Learnings from Los Angeles

Hello, friends. I'm Amanda Barr. And I'm Rebecca Lou Brennan. And welcome to Dance Principals 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. Hi, friends, and welcome to the Dance Principles United Podcast. Hope you are having an incredible week. Hello, Nathan. How are you?

Hello. Good to be back in, like, a normal kind of life. Right after we had you off in Vegas at your conference for a week and then me over in VCon in LA for a week. It is always nice to do those things. Right. And always good to go and connect with other people and improve our own learning. But then it is nice to get back home and settle into the swing of things as well, right?

Absolutely. Especially when we live in such a beautiful part of the world. We had a bit of a crazy couple of weeks. Should we tell people a little bit? We haven't planned this, but we. Should we tell people a little bit about our crazy few weeks? We both were in the US separately, as Nath mentioned. We kind of, like, flew past each other. We had one night where, you know, the children were at grandparents and we. We flew past each other as I was coming home and he was going over on that same day, we settled on our new house as well as, like, settled on our other house that we just sold as well.

Yep.

It was all a lot happening.

Yeah. And that's what sometimes, like, we were talking about the other day, I forget where we were, but someone's like, oh, have you had much going on? And we're the kind of people that are always like, no, not really.

They're pretty quiet.

Pretty quiet. And we're like, oh, well, actually, we were sort of like, yeah, like, selling our house and buying a new. And then. So. So, yeah, I think sometimes, and I think that's an important lesson for all studio owners out there, to be honest, is that we quite often undersell ourselves and what we're doing a lot of the time. Right. And it's always like that. Oh, it's like always looking after other people type thing and sort of not looking after yourself and reflecting on the amazing things that you're doing a lot of the time.

Yeah, it's crazy. Look, we'll dive into this a little bit because a few people have asked us about where we're living and what we're doing and all of those things. We actually bought a new house that we're sitting at at the moment, on the bump in day for Expo this year.

Yeah.

Decided that was the perfect day to be negotiating and buy a new house. And. And as a lot of our listeners know, we were living in Thailand for a period of time last year. So we actually have moved house three times in. Well, is it more than three times? We're in Thailand. We came home to a rental we then got because our house wasn't ready. We went back back into our house, then we've sold our house and moved into our new house and we're done. Yeah.

Although we said that last time.

We've moved a lot of times in quite a short period of time. We've had a lot going on.

Yeah. Yes. But like, it's one of those things. Like I think sometimes, you know, I know that you wouldn't have it any other way. Amanda, that's a dangerous thing to say on the podcast. But like, yeah, it's one of those things. It's. It's how we like to, I guess, approach how we do things.

We like to live a full life.

Oh, exactly. We like to live a full life. We've talked about. And I was talking about on one on ones with our studio Growth club members as well. I've been talking a lot with our members about like their own risk profiles and things like that. And like we're fairly comfortable having a risk profile where we're willing to take calculated risks because we want to reach. Reach for bigger things. Yeah. We want to reach certain goals and we're. There's always the potential for downside when you take a risk. Thankfully, touch wood that we. That we haven't experienced that as yet. Our calculated risks have always paid off on the upside, which we're very grateful and thankful for. But we've been.

Oh, it doesn't mean we haven't had hard times.

Exactly. As well.

Has it all been.

Yes.

But such had a rainbow.

Yes. But over the long run, the upside has paid off for us with some struggles in the middle there. But being mindful that if you want to achieve those big goals with your business, with your studio in life, sometimes you do have to be willing to take those risks. And if you're not a person that is comfortable taking risks, that's okay as well. Like each to their own. But just making sure then that you're adjusting those goals that you're setting for yourself as well is super important.

Yeah. Interesting. Totally not what today's podcast is on, but off topic on us a little bit at the moment. But yeah, get into what we actually wanted to talk about the podcast was Nath mentioned he's just been back from a. Are we going to call it a convention?

Yeah, convention conference.

Yeah, very big event. How many people were there? Maybe 7,000.

Yeah, maybe 7,000.

And it was called VCon. Now can you explain what VCON actually is? Because people ask me and I had no idea to take to tell them where you were. So maybe you could explain it to me at the same time.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a massive, massive fan of Gary Vaynerchuk or Gary V as a lot of people might know him as. And about sort of three years ago. It was during first COVID lockdown. He like, people might have heard me talk about this before, but he started a, an NFT project. Now this isn't the place to talk about NFTs or anything like that, but what Gary Vee did that was very different was that when he sold his.

