Behind the Scenes of Studio Success: Real Stories and Lessons Learned

Hello and welcome back to the Dance Principles United podcast. Last week's episode, our hundredth episode, was an epic episode. We've had so much great feedback over the week. So many people really enjoying Amanda and Beck sharing their entire dance studio owner story from the very start of them owning their studios all the way through. Look, we didn't quite get to today because we needed to split it up into two episodes. So today's episode is the second part of that episode. If you haven't already listened to last Week's episode, episode 100, I highly recommend jumping back and giving it a listen. But we hope you enjoy the second part of the story.

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.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to this week's podcast, episode 101. If you missed episode 100, guys, it was a big celebration. It was a lot. It was look, probably one of our best yet, if we're honest. We went really deep.

Wow, that's a lot.

It went really deep into the dance sensations and Paul's journey went back to the very start of both Amanda and Beck Studio, completely throwing open the doors onto how they built their studios into the amazing businesses that they were. So if you've got some time, highly recommend jumping back in and listening to episode 100.

Hang on, Nath, I feel like you went back to when we were first dance class.

Oh, yeah, we did. Yeah. We went way back.

We went way back.

We went to childhood trauma.

It was epic. Anyway, sorry, I digress, I digress.

But we got to that point where we're like, oh, we've actually been going for a little bit too long now. We probably need to cut it off. And then we thought, you know what, we're going to just keep going because we felt it was really valuable. So we thought, let's finish it off in episode 101 of the Dance Principles United podcast. And let's finish off the pause slash dance sensations journey. How do we think? What do we think?

Let's do it.

Amazing.

Excited.

So where we left it from a dance sensations perspective, we were just talking about how we'd gone through and we'd opened up Shell Harbor. We put it all on the line.

We took so much money.

A huge fuck off.

So much money.

And yeah, we had our mate run off with $30,000, which put us really close to the edge. But in the end, it all paid off. So we had our brand new studio in chill harbour in 2015. We were running three studios there, three studios in our original location down in Kiama. How did we navigate those first, those couple of years of running both locations?

Look, we did like. Well, I'm going to say. Well, I'm going to go for. Well, it was a lot. It was a lot because I knew I had to hustle hard. And we got Shell Harbour, as I mentioned, up and running really quickly. We did really great numbers by the end of our first year and we were super proud of that. But I also had a newborn and a toddler and I was running two studios that were both quite big and I. I like to support my team. I'm all about being there for my team at all times. And so I was going back and forth between their locations every night, checking in on them, being there for them, you know, not wanting to leave them before clothes, doing all the things and look, it was great. We were actually doing really well. The business was absolutely thriving that first year. We had cash flow problems and there was a few, like, teething issues. But then we kind of got into year two of doing that and year three and it was thriving. I think the biggest thing that happened during that time was we brought on an A player.

Yep.

It was a big thing. Right. It was the first time in our business we'd had studio managers.

Yep.

I'm using in inverted commas before, but studio managers that, you know, had grown up my studio and had done some admin for me and I, you know, promoted them or whatever and they were great at the time, but they didn't bring anything new to the table.

They were using the. Your training, our system and everything that we'd done, it was. It was all in house.

Absolutely. And like lovely people and they were great at the time. But we decided to take a, you know, a big financial risk to be honest, and pay what we believed was an A player, which is Cara. Right. And Beck's voice, she's like. She's doing the voice, the faces, but not the voices today.

Well, I don't know all of your story. I mean, I did know you at the time, but probably didn't know all the ins and outs.

And we decided to take a big risk and bring on an A player. And Cara, those of you who don't know, was the studio manager at Dance Sensations. She's now works for us Inside Dance Principles United and is an incredible asset to our company, Dance Principles United. She supports all of our studio growth club members through all of their back end systems and does some incredible things for them. Anyways, we brought her on and it was a lot of money. It was a big jump on wages from what we'd paid previously to a, you know, studio manager. But you know, it's that thing, right?

Again, risk versus reward.

Risk versus reward. We brought someone in who I didn't need to give the ideas to that helped me with the ideas that we, you know, worked in collaboration. She, you know, came in with a different background, not a dance background, even though she did dance as a child. But that was, you know, many years before. Just, you know, for a little bit she didn't come in with a dance background and came in and gave so many new ideas to our business and that really helped us explode with those two locations.

Now I want to say this to our listeners and Nath, you'll be so blown away by how awesome I am by saying this. You guys are saying like you bought on this very expensive person. But this would have one been a totally calculated risk and you guys had worked your guts out to get the student numbers in and the class placements in for you to be able to afford this person. It's not like you were just like, we're at rock bottom, let's bring in this magical person.

Oh, absolutely.

And I think like that can be a bit of a facade in our world because I've had studio managers as well as you both know, and, and I think sometimes people can look from the outside in and be like, yes, that's the answer to all my. Yes, yes, exactly. But it wasn't that, right?

