Outsourcing Effectively in Your Dance Studio

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. Hi, friends, and welcome to the Dance Principles United Podcast. Hey, Nath, how you doing today?

Hello. Very good. Trying to stay warm in this absolutely freezing, freezing little period we've got down here in New South Wales, but excited to be on the podcast with you, as always.

Amazing. Well, today we are chatting about outsourcing. Right. Outsourcing is something that all business owners have to do at some point, whether that's new brand, bringing internal people in, you know, getting subcontractors, hiring external companies. It's part of, like, everyone faces it, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we're big about helping you as a dance studio and to build the studio of your dream. So it's going to look very, very different for everybody. We completely understand that. But at some point in your journey, you are going to be. Yeah. Starting to bring on help. Depending on, like, whether it's, you know, teaching. We're going to get into, like, all the different types of things that we start to outsource and how to do it effectively. But as you sort of grow and stop being the. The one woman or one man show, it's something that, yeah, every. Every small business and definitely every studio faces at some point along the way. And it's something that I. I guess sometimes we. We see lots of studio owners do it really well, but we also see studio owners make a lot of mistakes around it.

Yeah.

Because we also know that our staff and contractors, external people that we're bringing in, is one of, if not the biggest expense that we have in our business. And it's something that if we don't do it the right way, can really affect our profitability, right?

Absolutely, absolutely. And we know that we need help to be able to grow. There's no doubt about that. And if you do outsource, well, it means that you can grow your studio or your business. However, as you said, it affects our bottom line. Because any money that you're paying to any other staff members is money that's not in your pocket. That's the reality of the situation. So there has to be, like, a happy medium around it, right?

Yep, without a doubt. And it's something that we were just talking about just before we started the podcast is that we know that you Know, quite often, especially in, like, if you do follow a lot of, like, I guess, business influences or something like that, that we've got Instagram memes. Yeah, Instagram memes of, like, business owners, you know, living their best life and it's all Skittles and rainbows and we only have to do every day what absolutely lights us up. Right. And is that the reality of owning a small business all the time?

Absolutely not. I call bullshit on that. Right. Like, it's, it's not our reality. And yes, you know, to some degree and at some point in our journey, we should be doing tasks that we really enjoy and love. But the majority of small business owners, if you are doing under seven figures, there are tasks that you have to do that you don't love as much as the others, right?

No, absolutely. I was thinking the other day about one of our amazing studio growth club members who had a little bit of a bathroom emergency and was literally sweeping and cleaning up poop off the bathroom floor. Like, yeah, that's not a task that lights them up. I'm going out on a limb here to say, but there are some points in our businesses and look, hopefully we're not cleaning up shit a lot of the time, but there's sometimes, like, it's a bit of a metaphor. Right. That sometimes we just have to roll up our sleeves and get in and do the dirty work. Things that we're not so much enjoying, but that we can't afford to pay hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars for other people to come in and do for us.

Absolutely. Sometimes that money is better in your pocket. So let's get into our golden rule. When we're talking about how to outsource, when to outsource. Can you afford to outsource? Our big golden rule, Nath, what is it?

Yeah. To make sure that as we start that we're outsourcing low value tasks to enable us to free up our time to do higher value tasks. So, so, so important that that's where we start, because we've all got to start somewhere.

Yep.

But making sure that we start by outsourcing the lower value tasks first.

Absolutely. So if you're thinking, if you're sitting there as, and are going, oh, I'm struggling for time, you know, I'm just doing too much at the moment. The biggest thing you should be focusing on is what is the lowest value task that you do currently in your studio and that should be the first one that you outsource. Really, Right.

Yeah, absolutely. And too often we see studio Owners, like, go back to a place of safety. Now. This is definitely not me. And as much as I love you, my amazing wife, I know this is not you too. But for some people, cleaning is something that just lets them switch off.

What are you saying about my cleaning?

Yeah, cleaning is a task that just lets them switch off and just have a couple of hours with a podcast in going around and doing the studio. But at the end of the day, cleaning is an example of a low value task that is probably always the first one that we should be outsourcing to allow us to free our time up to do high value tasks in our business.

