Concerts That Keep Families Coming Back

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.

Well, hi friends, it's Bec here from the Dance Principles podcast. I am here joined by the lovely Amanda. How are you, Amanda?

I am so good. We're doing a big day of podcasting today. It's so much fun. I always love spending the day with you.

So fun. We just had a nice lunch together.

Tough.

Always great. And yeah, we were just chatting over lunch about how many people already are getting ready for concert. And it's crazy.

That's so quick.

I know. Like I am, I am getting ready for concert in the studio and we are, you know, talking about the themes and the music and finalizing all of that and it's still just like it gets so crazily quick. Exactly what you're saying. I can't believe it's already August.

I know. Crazy, right? Absolutely crazy. We wanted to chat about because so many people are talking about it and we, you know, constantly kind of see a few mistakes from studio owners. And what we want for our concerts is obviously to be a great celebration for our students, but what it should be working towards is making sure that the majority of those kids are re enroll for next year. It is our lasting thing of the year. For most of us, most people, it's the big, you know, end of year celebration and it's whether after that, it's when they decide whether they're going to re enroll, whether they're going to tell their friends what a great experience it was or are they going to tell their friends, oh, that was so hard. That was such a drama. Don't you think? It's such a big thing.

It's. Yeah, it's crazy. And I keep self reflecting on this and I've changed my concert so much since I first started because I think you've got to think about it from the parent perspective.

Absolutely.

And you know, I never did concerts from the parent perspective ever. I always did it ego based and then wondered why people left and couldn't understand that. And I just think as well, like our attention span is so much shorter now.

Absolutely.

And people are so much busier than even 20 years ago, than even 10 years ago.

Right. It's crazy. Like life has changed and people expect so much more in terms of the entertainment value. And the professionalism. But yeah, as you said, their attention spans are like very short thanks to Tick Tock life. You know, like it's, it's crazy. People just want like these small things. And so it's super important that we think about concert, you know, not just as a ego driven. And when we say that, we mean that in the nicest of ways because we've done the same thing. Ego driven means it's like, oh, this beautiful, creative and because I love this costume and this is so, oh my God, this dance is really edgy and this is this and this is that, you know, and stop thinking about it like that, that it's for us or for our peers. And think of it as number one, a retention exercise and a marketing exercise that's going to bring more students to your studio. And also a money making exercise as well. Because concert in my eyes and how I've always said it is, it should pay for your six week closure and then some because it's a lot of work. Like it should be a profit and it should be a money making exercise.

Absolutely. And you know, like you said in the first place, it also should be a way for parents to then want to come back to your studio. And if they have an awful time, not just at the concert but before.

The concert in the lead up because they otherwise they put it in their mindset before they even walk in, then.

They'Re definitely not going to come back and they'll do something simpler and easier. And you know, I said it in the last podcast, I'm going to say it now. Not everyone appreciates and loves dance like we do. They don't though. They don't and they don't. We get so upset when they leave, but they don't seem the same value in it.

Yes. Because they don't know what they don't know. Right, exactly. Absolutely. We put together a little, you know, I think it was 11 golden rules for concert planning that you need to be thinking of. And we wanted to of go through a few of those today. Do we think?

Yeah, I think so. So the first one, Amanda, is fewer payments, happier parents.

Absolutely. And this really comes from, you know, asking people to open their wallet. Too many times it pisses parents off and to be honest, it's not always about the amount, but how many times they have to open that wallet or you know, put in the details or you know, obviously we're not all pulling out cash these days, but whatever it is and actually make a payment, you know, it's that interesting Thing because I was really thinking about this. Our school is like an all inclusive school, right? We don't pay for, you know, excursions, camps, anything like that. It's all paid for in our fees, right? Even things like, you know, my daughter gets on a bus to go to sport once a week. I didn't even know that. We didn't cite like, because we signed a note at the beginning of the year. It's all paid for, like there's nothing to do. So it's just that thing, Right. And it's so nice to have that. However, they recently, two weeks in a row had like fundraisers where we had to buy stuff, right. Like, you know, it was a pie drive one week and another week it was like, you know, a bookweek donation or whatever it was, right. And, and they were small amounts of money, very small amounts of money, like, you know, $10 here, $13 there. But God, that pisses me off opening my wallet again. If they'd asked me for $50 up front for all of those things, no problems asking me twice for little bits of money. It's annoying, right?