No, exactly. I think that's something. I'm glad you brought up the numbers side of it, Beck.

I'm over this now.

But yeah, I think that we see too many people thinking that getting in that studio manager is the solution. And it's not because, sorry, it's not solely the solution. Like Manda said, we had worked out absolute guts out and done so much of it ourselves and we knew that by bringing that person in was going to allow us to step up and do even higher level tasks again and continue to grow the business to the level that we needed it to be to support these, these two locations and the building costs and everything that was going with it. So we, it's one of those things that we were at a point where, yes, we've built up the cash flow to be able to do it and but we're still taking a little bit of a risk. But we are confident that bringing on this amazing new person will help us to get that extra growth even more quickly. It wasn't just a. It is something we unfortunately see too many studio owners do. I think get, oh well, I'm a bit bored of doing those things so I'm going to bring somebody on or I can't be bothered doing those things anymore. So I'm going to bring somebody on without being able to afford it. So I think it's a super important point to make.

Beck Cara on. Before that, Nathan had actually come full time in the business as well. He'd left his other full time job and was working solely at the studio.

Well, we'd opened a tutoring business as well.

We opened a tutoring business. Yeah, that happened too. We opened a tutoring business at the same time and we actually had three staff tutoring for us and had a couple of hundred kids in our tutoring center as well. School tutoring, at school tutoring, like after school tutoring, group lessons and stuff. So we're running both of those. But yeah, things were great and then we sort of talked about combining. But I think maybe let's jump back over to. We can jump into pause now. I feel like I've been talking for a little while and I'm okay. It gets a bit concerned.

You want to pass about that sip of champagne?

Basically I'm gonna take over as an interviewer.

No, no, hey, hey, hey. That's my job. So we're talking about, I think we left the pause journey back where you just got the loving kick up the ass from your mentor told you that you could basically come here and keep crying every week or you could just step up and actually do the shit. And you chose the path of stop stepping up and doing it. So what were those sort of years, let's say like you know, 2015 to sort of 2019, 20ish. What was the growth? How did you invest in your studio and take those steps to build it up?

Yeah, it's interesting because I think I mentioned like my studio had always been seniors. We were very top heavy. You know, I'm talking, we had, we had like 40 to 45 seniors in our troop. And that was tricky because when we were doing comp you were only allowed to have 40 or 30 or whatever it was. So we'd actually had reserved in our senior troop. I don't know if you've ever heard.

Of that, but it was crazy.

Yeah, it was crazy. But then I probably had six in my six and under troop. So, you know, reversed all that, started to work really hard at preschool and just chipped away at it. And that's the best way for me to say it to everyone out there is we literally chipped away and just started consecutively marketing preschool every day of the year, getting the leads in, working on our customer service. And I say working on our customer service because it is working on it. You know, you've got to make that customer service journey so amazing for people to come in, enroll and stay. So I really started working on that and we just started to see those results of those preschoolers getting slowly, slowly, because I think people think this happens overnight and it totally doesn't.

You didn't go 12 to 300 in two weeks.

Definitely not. That was years in the making. And slowly just chipping away, chipping away, chipping away. And just starting to see then the follow through of that. And that's the exciting part. It's like you start to see the preschool build and then you start to see that next age group, the fives and sixes are getting a little bit bigger now, and then you starting to see the eights get a little bit bigger. And so that's sort of how that all worked, I guess.

Amazing. I'm going to throw a question at you then. Yes, because this is something we do see with studio owners because we work with so many studios that experience epic growth, like you're talking about. They put in the work, they turn up to all the trainings and they experience epic growth, which comes with so many positives. But one thing, it's a slight negative we sometimes see is that there's sometimes little growing pains, sometimes around team, sometimes around the OG families and things like that. Did pause, experience any of those growing pains with team and all families.

So much so I can't even begin to tell you. I think I made a lot. Oh, gosh. It's so. It's hard to say whether it was mistakes or whether it was part of the growth. But we definitely started to drop the seniors off because I was so focused on that bottom part. I think there were other factors that came into that, which I know we're going to chat about later. I think people were getting cranky that I was so focused on preschool and not focused on other things on Instagram. And definitely, like, we definitely see drop offs. You know, my focus changed as well. I had a little boy in there too, and I think that really changed and I was trying to spend more Time with family and less time with my seniors because I was there less at night. So, yes, that change definitely had ebbs and flows. Absolutely no doubt about it. Do I regret any of it? I don't. I don't regret it because I think we're in such an insanely strong position now in the business that it was worth it. But yes, we went through difficult times.

For sure because does in. We'll jump forward. But before we jump back, does in 2024, Paul still have incredibly trained, amazing seniors now? Yes, 100%. Yeah. Does your business now make heaps more money than it was?

