Dance Studio Admin Secrets: How to Train, Track, and Actually Lead Your Team

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 to another episode of the Dance Principles United podcast. I thought I'd hands there.

I know I was gonna say they're very big hands.

I'm not sure why I just did jazz hands. I was excited.

I'm excited, too. Excited. Should I do another shameless, like, YouTube plug? Like, if you want to see Amanda's giant jazz hands.

Let's not. Let's not. But, hey, we're here to chat about admin team today because we had a question on our broadcast channel from Beck, and Beck was asking about strategies to optimize your admin team. So we thought we'd jump into it today. Jazz hands. And to chat admin team. Because I know it's something you're super passionate about.

Absolutely. Because we know that I'm all things numbers in dance studios, and we know that our biggest cost for dance studios is our staff. And it is. If we're not looking at it consistently, if we're not trying to optimize it, then it is an expense that can just sort of get away from us. And we've all been guilty of it.

Absolutely.

I know it happened to us over the years at certain points when you just sort of, like, you're in that sort of, like, phase of growth, or you're just, you know, something's come up and you're going through that different season, and then you sort of pause for a sec, you're like, how much am I paying out? And, like, you've got to start to think, is, is it worth what I'm paying?

Yes, absolutely. Or could I have that money in my pocket? Yes, you know? Or how much are they taking out? Because there's nothing, I hate to say more than studio owners who are resentful to their business or resentful to their staff because they're like, oh, I'm paying them so much money, and I'm not getting anything for myself, you know? Or don't they know that I'm paying them more than me or whatever it is. And that comes down to managing your staff well. And, you know, we have to take ownership of that.

Yes, without a doubt. And I think it's. Sometimes we're focusing specifically on admin today, and I think sometimes why that can get out of control a little bit more is because it's not as tangible as teaching a class. When we're employing our staff to teach classes, it's like, oh, well, this teacher teaches classes on a Monday and Tuesday and they're really full classes. We can see that with our eye.

We can see the value.

Yeah, you can see the value in it really easily. And with the admin side of things, it can be, I guess, a little bit more. I'm not sure if abstract's the right word, but it is a little bit. Sometimes if it's not set up properly, especially it's a little bit harder to see the results of that.

And you might not understand it as well. I think there's that as well, because if you, you know, especially a studio owner who is passionate about teaching.

Yeah.

Which is great. You might not understand the admin side and how long that takes. And then sometimes, you know, you don't have that. That great ownership of it because, you know, you're not that into it. Let's be honest. Sometimes it's just not your wheelhouse and it's not what lights you up. So you just go, oh, I'll just let someone else do it.

Yes. But I do think, I guess maybe to push back on that a little bit. I do think, especially as we're starting out and as your studio is sort of growing from the bottom up, I think you need to take on the bulk, if not all, of the admin yourself up to a certain point in your studio. Where do you like. And people always ask, like, what's the exact number? There isn't an exact number. But what, like, what do you sort of feel is like, oh, I think.

That'S such a hard thing. I think that if you are capable of doing all the admin yourself, you should be doing that for a very large majority of that of the time, like you. And it depends, like, what the goal is. Is the goal to make more profit because working a bit harder gives you more profit? Yes, but, you know, I don't know if I want to put a number on it as such. But, you know, I think it really depends on what the goal of your studio is. Is it to, you know, really provide a great lifestyle for you? If so, hold on to it for as long as possible?

Yes.

If, you know, it's, you know, you're in the middle of a busy season of life and the profit is not as important to you for whatever reason, well, then maybe it's time to, you know, I think there's so many factors in it. I don't know. Is that a wishy washy answer?

I think it's a little bit wishy washy. But I do think, I do think the key is I see too many studio owners because it doesn't light them up. They push it away too early.

Yeah.

And I think. And then they, like you said, start to get resentful and start to think, oh, why am I not making any money out of this thing that I'm pouring my heart and soul into? And sometimes it's really easy. The reason you're not making as much money as you want is because you're paying other people to do. To do stuff that you could be doing yourself.

Absolutely. So let's talk about optimizing. Let's presume that they do have admin staff.

They've got to a level where it's like, okay, I've grown to this level and I know that if I need to push to the next level, that's how we always approached our administration stuff. Right. We, like, you sort of got to, you know, what came first. The. The chicken or the egg type thing. Like, you get to a certain level and you're like, right, I know now to take that next step, I need to invest in a staff member to try and help me get to that next level.

Absolutely. And if you are there at the moment and you want to optimize your admin staff so that they're doing an incredible job for you, it's making it worth the while of paying them out. Let's talk about a couple of tips that we can give our studio owners to really help them make the most out of their staff. What would be your first tip around that?

