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Growing a Yoga Studio in a Crowded Market

February 7, 2012 •

Are you con­fronting the chal­lenge of open­ing a new yoga stu­dio, get­ting estab­lished as a newly cer­ti­fied teacher, or attract­ing more stu­dents in a com­pet­i­tive urban area? If so, you’re not alone.

More Yoga Teachers

Yoga Pose Warrior 1There’s been an explo­sion [Read more…]

The Real Problem with Netflix

September 30, 2011 •

Con­sumers are enraged at Net­flix’ steep price increases with good rea­son — a 60% increase is hard to take dur­ing a pro­longed reces­sion. As a result well over 1 mil­lion have already can­celled their sub­scrip­tion.

From the consumer’s POV, Net­flix’ lat­est plans to split the offer­ing into two unre­lated ser­vices, Net­flix and Qwik­ster, are utterly ridicu­lous. Infu­ri­at­ing. And per­haps fatal to the company’s longevity.

Net­flix has given its cus­tomers the rea­son — and the moti­va­tion — to look else­where for a bet­ter value.

A Broken Brand Promise

The heavy-handed moves by the com­pany are caus­ing me to rethink how much, if any, I want of Net­flix’ ser­vice in the future. Like mil­lions of other Net­flix sub­scribers who have become dis­en­chanted with the brand.

One of the rea­sons for the furor that’s fuel­ing the con­sumer back­lash is Net­flix’ bro­ken brand promise. We used to believe Net­flix stood as a shin­ing exam­ple of a con­sumer-cen­tered mod­ern cor­po­ra­tion.

Now we real­ize it was just a big myth that we col­lec­tively bought into. Myself included.

Net­flix has squan­dered our trust and lost our loy­alty. They’ve pol­luted their brand. Can they over­come this dam­age?

Setting Up for Streaming Is Not Easy

Net­flix is clearly stak­ing its future on main­stream adop­tion of stream­ing and dig­i­tal down­loads as the pre­ferred way to “con­sume” movies, music, TV episodes, games, etc.

But there’s a lurk­ing prob­lem that no one has acknowl­edged in the furor that’s rag­ing across the blo­gos­phere. And that’s user expe­ri­ence.

If you plan to stream movies to a PC, Mac or an Apple-branded con­sumer device (like Apple TV or iPad), con­fig­ur­ing Net­flix and enter­ing your cre­den­tials are not too dif­fi­cult. It’s easy if you’re using a device that’s equipped with a key­board.

But heaven help you if you’re using a tra­di­tional con­sumer elec­tron­ics device and must enter user cre­den­tials with a remote con­trol device. (You might want to con­sult a teenage geek who’s com­fort­able with remotes as an input device.)

To make things worse, just because you’ve got­ten it work­ing once doesn’t mean your Net­flix con­fig­u­ra­tion will keep work­ing indef­i­nitely. Soft­ware updates by Net­flix and/or your con­sumer elec­tron­ics device man­u­fac­turer can cause the con­fig­u­ra­tion to stop work­ing. So you con­front the user expe­ri­ence issues all over again.

Net­flix doesn’t exert much influ­ence over the con­sumer elec­tron­ics ecosys­tem, so the user expe­ri­ence prob­lems are sys­temic and likely to per­sist…

The Remote Was Not Designed as a Keyboard Substitute

Over the past sev­eral months I’ve wasted hours try­ing to keep Net­flix stream­ing to our flat-screen TV, using Sony PlaySta­tion 3 and the PlaySta­tion net­work as the inter­face to Net­flix. My first attempt to con­fig­ure stream­ing took sev­eral hours (includ­ing sev­eral ses­sions on my Mac to get online help).

After the ini­tial setup it worked just fine — until Sony’s PlaySta­tion net­work was hacked and every­thing had to be reset. Since then I’ve had to reset the con­fig­u­ra­tion more than once. I’m not sure if this is caused by Sony’s fre­quent soft­ware updates or some con­flict between the PlaySta­tion net­work and Net­flix.

