5 Reasons Your Dance Studio Isn't Growing - Part 2

Hello friends, I'm Amanda Barr and I'm Rebecca Lou Brennan, and welcome to Dance Principles United, the podcast. Together we are passionate about helping studio owners with the business of running their studio.

Join us as we talk everything from marketing, systems, studio culture, motherhood, life, and everything in between.

This is the Dance Principles United podcast. Hey friends, and welcome back to Part 2 of 5 reasons your studio isn't growing. If you missed last week's podcast, make sure you jump back in the podcast feed and check that out. And today we're gonna continue the conversation on how you can actually grow your studio. Reason number 4, people aren't growing the studio, uh, you know, how they want and what they dream of. Yep.

What is it, Bec? Well, I'm very passionate about this.

Mm-hmm.

Because I used to do it. Um, and it's that you are marketing to the wrong people. Mm-hmm. And so, You know, we often see studio owners have put that perfect— only perfect dancers up. God forbid there'd be a sickle foot, you know, God forbid that their hair's out of place. And so therefore you're actually marketing to other teachers and other studio owners, your peers.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because parents actually find that stuff scary. And I said this on the day, like, you know, it is so weird to people that we dress 8-year-olds in fishnet stockings. It is weird. Absolutely. Like nobody does that except strippers.

It's true though. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, and so like we think it's normal and it's normalized in our world, but it's not actually normal to everyday people. Yes. And so then they're very turned off. And the people that you want to get in are people who don't really probably know that much about dance.

You want to get them in and educate them and teach them.

Yeah, exactly. And parents that, you know, I always think of Tim, parents like Tim who had no idea about dance and has been in footy footy his whole life. And absolutely, you know, he was really blown away by what happens in dance.

Absolutely. And, you know, Tim, um, is Beck's partner, for those people who listen, uh, new to the podcast. And, you know, uh, he is a dad of a teenage daughter. Yep. And he wants his teenage daughter to, you know, do whatever she wants and have the best of everything. But he didn't know anything about dance. Now, in saying that, he's a competitive guy. Yep. Who played high-level footy, so he wants them to be trained. It's not like he doesn't care about the training or you know, how hard they work, or being part of a team. He wants all those things, but he doesn't know what good and bad dance is. To start with, what he wants to see is kids, you know, learning confidence, being, uh, you know, having fun, all of those things. Like, that's what a dad like that wants to see.

Should I tell you then the funny story of the first time?

Absolutely.

Tim to a dance thing. So guys, the first time I took Tim to a dance thing, I think Bibi was maybe 9. Yeah, she would have been about 9. Was the Dream Dance, right? And they did a workshop and then they did a performance. Absolutely. At Roundhouse. Now, when you're in Dream Dance and you're a studio owner, you know, you get to sit at the front. So we're sitting right at the front and the stage is maybe a meter away from us. And anyway, these kids start coming out and Tim turns to me and they dress themselves at this.

It's not a costume. They wear what their parents put them in. Yeah. Totally.

So Tim turns to me and he goes, did Marco dress these kids in these costumes? And I said, no, the parents dress them. And then he's like, the parents dress them in fishnets and undies and PVC. And I'm like, probably not the best thing to bring to the first night. He literally watched the entire show looking at the roof. He refused to look at the stage. Now, to me, that show was completely normal. That's what we dress kids in.

It was fine.

Didn't even think about it. Did not think about it at all.

There was no problems with the choreography, it was nothing like that.

It was just, yeah, of course, big moment for me to see that side of things though, and for me to go, okay, my social media is my window to parents, and they're seeing that for the first time. They're probably not going to bring their 4-year-old to my school, but if they see happy, friendly faces of kids having a great time, very different.

Absolutely. So people are, uh, you know marketing to the wrong people. They are marketing to their peers. The other thing that I really see a lot of studio owners do is market to their current students.

And you know, very passionate about this.

I am, because to me I see, uh, Instagram feeds that look like newsletters. So instead of it being a marketing thing to new clients, it's like, hey, make sure you pay your fees on time, fees are due by this week, or 'Hey, concert's coming up,' or even 'Congratulations to this student.' And, you know, and I think, you know, there is room for that on our Instagram. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that that shouldn't ever be on your Instagram. However, if that's all there is and it's not also marketing posts as well, uh, that's where the problem comes, because it's like, hey, this is a community and you're not invited in. It's almost like a— this is like almost like a private page that should just be for our people and we don't actually accept new people because you don't know what we're talking about. You're not cool enough. Yeah. So I think that's really good, but you can do it in different ways. And, you know, one of the ideas, you know, that you could think about is, you know, instead of doing the congratulations to little Miss Jessica who won, you know, get the beat, whatever, this crown, Miss title, whatever. Yeah. You know, and that being the purpose of the post, why not use it as a marketing as well as a congratulations to Jessica, you know? And that could look like, look at Jessica and how far she's come. She came to us when she was 3 years old, and she started as a shy little kid who wouldn't want to go into dance, you know, at all these things that she's done to get to this place. Do you want your child to gain confidence like Jessica? Come and see us. And that changes it up from being a newsletter post to a marketing post. I think, you know, there's a lot of ways to do that. I love that.