You bought lots of NFTs. Well, yeah, there's that too.

That's a story for another time. But he sold his NFT and with it came tickets to three years worth of business conferences. This beacon. The first year I went, I was in Minneapolis over in the States and it was awesome. It was very focused on all things NFT related. They call it Web3. But as that space is sort of like, let's be honest, it's fizzled a little bit. This year's VCON was much more about business, business speakers, talking about marketing, talking about like, well, being around business, but very business focused, very advertising and marketing focus.

A lot of content, a lot of.

Content creators and stuff like that. But yeah, like I said, just all about. I think what he's trying to do now that that whole NFT web3 space has sort of died down a lot. Like I said, this was the third year and there was big speculation like will he keep them going now that he's. Now that he's done it for three years. But he was this year definitely trying to focus on more, bringing in more of the business community, which made it a really different event, but a really great event as well.

Yeah. And all of them have also focused on art and pop culture for sure as well as business. So it's kind of like all intertwined. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah. He's sort of like, yeah, trying to bring it all together. He gets like amazing speakers in from all walks of life, a lot of pop culture, but the people that he's bringing in from pop culture, like, you know, I heard Will I am speak and lots of other like, like lots of other incredible, incredible people that are like Danica Patrick, who's like a NASCAR driver who's huge over in the States, not so much here in Australia. There was Flavor Flav. Was there like all these incredible, like sort of pop culture icons, but them coming at it from their. What they're doing on the business side of things as well.

Oh, yeah. And that's interesting because some of those big, you know, obviously, like, I don't know if we call them pop stars or rappers or like, whatever, you know, they are pop culture icons. They have very clever business brains on them and a lot of them are doing very amazing things. So it's interesting to hear. So you kind of like you gave a bit of a few people that you. Do you want to give us like a sort of basically highlight of who was there. So you said, will, I am from Black Eyed Peas. What was the NASCAR driver's name? I don't know.

Danica Patrick.

Okay.

She was amazing.

Like I said, a female NASCAR driver.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, she absolutely. She absolutely tore shreds off. The poor moderator asked her some question about basically like, you know, something about, well, especially for you being like a female and a mother, and she tore him to shreds. It's like, it's not anyway that she was. She was incredible.

Flavor Flav, he said.

Yeah, Flavor Flav. Nick Cannon, like, he's like absolutely amazing. We used to watch years ago when we were, when we were younger. Do you remember that? Like, what was his. What was he saying? Something can out. But he's got. He's had an incredible career as a comedian himself. But more so he identifies the amount like he rattled off and I didn't write it down in my notes, but he like the amount of comics that he's unearthed is just like ludicrous. Like Google that if like Nick Cannon and the people that he's unearthed and stuff like that. Absolutely amazing. Amazing. Used to be married to Mariah Carey. Just as like a thing as well.

But like, just like other Nick Cannon as well. Who else? You said, who else was there? The Bluey creator.

Yeah, the creator of Bluey. The Aussie guy. He was on a panel with two other incredible content creators.

Oh, you said the guy from the Tick Tock guy. What was his name?

Kobe Lane. He was like the. He's like an Italian guy that he doesn't speak on his Tick Tock. Like, I'm sure everybody that's way cooler than us, Amanda and our younger studio owners out there especially going well of course, like Kabi, like he's the guy that is there on Tick Tock and he reacts. He just reacts with his facial expressions and he's like. And his body movements to things on TikTok and he's got like 163 million followers. It was super interesting. Right. Just in terms of I think how the world's going. He was the session directly after Will I Am and he had just as many if not more people try to get up to the front of the stage to take self selfies with him. And Will I Am.

Yeah, it's funny. Whereas I would be like, yeah, all about Will I Am. Yeah, yeah, cool. Who else is a highlights? And then we'll go back to like what some things that you actually learned. You said, who did you see before?

Yes, Saweetie. Look.

Is that even how you say it?

I'm so sorry. I feel like. I feel like so many eye rolls are always coming back at me through the podcast. And T Pain performed on the, on the Sunday night and the closing as well.

Yeah.

Who look like I went in with no expectations to. To be honest, I didn't really know heaps of his stuff but like he was absolutely incredible performer and just yes, really good, really good vibe to finish. Finish off the conference as well.