Need­less to say, if your inter­face to a con­sumer elec­tron­ics device is a TV remote, hav­ing to enter mul­ti­ple sets of user IDs and pass­words is a non-triv­ial and frus­trat­ing exer­cise. The fact that what­ever you type when enter­ing your pass­word is masked with aster­isks — ******** — increases your chances of wast­ing your time due to typos that occur when you use a remote as an infe­rior key­board sub­sti­tute.

My Netflix Solution on the PS3

To fix the bro­ken Net­flix con­fig­u­ra­tion required con­sult­ing both Net­flix’ and Sony’s sup­port resources online. Not sur­pris­ingly they weren’t coor­di­nated. Net­flix’ site turned out to be dis­tinctly unhelp­ful, and Sony’s site required some real dig­ging to find the solu­tion.

Not to men­tion wait­ing until server main­te­nance was done (dur­ing prime time, I might add).

PlayStation Network Message

The even­tual solu­tion was:

  1. man­u­ally reset the date and time on the PS3
  2. unin­stall the Net­flix app on the PS3
  3. down­load and rein­stall the Net­flix app
  4. re-enter my user ID and pass­word for Net­flix (using the remote, of course).

Oh — and I for­got to men­tion that Sony required me to reset my pass­word to the PlaySta­tion net­work before begin­ning this whole pro­ce­dure — yet another frus­trat­ing bat­tle with the remote as key­board sub­sti­tute.

This may sound sim­ple, but using the remote as an input device for activ­i­ties designed for a key­board meant that these steps took well over an hour — once I under­stood what was required to fix the prob­lem in first place. Find­ing the solu­tion required use of a com­puter.

Net net –

Given the on-going lack of coor­di­na­tion between Net­flix and con­sumer elec­tron­ics com­pa­nies when it comes to user expe­ri­ence, usabil­ity issues like these will prove to be Net­flix’ Achilles heel if their future depends on happy cus­tomers.

Thank­fully, Net­flix has lis­tened to their cus­tomers and responded. Plans for Qwik­ster have been aban­doned — the ser­vice will not be split in two.

Apple & The Beatles: Love At Last

November 16, 2010 •

As a girl, I shiv­ered one night in the base­ment where our TV had been ban­ished, and thrilled to the Bea­t­les’ Amer­i­can debut. Not all my shiv­ers were from the cold of that unheated room… I’d fallen in love.

A land­mark event [Read more…]

Where Are the Books in French for Kindle?

August 9, 2010 •

A fran­cophile friend is eagerly try­ing to buy French books and peri­od­i­cals for her new Kin­dle DX. She splits her time between Seat­tle and France, and would love to con­sol­i­date her read­ing mate­ri­als elec­tron­i­cally for prac­ti­cal rea­sons. Fueled by opti­mism, she bought a third gen­er­a­tion Kin­dle last Fri­day.

She loves Kindle’s promise, but dis­en­chant­ment is already set­ting in… For rea­sons that aren’t clear, the usage sce­nario she has in mind is not well sup­ported by the cur­rent mar­ket envi­ron­ment. She has spent hours search­ing www​.ama​zon​.fr, to no avail. No French books to speak of, and hardly any peri­od­i­cals.

Her trial sub­scrip­tion to Le Monde has revealed a num­ber of usabil­ity issues. There’s no teaser for­mat that enables her to skip to the arti­cles that most inter­est her. No images, text only.

Update: March 14, 2012 — Ama­zon has launched the French Kin­dle Store (at last!), and now offers over 4000 French clas­sics at no charge. You can visit Ama­zon for more infor­ma­tion on what’s avail­able for French speak­ers. It will be inter­est­ing to see how long it takes the French pub­lish­ing indus­try to agree to release cur­rent titles for enjoy­ment on a Kin­dle…

And now, back to my friend’s wish list — for the expe­ri­ence she wants on a Kin­dle…

En Français, S’il Vous Plait

Her dream: read French nov­els, news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines on a con­ve­niently portable device like the Kin­dle. Cur­rent releases, not just 19th cen­tury pub­lic domain books. Because she’s pas­sion­ate about per­fect­ing her French com­pre­hen­sion and pro­nun­ci­a­tion skills, she’d love to read while lis­ten­ing to a simul­ta­ne­ous play­back via MP3 (or equiv­a­lent).