It's so annoying. And it's like an annoying. It's an extra thing that you have to do then like you've got to go into the parent portal and you've got to pay the money. And I hate that as well.

Yes. And something else you can get as a parent.

Yes. I would much rather just pay once, have it over and done with.

Absolutely, absolutely. And so when we're talking about asking parents to open the wallets, what we mean by that is quite often we see studio owners that ask for costume payments. Obviously got to be done, right. Then they ask for maybe a concert day fee. Then they ask for photo money or DVD money or download money or whatever that is. Oh, and by the way, you need to buy stockings. Come in and buy your $10 stockings. Oh, and I forgot to tell you that you also now need to get this lipstick. That's $20. Here you go. All of these things just means that they've got to open their wallet so many times. So really think about how many times you're asking your parents to open the wallet and see what you can combine, you know, into a package, like a concert performer package that includes their dvd, their, the stocking, like whatever it is, the rehearsal day fee, all of those things. You can have so much happier parents, so much happier.

And it just makes it so much easier. And I think that's the key. And God, I am even thinking about things now like, do we really want to make parents buy five or six costumes? You know, can you do those three in one? I've seen some great three in one costumes now, where they have the ballet skirt, then they have the unitard that can be for acro, and then they put the jazz skirt on. Like, it's just. It's easier for your backstage. It's easier for your parents.

Yes.

I actually think you could then put more of a markup on that. Like, you know what I mean by that? Like, you could put a 50 instead of a 15 on each different costume.

Absolutely.

And still. And just make it simpler.

Yes. People like simple things. They like one payment, even if it's larger. And I think that's so, so important. And I feel like a lot of studios also break up their payments too small. Right. I was having this thought, like, I was sitting the other day at Flip Out.

Right.

As you do. I was working at Flip Out. I had gone there with four kids and me. You know, I'd paid all their entries. I'd bought a coffee. They're all about to hit me up for a milkshake. You know, all of those things. Nearly every one of your dance parents does that quite often on a Saturday. You know, in the school holidays, pretty much every day. And I wasn't walking out of that place without spending $120.

Easily.

Easily. Like, we haven't even gotten to lunch yet. Like. Yeah. And I so often see studio owners breaking up payments like that. And I think that's a really, like, why, you know, like, if a costume is $80 or the fee is $80, why are you doing it two installments of $40? Like, why are you opening. Asking them to open their wallet? I do understand. If it's a $1,000 costume bill, I get that. Like, it should be broken up. And I think that's good for budgeting. But if we're talking anything sub 100, don't split it into multiple things, because I guarantee you, those parents, that's a normal part of their week. If they've got a family of four and they're getting Dominoes on a Saturday night, it's $100. Domino's doesn't say, would you like to pay that off over two weeks? You know, like, it's that thing. So I really think you're actually pissing the parents off by asking them more times. You're creating more admin work and more headache for yourself. Just. Just do it. One lump sum. And don't overcomplicate it. I Guess. I love it. I love it.

Okay, so fewer payments, happier parents.

Yes.

The next one is take the work off parents plates.

Absolutely.

And can I just say, I remember when I was growing up dancing, my mom had to sew the costumes. She had to put the sequins on the costumes. I remember her vividly. Remember her downstairs in our laundry swearing and carrying on and going crazy because she's trying to make costumes at 10 o' clock at night.

Yes.

And we just shouldn't be like that anymore. And look, back in the day we didn't have costume companies that you know.

But a lot of people didn't dance because of that.

Oh, 100%. So yeah. What, what do we think we can.

Take off the parents obviously sewing costumes.

Number one, do not sticking diamantes on costumes.

Even little things like don't ask your parents to sew elastic on a hat.

Yeah.

Like yes, I know they should all be able to do it, but it takes two seconds. Just do it all. Don't ask them to do it. It just pisses parents off. Right. Like I, yeah, I think you should take all of those things, costumes off their plate. They should be given to them as like ready to go. The same as like running around for extras. You know, don't ask them to go, oh, so here's your costume. But by the way, you're going to need tan jazz tights and I don't sell them. You've got to go over to the dance shop or you're going to need these special black fishnets or whatever it is. Right? Yeah, I don't sell them. So there's a dance shop, here's the address. Go and get them from that. Like we at this in 2025, no one should be doing that. You can all stock stockings, you can all get wholesale prices on them. You know, all of those things. You can include it in the costume fee so that then it's not hey. And then you've got to do this extra work because it's extra work on parents and people are like flat chat for time at the moment.