Yeah, amazing. Any other incredible speakers?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I was just sort of going through my notes and like it started off one that I sort of wasn't expecting, but as the guy was speaking, I'm like, I've actually seen a Netflix show on you.

Yeah.

And his name's Will Gidara Guidara. He runs an amazing three Michelin star restaurant called eleven Madison park in New York. And his session was all about incredible customer service, which I know is something that we really, really focus on, especially in restaurants.

I love good customer service in restaurants.

But like, but thinking about like, you know, I always sit there and we always talk about that, that we sit there. We're all business nerds ourselves. And whenever we're hearing like anybody speak, we always think, how can we relate this? But back to dance studios. And so he's talking about like how did he get his restaurant? Like he's not a cook himself. He comes from the front, front of house restaurants. But he just wanted to create one of the best restaurants in the world. And three Michelin stars is pretty much saying that you are one of the best restaurants in the world. Right. Like that's an incredible, incredible honor. But he talked about that he just wanted to focus on the Absolute best customer service that he could. And he talked about it as a one fits one, size fits one approach. And he wanted to approach his customer service from that. And that's something that we always talk about, like, you know that we love systemizing and automating and making our lives easier around so many of the, especially the mundane admin tasks in our studio. We want your lives as a studio, anybody that we're working with to be easier. Right. But at the end of the day as well, we are small businesses and people want that human connection. So while there's definitely a place in our studios for all these amazing automations that we're teaching, there also comes a point where as a small business owner, we need to be providing really great customer service on a personal level.

Absolutely.

Where businesses in our local communities. And so he talked about like a couple of amazing stories. So like things like that he did like that just didn't have to cost a lot of money. But he talked about wanting to go that one size fits one approach to really take things to the next level for his customers. So some of the ones that he talked about were like, like I said, we're talking a three Michelin star restaurant, right. So we're talking about people that are paying what probably like 300, 400 US dollars ahead for their meals by the time they're including wine and whatnot.

Oh yeah.

So like we're talking about super expensive stuff. So these people are like coming in and dropping an absolute bomb. But one that always stood out in his head was that he was walking past like during service and heard one table talking about how they'd been in New York for six days now and they were leaving first thing in the morning, but they hadn't experienced a New York street hot dog yet. And that was one of the things they just wanted to do like, was experience a New York street dog. And they hadn't done it and how sad they were. So he took a gamble. He went outside, he got two dollar street hot dog and he came back in and, and he's like, this is the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my restaurant. Convince a chef to serve a $2 street hot dog in his three Michelin star restaurant.

That's crazy.

And so, but he said like, so the chef cut up the hot dog into six pieces. We put it out as like a in between course, swished some extra ketchup and mustard on it. And he said, the look on these people's faces, he's like, it was in between Some sort of, like, you know, slow age, comfy of duck and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And some other, like, you know, bullshit fancy course. He's like, but the absolute look of joy on these people's faces. That was what they left his restaurant.

Remembering.

Remembering, absolutely. The $2 street hot dog. And another one. He said, like, he overheard a businessman talking that he's. Again, he was on the red eye back home after the meal, and he forgot to buy his daughter the I Heart New York teddy bear. And so sent one of the team just across the road to the bodega or whatever it was, just around the corner. Spent 10 bucks on the Iheart New York teddy. Bring it back, put it on the. On that businessman's desk. Like, how mind blowing is that sort of level of customer service and in the scheme of things for such a small amount of money? I think sometimes we get caught up in our customer service things having to be these big, epic expenditures. But it's so much.

Sometimes it's about the thought.

It's about the thought. It's just about listening to our clients and reflecting back what they want. And he talked about with all this customer service that what he wants to, like, what he's driving force behind it is, is that somebody, you know, somebody will come along and almost certainly in your area, be better at your product or service than you. He's like, I live in New York, for God's sake. There's going to be somebody.

There's going to be amazing restaurants open.

Nearby that is probably going to cook better food than us, right? But if I'm building epic customer service and relationships, that's impossible to replicate overnight. Ooh, yeah. It takes years. It's the relationship building and the relationship building. They're the things that takes years and years to build. And nobody's gonna be able to replace that overnight.