Yeah, absolutely. So when we're talking about low value tasks, we're actually talking about dollar amounts. Yeah, yeah, like very specific dollar amounts per hour. And so cleaning, for example, is an example of a low value task. Because cleaning is what, like $30 an hour depending on, you know, who you are and where you are and all that kind of stuff. But you know, it's quite a cheap task that you can be outsourcing.

Yeah, without a doubt. Other examples of things like low value tasks. We had one of our members talking about, you know, stop taking uniforms and costumes the other day. That' that if you've got a nice little system in place and that can be done by, you know, a 15, 16 year old junior. Really, it's just, it's just counting things, right? Yep, that's definitely an example of that.

Some teachers would mean, like it's an $18 an hour task if it was taken by a junior, something like that, you know, and that's like a whole range of admin tasks, right, that we're talking about in there. Like very. Not all admin because we're going to jump into high value admin, but there are low value admin tasks that, you know, could be done by a 15 year old that is literally like 18 an hour. You know, stock taking is a great example of that. Taking the bins out is a great example of that. Vacuuming the floor at night. I know that kind of like then goes into cleaning, but it depends if your admin team does that as well. Yeah. You know, there's so many things in there. It could even just be things like, you know, replying to Facebook comments, for example. That's, you know, like, oh, thanks so much for loving this, you know, like really simple kind of things. Yep, they're low value tasks.

Exactly. Things that aren't necessarily like, especially when we're talking admin tasks that aren't face to face client Facing type scenarios.

Yeah, absolutely. Sorting props, sorting costumes, bagging costumes. All the bagging costumes. Right. Like you know, putting them into new bags or getting them steamed or whatever that is. Right. You know, all of those are low value admin tasks that you know, maybe you know, are worth somewhere between about 18 to 25 an hour, maybe $30 an hour. But like that's it, that's what those tasks are worth, right?

Yes, absolutely.

And some other low value tasks, like some teaching.

Yep.

Is a low value task depending on, you know, and we're going to talk about this because teaching is a very big range like admin. But some teaching is, you know, 25, $30 an hour for some teachers.

If it's an assistant on the class, maybe it's even less if you're getting a junior, if you're getting a 16, 17 year old assistant, that's with, with another more senior teacher. If it's a really big class or something like that, then yeah, it can be anywhere from. And I know some people might freak out when we say this but like we're talking 16, $17 an hour if it's a junior. I know there's people out there thinking, oh, what are you talking about, Nathan? You wouldn't believe what I pay my teachers. Don't worry, I do, I do understand. But yeah, that is something like those very. Yeah. Like low value teaching tasks is something that we can perhaps look to outsource early on.

Absolutely. So like there's some examples of low value and we're talking as we said, per dollar amount. So let's talk about like some high value tasks. Yeah. Now going back to the teaching. Some high value tasks are teaching. Without a doubt there are some teachers that we're paying $100 plus an hour.

If you're a high income studio. We totally understand.

Absolutely. And if that's the case, then teaching is a high value task and not something you should be giving off. If your teaching is, you know, at the same level of someone that you'd have to employ at $100 an hour for example, or $150 an hour, that's a high value task for you and something that you shouldn't be giving off lightly. Right?

Yeah, without a doubt, without a doubt. And it's, I guess that's sort of. Yeah. Also looking into like your skill sets as well is probably something you should be evaluating when you're thinking about whether to keep or hand off these tasks. But it's probably something we'll touch on a little bit later as well. But yeah, super, super important. So we talked about some of the higher value tasks, some teaching, and this is one that I think's really changed, especially in the last couple of years.

Absolutely.

Is social media. Social media used to be that thing that we just sort of. Oh yeah. If we have time, we'll throw up a couple of posts on Facebook.

Let's get a junior to do something. Ye, yeah.

It is now such an integral part of our business. It's our main source of marketing for most of us. It's, it's not something that we, that we can take lightly anymore. It's got to be something that we've got to be giving specific attention to and yes, specific time each and every week to make sure that our social media game is on point.

Right, Absolutely. And it's a high value task. Like we've seen people who outsource their social media that are paying, you know, $100 an hour sort of amount, if not higher, to some third party company. Third party companies that do that kind of stuff. That means it's quite a high value task and not something you should be passing off lightly because at that kind of price you could be doing it yourself. Right?