I love that. We find that so many people aren't making social media a priority. Absolutely. You know, and they're like, I just don't like social media back. I'm like, well, then you don't want to grow your business. Like, it's where everyone's at.

It's part of it.

Yep. You know, we're all on our phones. Did you buy something this week from your phone that you haven't bought before?

Do you want to know how many things that I've bought from Instagram? I don't even think I could tell you how many things I've bought.

I always get some random packages coming along and and I've completely forgotten that I purchased that. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's right.

I got some straws today if you're interested, some reusable collapsible straws that have a key ring. Very important stuff. Like, don't we all just get random stuff?

Not that random.

No, it's a 3-pack. I bought you one if you'd like one.

I would like one.

Thank you. Because apparently one isn't enough. I had to buy it in a 3-pack. But like, we all buy shit on our phones. No, just me. They're in different colors if that helps.

But we do, we buy stuff on our phones, but it's where we are, you know. And, and I think when I was— when we were doing this talk, I said to everyone in the expo room, and it was a pretty full room, yeah, who here's been on their phone this morning? And of course every single person put their hand up because that's the first thing we do.

Absolutely.

You know, we grab our coffee, we scroll on Instagram, it's just what happens. So you need to be making it a priority.

Absolutely. Not an afterthought.

You know, we talk about this too, there's the plumber does not have that much. So what's he going to do for his social media? That is a hard social media gig. We have cute kids all the time doing really fun stuff. It is so simple for us to do social media.

Absolutely. So you really need to make sure you're prioritizing it as part of your time to grow your business every single week. I also want to chuck in there, you know, making sure that it's an important part and there's clear call to actions in your social media as well. Not confusing the message. You know, um, I was doing a social media audit, uh, for a new client the other day, and whilst they had great marketing posts, there was no clear, like, what's the next step, right? Like, you know, it was like, hey, we've got a tap class at 3:30 this afternoon, that's great. And is the next question, right? Like, what the fuck do you want people to do with this information? Exactly. You know, DM us for your free trial, not just come along and try the fun. Yep. How the hell are they going to come along? They don't know anything about you. Like, tell people what you want them to do. I think that's really important.

I love that. I also think looking into your social media as different age parents. Absolutely. Because, you know, people always say to me, oh, I'm trying to grow my preschool, and then we go into their social media and it's all adults or seniors on there.

Yeah. Lots of scary leg mounts, right?

And it's like, okay, so someone's gonna probably— okay, the first thing that I do is I would see an ad come up and then I'd pop onto their Instagram and have a little look, right? So they're going to look on your Instagram and they're going to go, well, they're advertising preschool but they clearly don't care about preschools. They're not going to opt into your brand. They have to see the same age child as their child in your Instagram or they're not going to do it. Absolutely. I think just looking at that Even going into your website and doing that, because sometimes you go into people's websites, same thing, they've got these beautiful elite dancers, you know, on the COVID of their website, and you're like, they're not going to opt into your preschool brand.

Absolutely. So I think that, um, if you're listening to this and you're not driving a car and it's safe to do so, um, do you like my public service announcement? I do. You should do a social media audit, um, and maybe a website audit as well, and have a look, like, is there something in the top 3 posts, you know, on that start of the grid on Instagram that, you know, whatever you're trying to sell at the moment, if you are saying, hey, we're trying to grow our preschool or we're trying to grow our tap program, or we're trying to grow our cheerleading, like whatever that is, is there something in the top 3 posts that corresponds to it? And is there a clear call to action of what you actually want people to do to come along and try that?

Yep. Absolutely. Organic marketing.

Yeah, it's gonna be done.

It's part of it. Parents in it. Yep. It's so— we've talked about it, Nathan. I just did a massive talk about this stuff, Amanda. But yeah, you know, making sure that you're tagging parents, making sure that you're doing competitions and things on social media that can get people to share. The more people share you, the more free marketing you have, essentially. It's, it's a no-brainer.