Yeah, And I think it comes back to knowing what the jobs are yourself. And I think that comes from holding on to the tasks for as long as you can.

Yes.

And as you're doing it and as you're starting to think that, you know, we all get to that point where, like, okay, I think I'm getting close to handing some of this stuff off.

Yeah.

So as you're doing that, start to systemize it. And when I say systemize, thankfully, like, building out systems in 2025 is so much easier than it used to be. We used to have to, like, scribble things down or write them out on like a process word document and things like that. My favorite tool, it's a free tool called loom l.com and it is a screen recording software that is super easy and super simple to use. And if you're starting to think, all right, I think I'm going to be getting some admin help soon. And you, you list out your tasks and you find the lower value ones, you're like, right, I'm going to be getting. I'm going to be handing off first the client inquiries.

Yep.

You do a screen recording of you getting how you get back to client inquiries. Yes. Click stop on the recording, give it a name and put it in the folder.

Yeah, absolutely. And what the process is and what you do. And I think that that's so important. But also knowing how long it takes you.

Yes, without a doubt.

So, you know, I think it's important to kind of know how to do it before you hand it off. You need to have a good understanding of what you're asking them to do and how long it takes you. So for the example of an inquiry. Right, how like an inquiry, it's a little bit of a harder thing because it's not.

I don't think it's looking at one inquiry. I think it's more you looking at how long do you spend on inquiries? Each day.

Each day, for example. Yeah. And you might go, hey, I normally get, you know, four to five inquiries a week, for example, I normally spend half an hour a day chasing these or, you know, whatever it is. Right. So therefore, that's how long I'm allocating a staff member for. You might allocate them a little bit longer. Let's talk about another task. Like, that's a little bit more tangible. Like, for example, the accounts. Right. That's a really good one because it's sort of a more clear cut. I would be actually timing yourself, doing the accounts and going, okay, so I do the accounts weekly or whatever it is, terminally, or whatever it is for you. Right. And it takes me 38 minutes generally to do it, like, whatever it is. And then, okay, so someone else that hasn't done it for as long. It might take them 45 minutes to start with. To start with, absolutely. And you've got the system down and you've written down how to do it. So I think that's really important because I think too often we go, hmm, I need admin help, I need admin help. How many hours should I get them for? Hmm, maybe about 10. And there's no rhyme or reason. So instead they just pluck a number out of thin air. And I've done it to pluck a number out of thin air of like, oh, I think I need about 10 hours admin help a week, rather than going, hey, I want them to do this task which generally takes this amount of time, this task which generally takes this amount of time, like and actually adding it up and like finding that number from substance.

And do you know what I think is really powerful about doing that and I think it's something that we'd probably find if we did it ourselves. Is that too often we've all, like I said, we're all guilty of it. You sit there and you think, gosh, I've been busy today. And then you're like, was I?

What did I do?

But if you've actually taken the time to sit down because you can think, oh, I've just been go, go, go, go, go all day. But if you are disciplined about writing down those tasks because you might be thinking, oh, well, I definitely need someone for at least 15 hours a week. But when you've been disc a five day period and written down all those tasks, you're like, oh, that was only three hours.

It was not 15 hours. The other time I must have been distracted on Facebook. And then I opened up the iconic and did some, or maybe some Amazon.

Like I was gonna say, are you projecting here?

Do you know what I mean? But I think that that's so important as well. So tip number one is understanding the task that you're going to give someone, systemizing them and actually knowing approximately how long they take and writing a really good, good list on it. And that kind of comes then into our next tip which is like creating KPIs around it. Right. Do you want to explain what a KPI is?

Yeah. So like I said, like when we have, when we're employing a teacher to teach a class, we, without knowing it, you guys all know what the KPI is around. Like the key performance indicators around that class is it's that kids are having a great time, the classes, the dance is looking great, their techniques improving, and the class is growing. Yeah, you're not losing kids out of the class and it's actually growing. Yeah, like they're just you.

And you don't need to like sit there and write it down like it's.

A good idea too. But you just do that naturally, you know, when a teacher is doing a good job in their class. However, with our admin team, too often we're just like, oh, thank God, I've got rid of this admin.

I don't need to do the accounts, I don't need to answer the emails anymore. Whatever.

There we go.

Yeah.

And we tune out to it and we see it time and time again, not just in dance studios, but in like so many other small businesses. And it's a recipe. It's not setting that team member up for success. And when you're not setting them up for success, then you're not going to get the output that you need. You're going to end up wasting a lot of hours, which costs you a lot of money.

Absolutely.

And it's money that could be in your pocket and you're going to get staff members that potentially aren't as engaged with. Which isn't. Isn't good for you long term either.