Yeah. And look, I don't. Look, I always sometimes worry about being too negative when I talk about these sorts of things, but if I'm being brutally honest, guys, I've seen way too many studio owners get taken for a ride.

Oh yeah.

On outsourcing this to third party, like companies that say they're going to do it. I had one of our members that we were talking to and I think they were paying upwards of $100 something a week, like maybe $110, $120 a week.

A couple of years ago.

Yeah, this was a couple of years ago as well. And we. Okay, let's pause and have a look at this because we were looking at like how to cut some expenses and when we drilled into it, they were paying, like I said about that $120 a week mark. And we scrolled back through their social pages and there'd been something like three posts in the last six weeks. Right. And so like I said, like it's one thing to outsource these tasks as well. And especially if we're talking into these high value tasks as well. As you move into these high value tasks, if you're outsourcing, not only do you have to outsource effectively, but you've got to make sure that you are holding whoever you're outsourcing to to account.

Absolutely. And in the case of this, you know, that specific studio and I could have done better, like so much. They were more than capable of doing a better job. They had a better understanding of what their client was looking for, what they should be posting on social media, you know, all of those things then that company did. And they're paying a company a huge amount of money, you know, and that's what we're talking about, like $150 an hour when you could be doing it yourself. Oh, here's the better.

Here's the absolute kicker. This studio owner was the one that was providing all the photos and videos to this company. They were sending them through to this company and they just weren't posting them for them.

Yeah. So, you know, things like that, you know, it's really important that you look at that as a really high value task. The other one I know that you're really passionate about, we've been talking a lot about at the moment is bookkeeping as a high value task. Like at an incredibly high value task.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it was something I was just going to quickly jump back to the social media. But it works for the bookkeeping as well. I think sometimes too often studio owners don't give themselves enough credit for the skills that they have. They think, oh, like I couldn't possibly do social media as good as this company that I've seen. Or I couldn't possibly. I'm not a numbers person. I'm doing an inverted commas which never translates on the podcast. But they like tell themselves that they're maybe not a numbers person, so they couldn't possibly do the, the bookkeeping. And when we like, again with another, another client that I was working with one time, we were looking at bookkeeping and they were outsourcing. They didn't really, like I said, they talked themselves into that negative mindset of I'm not a numbers person, so therefore my bookkeeping is something I need to outsource. And we had a bit of a chat about it and again, they were paying about $450 or $440, $450 a month. And when we drilled down into it, we're like, I'm like, do you understand what you're paying that $450 for? I'm like, not really. And so we jumped into there they were using Xero, but MYOB, QuickBooks, whatever we're talking, jumped into their accounting software and we looked at what's called the bank reconciliation, which is when your expenses or your revenue comes in just saying, oh, I spent that money. What did I spend it on? I spent it on advertising or I spent this money on cleaning or I spent this money on some travel. It's just categorizing all your incoming money and expenses to specific categories. And about 45 seconds into that chat they're like, wait, what? That's it?

That's all they do?

Yeah, that's all they do. That's literally all they were paying their bookkeeper for. But because again, like it was a bit of negative self talk, I think around numbers and money mindset that they'd convince themselves that they weren't able to do that and straight away the studio owner took control of their bookkeeping. Which number one, you know, your bookkeeper is the person that's got the finger on the financial pulse of your business, which is super, super important and probably.

Something you should be doing if you can.

Yeah, absolutely. And so they took control of that and we're able to up their pay by like we just started. I said, why don't you take control of it yourself and just up Your pay by 250amonth and then you still got some money spare in the business, right?

Absolutely.

Because that's exactly what you were talking about. Like the more sometimes that we take on, especially if it's the high value task, if you take something back on like that, up your pay a little bit because that's, that's one of the benefits of owning the business, right?

Absolutely. More money in your pocket. And you know, I think that's both the social media and the bookkeeping are really good examples of so super high value tasks that people outsource way too early.

Yep. And too, yeah. Too quickly. Too early.

Yeah. Have this negative mindset around it. They, you know, outsourcing bookkeeping, but then they're doing their cleaning, which makes no sense whatsoever. Right, yeah. You know, because like, let's talk about it. If, if bookkeeping is probably $150, $200 an hour task, cleaning's $30. Like how many hours of cleaning do you have to do for one hour of book? You know what I mean? It just doesn't quite add up.