Oh, I can't even begin to tell you guys how crazy that is, which is why I'm so passionate about helping other studio owners to grow this business of their dreams. Because it was so detrimental at the time that I was talking to you guys about when I had that epiphany moment that, you know, it was literally do or die. Like I was going to have to get rid of the studio altogether or go into ridiculous amounts of debt and not cope in life. And now, yes, it is exponential and I'm very grateful for all the things. So yes, absolutely. But I think it's that consistency that was key. Regardless of whether you're. It doesn't matter where you're consistent. It is that consistency that is key and the hard work that is key. I think I kind of didn't work that hard. I did work hard, but not on the right things. Yeah, like, I did work hard on the, you know, like we used to have these epic designs like we were talking about today. Like the concerts that I used to do for pause. And we still have epic things. I'm not saying that. But we used to do these crazy concerts with exactly. Props and sets and scripts and you know, like. And it was. I was all about that and not enough about the business and growing the numbers and also affecting more kids in a positive way. I think that's the key.

Right.

100%. And I think at the end of the day, you didn't have. I think that's what sometimes we see especially in like the studios we work with, with that higher level, those higher level students, sometimes when we start working with them, they think, oh, I'm gonna have to give all that up. No, you don't. Like you're still going to be able to have.

It actually means you can put more money into those things.

100.

That's something for me that I really feel like if you are someone who thrives on that creativity and thrives on, you know, putting those incredible productions on and, you know, the sets or the costumes or the whatever, by, you know, changing your business to be a more financially viable business model allows you to put more money into that.

Totally.

Yeah, absolutely. And create that amazing creative vision that you've got going on.

Yeah, 100%. Because we know that the students at the bottom end are so much more profitable than those at the top end.

Yeah.

So you've got more money to play with in lots of things that you do.

Absolutely.

All right, so we're back across to the dance sensations journey. You've had a bit of a rest, Manda. It's okay. We're back around that 2018 mark when we made the absolutely huge decision at the time to close your first baby and combine both of our locations into our big, new, brand new home in Shellharbour.

Yeah. And it was a really big decision. It was something that took me. You remember Bec.

I remember you guys.

Took me about eight months to do the decision.

Well, I think I was on maybe two or three retreats with you guys, which are probably six months apart, if I remember correctly. When we met in person. And all three of those retreats, that was your thing to work on at the retreat was like. And you were so torn by the decision, and it was such a big moment for both of you to let go of that, which I didn't really understand enough at the time. But I really get it now, obviously, that I'm such good friends with you both. But I feel like it was such an epic moment for you. Right?

It was. You know, as we talked about before in the last episode, if you missed that, we spoke about that. You know, my first studio was in Kaima. It's a small town and it's a. It's a community.

And where we both went to high school.

Absolutely. We did all those things. And, you know, I was known in that, and I felt. I felt that connection to those students. We all have that. Everyone. Everyone that's listening to that podcast understands that connection that we feel to those kids. So I've been playing with the idea of combining our studios from a purely financial perspective. From a financial. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to be really clear with that wording that I just used. Combining our studios, not closing one.

Yes.

Sorry. That was my fault of earlier. Sorry, everyone.

Absolutely. And that was something we played around with, and it took me a year to kind of, like, get that wording right. And it was something. It wasn't just done, like, a snap decision. Snap decision. There was so much that went into that, and I really played around with the messaging to my families, how I was telling them, when I was telling them, the wording I was using to tell them. There was so much that went into that, and it did really well for us. But let's start by talking about the numbers. And I feel like this could almost be a podcast in itself because I know so many other people sort of struggle with the location things and having multiple locations, whether it's a good thing, bad thing, you know, whatever. So as we mentioned on the last one episode, we had this huge Shell harbor building, and we weren't even using.

Like, using like, 35% of the square space, maybe.

Absolutely.

And to start with, we just couldn't afford to renovate the rest.

But we put. So, yeah, we started with three, like.

Very pretty big studios.

130 square meter studios.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there was three of those and a reception and, you know, all of those things as well. But we basically just like, boarded up the rest of it because we just couldn't afford to renovate it. It had a commercial kitchen that you had to be. Pull it out and you had to, you know, do all these things. We just kind of, like, shut the doors, locked the doors on it, and just left it, and it was all just sitting there. So we really looked at the numbers and we looked at what, you know, renovating that new studio and making it bougie. AF was, which, as you saw my studio when we first opened it, it was.

Yeah, we went all in again, as we do 100.

I think you have to.

Yeah. And it was a beautiful studio space with six really beautiful studios, an incredible reception, offices, all the things for a small town. It was a very bougie. I don't even know if it's even just for a small town. Right. It's a pretty vicious, dude.

Far out. Like, it was amazing.

You know, all the furniture that was custom done on point. Like, it was beautiful and.

Sorry, I'll just jump in. You said, like, we looked at the numbers and when we look at the.