Yes. We're so big on giving our costumes out with absolutely every single thing that they need. And I'd rather mark the costume up and, and do that than try and.

Ask them to do those things. It's just such hard.

No one has time for that.

No one has time for that. The other things that you really need to be taking off the parents paints is, you know, anything really that requires them to do anything. So what I mean by that is, you know, Payments should be taken via direct debit if possible. Like don't make them come in and pay you for that separately and oh, have to remember to do that. Oh my gosh. My absolute pet peeve. Opt ins for concert or signing a piece of paper. Agree. Like anything like that. I'd be the mum that would just forget to sign it.

Oh, same. I always forget to sign things for my kids.

School.

I'm terrible with that.

See, that's what I started saying about my kids. So school. Yeah. That we sign one note at the beginning of the year.

That's such a game changer. I would sign the note right now for everything. Happy for all the things.

Absolutely. Because you want to make it easy for parents and giving them a, like an opportunity not to opt in. Like that's just saying, oh, I don't want to do. Like people don't know what they don't know.

Yep.

And I think it's just a chance for them to go, oh no, I won't do that. Oh, I have to sign a note. That must be really serious and hard. You know, obviously if people don't want to do the concert, you allow them to opt out but you don't do an opt in ever. Please don't ever do an opt in. Such a bad choice.

Can I flip this and look at it a different way? Don't make that hard for their hair.

Oh, no.

Why are we doing these crazy difficult hairstyles? Like not every parent is capable of doing that.

I can't braid. I don't know how to braid. Like it's so hard.

You don't know how to braid.

It's a real problem. I could not braid but like I couldn't cope with doing braids.

But also like difficult makeup. And I remember when I was used to make the sixes have makeup, right?

Yeah.

And then when BB was 6, I could not get makeup. Now she's obsessed with makeup. But I couldn't get makeup on that child's face. Like it's actually hard. And especially like because she's got a Chinese background. Do you know how hard it is to get mascara on? You know, like eyes that don't have the lashes that go up.

Her lashes go straight out. Yeah.

And then she's blinking and there's black all over her eyes. And it was just so hard. And I was like, why am I doing this? This is crazy to make parents go through these.

It's so hard. Exactly that. And it's just like, what can you do to make it a little bit Easier for your parents. Every single thing that you're doing is like, is this easy for my parents or is this actually quite hard? Because every time you're making them do something hard, whether that's putting makeup on them, going running around for stockings, signing, remembering to find the note, to sign the note, to send it in, or to answer an email email, or remember to go into the portal, or remember to drop into the studio and pay for something. You're pissing them off, and it's making them less likely to want to do the concert, less likely for them to have a good experience. And they're already going to be angry by the time they get to concert day. So you've really just got to think about, what can I do to make it easier for them?

It's letting go of the ego of things. That's really what it is. And I just want to give you a perfect example. Okay, so for our preschool concert, we're doing different colored costumes for different colored days. The same costume. Right. But Monday will be orange, for example. Tuesday will be blue, blah, blah. We have kids that come on two different days and do two different things. So my team said to me, are you going to have a problem that you potentially could have eight blue kids on stage and two pink? Is that going to be an issue for you now? Ten years ago, Amanda, that would have been a massive issue for me.

I'm sitting here having, like, a mild panic attack as you're saying that.

But why? Why is that so important?

Yeah, because no one cares. No one cares.

They're only looking at their own child. We care. It's not symmetrical everything, but, like, does it really matter in the scheme of things?

Absolutely.

That's the stuff you've got to let go of. You know, does it really matter if their hair is not in 10 braids with a, you know, six little zigzag parts? Like, you know what I mean, though?

Yeah.

And you've got to think about the journey of that. Like, I hate people. Even for comp. I'm, like, trying to simplify our hair so much now for comp, because I just think there are literally sometimes those kids probably, and parents have to get up at 5am that was me last Sunday.