French is not her native lan­guage, so she wants to be able to select unfa­mil­iar words on the Kin­dle, thereby launch­ing a built-in dic­tio­nary whose entries explain their mean­ing. She’d also wel­come the option of view­ing French-to-Eng­lish trans­la­tions of unknown words and slang (a must-have for peo­ple whose French is less flu­ent than hers.)

She’s very inter­ested in Kindle’s text-to-speech option, espe­cially if it doesn’t sound like a robot. Need­less to say, she expects the text-to-speech option for French con­tent to pro­duce words pro­nounced cor­rectly in French, rather than lis­ten to a techno-voice try­ing to pro­nounce French words as if they had been writ­ten in Eng­lish.

Before order­ing the Kin­dle, my friend did some research which revealed that Ama­zon had released a dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing plat­form for French lan­guage authors in Jan­u­ary. That sparked her pur­chase of a Kin­dle. Surely, she thought, there’d be French ebooks in the mar­ket­place by now, 6+ months since Ama­zon released its multi-lan­guage pub­lish­ing plat­form.

Hélas! She’s learned there are few con­tem­po­rary books in French for Kin­dle. And no linked dic­tio­nary for French con­tent as there is for Eng­lish lan­guage con­tent.

Too Early, Or Too Unusual?

Her big ques­tion: is she just suf­fer­ing early adopter pains, and if she waits patiently, will some­day have the oppor­tu­nity to read French books and mag­a­zines on a Kin­dle? Or is she an out­lier, a mem­ber of a niche mar­ket of French read­ers who would wel­come elec­tronic books, but who are too few in num­ber to moti­vate the French pub­lish­ing indus­try to embrace the new dig­i­tal for­mats?

And what about the French government’s con­tin­u­ing quest to pro­mul­gate the French lan­guage around the world? Will France suc­ceed in ensur­ing a steady demand for French lan­guage pub­li­ca­tions beyond French bor­ders? And if so, surely dig­i­tal for­mats would make French pub­li­ca­tions more eas­ily acces­si­ble to a broader global audi­ence if book­sellers could avoid the brick-and-mor­tar chal­lenges of inven­tory fore­cast­ing, ship­ping costs and other import-related chal­lenges.

Update

The Wall Street Jour­nal describes the role of the French gov­ern­ment in pro­tect­ing the rights of small inde­pen­dent book­sellers, and spec­u­lates on what’s in store for elec­tronic books (Sep­tem­ber 24, 2010 arti­cle). Will the same law that pro­tects small book­sellers against heavy dis­count­ing also apply to elec­tronic books?

What Story Does Your Face Tell?

June 23, 2010 •

My brother is writ­ing a book with his step­daugh­ter about their scar­ily par­al­lel sto­ries as can­cer fight­ers and sur­vivors. At the moment, they’re work­ing on author pho­tos for the book cover. This process has made me think about the sto­ries that faces tell, or hint at; the mes­sages that can be per­ceived sub­lim­i­nally when your photo appears in dif­fer­ent con­texts — like a book jacket, a Face­book page, etc. [Read more…]

Creating a Yoga Community

March 18, 2010 •

Guest author, Brook McCarthy, is a part-time yoga teacher in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia. Brook also runs a mar­ket­ing con­sul­tancy that helps busi­nesses in the health and well­be­ing sec­tor improve their com­mu­ni­ca­tions online.

Cul­ti­vat­ing com­mu­nity can be as sim­ple as a friendly yoga class, a shared meal or an inspir­ing work­shop. This can sow seeds towards cre­at­ing a soul-cen­tered kin­ship of yogis who take their com­mu­nity “off the mat” and beyond the stu­dio walls.

Community Begins with the Teacher

For almost a year, I attended a yoga stu­dio in the heart of Syd­ney, Aus­tralia. It was a busy school, packed with work­ers from nearby build­ings, and had a “buzz” of the town out­side. I attended sev­eral classes a week and was often taught by a par­tic­u­lar teacher who, time and again, asked for my name. The first dozen times, I didn’t mind.

