Tula Software has Acquired The Minneapolis Yoga Conference

I’m excited to announce today that Tula Software has acquired the Minneapolis Yoga Conference! We’ll be producing and promoting the 2017 Conference, which will take place at the Hyatt in downtown Minneapolis on March 3, 4, and 5, 2017. With this acquisition we’ll have an opportunity to connect more closely and more deeply with our customers than ever before, while also being able to expand the offering to the Minneapolis yoga community. 

For those unfamiliar, Tula Software has been a big sponsor of the Minneapolis Yoga Conference for the past two years, and we’ve made many new friends in the Minnesota Yoga community as a result. Our intention is to make the Minneapolis Yoga Conference the premier yoga conference in the nation, while also continuing to sponsor and support the numerous independent conferences we already attend, and new ones we plan to support in the future. 

Our aim is to honor and highlight the conference’s roots, where the depths of yoga are embraced and celebrated, and where it sits at the fore-front of the Yoga Therapy movement, while also bringing a new and exciting energy to the conference that only Tula Software could bring. 

Each year, students, instructors and studio owners from around the world will have an opportunity to connect, support and learn from each other. We will welcome, honor and respect everyone for where they are on their yogic path, and express gratitude for each person and what they bring to the larger yoga community. 

Over the past couple of years, one of the primary ways we’ve spread the word about Tula Software has been by sponsoring and attending various yoga conferences. And while the raw business results of these efforts are somewhat difficult to measure, I have felt firsthand how valuable and important these conferences are to me personally. I took it as a given that over time, they’d be an important part of our growth, even if it wasn’t something I could measure directly.

After so many positive conference and festival experiences, we had started to think about what a conference produced by Tula Software might look like, primarily so we could have a context whereby we could meet and interact with our customers over a long weekend, and importantly, where they could all meet each other. 

As it turned out, the universe aligned a few things and an opportunity to acquire the Minneapolis Yoga Conference presented itself, and we jumped at it. 

We’ll now be able to both expand the conference for the people of the Minnesota yoga community with whom we’ve become friends, while also have a place where we can invite our customers so we can meet them in person, get to know them and their businesses more deeply, and encourage and support everyone who is helping to spread the wonderfulness that is yoga.

In the weeks ahead we’ll be launching the new website, sharing the schedule, introducing some presenters and give everyone a glimpse of what we’ll be putting together. To the handful of people we’ve already spoken to about this announcement, we can’t thank you enough for your words of encouragement and support.

Thank you

Updated Pricing for Tula Software

Coming off the massive launch of the retention center, I'm super excited to announce today some pricing updates we've made to Tula software and the plan options we've made available. We think each of these tiers now provides more value than ever before, while still giving our customers the same pricing options.

Our pricing plans are staying as they are with three tiers of $79/mo, $99/mo and $139/mo. What's changing however are some of the limits on the plans and the features available with the pans.

The new pricing!

On the $79 Yoga plan, you can now have unlimited studio workers along with your unlimited students! No need to worry about the number of people you have on different roles. I was never in love with charging people more for more instructors, so we're really happy with this change.

The find-a-sub feature has now been moved off of the $79 plan, and put on the $99 plan, along with the electronic waivers and the retention center. Moving this feature onto the mid-tier plan makes the most sense from a feature standpoint, and also allowed us to make the $79 plan become unlimited.

And the $139 plan remains the same, with the custom iPhone application.

Lastly, there's one other big update we decided to make to help celebrate the launch of the retention center! Before the nominal usage based pricing kicks in, we're going to include 5,000 retention center emails on the $99 plan, and 15,000 retention center emails on the $139 plan!

We think this is a great way to thank early adopters of the product, encourage people to upgrade, and also gives our power users another great reason to move up to the top tier plan. 

Here's a handy little graph to outline our pricing tiers. And of course, our existing customers are all grandfathered into their current plans if they don't want anything to change.

