set up recurring memberships with automated billing, and also perform one time charges for individual class purchases.

Beyond this, you can now save purchases by transaction type, see payment history by student, view revenue reports across your entire system, and send automated receipts.

Payment Center is also the foundation upon which we will be building other key features as it relates to enabling our customers to collect money online.

How it works

To make this happen, we have deeply integrated with one of the most innovative payment providers around, called Stripe. Stripe has no setup fees, no monthly fees, and clear per transaction pricing (2.9% + $0.30). Even better, they have a sign up process that can be completed in 3 minutes.

With the launch of Payment Center, our customers can literally be set up to take credit cards in less than 5 minutes.

The philosophy behind Payment Center

Nothing defines our philosophy more than the decisions we made around Payment Center. We are aiming to be nothing other than the absolute best software in the world for independent yoga studios.

We are not, however, aiming to be the best credit card processing software in the world. And so we deeply integrated with people who are.

We have built a state of the art payment system that gives our customers the ability start taking credit cards in minutes, is PCI level 1 compliant, and puts student credit card information in the hands of our customers.

Once you have connected your Stripe account with your Tula account, everything is managed from within Tula. Stripe is used to store credit cards, (we store tokens related to those credit cards, allowing us to maintain PCI compliance), charge those credit cards, and deposit money into your bank account. Everything else, such as setting up recurring membership plans, charging your students, giving refunds, and sending receipts, is all handled through Tula.

What’s Next?

Now that we have a solid payment foundation, you can expect to see more features along this line. Without spilling all the beans, let’s just say that we definitely plan on enabling our customers to easily accept payments via their own websites. Wait, that’s probably all the beans, isn’t it?

We’re thrilled to launch Payment Center, and we’re excited about the things we’ll be able to build upon it’s foundation. We hope you like it as much as we do.

Video Tutorials

To help guide people as they set up their accounts, we put together a few video tutorials which we’ve embedded in the application itself. Check them out below.

What is an API

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FSNvhE8EMY&w=560&h=315]

How to connect your Stripe account using your API keys

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3lUT0FQLsY&w=560&h=315]