Absolutely. So, you know, spending time on that and also learning— spending time on paid ads. Yes. And learning paid ads properly. Properly being the thing, because so many people go, I tried that and it didn't work. I'm like, you didn't try it properly.

That's right.

Because that's the number one thing. And, and look, you know, it's not something you're going to get right the first time. No, you don't expect someone to do a pirouette properly the first time either. It's, you know, you have to take classes, you have to learn about it, you have to invest in programs, you have to try different things and see what works. Like, you know, there's all of these things, but when you get paid ads they work no matter where you are, no matter if you're a small country town, no matter if you're in the city. Paid ads actually work everywhere.

And our members, Tribe and Studio Growth Club, are so lucky to have Nate. Yep, in their corner, who's on the forefront of all of that, who does step-by-step guides. You don't need to go and spend $10,000 with someone who's—

don't pay someone to do your ads. It's actually not that hard.

It's not when you know step by step how to do it and you have Nate there explaining it, it's actually easy.

Can I just like fully just go on a rant and a tangent? I love rants and tangents. The amount of people that tell me that they're spending huge money getting someone to do their ads is crazy. Ridiculous. Crazy. It actually— they're like, oh, it's just too hard, so I'm paying someone to do it. It absolutely is not that hard. And you know, if you were to invest 2 hours or 3 hours to learn it once, you would absolutely be able to do it yourself and save yourself so much money. No one knows your market, your clients, your town like you do. And if you could just spend 2 hours maybe once getting it all set up right, and then maybe, you know, an hour a month, that like, think about that. Yeah. And you know, the time and stuff that that takes, it's actually not that much time.

Yep.

If you want to grow your business, learn how to do it yourself. And you know, you learn how to do it yourself, Bec. Yep. You're not a tech person. You learned it for a very long time and made sure that you knew how to do it in your business. Yes. So yeah, don't spend money like on, on paying people to do it. You know, invest in a program. Come to something like TRIBE's $39 a week. Like come along to TRIBE. You know, you can, you can learn it for free on YouTube. Worst case, like whatever you need to do, but don't pay someone huge money., to do it, like just do it yourself.

Yeah, I totally—

sorry for my rant. Loved it.

Loved it. Number 5, you're not leading your staff. I feel like this could be a whole podcast in itself.

Look, it can be. And that's one of the reasons we see studios not growing is, you know, they just employ staff, they employ— and look, I wouldn't even say— I was very careful not to use the word team. Because I don't think they're running a team. I think there's a random staff member here, a random staff member there, and they're not working cohesively as a team because you're not being the leader that they need you to be. Because when you bring everyone together and you're like a strong leader, you know, that changes it. And you know, you really need to make sure that you're leading them and, you know, becoming the studio you want to be.

Absolutely. I mean, you chose to be a leader.

Mm-hmm.

If you're a studio owner listening to this. And so your staff deserve a great leader. Absolutely. And they need to be led. You know, I was talking to Stephen Townhouse about this yesterday. Yeah. Okay. And saying, you know, it's so— he said he has never— now he's worked in hundreds upon hundreds of studios. Absolutely. He has never once had proper staff training except at my studio. Never, really. Never. He's like, often I just go in. He's like, what if someone hurts themselves? What if, like, am I meant to fill out an incident report? I don't know.

Like, what is that? Crazy.

You know, he said he just walks in, they say hi to him, they close the door, and that's it. And that is so— it's insane. It's insanity, isn't it?

It is. Look, that's just blown my mind in so many ways, especially like, you know, different if it was a once-off or whatever. But he's been on staff at so many studios, and you know, that's not just his story. That's so many people's story, right? And including like young 19-year-olds or 20-year-olds that have come out of full-time or whatever. Yeah, like just like, hey cool, you're here, awesome, make sure you teach them a good routine for the concert, good luck. Yeah, you know, and they're not training them to be part of the team because, you know, you should be running staff training regularly with your team. I know you are really big on it. What are the big things that you think that all staff, regardless of whether they're teachers, admin, um, you know, teaching one class a week, 28 classes a week, what should they all know?

Well, the first thing I want to say is staff training is not you going, put your props away. Like, it's not a staff meeting. It is genuinely training them in things and upskilling them. The biggest thing they need to know is how to close a sale. Every single person needs to know that because they're going to get new people into their class. They need to be confident to go and talk to the teacher, uh, to their parent. Yep. And say, let's get you enrolled, and also upsell the next class.