And what I'm big on with those sorts of things as well is no matter how good a cleaner you are in your business, if you can scrub your floors really, really well, it's probably not going to add to the bottom line of your business. It's not going to help you bring in more students, not going to help you save your expenses. Really in the long Run. It's not going to help you generate more revenues and more profits for your business. But if you work on upskilling yourself on the bookkeeping, there's so many resources out there in 2024, so many free resources out there. Like I said, every single accounting software package that you could possibly use under the sun, they want you to use their product. Like, there's so many amazing trainings on all of those.

Jump onto YouTube.

Yeah, jump onto YouTube, jump onto all of those things. And if you upskill yourself in those sorts of areas, then you're going to be adding value to the bottom line of your business, full stop.

Absolutely, absolutely. High level admin is one of the other, like, really high level tasks that we see outsourced way too early. You know, when we're talking high level admin, we can talk about a range of things. It can be calling that parent back that has inquired about your classes.

Yep.

That is actually a really valuable task and not something you should be giving to a junior with.

No, absolutely not.

Or even, you know, a new admin person. That's not great at that.

Yep.

That's something that you can do so passionately. And if you are the one that's picking up the phone to the inquiries as an example, you probably have a heaps better chance of getting them in the door. That's actually making you money in your business. So that's something you shouldn't be outsourcing, like, you know, until you're doing really, really well, I believe.

Yeah, absolutely. We're talking like, even, like, you know, I don't know, can we, can we put a student mark on it as like a rough estimate or things like that, or is that a bit hard?

It's hard, but I, I think unless you've got over like absolute minimum two or three hundred students, you should still be coping with doing the inquiries yourself.

Yeah.

Because I think there's other things that you could give away first.

Yes.

Because that is a really valuable task and no one's going to do it as well as you do it.

No. Nobody's going to be as passionate about your business, about your classes as you are. And like, even when, you know, obviously we ran a very, very large studio. But I was talking to somebody the other day, like, I honestly believe the reason that our staff was so good at it.

Yeah.

Was because every single staff member that worked at Dance Sensations heard us doing it.

Oh, yeah. Like I still picking up the phone and doing it. There was no doubt about that up until the very end of our Studio journey. I did it solely by myself until at least the 500 sort of 600 student mark, without a doubt, until we sort of brought on some other higher level team members. But that is a super valuable task and if that takes you two hours a week, it is so, so valuable to do that. If it's, you know, 20 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, you know, whatever that is, that is something that's super valuable that you should be doing. But yeah, get rid of the low value tasks. Don't do the stock take, don't do the cleaning, don't do the bagging of costumes that are cheaper. Like that makes more sense. The other like really high level admin things are like, you know, designing marketing strategies.

Yeah.

You know, I think so many people like, oh, I bought this new person in and they're going to, yeah, I'm just going to let them go with the marketing. Like.

Yeah.

And quite often those people don't really have that bigger idea about what they're going to do. They don't know how to design a marketing strategy. They don't know how like what you want or how that all works. Whereas you know, what you want. If you could like learn about that, if you could do, you know, upskilling yourself, like nice talked about whether that's, you know, joining a program, whether that's just, you know, researching on YouTube, listening to podcasts, whatever that is, and designing an incredible marketing strategy that's going to be so much more valuable than you cleaning the floor. Let's go back to the cleaning of the floor. Right. And you're gonna do it because if you were to bring someone in to do that for you, that's a 200, $300 an hour task. You know, if you were bringing someone in to do that, that's a really high level task.

Yeah. And ironically, a lot of the times they've managed to talk their way into you paying them because they've been a really good salesperson. And that's what you know, if it's in terms of like a high value, like admin strategy or things like that, like that's what you're trying to build, right?

Absolutely.

And so like that, that's the biggest thing that we often have to work with our stud is, you know, you being the marketing and salesperson for for your business. That's really something that you've got to lean into and that's something that you've really got to look to upskill yourself in. If you want to be a dance studio owner.

Absolutely Absolutely. So, you know, as small business owners, we need to wear all the hats sometimes, right?

Yeah.

But you know, it might be time for some of our listeners to think about like outsourcing one of those low value tasks.

Yeah.

So how does that look? How do they know if they can afford it, if they're ready, all that sort of stuff?

