Exercise of Inclusion

As part of my continued exploration I took a Zumba class for the first time. As someone who enjoys exercise, enjoys music, dancing and was a former cardio kickboxing junkie  people were surprised to hear that I had never attended a class before. Zumba, founded in 2001, has become one of the largest exercise classes in the world. Zumba's boasts over 15 million users in 180 countries. As part of my continued research project in the evolution of the concept I am creating, I thought it would be important to learn what all buzz was about.

I was able to locate a class using the official Zumba websites class locator. Studio offerings ranged from health clubs such as the Equinox and Sports Club LA to dance companies located in VFW halls. I selected a class 3 miles from my office located at an American Legion in Newton.  While it was simple to find the building it was challenging to find the class location as a Bingo game was playing in the large hall and it was difficult to determine who was a Zumba attendee and who was there for Bingo. Really, I chased down some 20 something girls in sweatpants hoping to follow them to Zumba class only to find out that they were attending Bingo.  I was able to finally find the room once the music started for class. I was able to enter the class late and only required to pay my $5 cash fee, no pesky waivers or health forms to contend with. Out on the dance floor I tried my best to follow along with the instructor to the beat of the songs. My group ranged in ages from 8 years old (the teachers daughter) to about 60. Size and athleticism range was also on as large a scale. The one common denominator was that everyone was there to have fun. The class lasted an hour for a total of about 12 different songs and routines. I was wearing a fitbit during the class and tracked walking 3 miles over the duration of the class. At the end there was a cool down period where slowed down salsa and meringue moves were used to stretch us out. I found the class to be a great experience and I plan to incorporate into my routine.

Zumba exploded on the scene in 2001 and was created by a Columbian celebrity fitness instructor who had forgot his aerobics soundtracks and used a music from his car and incorporated dance moves from  hip-hop, soca, samba, salsa, merengue, mambo and martial arts to teach an aerobics class.  (wikipedia) Zumba sells DVD's, video game programs, clothing and accessories. It also offer certified training to become an instructor. Zumba does not charge a licensing fee to gyms and individual looking to teach Zumba classes. Zumba derives its revenues from the products for sale through its website. http://www.zumba.com/en-US  This is pretty important for a few reasons. First off, Zumba makes it very easy and accessible for consumers to consumer their core product of exercise. By doing this they have broadened the scope of consumers introduced to the Zumba JTBD which is "ditch the workout and join the party". Zumba has also done an excellent job of building a loyal fan base where each participant feels like they belong. Lastly, Zumba makes it very simple to consume their product on a number of different levels. Attending a Zumba class and studying their revenue streams was very helpful for me in working on my concept.

You've Been Served

Monthly box subscriptions seem to be the next big thing when it comes to combining e-commerce and and a membership fee model. While this has been around for a few years with products and samples a new and interesting format has been the evolution signing up to receive curated food and recipes. I decided to try "Plated", simply because I seem to see their advertisements more often than their competitors Blue Apron or Hello Fresh.

I ordered my plated meal on a Monday with the scheduled delivery date of that Friday. On Thursday I received a friendly email from Plated confirming that my meal was en route and confirming the ingredients I would need to have on hand to prepare my meal. For the recipe I chose which was Meatballs with Zucchini, Blackened Tomatoes, and Mint.  this include having an egg, olive oil and salt and pepper on hand.

Experience
My package arrived Friday afternoon in a cool refrigerated container via Fed Ex. Portions were packed in groups of two and according to food group. All ingredients were pre measured and clearly labeled.  A bright and colorful card detailed instructions with pictures demonstrating each of the eight steps. When I order this meal it did not occur to me that I would be spending a significant amount of time slicing and dicing. The instructions estimated the recipe would take between 30-45 minutes to repair; I estimate I spent about 25 minutes of my time peeling the zucchini to make pasta ribbons. I had always wanted to learn how to slice veggies for pasta alternatives so this was a fortunate side effect. Instructions for mixing the meatballs were quite simples and the roasting of the tomatoes took no time. The tools that Plated provided me made me feel confident during the preparation that I could produce a quality product.

Feedback
I served this meal to my husband, sister and mother. I received very positive feedback on the presentation, food combination and process. My husband, a busy Finance/IT professional and father to our two small children felt it was a do again and is hoping to select and cook our next Plated order. I look forward to this too as Fred has not had a lot of training when it comes to cooking and I believe that Plated can help him to fine-tune his cooking techniques.
My sister (who weighs 105 lbs) was concerned that she would not feel full since the pasta was not pasta but zucchini. My husband explained her feeling of fullness would come from the meatballs; Courtney remarked the whole experience felt rather "yuppy".
My mother, a recent retiree, volunteered next time to go food shopping for me at Wilson Farms in Lexington, she thought I was crazy for paying $15 per serving for the meal. After I walked her through their  target consumer (someone who makes too much money to be wondering around a supermarket) the wheels began to turn on her offering her own version of a Plated service. We anxiously await hr shopping her proposal to local VC firms.

Complements
I think that Plated is missing out on an opportunity to sell cooking accessories to their customers. Plated assumes you own sharp knives or a pan. It would be helpful if they could list the tools needed at the time of the order and link you to a page where you can purchase the needed equipment. If Plated decides that is too far outside its business model it should consider partnering with a Williams Sonoma or Sur La Table and receiving a % of revenue for each product sold. They could expand this to include table settings as well. I would also recommend that Plated add technique video's to their website; for a moment I was unsure of how to slice the zucchini, referencing their website for a tutorial on how to prepare this meal would seem like a natural fit and another way to connect with your customer.


Strategy
After this activity was done I thought a lot about what Plated's strategy was. If I was an investor I would be incorporating my suggestions above so that I would catch the attention of Amazon and use Plated as a launching pad for the first online grocery store. The disruption factor would be that it would change the way people purchased food; have them buy according to recipes and not in mass quantities.

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.

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.

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.