I'm coming back to the numbers. Give me a minute. Sorry. For those that don't know, we are in Bali at the moment. We've had a huge day at a seminar today. We've had four days learning, and we're recording this podcast tonight and probably getting a bit hangry as we're. So sorry for cutting you down there, Nath. Anyway, so we looked, you know, we had this great space that we knew we had our potential in. We had three studios in Kiama and we're like, hey, we could put many more than three, but let's start with three more at our Shell Harbour location and combine locations, bring all our people up. But we were so clear on the numbers. We sat there and looked at how many of the kids and I can't remember exactly what our renovation costs were, but it was about 200 grand or something similar to that. We're like, okay, if we spend 200 grand on the renovations just to do that second kind of half of that. We stopped paying our rent in Kiama. How many kids do we still need to bring across to be at the exact same amount? And we looked at it and we played with it and we played with it really hard. And we knew the exact, exact percentage of children we needed to bring across from Kiamba to Shell Harbour to make the numbers work. And when I mean exact.

So this is where. This is where I can jump in and give, like, I literally, guys pulled every single one of our students out exactly how much they were paying. This last year I went in and I ran like, I'm a bit of a maths nerd, obviously, but I built spreadsheet models on looking at exactly what percentage of students we needed to retain from shellharbour and what percentage of students we needed to retain from Kiama. Had all these tables going left, right and centre. So we like literally knew.

We sat there and highlighted kids and went there a yes, there a maybe, there a no, looked at their address, looked how far it was for them to drive, looked how committed they were to it. Okay, this is scenario number one. Now scenario number two. I know that kid. Let's change them from a maybe to a no. Let's do that. And we actually sat there and we knew the numbers. We ended up only needing about, I think it was about 55% to come across. And it did make the drive for some people up to about half an hour. So it was a decent sized drive for them to come across. We ended up taking like 89% of the kids across. However, it was, if I say so myself, done very well and very planned. Because it wasn't just something we decided spare of the moment. We had planned the exact way we were going to announce it, the wording we were going to use. I mentioned before how we're going to make it exciting, how we're going to entice them up, what new things we were going to offer them. We actually, even the year before, sort of like slowly started with a few bits and pieces to try and get them to drive up there.

Just happened to have those troop rehearsals.

Up at Shelter with everybody and doing bits and pieces like that on purpose. And also by making it super exciting by, like, revealing, you know, we spent the money getting 3D, you know, CAD drawings or whatever they're called, even though we didn't really need them, but to show people what. How incredible this place was going to be and why they needed to come. And when we made that decision, that was where our studio really took off. Because I could focus on one place and yeah, we kind of went from strength to strength there, which was incredible. And such a good financial decision for us.

Yeah, absolutely. Because. Yeah. And maybe, like you said, maybe it's a whole other podcast. Maybe leave us some feedback. The comments here. If you'd like another podcast about the whole two locations v1 locations. Because there was a lot to it. Staying on top of it as the CEO of a dance studio, as you guys all know, is a tough job. And so much of it is connected to you. So, yeah, trying to split yourself two ways does. Does get difficult. Yeah, for sure. Sorry, I felt like I cut you off there.

What was that? No, absolutely. Look. And that was really when our studio started to grow after we did that. 2018 really grew from there. Things were doing so, so well until. Bum bum bum. Well, not until ba ba ba. But let's talk about.

Yeah.

2020.

2020. A huge year for. Look, we don't even need to tell everybody why it was a huge year. Right. But allowed us to start many new adventures. But we'll circle back to that in a minute. Bec, tell us about how Pause did all things Covid in 2020. How did you guys attack it and approach it?

Hey, can I ask beforehand?

Yeah.

Where were you at before COVID Like, it was probably almost your, like, peak before your peak now, Right? It was the first big peak.

Totally.

Before you kind of had a drop and then peak to gain, obviously.

Yes.

As you know, Covid did to us, like, where were you before? Like, you know, because we haven't really gone. Okay, where were you at?

Yeah, I don't even know if you guys know this. So we were at a point before COVID and literally just before. So 2019, the end of the year, where I was like, I think I need more space. Cause we were drowning in the space we were in and really drowning, especially in our afternoon classes. We only had four studios, and I could see that the numbers in those studios were getting crazy. And so next door to us Was actually a gym. And the gym left there and relocated. And so that premises was up for rent.

I remember that.

Yeah. And so I think it was January or February. When did you go to America, Amanda? It was. Right, okay. So I think it was February, just before Amanda went to America. And I had a different business mentor at the time, and he was like, 100%, you should go all in on this. You know, you need the space. This is something you should do. And I had a friend at the time who said to me, Covid's a thing. And I was like, is it?

Yeah.

