Our focus on yoga

I’ve written before about why we’re focusing so strictly on introducting our software to yoga studios, but the question comes up so often as to why we’re not actively marketing to dance studios, martial arts studios, and others that I wanted to take a moment to expand on some of the things I’ve mentioned in the past. It’s easy to think that a product is all about it’s features, it’s functionality, and what it allows users to do. But products that people love go far beyond any particular piece of functionality. They tell a story. They empathize with their users. They know what you’re struggling with because it’s makers have been there too.

Great products have personalities, they have opinions, and they guide users to do things with their business that they might not otherwise have thought of.

These personalities of a product though, they develop over time, not overnight. And we’re making sure that the personality of our product is one that meshes perfectly with that of independent yoga studios.

Facebook has a very different personality now than it had when it was only available to college students. Twitter will have a different personality in 3 years than it does now because they need to start turning a profit. And our software would have a different personality if we were trying to please everyone.

While yoga studios may share some of the same requirements out of their software that others do, I believe they all have different personalities. Their customers are different, and while maybe nuanced, the differences between these businesses are very real. What works for one may not necessarily work for another.

Over time, Tula will be seen as the best software in the world for yoga studios becuase we recognize and embrace this reality. And I hope, in the process, we’ll be able to help you make your studio business a little better than it might otherwise have been.

Of course, it will have nothing to do with our features, and everything to do with the soul and the spirit of our product.

"For your own protection"

Maile and I heard someone mention the other day that MINDBODYrequires new studios to sign a one year contract. This didn’t sound right to me so Maile got in touch with a sales person that she had communicated with over there in the past. Sure enough, they require every new studio to sign a one year contract. Here’s exactly what they wrote:

We do ask for you to commit to a year. The contract is more to protect you. It includes what we guarantee in our services and also will keep the price at the price you sign up for.

I love the whole It’s really to protect you! bit. This of course is nonsense.

This protects MINDBODY and their investors. They could provide new studio owners the same exact protections without requiring them to sign a one year contract – but they don’t.

Nothing displays a companies confidence in their own products more than their contract terms.

We don’t require anyone to sign a contract, and we believe that we’ll retain our customers because we’ve provided a clean, powerful, easy to use system for independent yoga studios to run their businesses.

We wan’t people to keep using us because they love our software, not because they’re contractually obligated to do so.

Apparently MINDBODY isn’t as confident in their product as we are.