I became a big soul cycle patron when they opened close to my house this past winter. I have a number of friends in NY who are devoted followers to their classes. I noticed that once soul cycle entered the market several cycling studios opened in Boston, and with the exception of Flywheel all were homegrown creations. I decided that I would try out all of these spinning course offerings in the Boston area to determine if Soul cycle is an experience that can be easily replicated.
I found a number of gyms with stylish and clean studios sprinkled through out heavily trafficked areas of greater Boston. Each studio was equipped with trendy playlists pumping out the motivational popular music that kept the class participant engaged for 45 minutes to an hour. But thats pretty much where the similarities ended. What was missing from the other studios that soul cycle provided was an uplifting motivational experience that enabled me to center my mind and body in a similar manner that yoga allowed me to. What I also found was that the quality of the instruction was far superior too. All of the cycling studios had the same type of moves that they called out during the routines. The difference was how the soul instructor was able to make the routines and moves simple to understand and easier to execute during the session.
Soul Cycle's competitive advantage is that they are able to deliver the cycling experience better than any of the competing studios enabling Soul to demand as much as $10 per class more than there counterparts and limit the need to spend on marketing as they have an evangelical customer base who recruits new devotees for them.
Take away: create an easily adaptable, spiritually uplifting, results oriented fitness experience that can be deployed in multiple major metropolitan markets.
Friday, June 27, 2014
An association that I belong to recently ran a course at the Improv Asylum on techniques that can help one to be a more effective listener. The course was comprised of about 14 other colleagues from this association with about 12 attendees who were male and three females including me.
The first exercise was a skill builder on listening. The exercise was that one person started by saying something and the next person would say the first word that popped into their head out loud with the outcome being that the game would end when someone was able to say the first word that was used to start off the game. The challenge that groups (ours included) typically ran into is that people were so focused on trying to remember what was the first word that was used was that the word that they uttered as first coming to mind did not associate with the word that was said prior and made it impossible to achieve the end result of getting back to someone saying the first word that was used at the beginning of the exercise.
The instructor walked us through how through active listening and remaining focused on what the person to our left was saying we would be able to eventually come to a place in the game where someone would reference the original work that was used to kick it off. It reminded me of how we tend to miss out on what is actually going on around us because we become over focused on executing on a particular task and how this can lead to a creative breakdown in our innovation practice. I was able to apply the tools we learned in this exercise later on that day in another game we were playing and won because I was able to apply the frameworks.
The first exercise was a skill builder on listening. The exercise was that one person started by saying something and the next person would say the first word that popped into their head out loud with the outcome being that the game would end when someone was able to say the first word that was used to start off the game. The challenge that groups (ours included) typically ran into is that people were so focused on trying to remember what was the first word that was used was that the word that they uttered as first coming to mind did not associate with the word that was said prior and made it impossible to achieve the end result of getting back to someone saying the first word that was used at the beginning of the exercise.
The instructor walked us through how through active listening and remaining focused on what the person to our left was saying we would be able to eventually come to a place in the game where someone would reference the original work that was used to kick it off. It reminded me of how we tend to miss out on what is actually going on around us because we become over focused on executing on a particular task and how this can lead to a creative breakdown in our innovation practice. I was able to apply the tools we learned in this exercise later on that day in another game we were playing and won because I was able to apply the frameworks.
Crumbs Cupcakes
I found myself in the baking aisle of target the weekend prior to my nephews birthday. At perfect eye level was a beautifully packaged box of Crumbs "Happy Birthday" cupcake mix staring me down. With its premium price tag of $9.99 per box that yielded 1 dozen buttercream frosted cupcakes I realized that this mix was not for the faint of heart. I had never baked cupcakes for any of my kids events. This was partly due to a shortage of time balancing my schedule and a fear of serving fallen, sloppily made, poorly constructed cupcakes for my children's birthdays. That fear of failure rearing its ugly head. I decided that since it was my nephews birthday and not a venue where too many people could see my fail that I would take the plunge and bake.
Had I known what I was getting myself into I would not have purchased the mix. 4 sticks of butter, 10 ounces of cream cheese and about $40.00 later found myself in my kitchen at 7am ready to bake. The instructions were fairly simple to follow and broke the process down into about 4 steps over a 3 hour time period. The recipe required three different types of frosting, one was for the rosettes that were to be used to decorate the cupcakes. I had a lot of fun baking the cupcakes and the the end result was quite positive; not the epic failure I had imagined.
Part of what motivated me to try this cupcake mix was to evaluate how a high end bakery could enter the baked good mix market. The average cupcake mix yielding 24 cupcakes cost about $2 at target and frosting seemed to add an additional $3 to the cost with a total baking time of about an hour. I'd be interested to see how Crumbs fares in this category as I would imagine that people with this level of discretionary income's time per hour would be high enough that they would be better served to spend the $80 on 24 customer cupcakes from a specialty bakery not taking into account the "experience" factor baking a crumbs cupcake.
Had I known what I was getting myself into I would not have purchased the mix. 4 sticks of butter, 10 ounces of cream cheese and about $40.00 later found myself in my kitchen at 7am ready to bake. The instructions were fairly simple to follow and broke the process down into about 4 steps over a 3 hour time period. The recipe required three different types of frosting, one was for the rosettes that were to be used to decorate the cupcakes. I had a lot of fun baking the cupcakes and the the end result was quite positive; not the epic failure I had imagined.
Part of what motivated me to try this cupcake mix was to evaluate how a high end bakery could enter the baked good mix market. The average cupcake mix yielding 24 cupcakes cost about $2 at target and frosting seemed to add an additional $3 to the cost with a total baking time of about an hour. I'd be interested to see how Crumbs fares in this category as I would imagine that people with this level of discretionary income's time per hour would be high enough that they would be better served to spend the $80 on 24 customer cupcakes from a specialty bakery not taking into account the "experience" factor baking a crumbs cupcake.
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