And he was like, Covid is 100% a thing. You need to think about this. You need to start getting your team ready for Covid. I'm telling you, this is a problem. And so I decided not to go all in on that. Thank God. Extra rent in that premises, because it was what, a month later that we would have, you know, been paying that extra.

Remember speaking to you on the phone whilst I was in America about that, and that was like, what, like two weeks before we went into lockdown or something like that. Yeah.

And like, I think because Amanda and I both. Well, she was in America and she was seeing it happening, I had this friend saying, this is going to happen. I think because we were both on the forefront of that, it made our lives a lot easier through Covid, definitely. But my business was 100% at the best point it had ever been.

Do you remember the numbers or.

I think we'd probably be around where we are now, so, you know, about 600 kids, we probably were hitting the 250 mark in preschoolers. And for four studios, 600 kids is a lot of choice.

And you also have a huge class average as well.

Oh, 100%. Yeah. And also, like, one of our studios is very small, so even fitting 12 kids in that studio is. You know what I mean? So there was. It was epic there of an afternoon. Like, it was freaking crazy. So I think, yes, we were at our peak financially and kids wise and all of the things. And I'm so grateful that we were on the forefront of that, knowing that that was going to happen. But obviously it was huge for everyone and people didn't see it coming, which was horrendous.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Do you remember? And, like, similar for us, really, the fact that we'd had the full year. 2019 was our first full year of our combined location.

Absolutely smashing it. We're doing so well financially. You know, really, the first time we'd. We'd hit the seven Figure revenue a few years before that, but it was the first time we were really seeing the profit come from those seven figures as well.

Because of the investments in the renovation?

Yeah, sorts of. Because we'd sort of paid off some of those. We'd combined out rents and we were making really great money, which was awesome. Which was so, so exciting. And then, as we sort of mentioned, I was in America. It just so happened that I was there late Feb.

Early March.

Yeah, late Feb. Early March. And you know, Covid wasn't a thing in Australia. I remember my dad said to me, make sure you sanitize your hands. I'm like, oh, for God's sake, dad. Like, what are you talking about? You're being so over the top. When I left. But whilst I was in America, only for about 10 days, towards the end of that 10 days, like, shit was getting real. And it wasn't at home, but it was getting super real in la. And it was interesting. We had a couple of friends in the States as well who were like, you need to start prepping for this. And it was a really interesting moment because Bec and I, Nath and a couple of other friends, Michelle Hopper, Doyle, Casey, there was a couple of us, we started jumping on a few calls and we're like, hey, what if this is a thing? Yeah, what if this is a thing? And Cara, we talked about Cara before, who was my incredible studio manager. And she's a. She's a prepper, right? She's an absolute prepper. So she started like writing emails, setting up landing pages, getting some things ready. Because she's like, what if we were going. Gonna have to go online? I'm like, no, that'll never happen. She's like, dance classes.

No.

And she's like, let's just. Let's just write an email just in case.

A few emails.

Let's write an email.

Let's start making a landing page.

Let's play around with how that would work. And I'm like, no, that's a waste of time. She's like, no, I'm gonna get this happening. And so we kind of all played around and we had quite a few, like, late night zoom calls where there was a. A few of us in the dance space and we're all kind of like.

I don't know if it was zoom. I feel like it was Facebook Messenger. I feel like we didn't.

There probably wasn't zoom. No, you're probably right. But it was definitely. It was a video call of some description.

I had a similar Situation where I was like, okay, Zoom needs to now be a thing. And I think my studio manager at the time was pretty on top of that. And we were, like, researching Zoom, finding out all the things about it, finding out how it all worked so similar to you in your situation. You guys were looking at emails and blah, blah, blah. We were looking at Zoom and how we can do those online classes and how we can make it all work. I think we both did it quite differently over that time, though. Am I right in saying that?

In some ways, yes. I think we're both being proactive on it, for sure.

I think that was the case.

You know, we. The week before the lockdown happened, went, hey, let's do an online class, everyone, for free. Let's just try it. And tested a whole heap of things.

Tested all our team.

We got all of our team in, our staff in, and they were like, we are not doing an online class. I'm like, yeah, we're just gonna do it for fun. Let's just see what happens. Let's do a junior workshop and a senior workshop just for fun. And we, like, practice. I think it was almost like 10 days before, which was like, you know, 10 days before doesn't sound like a.

Lot, but it was.

It was.

Oh, my God. Yeah.

Cause everybody was in denial.

Everyone was still in denial that it was going to happen. And we're like, let's just practice. Worst case, we have fun for an hour, and we like, let's just practice. We were practicing our tech. We were practicing all these things, which was, you know, it was obviously a very interesting time. And I, like, tell me, like, what did you end up doing over Covid? To be honest, can't even remember because it's all such a blur.

How did you. I remember because I feel like I was quite controversial. Surprise, surprise of how I did things and got a lot of flack for it, but not from my parents, which is interesting. Probably from more from the dance community as a whole. But we didn't change our prices at all. And we did every single class online.