Another evening after class, I heard a teacher invite sev­eral stu­dents to the pub for a drink after class. I wasn’t offended by a yoga teacher hav­ing a drink with his stu­dents (Who knows? They may even have been drink­ing soda water.), it was the inclusive/exclusive infer­ence that left me feel­ing on the out­side.

My present yoga teacher cul­ti­vates com­mu­nity in each and every class he teaches. Not only does he have a gift for remem­ber­ing names and the phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions of each stu­dent, he gen­tly uses our names to ver­bally adjust stu­dents, which also works to intro­duce us to each other.

Creating Community — One Class at a Time

Each class is made up of a col­lec­tion of indi­vid­u­als who bring with them the emo­tions and pre­oc­cu­pa­tions of their par­tic­u­lar day. I’ve wit­nessed yoga teach­ers change stu­dents’ dif­fer­ing ener­gies, unit­ing the class towards com­mon goals such as mind­ful­ness.

Rather than cre­ate chal­lenges for the more expe­ri­enced yogis in the room, try to teach each class as if all your stu­dents are begin­ners — make your instruc­tions acces­si­ble, your tone wel­com­ing, and your spirit encour­ag­ing. A sense of fun and joy­ful­ness is a pow­er­ful teach­ing tool and helps stu­dents lighten up and smile at their neigh­bors. Ask stu­dents to intro­duce them­selves to the peo­ple next to them in small classes. And lead stu­dents in a Namaste to each other at the end of class.

Humor is most effec­tive at help­ing stu­dents get out of their heads and onto their mats. Crack a joke and see peo­ple relax — most effec­tive after a core strength ses­sion. One of my favorite teach­ers has a gift for crack­ing jokes at oppor­tune moments. Although these jokes can be a bit off-colour at times, they are accom­pa­nied by a charm­ing, open smile; my teacher eas­ily dis­arms new stu­dents of their con­cerns that all yoga teach­ers are seri­ous and holier-than-thou.

Taking the Classroom Outside

Encour­ag­ing stu­dents to linger longer can start with a cup of tea, extend to a meal, and end up with peo­ple vol­un­teer­ing in their com­mu­nity — it’s all in the spirit of inclu­sion.

One suc­cess­ful Syd­ney stu­dio does this with grace as the yoga teacher boils a ket­tle in the recep­tion room and offers stu­dents who linger after class a cup of tea. A meal at a local restau­rant after a yoga work­shop or the com­ple­tion of a course also encour­ages stu­dents to relax and get to know one another out­side of class. Depend­ing on your locale and the stu­dents’ means, either bun­dle the meal into the price of the work­shop or let every­one know it’s “Dutch treat.” Some stu­dios spon­sor annual or sea­sonal group meals, and ask stu­dents who want to par­tic­i­pate to con­tribute some­thing, such as a favorite home-cooked dish, to share with their teach­ers and fel­low yogis.

For stu­dents who are fre­quent vis­i­tors to your yoga stu­dio, offer­ing a vol­un­teer pro­gram can help build a sense of com­mu­nity, and not only among the vol­un­teers. One yoga city stu­dio I have attended has a “karma yoga” pro­gram offer­ing free yoga classes in exchange for clean­ing duties. I began vol­un­teer­ing at another stu­dio giv­ing adjust­ments and cor­rec­tions dur­ing Sat­ur­day classes. I was already an expe­ri­enced yoga stu­dent at that time and much appre­cia­tive of the per­sonal instruc­tions given to me by the yoga teacher. The stu­dio also ben­e­fited from hav­ing an extra set of eyes and hands dur­ing busy classes.

Widening Your Community

Groups tend to be judged by their actions before peo­ple lis­ten to their words. Per­haps the sin­gle most pow­er­ful thing yogis can do to encour­age new peo­ple to expe­ri­ence the ben­e­fits of yoga is to become more involved in com­mu­nity ser­vices. This also allows stu­dents to expe­ri­ence karma yoga, the yoga of action.

