Breaking Old Habits to Grow Your Dance Studio - No Bulls#$t Business Tips 18

Hi, friends.

Welcome to no Bullshit Business Tips by the Dance Principals United team. Each week we're dropping short, actionable tips for you to grow the studio of your dreams. You can find this video on our free Facebook group at Dance Principles United, or check it out here on the podcast as a bonus episode every week. Hope you love it.

Hi, friends. Welcome back to no Bullshit Business Tips with Bec and Amanda. And today we wanted to talk to you about rethinking the old ways of doing things. Now, this is definitely something that I have to keep self reflecting on. And you know, we're always talking to our client studio owners about this and they have to keep self reflecting on as well. But sometimes we just keep doing things because it's what's always been done.

Absolutely. And I think it's just, you know, we all are just creatures of habit, right. And we're like, oh, this was the way it was done when I was a kid. This is how my studio was run. This is how when I bought the studio, this is how I've done it for 10 years or 20 years or whatever in the studio. But is it still serving you? I think that's a question you really need to think, is it still serving you? And is it still serving your clients?

Yes, I think that's the big one. And has it ever really served your clients? Because, you know, back before, we didn't really think about all of this business stuff. There wasn't so much education around everything. But now there is, and so you've got to question things. I'll give you a perfect example. So we've really worked on what we name our classes the last few years. And so, for example, we were still calling it grade one, grade two, Grade three, Grade four ballet. And like, I had to question why we do that, because people get confused because grade three ballet doesn't mean you're in year three at school. So that's confusing. It's also confusing for my staff. Like, obviously my ballet staff would know what age group is meant to be in there, but my staff who aren't ballet, which is most of my reception staff, have no idea. And so I used to have to have this thing that was six years is primary, seven years is grade one. Why don't we just call it six years ballet, seven years ballet on our timetable, which is what we do now. Duh. But we kept it that way for so long.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's just about rethinking how we've always done things in our studio. So whether that's naming the class, the way you do, the timetable, how you audition for your performance teams, you know, how you do the age groups of your performance teams, how you run your rehearsal, your concert, you know, and even just things like the classes that you've always run. Like, you know, for me, I had to rethink. I decided to let musical theatre go. And I know you're big on musical theatre, but it wasn't for me and it wasn't in my studio. So I just kept running that class because I was like, oh, yeah, we have to have a musical theatre class. Why? Why do I have to have a musical theatre class? Do you know what I mean? There's, there's no rules around it. We get to make our own rules. So really rethink what you're doing and really question why.

I'll give you another one. Another example that's probably an unpopular opinion with many of you out there, but I changed it. We used to do these massive rehearsals for concert, right? So we had like weekend rehearsals, then we had the dress rehearsal and it was a lot for parents and we really rethought that and we don't do anything, any rehearsals for concert anymore. It's a game changer for me because my weekends before concert are not completely taken up and it's a game changer for parents because that time of year is super crazy for them and I don't think it made that much of a difference. I don't think doing that all day rehearsal at the concert for them to then be exhausted of the night of concert made the routines that much better. I actually think the routines are better now that they're not exhausted from doing rehearsal all day and they come in fresh and they do a great job on stage.

Absolutely. And that's just an example of the old way, right? Like, you know, running the rehearsal, running the photo day. It's concert time at the moment that we're filming this. And something that we're hearing from a lot of studio owners is about their photo day, that they hate photo day. Sorry to our photographer that's sitting right here. But you know, that's a real big pain point for a lot of studio owners and you know, a lot of both the studio owner and the parent, right? And I said to a few people, like, why are you doing this photo day? They're like, oh, because we always have, you know. And I was like, well, if you don't, if the parents don't like it, no one actually likes the photos. You're not making any money like, why are we doing it? You know? So I really want you to rethink the old ways. What's something that you could rethink today? We'd love to hear about it in the comments because I think sometimes we're just like, ah, but I've always done it.

Yeah. And I think just it's always about that self reflecting, guys. It's like when someone comes to you and says they don't understand why you're doing something rather than just going, oh well, they know nothing about dance or whatever it might be, actually look at it and go, actually that's probably a fair call. I can get why they're confused about that. Let's change how we're doing it. Like, I think it's really great to self reflect.

Absolutely, absolutely. So take some action on this. You know, really have a bit of a brain dump of some things that you're just doing because you've always done them. And we'd love to hear about that brain dump and what you kind of like questioning. And it might not mean that you just get rid of it completely. Maybe it's a new version of it and maybe it's just a bit of a thought process when you're, you know, going through the things in your year that you run as a studio owner.

We'd love to hear this in the comments because there's probably others of us like me who are doing that stuff too. And I can go, yeah, why am I doing that? So make sure you guys let us know in the comments some of the things that you're doing. We'd love to hear from you. Make sure you take some action, guys.