And I swear we did the same.

Okay. And had every single studio operating as if the kids were there. We didn't take our kids, our teachers, into the studio. They taught from home. But every class, as if we had our normal four studios. And it literally had pink room, blue room, red room.

All the things log into this.

Yep. And they logged in. And I think. I'm pretty sure the numbers are clear, that we sustained 85% of our students. And the crazy part about that was a lot of our students were preschoolers and even with our preschoolers, they still sustained, but we also did a lot of extra things, which I know you did. So we did, you know, weekend for free.

This. Yeah, craft.

Blah, blah, blah. Like, my. My staff went above and beyond. I have to say, I was so proud of them every day through that. But, man, we worked our guts out. And like, I'm talking, like we did cooking classes and craft classes and disco for the kids and. But because we gave so much extra value, I feel like parents were so appreciative to us. And, you know, kids were bored at home and we were making kids not bored at home and kids were not exercising. We were getting kids to exercise. And I think that was the key.

Absolutely.

And we were educating parents on that as well. We weren't just putting the kids online and that was it. The kids are online and see you later. We were talking to our parents all the time and going, wow, check out what they just did online. And look how amazing this is. And we've got a free dance party and we've got this. And consistently reaching out and connecting with our parents. The other thing we did. Sorry, I'm talking so much.

No, please do.

Was we did a free fitness class for all of our parents. Every single morning I came to them. That was a game changer too, because a lot of our parents felt isolated. I think a lot of our parents felt like they weren't fit at the time. They couldn't do that. And the kids were allowed to come to the fitness class as well. But I think that connected a lot of our parents with our community at the time and felt like they weren't so alone.

Absolutely.

And I felt that too. Cause I was a single mom at the time with two kids and I was the loneliest I've ever been in my whole life. Because, like, I know you guys and couples, like, you at least had each other. Like, when you're a single mum, you literally. I didn't have my parents.

I didn't have any adult connection.

No adult. Yeah. Like I did, obviously, you can call a person. I get the same. It's not the same as being in the room with someone. And when you're in that for like 10 to 12 weeks or whatever it was. It was hectic. So.

Yeah, absolutely. And look, during COVID I was going to say, because we did work on this strategy together, it's just all a bit of a blur.

Yes, we did.

You know, we did the same. We actually. We actually announced that we were going online about half an hour after old.

Scomo did his announcement.

Yeah, we'd already decided with our staff before Scomo had even announced that we had a staff meeting. And we're. We're going online no matter what. We're going online tomorrow. This is what's happening. That was a Sunday night. We were like, we are going online tomorrow.

I think you made the announcement at like 8:30 on the Sunday night, at 9:00pm, before the lockdown had started officially. I had driven into the studio, I'd got a mate. We were laying Internet cables all the way down the hall.

We'd announce to parents we'd done a live. We'd done all the things. Because I think that was a thing that we were fast.

Yeah. Because we went slightly different to you. We still got our staff to come into the studio because they were allowed to. To come into work. And I would. I just preferred them to have the solid Internet that was in the studio because I didn't want any of those issues.

Yes.

I think we had separate locations. I think your location was a bit more rural than mine, if I remember correctly. I'm pretty sure my staff would not allow.

Yeah. But yeah, we did the same thing. We charged parents the exact same price. They did their exact same timetable with their same teacher in their same studio. By the end of that lockdown, we'd only lost about 15%, same as us. Which actually meant, as it happened, financially, we're ahead because we all got the government incentives and all the things. So it meant financially we were actually ahead.

Can I just say, with the government, with people listening, though, if you didn't get that, it's because we had employees at our studios and.

And I had full time employee. A lot of full time employees.

So did I.

And I think if you'd already paid. I've always paid. Right. And paid the correct.

And if you're unsure about that, Nathan, I did a great podcast on it. But like, just remember that anyway. Absolutely.

Look, I think both that is that and like us getting the building, but are examples of when you sometimes take risks and make financial commitments, then sometimes you do get the rewards for that. Like, for us, we took the huge financial risk of combining into one location. It was a big risk at the time. If we still had our rent in Kaima at the time of COVID we would have really, really struggled. But it just so happened that whoever, whichever. Whichever thing that you look to was smiling favourably on us for that around that. And like Bec said, because that we had always paid staff as employees, paid super tax the whole way, all the way through, which is why both businesses qualified for those things.

Well, I hadn't always done that, but I'd learnt my lesson with it.

So, yeah, had been for a while.

Look.

And, you know, we all went through Covid. We've all been there. We don't need to, you know, tell you. We reopened and finished the year back on about 95%. When we reopened in June, from memory, we couldn't run a concert because of our. Our venues. We're still not able to run a concert. We took a huge risk and ran a circus tent concert and did all the things.