No. So what's an example of a KPI that we should be, you know, setting up for our admin stuff?

So I think a key one is if you're talking about. The two examples we talked about were like, leads, so like those inquiries and also accounts. So let's look at what, what it might be in those ones. Yeah. So if it was around your leads, then you would be looking at something like, how many of your inquiries that come in do you, number one, book in for a trial and then number two, how many of them enroll?

Yeah.

Like, they're just two really easy KPIs. And when we say like, and then having some sort of system in place to be able to think. Okay, when I say inquiries, I mean Everybody that Facebook DMs, Instagram DMs sends a website contact form. Yeah. So. And you might not have that number to start with. And that's okay as well because we've all, like, we've all got to start somewhere. And most of the studios we start working with don't have that number as well.

Absolutely not.

So start it now and start to look at. Okay, I have. In the last month or last week I had four inquiries. One of them booked a trial and one of them enrolled.

Yeah.

So I had 25% book a trial and out of like, that means 25% enrolled as well.

Yeah.

And then you look. So then you've got the number for one week, then you collect that number the next week and the next week. And so then you can start to build a picture of what it looks like over a month. A term. Yeah, A year. And that gives you like a benchmark for that staff member to then just be better at. Yeah.

And to keep improving and to keep. Not even a goal to start with. It's just like, let's keep.

Exactly. It's here's where we are. And your job is to Continually get this number better?

Most definitely.

So it's like I said, they're just two really easy ones. If you're starting out around those. Those inquiries that are coming in. What percentage of them do I book in for a trial?

Yeah.

What percentage of them end up actually enrolling?

Yeah, that's a great thing. Especially if that's, you know, and obviously this depends on what your admin person's role is inside your business, and I think that's really important. But if it's accounts, what would be a KPI that we could set around doing the accounts? Is it getting it in a certain time frame? What is it?

So I think, like, depending on whether you are a studio that does direct debit or you're a studio that does the term invoices, for example, still, it might look a little bit different. But let's say that you were still doing the term invoices and you had fees were due by the end of week two or whatever your due date is, then the first KPI would be what percentage of accounts are paid on time.

Yeah.

And again, this is where it's at, and we're just going to try and improve from here. And then it's what percentage of accounts are still outstanding after end of week three.

Yeah.

End of week four.

Yeah. Okay.

And so you just keep tracking that number all the way through and then what, you know, what. How much is outstanding at the end of a term.

Yeah.

And so obviously the other, you know, we talked about the inquiries, one, they're all numbers we want to keep going up. The amount outstanding is a number we want to keep coming, is we want to get tracked out.

Absolutely, absolutely. So having clear goals and targets for your admin staff, it's definitely our tip number two on how to really optimize, you know, this and like, you know, set them up for success. Right.

Yes. Have them report to you every week.

Absolutely. That's what I was going to say is the next thing is actually like getting together with them weekly, Right?

Yes. Because it's. I think it's something that I hear all the time, studio owners say, oh, I just don't want to micromanage them, or I worry that I'm checking up on them too much. And I think that's a complete fallacy. I think our staff want to do the right thing by us.

Yes.

They don't want to let us down. And it's. It's human nature that if you're not going to get checked on something, you let it go.

Yeah.

But if you Know that every Monday I'm going to be reporting my numbers to Amanda.

And that could just be them sending you an email.

Yes.

Like, that could be what it is. Finding the number themselves and sending you an email, that might be all it is. Or sending you a message or whatever that is. Right?

Yeah.

But it's holding them accountable to those numbers, I think is really important. However, I'm saying that. But I do think the other way to really optimize your admin team is good training and like constant communication with them.

Right. Yeah.

Because I think too often we're like, oh, yeah, we've got our admin person. I'm not sure what she does all day. Like, have we heard that before? Your eyes go, yeah, yeah, not really sure what she does. I think she's really busy. But like, have you actually sat down and asked and said, hey, I just want to check, check in that we're really like, you know, using your time as effectively as possible.

You're adding great value to the business.

Absolutely. Like, you know, can you tell me about the tasks you did today and did you have any. Do you have capacity for more tasks today or you are at your limit, like actually asking that question?

Yeah.

Because I think too often we're like, oh, I don't want to ask them to do anything else. Totally me. Because we're a nice person and we're like, I don't want to ask them to do anything else because, oh, I think they're so busy. But like, have you asked them if they're busy? Have you asked them if they can do more or what would they like to do more? And I think the power of sitting down with them for a 10 minute catch up every week is really, really important and something that so many people don't do.