Yeah, I think that would blow the minds of a lot of people. They're like, oh, my teachers wouldn't do that, they wouldn't know how to do that. But I guess the question is, why? Yeah, why do they not? Do they not want more kids in their class? Do they not want their routine to look better? Do they not want more kids in better formations with a larger number? Like, people need to know that.

Yep, absolutely. And I think what happens is We employ these kids from full-time. Yes. We give them no training. We stick them in a class. We expect them to know how to do everything. And if they don't know how to do it, then we fire them and then we bring someone else in because they just weren't a good teacher. Yeah. You know, a perfect example. I've got this gorgeous girl at the moment who did Brent Street full-time last year, went to America with Paris Cavalli, things, right? Great dancer. Not good with behavior management at all. Yeah. Okay.

So because she's never learned it, right?

So she came in last year, started to teach a class, drowned in there. And so now I'm like, okay, cool, let's upskill you. Yeah, like you just need some upskilling on how to have great behavior management. She's a great teacher, very passionate.

Absolutely. Great with solos.

Why would I just let go of her?

Because she was having a few issues because she'd never— like, she's also not a bloody mind reader.

Exactly.

You've been a teacher for, I don't know, 25, 30— no, more than that, right? 30 years? 35? I'm old. But you know what I mean? Like, you— so you've learned skills along the way, you know, and you've taken knowledge from different people along the way, and you have so many skills to share with that young teacher, you know, and it's so important that we're training the staff consistently. So they need to know how to learn, um, close a sale. They also need to know about what we stand for and what we want out of our business, right? What our values are, what our ethos is, what we want our studio to be about, because it's different for everybody.

Absolutely. You know, I'm just going back to teachers.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, they absolutely do love it. They love the upskilling. And, you know, Stephen was at my studio last night and he's doing these incredible talks at the moment. Now, Stephen and I worked together for 7 years. I was the first person to employ him as a teacher. And after the talk, he said to me, okay, Bec, give it to me. What, what, what can I change? What do I need to do better? And That's because when I was employing him, we always had that conversation about his routines, about choreography. Yep. And he is one of the most famous choreographers on the planet, but he will still ask for feedback and want it.

And that's why he is so good, right? Yeah.

But I also think there's a lot of young teachers who would love that feedback. I mean, I know we're going to talk behavior management in a different podcast, but that room was packed.

Yes.

You know, like it was one of the busiest sessions. And that just tells me that people need this. These teachers need to know how to have behavior management. They need to know how to clean a routine. They need to know how to positively teach. There's so many things they need that we're not giving them as leaders, and we need to do that. So I'm very passionate about it.

Absolutely. And let's be honest, most of us studio owners were teachers first.

Yeah.

So we're not just here to teach children how to dance. We're also now, you've put yourself as, you know, you've become a business owner, you've made this choice. And so you're now here to teach your team and lead your team as well and impart knowledge. And look, it doesn't mean you have to have all the answers.

No.

And don't think that you ever do, like, have to. And that's what, like, in a team training, for example, I know at Paws, you often get different teachers to run different parts of it. This teacher's great at, you know, this staff member's great at this. Let's all talk about it together. Lead the discussion doesn't mean you have all the answers. Um, and I think that's really important as well. So if you are not running a staff training, you know, really think, what are you leaving on the table? Because it is so easy to, for kids just to drop by the wayside. They, they leave the studio for whatever reason. You know, we're here today to talk about growth of our studio, but we can't grow our studio if we just keep dropping off a couple of kids every now and then. When I, ooh. I'm just throwing myself at the microphone now. Um, if we don't have that consistent, um, retention going on, then we're going to lose our students. And if you're not doing a great job of training your staff, you are going to lose kids.

Absolutely. Well, we hope you have enjoyed today's session of 5 Reasons Your Studio Isn't Growing. We always say, you know, you might feel a bit overwhelmed after listening to this because we've said so many things. Change just one thing today.

Absolutely.

Just, you know, after you've listened to this, just go, Go back to your office or your computer and just go, okay, what's the one thing that really spoke to me then? You know what, I need to spend more time on social media. I'm going to block the time in on a Wednesday from 9 to 11, and that is it. That is my social media time. Yes. Like whatever it is you've listened to, just change that one thing.

Yeah, one thing. I love that so much. Hey, so much fun. Thank you for letting me go on random rants, talk about unicorns, any of those things, talk about babies, uh, nice birthday presents, all of the things. Amanda Barr, it's been so good to chat. I hope you've enjoyed this week's podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dance Principals United podcast. If you'd love to learn more from us, we have a special offer just for our podcast listeners. Go to the link in the show notes right now to get 2 weeks free in Dance Principals United Tribe. We would love to see you there.