Oh, yes, I remember that.

That was one of the best things we've ever done. That never killed me, but that was.

It was incredible. We did that for our concert, which was amazing and we were super lucky. Obviously, we're in New South Wales for those people listening, because I know Melbourne had a different set of circumstances. Victorians, I'm sorry, but that was awesome. But we're pretty much back to where we were. I think you were the same, right. Going into 2021, we're like, yeah, cool. We're back to where we were pretty much.

Yeah. You felt like it was all fine.

2021, we're like, yeah, cool, we've done this. That was hard. But we're pretty much back, back. We were probably down a tiny bit. From memory, I think we're down about 8%, which wasn't a lot like. It was a tiny bit.

Yep, totally.

I think in both of us cases in that one. And it's something that we've talked about a lot this week. I feel like the reason that both of our studios did so well and it's something that we translate into what we do with Dance Principles United now, is that we took action quickly and decisively and we acted on it.

And it's not always right.

No, exactly. But sometimes get it wrong. But in most scenarios, when you do those things, you get it right and you get rewarded for it.

Yeah.

And I'm going to be controversial, as I always am, guys, as you know. But I feel like, as well, we didn't take on the victim mentality of, oh, my God, our life's over.

Yeah.

And I think that's a thing.

Let's get shit done.

It is. But it's a thing with people in business in general that needs to be okay. We have to pivot. Like, who knows what's going to happen in the next 12 months, two years, three years, in business, things will change. You know, when Amanda and I listened to Mark Morris, who said this, things are going to consistently change in business. It's the people who pivot with the change. You can't just stick him. It's like people who stick their feet in the mud and like, social media doesn't work. It's like, you know, these things are changing. Your business has to change with it. The businesses that consistently grow and do all the things change with the times. And Covid was a time.

Yep.

And there's going to be another time that's going to come up and we all have to work with that time. We have to pivot. You can't just stay where you are. That is the worst thing you can do.

Absolutely.

And you have to work hard to stay with it.

Absolutely.

God, I think all of us can say we probably worked harder through Covid than we did at any other time.

Absolutely. As I know I. Every studio owner did.

Of course they did.

Absolutely. Look, 2021 lockdown happened. You know, that was harder for those people in New South Wales. It was harder because it was the second time around. Just like in Victoria, it got harder each time.

Absolutely. Because people were struggling more and.

Yeah. And, you know, it was second time. Like, yeah, that was fun the first time, but now it's not. Not fun. But you know what I mean? It was. It was a moment. So, you know, we. We dropped during the second lockdown. I think you did too. But we were very lucky that we built it straight back up. You know, we didn't have as many opt in. We had not many. We didn't do an opt in. Just to be super clear. We had more drops but they all came straight back, so it wasn't such an issue.

Yeah, I didn't have that experience, but I. I don't know. You guys, like, didn't do the whole online classes. Yeah. You didn't do it as hectic that time. No, no, but I did, so. And again, like, maybe that was the time that I'm thinking, yeah, sorry.

Because we were in regional. Just to be super clear, we only had. We sat right on the border. So our studio was in lockdown, but half of our clients were not actually in lockdown.

Yes.

We, like where we lived, we weren't in lockdown and half of our clients weren't. So it was very hard. It was this weird limbo land because they were still at school and it was just up the road from us.

So we had this, like.

It was a different situation for us because we Were like, you couldn't say to people that weren't locked down, hey, you're not locked down, but you've got to act like you are in the afternoon for dance. That wasn't fair.

Yes, I remember. And so you struggle with that. But I actually just did. I rinsed and repeated.

We did.

And we had total lockdown in our town. So we just rinsed and repeated, did the exact same thing. We did lose less. I think we were at 76 or 77%. It wasn't 85. Like it was the first time. But we just kept those classes going and financially, you know, got through it.

Yeah.

And again, it was an example of, for us doing that change. And you'd. Going back to what you did.

Yeah. Because we're in different areas. We had to do what we had to do.

But we also just made that quick. We analyzed. We saw what was happening. We're like. We sort of felt the room a bit and we're like, yeah, it was.

Your best thing to do.

We can't do it this time. Our parents won't support it.

Yeah.

We looked at the numbers. We knew how. What percentage of our clients were in lockdown and what weren't. That was the hard thing.

100.

And we looked at like the higher end one on which ones are the higher end clients were in lockdown and which. Like, there was a lot going on in there.

You know, which was a really interesting thing for me through Covid was how many scenes is I lost? And I think that was a real game changer. Well, yeah, a lot of people have said that definitely. But for me, like, it was a real. A real, real thing. And it's. It's taken a long time to build that back up, I feel, because they just. The little ones, you could keep engaged online. But the seniors were like, n. I'm out. Yeah, I'm done with this.

It was harder on them, obviously.

A lot more.