Yep.

Like, how pissed off are you at 5am trying to do your child's hair?

We only had buns, but it was still like 5:00am yeah, absolutely. I had to do two girls.

Girls hair and makeup, three girls braids.

Oh, it would not have happened. I tell you what, I had to do two girls Hair and makeup at 5. And then I did the other one when I arrived. But like, oh, it's a lot for parents, and it's not a great, like, experience. It doesn't make people, like, love your brand, love your business. So what can you do to take things off their plate and make it a little bit simpler for the parents?

All right, Talking costumes, simplifying your costume pricing, we've kind of talked about a.

Little bit, but we have. If you are still a studio that has 8 and under jazz is 82.50, 10 and under jazz is 89. And then my grade one ballet class is $102. And then this class is like, so many different prices. You need to stop.

I'm laughing because that was me not that long ago. Yes. Like, probably five or six years ago. I was totally doing that.

Absolutely. And I feel like people, studio owners do it with the best of intentions because don't want to, like, you know, because every costume costs different, I think. And so therefore they're like, we don't want to mark it up too much and, you know, blah, blah, blah. For all those reasons, however, what it actually is doing is just confusing the shit out of parents. Because, number one, they've then got to remember and calculate, I've got an $82.50 costume and $101 costume, and then that other one is 34. Like, they've got to calculate all these things.

Yep.

They got to remember all their class names. They don't understand why their $101 costume isn't as good as their 82, 50, like costume. And quite possibly that's the case because we know that different brands have different costs and, you know, they're shipping and there's all those things that sometimes the $82 costume can look better than a hundred and something dollar costume. It's just how it works. Sometimes we know that the parents don't understand. So stop confusing your pricing. I think my feeling is three price points absolute max.

We just do one.

Now you do one. I love it.

Yeah, we just do one for junior, one for senior. That's it. So I think our junior is about 130. And I've seen is about 150 and.

Then a preschool price.

Yes, there you go.

There's my three preschool, junior, senior. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's how you should be doing it is just, you know, this is the price for. You could do junior, senior, preschool, or whatever. Or you could do ballet costumes are all X amount jazz costumes, X amount hip hop. Costume, like depending on whatever works for you. Right. Or everyone's the same amount. And I think that's really good for your budgeting.

Yep.

Takes a whole heap of admin work out. If you know that you're charging whatever, $100 for every costume, then you know that you want to look for costumes at a certain price point. You also know if you want to keep that price down as much because your profit will be higher. But it's just. I think it just makes it so much easier for the admin. It makes it easier for parents. It makes it easier for you. Like, just don't over confuse it.

Yep. Totally agree. And don't make them go and buy different colored shoes because you think that's going to go.

Absolutely not. Shoes are all one color only. You choose a color at your studio and you stick with it.

I just think we do, like. Yeah, we do things because that's what we've always done in the past, or that's what our studio owner did. Or, you know, and it's. It's not. What's the fans first experience? Is it not in any way, shape or form?

Absolutely.

All right, what about sell the experience? Talking about fans first, not just the cost.

Absolutely. You know what I see from some studios when I've read through information packets, like a paragraph explanation about why something is so expensive? Almost apologizing, not meaning to try to be kind. I think it's with kindness. I think people do it with love and they're trying to but like over justifying things. Like, thank you so much to all the parents for understanding that this concert fee is this amount. Obviously there's a lot that goes into the day. It's our staff, it's our blah, blah, blah. We know that it's a lot of money. And so therefore we've split it up into three payments of blah, blah, blah. You're just confusing the shit out of everybody. Right.

We're also convincing them.

You're also telling. Putting the idea in their head.

You're convincing them that this is a lot of money. That's the first thing. You're convincing them that they need to be able to pay it off. You're convincing them that the day is going to be probably crazy because there has to be so many. Like, you're just telling them. Yeah, all those stressful stuff in their head.

Absolutely. And I think that it's really important that we, you know, really sell the benefits and talk about the experience, not the cost. Like, this is an incredible day that your child's Going to remember for the rest of their life. I remember my concerts when I was six and it was such a huge memory. I wonder if you parents have, you know, a memory of your dance concerts, if you dance growing up. Or perhaps it was your football grand final or your, you know, like, telling it as a story. Because every parent would relate to some sort of a story around that. Whether it was the football grand final, their dance concert and how special a day it was, and how they have those memories as an adult.