Yeah. And I think, to be honest, I think asking those sorts of questions and like asking what I did, like, you can even within that, extend it out to like, you know, is there anything you'd love to work on for the business? Like, is there anything you see that you could do to help the studio grow? And I think that can be a really powerful way to see if they are the right kind of person as well. Because the wrong kind of person. And we've all hired them, the wrong kind of person is happy to sit.

There and not do anything and not.

Do anything and cruise by doing. Doing the bare minimum.

Yeah.

But the right kind of person is bored when they don't get enough tasks to do.

Yeah.

Right. And so I think it can be, it can be a massive catch 22. Like you said. Sometimes we're scared of asking them, have you got enough to do out of fear of them, like having a conniption and telling you how busy they are. They couldn't possibly like read one more email because they're so busy. But the sad thing is sometimes we see good staff members leave.

Yes.

A business because they don't see that there's anywhere for them to grow. They don't feel like they're being challenged enough. Yeah, yeah. Like we had, we were talking to. I forget who it was the other day we were talking to, but they said like one of their staff members that they found out too late, was absolutely hopeless, was ending up sitting there knitting at her desk. Right. And, and they didn't find out for, for, for too long, but they claimed that they were, didn't have anything to do. But then when they dug into it, they had so much to do that they just couldn't do and weren't getting done.

Yeah.

And yeah. Avoided the tasks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting. Right. So regularly checking in with them, asking how they're doing, setting them up for success, asking them, hey, how are you going with that? How can I help? You know, oh, by the way, I notice that, you know, that number, that KPI number that we set is, you know, it's not going the right way that we want it to. How can I help with that? Can we dive into that? You know, and I think that's a really big thing. And consistently training them. It doesn't need to be a horrible, mean, you're in trouble thing, but it could be just a, hey, I noticed we didn't enroll that kid that came to the trial last week. Can we talk about that? Like, let's see what the follow up was. How many times did you call them and can I read the email that you sent through and how can we make this better for next time? And I think we're often so scared to do that with our admin team and we just, I don't know, I just see it as a big thing. So if that's something that you get scared about, like today's the day to change it.

Yes.

Get in and chat to them. They work for you. They're there to set you up for success. But you have to really be, be a leader in that situation.

Exactly. I think there's like difference between like, I guess leading and managing. Is it like how I sort of think about it? Like, I think too often we think of that managing thing is like that that sort of like telling them what they're doing wrong.

Yeah.

But if you're there and Beck specs huge on this and so good. It's like, how can I support you? How can I help? It's not how, like, why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you? It's like, how can we help you be better at this?

Yeah, absolutely. I want to do better. Let's all help each other. What can I do? What kind of training do you need to be better? What can I do to you up for success? Let's look at it together and do it together so that we can be faster on it. So I think that's really important is really understanding what your staff are doing, that the numbers are going in the right direction and checking in with them regularly and training with them regularly to make sure they're having the most success possible. Right.

Yeah. And I think, like, going on to, like, the. The next part of it, I think it's just super important, is making sure that you've got the right person for the job. And this is a mistake that we see so many studio owners make, knowing that admin itself is a completely different skill set to being a great teacher.

Absolutely.

And whilst, yes, there are some people out there that have the skill sets for both.

Yep.

It is quite rare. And, yes, if you have the unicorn. Amazing. But just because they are a great teacher and staff member doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be a great admin staff member. And we've seen it happen too many times that it ends up souring a relationship so much that you lose a great teacher because you've had to consistently pull them up on the admin side of things. Because we put them in a role that they weren't going to be successful at.

Yeah, yeah. Which is tricky.

Yeah. And I think the. The one other thing that sort of ties in with that as well is making sure that when you do start to build out an admin team or optimize, like, to help you optimize.

Yeah.

That you don't. That you start with less hours and build up, rather than starting out with, you know, like, think, oh, I've got to get somebody in for 20 hours a week or 25 hours a week and have them not. Not enough things to do. I think it's important that we, like you said, going back to that task audit thing and starting out at a certain level and then building out from there.

Yeah. Great tips, great tips. Well, we hope that this helped you. Thanks so much. To Beck who wrote in asking for this topic. We so appreciate it. Not our Beck. A different back just to be confusing. But we really hope that you are starting to think about how can I optimize my team and it's a great time to think now for 2026.

Yes.

And setting yourself up for success and your team up for success so that they are working, you know, to their like their best capacity for you. And you know, I think that's so, so important. Right?

Yep, without a doubt. Thanks so much for listening as always guys. And we would love you to give us a subscribe and a like. And please drop us a comment below because we love hearing what you find valuable and because this podcast is all about helping dance studios.

Absolutely.

So let us know what you think and what else you'd like to you.

Thanks friends. 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 Principles United Tribe. We would love to see you there.