$139/month Mudra PLan

• Everything on the Mala Plan +
• Custom iPhone App
• Custom Apple Watch Extension
• 15,000 retention center emails

$79/month Yoga Plan

• Unlimited Students
• Unlimited Instructors
• Unlimited Calendars
• Unlimited Payment Forms
• Registrations
• Member Management
• Gift Certificates
• Etc, etc, etc,

$99/month Mala Plan

• Everything on the Yoga Plan +
• Find-a-sub
• Electronic Waivers
• Retention Center
• 5,000 Retention Center Emails Included

We feel very happy that we're able to offer this pricing, and we think it helps solidify our position as the company offering the most value per customer dollar spent in the entire industry. 

If you're still waiting to check out the retention center, there's no better time than right now, and if you have questions please get in touch!

Introducing Retention Center

I’m thrilled to announce today the release of our newest feature: Retention Center. With the Retention Center activated, you can effortlessly email groups of your students, invoking this new capability from any page where we display student information.

The Retention Center has quite literally been woven into just about every aspect of our product, and will empower studios to communicate with their students in a more targeted, personal and relevant way than ever before.

The easiest way to communicate with your students

Like everything we do with Tula, we obsessed about how to keep this new feature easy to use while also maximizing the power and capabilities given to our customers. We didn’t just want to make it easy for people to send emails. We wanted to empower studio owners to easily communicate with their students in a personal, targeted, and relevant way.

Student Filter as home base for the Retention Center

The first thing you’ll notice is that our student filter page has become the sort of ‘home base’ for the retention center. We’ve made our filters easier to use than ever before and we’ve also added some new filter options so that you can target people more precisely and communicate in a way that’s most relevant to them. 

For example, you might want to email everyone who hasn’t been to your studio in 90 days, and offer them a special one off pass. Or you might want to email everyone who has joined your studio in the last 30 days. Or you might want to email everyone who’s last purchase was a 10 pack and they have more than 5 credits left. Or maybe you want to email everyone who’s last purchase was a membership pass but their last attendance was more than 30 days ago.

All of this is now possible on the new Student Filter page.

Communicate with your students in a way that's relevant to them.

Retention Center always available everywhere

The other thing you’ll notice is that the Retention Center is available everywhere else throughout Tula, as we already provide lists of students in pre-defined contexts.

If you’re viewing an event page, now you can choose to email people who have registered for the event. Or if you’re looking at a past event, you can email everyone that attended. Maybe you’re using the People by Passes report to see who purchased a pass to your upcoming retreat, or maybe you’re looking at your memberships page. 

What we realized was that within Tula, we already have pages throughout the system where your students are segmented. Instead of always making you go back to some retention center home page, we felt the superior approach would be to make it possible to invoke the retention center from just about anywhere. 

Templates

Of course, no Retention Tool would be complete without the ability to save your favorite emails so that you can easily use them again for later emails. By using templates, over time you’ll have quick and immediate access a set of emails you call upon frequently to quickly communicate with your students, while still encouraging you to think about the timing and context of the messages you’re sending.

Updated User Profile Pages

The final thing we put out with this release was a nice update to our user profile pages. We updated the layout so we could display email campaigns that someone was a part of, and in the process we updated the page to more clearly show the active special event passes that someone has along with whether they have an active membership.

Activating Retention Center

The retention center is available as part of the $99 Mala plan, and has an associated usage fee of $5 for every 1,000 emails you send. Alternatively you can opt to choose to send unlimited emails for an additional set monthly fee that’s determined by the number of students you have in your studio. Once you agree to the pricing you’ll be able to save your retention settings and you’ll be ready to send emails.

The way the usage fees work is that you’ll have a separate invoice and charge for your email usage, that will be billed on the same date of your subscription renewal. For example, if your renewal date is on April 15th for your Tula subscription, you’ll also receive an invoice/charge for any emails you sent from March 15 through April 14th. If you choose to have unlimited email added to your plan, then of course that will simply become part of your normal monthly subscription.

