The week’s best yoga news, according to the people at Tula Software
Can’t Bring a Yogi Down
Thanks to the government shutdown ending Wednesday night, the Smithsonian Institute is open again. But there was still some rearranging to be done this week. A new yoga art exhibit that was supposed to be displayed in the museum had to move to a new location for its fundraising gala.
Read MoreGroupon has been known to offer a service at “as little as 10 percent of its market value,” and with the local deals company taking half the value of whatever is being sold, small business owners are struggling to keep their numbers in the green.
Read MoreThe Week’s Best Yoga News, according to the people at Tula Software.
Mental Health
In Mexico City’s prison system, yoga is being offered to young offenders to help them change their ways and cope with their current situation as well as what they will face when they leave. In a country struggling with a seemingly never-ending drug war, yoga is one of the ways Prisoner Director Cynthia Rosas Rodriguez is hoping to put them on a better path.
Read MoreThe other day I wrote a post about how mindbody attempted to hijack a legitimate quora thread asking about their competitors.
In their attempt to hide this list of their competitors, not only did they make themselves look bad, but it showed that they have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is exactly they're competing against.
But this mindset, and how we view 'the competition' is often misunderstood amongst businesses of all kinds. It happens in the software world, the world of yoga studios, and almost every other kind of business.
But most likely, your most important competition is something other than your biggest competitor.
Our main competition is not other software makers.
Our competition is apathy. Our competition is people doing nothing. Our competition is fear of cloud based computing. Our competition is the lizard brain inside people's heads that tells them they're not smart enough to embed a calendar into a website or connect a payment system using API keys even though they clearly are.
There are far more people running independent yoga studios with pen and paper than there are people using all of our competitors combined. And it's understanding this that allows us to succeed and compete with companies that have raised millions of dollars while we've organically grown our business without a single dime of outside funding.
But there is a lesson here for the independent yoga studio too.
Your competition isn't the gym down the street, or the chain yoga studio across town, or the private lessons that an instructor you work with is giving to some of your students.
No. Your competition is the same as ours.
Your competition is people doing nothing. Your competition is the thought in someone's brain that yoga isn't for men. Your competition is the fear beginners have about whether they'll be able to keep up in class. Your competition is the parent who thinks they're being selfish by taking care of themselves.
Your competition is Facebook, the internet, TV, couches, beer, cupcakes and movies.
Understand this, and you'll have defeated something much greater and much stronger than any business that you might ever have to compete with.
Two years ago today, the doors opened for the first class at my wife's new yoga studio. For those of you who follow our blog regularly, you of course know it was her studio that served as the inspiration for our software.
Two years after Tula Yoga Studio opened it's doors, I still struggle to find appropriate words to express how proud I am of my wife, the gratitude I feel that I get to take part in the journey with her, and the surprise at how much I myself have come to enjoy a regular yoga practice.
I cannot imagine our lives without the joy brought to our family by her studio, and I am ever grateful that Maile had the vision, gumption, and wherewithal to to make Tula the success that it is.
Congratulations on two years in business, and here's to many more!