Ooh, I think that is such a. You haven't told me that you're opening it. We actually haven't had time to discuss this trip very much, obviously. But I think that is something that's so, so important because, you know, there's incredible dance teachers everywhere, right? Like, there are so many incredible dance teachers. Teachers. There's always new studios popping up, and so there should be like, you know, that's what the world's about. It's about creating a marketplace and all of that sort of stuff. And competition is a good thing. But like you said, customer relationships, and not just relationships with your current customers, but what you're known for in your community, that takes years to build and a new studio is never going to have that straight away. So if you can keep focusing on building that, sometimes it doesn't be to need matter if someone's food down the road is slightly better. Because we like going to the place where we have a relationship, where we feel comfortable, where we feel comfortable, where they've gone above and beyond for us, where we feel at home, like a family.

Yeah.

So, so important. Such a good lesson.

Absolutely. And that sort of ties in with like, like before I go into some of the other, like a couple of the other sessions, not that I can go through everyone because we don't have six hours for the podcast, but I was telling you about like one of the most important things when I go to these events is the connections that you make and being in the same room as other people that are on similar journeys to you. I didn't meet any other dance studio coaches, if I'm honest, but people that are entrepreneurial, that are looking to better themselves, that are looking for new opportunities, that you never know the relationships that.

You'Re going to build, conversations you're going.

To have, all the conversations that you're going to have, you never know whether it's going to come in. But you know, I was talking to some like super impressive people that I actually connected with two years ago because I didn't go to last year's event, right. And some of these people that was like, you know, in the, in the web3 space, they're not in the wider space yet, but they were pretty big deals. But I bumped into them this time expecting them not to remember some rando from Australia and they're like, oh my God, Nathan, how's it going? Like and had a full on conversation and could remember so much about and that immediately made me feel again a sense of loyalty to them, to their brand. And I jump on that night and like the person that I was sitting next to, I was telling her about it from Australia as well, one of the friends that I connected with and she went on and bought one of their products straight away. Like it's just like you never know when those relationships, those connections, basically because.

They treated you like family, they remembered you, they remembered you by name. You didn't expect any of that? No.

And it was like, I think it's just like, it's just such an underestimated thing that we do in our businesses. That connection, that customer service and what's gonna flow on from it. I think we really, really underestimate it.

This is really good Podcast, because this is a conversation that we haven't had time to have since we've been back.

You're learning.

I'm glad that we're having this conversation on the podcast. All right, one more session you wanna tell us about? Give us one, because I think we should make this. And let us know if you wanna hear more about Nathan Learnings at this conference. I think we're going to do one more session and then we're going to break it up. And if everyone wants to hear more, we'll do more on next week's podcast as well. So what's one more session you want to share with us?

Oh, gosh, I might save that one, then. Oh.

This is a real tease.

Look, there was one. And look, I was attracted to the session because they were a husband and wife team. And look, they had something that we talk about with our vendors at Dance Teacher Expo. Right. Having, like, a catchy title makes a difference. Like, makes it such a difference.

So what was their title?

Shoveling Shit. A Love Story. So straight away, that makes me want to click on the app and think, read a bit more what the session's about. Right?

Yeah. Because you're like, what does this mean exactly?

Because I had no idea who Cass and Mike Lazzaro were.

Yeah, okay.

But turns out they were amazing. Husband and wife team. They started out, then I find that they started out with golf.com so another interest. I'm like, I'm in. I can see Amanda's, like, almost, like, rolling her eyes here, going, oh, my gosh.

For those of you that don't know, Nathan's goal this year is to improve his golf handicap. By what?

Ah, just wherever we get to, we're just on the way down. That's the plan.

There's too much golf chat going on at our house at the moment.

Everyone's got a hobby.

So these people you didn't even know, but they founded Golf.com?

Yep. That was where they started and then moved on, like, up through other things. To be honest, they didn't really talk that much about after the golf.com they just sort of mentioned their businesses, but it was more like how they work together, how they make sure that they, you know, like, work together without killing each other.

So did you get any tips so that we don't kill each other? That's the big question.

Well, yeah, lots and lots and lots. But, you know, they talked about, you know, lots of things that we sort of focus on that we look through as well. But the idea of, I Know, it's something you're big on that it's work life integration as a small business owner. Yeah, that, you know, work life balance. You know, we know that the guys, we know that the influencers there on Instagram do show that and they can show themselves sitting by the pretty pool and things like that. But what you don't see is all the hard yards that those people put in, like they work 40, 50, 60.

And whilst they're taking a photo is working by the pool. You know, that's the thing, right?