Going so much harder wasn't great for their mental health and all those things as well, if they were at that age and all of those things. So should we talk about where we are now? Sure.

Well, look, our. Where we are now could be a completely different story.

Absolutely. But let's go with pause.

Yeah, sure.

Where are you at now? Tell us. Smashing it.

Yes. Like the biggest numbers we've ever had. Definitely the biggest class placements. And I think it's important for our listeners out there to ask, understand I truly believe that class placements are different to numbers. And you know, you can have to student numbers they are because you can have 600 kids in your studio and.

600 class placements or 800 class placements.

Or something like that. You can have 400 kids in your studio and 2000 class placements which is so epic. So I think it's the biggest class placements and student numbers that we've ever really had.

And there are some people out there, Beck, that's the. Still aren't quite sure when we talk about class placements.

Sure.

So if bec, you're enrolled and you're doing jazz, tap and ballet, you're doing three classes and Manda is just enrolled in hip hop and jazz. So between the two of you two students. Two students, you're doing five class placements.

Correct. And look, I didn't know that when I first started out. So there's no judgment here. And I didn't know that for probably the first 12 years of owning my school. So.

But it's important number to know.

It is very important to know. And if you can up your classmates placements, you can up your profit hugely. Anyway, so we are at the biggest point that we've ever been by far. The council is kicking us out of our building as we speak because our building is too small for us and the parking is a nightmare and I totally get it. So we, my beautiful partner Tim and I are about to invest a massive amount of money to relocate Paul's Studios to a new building so that we have six, maybe seven studios. We're building it as we speak. Exciting but scary at the same time. And yeah, that's where we're at. We think it'll be a 250000 to 300000 build which we know is an investment in the future of the business.

That's where we're absolutely so, so impressive.

Absolutely. And babe, where's our dance sensations at?

Well, as we've done another podcast on, we actually sold our studio last year. We sold it at its highest peak which was just under 800 students doing a lot of class placements. Not as high as your average. I know your average at the moment's what like seven point something or something for your.

Yeah, I think. What did I say the other day in. I think it was like 7.5.

Not seniors from kindergarten up is what.

You mean by that. Yeah, it was from kindergarten. So we do swap our class placements out from preschool. We do preschool class placements which I think is 2.2 or something like that. So we do them separate to everyone else. But I don't think it was 7. I think it was like 5.8 or something like that. Amanda, maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like it's been a lot of changes.

We might need to check that.

I'll check it. But I think the point is our class placements, even 5.8 is an extraordinarily high quality.

It's huge.

Absolutely massive.

So we're trying very hard in my business and, you know, to get kids to do multiple classes and to be there more. And I think that profit then is huge.

Class placements is the biggest driver of profit, guys, because it costs a lot more money to bring a new student into your studio than it does to sell a current student an extra one to two classes.

Absolutely, yes, totally. So, yes, our class placements are the best they've ever been. I'm proud of my team for achieving that. That could be a whole thing as well. How do we achieve such crazy class placements within the school? Could be a whole podcast.

But we've been both super proud of our studios and what we've achieved. You know, we both have done well financially from it, but not just well financially, because we know that's not everything to everyone. We've also been able to, you know, impact so many students, lives, so many kids through 20 years. We've both done 20 years plus of business, and we've been able to impact that and employ so many staff to give them, you know, a start in their dance journey or perhaps their working careers before they move on to other things. And we've been so, so proud of that. And that's something we're so passionate about, teaching others in dance and Principles united as well.

Yes, I think that's the key. Like, we've both had very different journeys, as you guys have probably heard from the last two podcasts. But at the end of the day, our passion lies in wanting, wanting studio owners to live the life of their dreams.

Whatever that looks like.

Whatever it looks like. But we know how passionate they are. And whilst we come from very different upbringings in different places, we want all of you out there to smash it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's what we're so, so passionate about. Thank you so much for listening to our like us drone on. I think this is another way too long podcast.

Look, yeah, it's been out for a while, but. But I'm sure the audience is enjoying and I'm gonna pretend I think like.

Telling your life story of two people in two hours is really extra.

So I'm so sorry that you all had to do that. I don't know if you enjoyed it, you liked it.

Let know us know.

We'd love to know whether if there was anything that you were like, hey, I missed that. Tell me more about that bit because we kind of, like, touched on a few things and, yeah, you know, we'd love to hear from you guys about where you'd like to hear this podcast go. You know, we've just reached 100 episodes and we'd love some ideas. So if you heard something that we mentioned today in today's podcast or last week's podcast and you're like, oh, my God, can you just tell me a bit more about that? You didn't really explain that probably. Please let us know because we'd love to do that content for you.

Yep, totally agree.

Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for joining us, everybody. Would love for you to leave a comment or review like the podcast, because if you like it, then it helps us to reach more people and impact more lives.

Thanks, friends. Bye night.