Yeah, absolutely. And look, sometimes in business we do have to take calculated.

Absolutely.

You know, there's that thing between, you know, we can't always like, you know, save up all the cash reserves that we need to be able to do it. But if we're talking about something like cleaning, how I would approach or attack it is that I would think, okay, I'm going to be outsourcing this cleaning. Let's think of it might be. And I found somebody that's $30 an hour and they say it's going to take them three hours. So let's just call it 100 bucks a week. Yeah, right. So do I have $100 a week cash spare each week and will I have the cash reserves for maybe six weeks? Because ideally I'm going to be taking that time and using it to generate more revenue. But I can't just flick a switch and expect the money to start pouring in. Yes, we'd love that, but of course that's not our reality. So do I have six to, you know, about what, five to six hundred dollars to be able to support this for, yeah, four to six weeks whilst I try and transition into those high value tasks to start bringing the money in. So that's how I'd approach that really basic one of engaging a cleaner.

Yeah. Okay, awesome. So you know you've got a cleaner. You were before spending three hours, four hours, five hours maybe doing the cleaning because we know it takes us longer than it would take a professional cleaner because you get distracted along the way and there's bright shiny objects and then you do this, you do that. So if you're thinking about like going back to that simple idea of cleaning, you know, if you are currently sort of like calculating your time and thinking, okay, at the moment I'm spending about four or five hours cleaning, what could I be spending four or five hours doing instead? And that's the, that's the thing, right? For most of us it's not a, hey, let's have four or five hours off a week. No, that shouldn't be what it is. It should be like, what else could I be doing that is going to be a higher value task that's going to Make a difference.

Yeah.

If you aren't already spending four or five hours on your social media a week would make. Holy crap, that would be incredible. Social media, if that was the case, spending four or five hours, you know, like, which is overkill, you shouldn't need to spend that much time. But four or five hours chasing leads that have come into your business, picking up the phone, having conversations with them, you know, if that has cost you a hundred dollars a week in a cleaner, but you could get one new student a week by being better on following up your phone calls.

Well, in front one more.

One new student a week is much more than that, right?

Yeah.

Like, you know, it's so, so valuable. So what I think it's really important is to see how you can replace your time doing something that's more valuable in your business.

Yeah, without a doubt. Because that's, like I said, that's what we're all about. We're all about helping studio owners build the studio of their dreams. And you know, we, it's something that we always like we talk about that. We know that so many of our amazing listeners got into owning a dance studio because it's their, their love, their passion. But at the end of the day, guys as well, you're going to be passionate about it for longer if you're making good money out of, out of it as well, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So let's really think about the golden rule when we are outsourcing something. First thing, if you're thinking about outsourcing, think about how much per hour task is this? That would be your first point. Think about how much is this worth per hour? Am I happy to pay someone else for that or would I rather that amount in my pocket or what could I be doing? That is a heaps higher value task. In those same amount of hours, what could I replace in terms of time? I think they're the like, really important things to be thinking when we're thinking outsource. Outsourcing, right?

Absolutely. And don't be afraid to think about like you might have to upskill yourself as well. Like it might be something, you know, we, we always talk to our students about making sure that they're working hard at bettering themselves and upskilling themselves to learn like parts of dance and choreography and things like that. Being a business owner, guys, is exactly the same. Sometimes there's skills that we have to work at. It is very different to being a great dance teacher and a great choreographer. Being a business owner is a different skill set that Sometimes you have to do a little bit of work at.

Absolutely. So thinking about spending that time upskilling yourself, doing trainings, learning things, you know, listening to podcast, whatever that is for you. Right. Or just doing a bit of trial and error is so, so important.

Yep.

Anyway, I hope that you have loved this podcast, and if you're thinking about outsourcing, just really think about those golden rules that we have. But thank you again for listening to the podcast. Thanks, Dave.

Thank you so much, guys. If you have enjoyed the podcast, we would so, so appreciate you jumping on and giving us a little follow or even a review. It would mean the absolute world to us.

It does. It helps more people find our podcasts and it absolutely means the world. So if you have two minutes spare, jump on Spotify or Apple and just leave a review, we would love it forever. Thank you so much, guys.

Thanks, guys. 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 States Tribe. We would love to see you there.