Samadhi Yoga in Syd­ney has a for­mal “Yoga in the Com­mu­nity” pro­gram, and offers 16 heav­ily-dis­counted classes per week to any­one who wishes to attend. This orga­ni­za­tion also runs pro­grams in con­junc­tion with drug and alco­hol reha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­ters, at-risk child care ser­vices, clin­ics for patients with AID and juve­nile jus­tice units. While this type of com­mit­ment may be some years off for a fledg­ling stu­dio, a “clean the park” pic­nic day, a free weekly class after school to local teenagers, or a visit to an aged care home is more eas­ily man­age­able.

Each yoga stu­dio has the poten­tial to become a hub of activ­ity for the com­mu­nity beyond its walls. When we gather together with the hope of reach­ing self-real­iza­tion, we are work­ing toward rec­og­niz­ing the uni­ver­sal­ity of all beings, and achiev­ing peace and free­dom not only for our­selves, but also our world­wide com­mu­nity. Tak­ing our yoga prac­tice “off the mat” and into the world.

— Brook McCarthy, Yog­a­Reach, Syd­ney, Aus­tralia

Non-scientific Indicators of Consumer Confidence

March 15, 2010 •

Last Fri­day after­noon I was in a Seat­tle area Lul­ule­mon store check­ing out some spring-sea­son tank tops, and was pleas­antly shocked at how crowded the store was. It was hard to maneu­ver around all the shop­pers, and at times, you had to wait for peo­ple to move away before you could check out mer­chan­dise hang­ing on the rack or stored in size-spe­cific bins.

Yoga, a source of eco­nomic stim­u­lus?

Sadly for shop­pers (but not the store), all 4 of the dress­ing rooms were in con­stant use, result­ing in at least a 15-minute wait to try on apparel for size and fit. As a tes­ta­ment to Lul­ule­mon brand loy­alty, almost every­one waited patiently in line for a dress­ing room rather than go else­where. (There is at least one other yoga apparel store at this loca­tion, so peo­ple have other options within a 5‑minute walk.)

Most of the bins for pants and crops in my size were empty, and the same was true for tops and tanks. I over­head one sales per­son tell a shop­per that they replen­ish their mer­chan­dise on a weekly basis. 

Another pos­i­tive sign, the cashiers’ lines were busy; lots of peo­ple were buy­ing. Clearly this store doesn’t suf­fer from shop­pers mut­ter­ing, “Sorry, just look­ing…” And as every­one knows, yoga wear with Lululemon’s brand is def­i­nitely not inex­pen­sive.

As another indi­ca­tor of con­sumer con­fi­dence and this brand’s appeal, the shop was loaded with men and women across a sur­pris­ingly broad range of ages and body types. Yes, the store was packed with teenage girls check­ing out the lat­est hood­ies, but also with boomer women try­ing on yoga crops or tops, guys look­ing at run­ning gear, and men buy­ing gifts for wives and daugh­ters.

There was a lovely buzz in the store. It made me hope­ful that this region is start­ing to rebound from its long slump.

On the other hand, one of my more cyn­i­cal friends said that peo­ple aren’t shop­ping gen­er­ally; they just find it eas­ier to ratio­nal­ize invest­ments in “well­ness lifestyle” aids. And if that’s the case Lul­ule­mon is cer­tainly ben­e­fit­ing, at least here in the Seat­tle area.

The Sound of Her Voice

March 15, 2010 •

If you’re a yoga stu­dent who lives in an area blessed with lots of stu­dios and tal­ented teach­ers, you can be more dis­crim­i­nat­ing when choos­ing where to take classes or which teach­ers to fol­low. Now that I’m no longer a rank begin­ner, I’ve started to pay closer atten­tion to the fac­tors that cause me to pre­fer some teach­ers over oth­ers. And one of those fac­tors is, I con­fess, the sound of her voice.

yoga-class

Why the Voice Matters in Yoga

The sound of a teacher’s voice is an impor­tant aspect of a class: what she says and how she says it. It’s a mat­ter of per­sonal taste, but some voices are — to my ear at least— more pleas­ing than oth­ers. In any given class I spend a lot of time lis­ten­ing with either eyes closed or atten­tion focused else­where (the drishti gaze). When I’m not actively watch­ing the teacher, the sound of her voice helps me focus my prac­tice or iden­tify where a micro-adjust­ment might be required. What she says and how she says it can make all the dif­fer­ence between yoga-as-gym-activ­ity and yoga as some­thing more mean­ing­ful or uplift­ing.