Retention Center Version 1.0

This release is Version 1 of our Retention Center, and we already have loads of ideas we’re prioritizing for future development, from automation to conversation tracking and more. We’re excited we have this new foundation on which we can continue to build more powerful communication functionality to help you retain your students. 

We’re thrilled with what we’ve come up with so far, and we hope you like it as much as we do!

Looking at age as a percentage of your available life lived

I'm not sure if I think about the shortness of life more than most people, or if it's simply natural to think often about how temporary our situation here is. But in any case, I spend a fair bit of time thinking about the shortness of life.

But for as much as I have gratitude for each day, I've learned also that always acting in a way that assumes "life is short" can lead to it's own set of woes as the result of an unwillingness to delay gratification.

What happens is we tend to have a number in our minds regarding when we think our time is going to expire. Maybe for you it's 50 because that's when your father had a heart attack. For someone else it might be 95 because that's how old their grandfather lived to. Maybe someone constantly thinks death is knocking at their door because tragedy has visited them. 

The primary problem with thinking about age in terms of years though is that we don't actually know our expiration date. So we're basically working on an equation with an assumed value that's almost certain to be incorrect.

So when we say we're 20 or 40 or 60 years old, it also comes along with the built in assumptions we have about our life expectancy. Instead, I think it's better to think of age as a percentage of our available life lived.

What percent old are you?

This question makes it instantly clear you really don't have any idea how old you are. I'm 39 years old, but wth the rate of technical advances combined with the opportunity for sudden death to befall someone, I could actually either be 99% old or I could be 33% old. 

The thing is, only the dying know how old they are. And sadly, sometimes a 20 year old is older than a 40 year old when we look at age as a percentage of our available life lived.

What I like about thinking about age in this way though is that for me it's a good way to have both extreme gratitude for the present, while it also motivates me to put in the time, effort and work to optimize the things that need optimization even if it means I'm going to be a little less happy or there might be a little more struggle in the immediate future.

After all, if I end up having 60% more life here I want to optimize for it!

For me, thinking of age as a percentage of life, is a good way to find balance when there can be opposing forces at play.

So....what percent old are you?

I know. I don't have any idea either. We're all X%.

The Studio Owner's Manifesto

I've often gone back to Seth Godin's wonderful Bootstrapper's Bible for inspiration. In that same spirit I put together this little manifesto for studio owners you might find useful, based on a slew of my observations over the years. 

---

I am an Independent Studio Owner. 

What I have built is important and unique and valuable. 

I work for my customers and students. I open the studio doors every day to provide them with a valuable offering. I am important to my customers and I have gratitude that they include my business in their lives. Knowing I cannot please everyone, I always do what is best for the community at large.

I am an independent studio owner. I am not afraid of technology. 

I use modern technology to be the lever I wish it to be, so that I may pursue my intention with my business. I understand the power and influence of technology, and I keep a watchful eye to determine who is working to benefit me and my business as opposed to who is working to benefit themselves by exploiting my creation.

I am an independent studio owner. I am wide eyed aware that billion dollar companies are being built off the collective value of what my peers and I offer society. I am constantly told by discount sites and deals marketplaces that I need them, when we both know the truth is it is they who needs me. 

I am an independent studio owner. I understand the value of partnerships and of those who introduce my business to new customers. I am aware of the impact these relationships have on my business. I measure their impact with data and I compensate these companies appropriately. I do not work with people or companies that devalue me or my offering. 

I am an independent studio owner. I understand the value of quality Instructors and know they are a vital part of the community. I treat my people well and I pay them fairly. 

I am an independent studio owner. I am aware this studio would not exist in it's present form were it not for the vision on which I executed, and the risks that I took to make it happen.  In addition to valuing partners, customers, students and instructors, I also value myself. I pay myself fairly and in a way that recognizes the contributions I have made as the owner and creator of the business. 

I am an independent studio owner. I see clearly our society is embracing health, wellness and mindfulness in a way that it hasn’t before and I am excited to be a part of this movement. 

I am an independent studio owner.