Absolutely. There's. Yeah. Work life balance is something that just like, you know, we honestly think it's a bit of a myth as a small business owner. It's not something that we, that we, that we preach because it's not something that we practice as well. We want to be authentic.

Absolutely not. We are sometimes talking business at 11pm at night, but then other days, you know, we have the day off and we go and do things that we want to do. Go play golf in the day. You know what I mean? Like, it's, it's not like a, hey, we clock off at 5:00 and we don't talk about business again because that's just not reality. Some days we're inspired to be still up at night working late and doing things. Other days we're having a day off and not doing that. And I think that's okay. So what do these people say about that?

Absolutely. And so, like, especially Cass was saying that what she really wants to do is she wants to model what working hard and being successful looks like for her children. That, like, she, she thinks that that's super important and that's a value that she really wants to instill on their kids. And that's something that we talk about all the time as well. Cause we all get the parent guilts, right? Yeah, like, we're definitely. We've got book week parade coming up this weekend. Sorry, this week.

Can you hear the virtual eye roll?

But it's. Yeah, it's one of those things that like, you know, you end up doing these things and like, we are going to book parade this week, guys. But there have been, there have been some things that we've missed at school this year. And you know, we can see that our kids get a little bit upset and disappointed by it and things like that. And we feel the guilt just like anybody does, of course. But we have to say to them, guys, Mum and dad have to work as well. And we're really big on trying to model that for them as well. So I think that was just something that really resonated with me.

Absolutely.

But yeah, like I said. And then like just one quick one. Like I said that. That Kabi lame guy.

Oh, yeah. Okay, we're moving on from them. Yep.

The tiktoker with his 163 million followers that I'm sure everybody else knows.

If you don't know him, you've got to check it out.

You've got to check it out. Just. Yeah, onto TikTok. K H A B Y. I'm pretty sure he'll come up if you just type that in. But what I loved about his approach was just how he didn't seem to over complicate it. And it was all just like. So his story is that he was working just in a factory, just like a menial job and came home one day and well, ended his shift one day and got fired. He's like, oh. So I just started TikTok. But everything he did, like he got asked questions about.

Is that your Italian accent? I'm not really 100% sure what accent. That was a bit of a fix, I don't know.

But it was just like, it was, was just a, like, just everything. Like he got asked like, you know, he got a. He ended up getting a deal with Hugo Boss. And they're like, so how did you get that? And he's like, don't know. They just turned up and they asked me to wear these nice clothes and pay me money. And I did. Yeah, like everything like. And like he was obviously, I'm sure he was trying to put his like little comedic spin on it, but I think like at the, at the heart of it, everything was just so simple. It was just like he hadn't overthought things. Like he. Apparently he's got a movie coming out. They're like, you decided to speak in the movie?

Yeah, because he doesn't speak on his.

Instagram or his like, why did you decide that? He's like, because I wanted to. Like there wasn't like a huge strategy or anything. Like just all the way through his interview, everything was just like.

He did things because he wanted to do them.

Yep. He just did them because he wanted to. I don't think he'd overthought a thing in his life. Yeah, it just something like, yeah, felt good. He went for it and he executed and things worked for him. I think sometimes. I think sometimes as business owners we can really overcomplicate our decision making process.

Which then causes us to Procrastinate take too long on decisions that we could have just already started to move forward on.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Awesome. Hey, I love some of those learnings. What other great sessions do you want to share with us next week podcast if people want to hear about it? I want to hear about Will I Am's AI.

Yes, absolutely. Will I Am. And his AI startup was something I went to as well as a really inspirational guy called Inky Johnson who was a like college football star, projected to go like in the NFL draft and then eight weeks before the end of his senior year copped a hit in a game and was paralyzed down the right hand side of his arm.

So you tell us about his learnings on next week's podcast.

So his football career was over and then how he shaped his life after that. That was super, super interesting. And then just yeah, there was a really interesting guy, Tom Ferry as well. And about his business now, his success in business and things like that, he was pretty, pretty inspiring.

Okay, sounds good. Now this was only meant to be a one part podcast, but it seems to have gone for too long already. So that's what we do. If you would like to hear about those people next week, drop us a message and let us know. Know and we will make sure we record part two of this podcast for you guys next week.

Amazing. Thanks so much everybody. Awesome to chat as always.

See you. 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. It.