Does the teacher’s voice direct your atten­tion to the key focal point(s) for your pose? Does it help you crys­tal­lize your inten­tion or improve your abil­ity to shift into your med­i­ta­tion space?

Yes, of course, the con­tent of what the teacher says and how she deliv­ers her instruc­tions are hugely impor­tant. That’s the start­ing point, the sine qua non. If the teacher’s instruc­tional style or her abil­ity to guide you is out of whack with your needs and capa­bil­i­ties, noth­ing else mat­ters: you need to find a teacher bet­ter suited to what you need to learn, or unlearn. Solve that prob­lem first.

Once you’ve found a set of tal­ented teach­ers whose instruc­tion style and yoga tra­di­tion match your pref­er­ences, then you can start to pay atten­tion to other fac­tors, like class size, the nature of the invo­ca­tions or read­ings, etc. The spir­i­tual con­tent (or lack thereof). The smell of the stu­dio. Its décor. The props on offer.

Ide­ally, I pre­fer classes that are small enough to offer semi-indi­vid­u­al­ized atten­tion on how to improve your pose, align­ment, action, drishti focal point — what­ever. But it’s rare to find a high qual­ity, uncrowded class. In this par­tic­u­lar urban area crowded classes are the norm, unless you’ve found a new teacher, a new stu­dio just devel­op­ing its fol­low­ing, or can take classes at unpop­u­lar hours.

In large or crowded classes, it can be dif­fi­cult to see the teacher when your mat is not up in the front, except for those moments when she stops the class to demon­strate a new or chal­leng­ing pose. In classes like this the voice mat­ters more than ever. It’s the car­rier for good instruc­tion.

Implications for Teachers

If you’re try­ing to attract more stu­dents, think about ways to offer a trial expe­ri­ence of your voice, the qual­ity of your instruc­tion. What about offer­ing some sam­ple pod­casts or an online video clip to show­case how you teach and inter­act with stu­dents? Pick a pose or two, find a will­ing stu­dent or two, and get someone’s help to record/video the instruc­tional moment.

Then look for appro­pri­ate places online where you can pub­lish or offer your sam­ple of how you teach your stu­dents. Face­book, YouTube, your studio’s web­site, iTunes, online yoga com­mu­ni­ties — you now have lots of rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive oppor­tu­ni­ties to show­case what makes you such an inspir­ing teacher. And if this is all tech­ni­cally beyond your skillset, per­haps you can barter some free classes in exchange for tech­ni­cal or pro­fes­sional help with your pod­cast or sam­ple video.

If you con­tribute to a blog, think about ways to offer a brief pod­cast or audio clip in which you share your voice, your val­ues, or what you’re all about as a teacher and yoga prac­ti­tioner.

Share your voice.

Information Junkies Wanna Know… More

February 5, 2010 •

Inter­est­ing fac­toids, like how many Amer­i­cans prac­tice yoga, spread like wild­fire across the Web and blo­gos­phere. But get­ting any per­spec­tive on those fac­toids can be much harder to find, and in some cases, impos­si­ble.

This morn­ing I uncov­ered a web-based infor­ma­tion vor­tex when I tried to find out how many Amer­i­cans cur­rently prac­tice yoga. I fell into a cir­cu­lar spi­ral, [Read more…]

My Phone Company Is Stupid and Wasteful

January 13, 2010 •

I wish some agency that spe­cial­izes in intel­li­gent data­base min­ing and direct mar­ket­ing would help my local phone com­pany stop wast­ing trees on fruit­less direct mail pieces.

Here’s the deal: my recy­cle bin now con­tains some­where between 5 and 10 pieces of unopened direct mail offers from Qwest, [Read more…]

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About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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