Yep.

So talk about that.

Yeah.

Not about the 80 performer fee. Like, no one wants to hear that. Like. Yes. There's costs. We've got to write it somewhere. Absolutely. But let's talk about the experience.

Yep. Love it. I want to ask all of our listeners out there, have you recently, in the last two years, been to a dance concert? Not your own dance concert, somebody else's dance concert. Because that is probably the biggest opening experience I think I've ever had.

Yes.

And I have been to quite a few because, you know, my nephew dances. You know, we've had kids in. Tim's kids live quite far away, so they were at another dance studio. And so it's really interesting. So the first thing that I noticed was one of the concerts I went to was way too long. Like, I think it started at seven and finished at 11:30. Maybe even longer than that. Six to 11:30. It was like four and a half hours. Yeah. Concert.

Yeah.

Like, by the end of the first half, I was so over it. And I love dance.

Yes. And I love dance concerts.

And it was really cleverly put together and themed and beautiful costumes and, you know, great performing. There was nothing bad about it, but it was way too long. Like, I even get bored sometimes in musicals if they're too long.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because we have short attention spans. You mentioned it at the start. Absolutely. And so I think it's so important to think about that experience when you're an audience member and then how your families feel. Yeah. And what kind of experience you're creating. Right.

And even things like how long they have to wait to get into the theater. I'd never thought about that before. How hard it is to park.

The parking's a big.

Yes. Standing in a line to sign someone out at the end of a concert, when you've been there for four and.

A half hours because you were there an hour before and, like, what are you doing in that hour?

Right.

When you dropped your kid off, I think that's a big thing. Like, what are your parents doing Once they drop the kid off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then, and then they have to watch the show, then they have to hang around again. And the sign out process, oh, it's a killer, killer. And that's the lasting impression you leave them with. So how can you make that experience so, so incredible for them? And I think it's such an important thing to think about and you know, there's not, look, I do have some magic ways but you know, I do think that there's, it's not a one size fits all approach to it because it's going to depend on so many things. But you've really got to think about the experience from the parents point of view and selling it as an experience, not just a. This is everything we've got to do and it's just all like a job. Right.

And I really encourage all of you to go and watch a concert this year. Just try and get to some sort of a dance concert and just feel it. If you've got friends in the industry, go and watch each other's concert and give each other feedback on it. Because I think that's the best way. Like you don't know what you don't know and when you're stuck in the theater, you don't see what's going on out there or what. That's what happens.

And it's such an interesting thing because yeah, I went to a couple of concerts and the feedback I, I gave wasn't on the dancing. No, it wasn't actually about the choreography, it wasn't about the costumes. It was about the flow of the concert, what it was like, like you said, lining up parking, being there on time, knowing where to go, where to enter the theater, how to get backstage, you know, it was those kind of things. It was the awards at the end, it was, oh, don't get me started on awards at the end. It was the thank yous to the teachers, it was the videos in between. It' those things that I think so many of us can do work on rather than just the choreography and the costumes. Because most of us do that. Great, right?

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So I think going and actually watching it and then also just thinking about the parent experience.

Absolutely.

And I think if you're a studio owner who's not a parent yet, you don't. I never thought about that ever. Never thought about the parent experience until I had a child doing it. And then you realize the parent experience. But even then there's times when I haven't changed things. Even though I knew it was really inconvenient and not fun for me. I still didn't change it necessarily. And I just think we have to think smarter about that stuff. How can we make that experience amazing for our parents?

Absolutely. So really start thinking about your concert now, thinking about it as a retention exercise, a marketing exercise, a profit driven exercise, not just a, hey, look at my awesome choreography and great concepts and themes. Yeah, absolutely. Hopefully we gave you some things to work on today and some things to think about. We'd love to hear your thoughts on it. If there's anything that kind of resonates with you and you're like, oh my God, yes, I need to think about this means the world when you drop us a message. Right?

Bec sure does. So great to chat to you all again and we'll see you all next week. Bye friends.

Bye.

Bye.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dance Principles 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 two weeks free in Dance Principals United Tribe. We would love to see you there.