Set Your Team Up For Success in 2025

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 the Dance Principles United Podcast. Bec, I'm here with you in person. It's so lovely, so crazy.

We've been doing some expo work together and yeah, always love meeting you in person.

Always fun, Always fun. So give me a bit of a life update. Tell me all the things.

Well, we just did showcase. It was super epic. It's probably the craziest week of my entire life. Like.

And that's saying something for you, babe.

Yeah, that is. But, like, literally starting at 7:30 in the morning, morning kids still dancing at 11:00pm at night, like, trying to watch all the friends. It was hectic. You were there too, though, so it was kind of cool to hang out with you.

It was lovely. I didn't really see you very much, but I waved. No, don't be sorry. There was waving. That was about the extent of it.

There was a pat on the back every now and then.

You're okay. You got this.

Handing me a wine. That was about the extent of it.

I know that so many of our studio owners would have been in the same boat and know what it's like when you've got, you know, a lot of people that need a lot of emotional support from you. It's hard to be all things to all people sometimes.

What a fun week, though. I absolutely did love it. Like, it was super awesome. The kids loved it. They all were there for each other. It was just amazing.

Yeah, so, so good. Awesome. Well, today we're talking teacher training. One of the biggest, one of your biggest, most passionate things that I know you have a lot of big feelings about. So are you going to give us some great tips for teacher training or do you want to talk about what it actually involves first?

Yes. I think as an industry, we don't do enough of it. And I'm not necessarily talking about upskilling your acro teacher to teach better acro, although we definitely need to do that as well. But just teaching your teachers and your staff about your business, about what you want your business to look like, what you want their classes to look like, how you want things to feel, this. I can go on about it for hours, but it's just something that I think we don't do. Enough of. Is that teacher training.

Absolutely. And like you said, like, you know, learning how to spot a cartwheel correctly, for example, is super important. For sure. But that's a transferable skill that for a lot of teachers, they teach it, you know, three or four, five, I don't know, however many studios, and they would use that same skill spotting technique for the cartwheel through all of those studios. However, what we're talking about is very specific to a specific studio. Right. Because we are all running a different type of studio. And it's important that our staff know that and know what makes our studio special and unique in its own way, rather than just doing a generic, you know, across the board thing. Because we do all run like a different studio there, you know, the studio of our dreams. The way we like to people to communicate, the, the training we give our team, you know, the feeling in the place, it's all very different.

Absolutely. And the systems that we have in place, you know, and they need to know that stuff so that if they get asked a question or if they get put on the spot, they know exactly how you want them to answer it. It's just so important.

Yeah. There's nothing worse than having customer service that's different. Right. Then, you know, let's say you've got your 200 kids at your studio, and student number A asks one teacher one question about something about the concert, they answer one way. Teacher number B answers a different way, the admin person answers a different way, the owner answers a different way. And then sometimes clients actually know that and can use that, I guess, as a manipulation tactic. Not that I want to talk negative on that, but it's just, it's not giving the same streamlined message. It's not professional, and it's confusing for clients, Right?

Absolutely. So my first tip, Amanda, is to run staff training. Now, I don't want to confuse this with a staff meeting. I feel like there's lots of studio owners that have a staff meeting where they sit their staff down and then they say, make sure you put your props away and, you know, mark your role. Yeah, mark your role. And you know, here's the dates of our concert. And that's kind of the extent of it. I'm actually talking about sitting your team down for a day, you being the leader and standing up in, in front of them and giving them different things that they need to work on that are going to change the way that you guys do business. Getting them to work together in teams, getting them to answer questions about what their goals are. For their classes. All of that is what I think should go on in the staff training.

And it be a collaborative thing. Right. You know the other example we gave where, you know, telling them to mark roles. Yes, that's important. A hundred percent. That's important that they mark their roles correctly, whatever. But when you do it in a training sense rather than a meeting meeting, and it's a collaborative thing and everyone understands the why behind it, why it's important, what the follow up is, what happened, like all of this, it's so much more than just a mark your roles and like, you know, the teacher talking down on them.

Exactly.

It changes the vibe.

Oh, absolutely. And you know, going through your values on the day, like how important is that? And knowing your values, knowing you know what you want, how you want them to teach, what you want them to do. One of the. Oh, you don't know this a bit. Today some of my staff have been texting me what songs they're doing for routines because I want to make sure that our little people have, you know, routines that they can relate to. So it's just things. That's a value of ours. That's something that's really important to me. So it's things like that. Like, do your staff know that when they're selecting their song choices?

Yes.

You know, do they know what you want? Maybe you want a really high end feel to your music. Maybe you want it. I don't know what you want. I'm just telling you what I want. But yes, it's them knowing that in the first place that's the important part.

They're not mind readers.

No.

If you don't tell people they don't know, I think that's the biggest thing. So having that collaborative team environment where you come together for a training, how often do you think staff training should be happening?

Well, we do it every term and I think that's what should be happening. So four times a year, essentially. It's a great time. We always do it during school holidays, which is a great time to debrief about what's happened in the term and then get ready for the new term to come and, you know, just get everybody together. We always have like a little lunch or a drink after or whatever it might be to make everyone interact with each other and it helps them to feel more comfortable as a team as well. If they're coming in their brand new teacher and nobody knows them and they don't know anyone, how awkward is that?

They also can't, you know, I think so many studios sometimes just have teachers that just come and go. They come and they do their shift and then they leave. They're not part of the bigger picture. And that makes it really hard because we know. Let's talk about the ballet teacher that just comes and goes. You know, it's really important that the ballet teacher also knows what's going on in their jazz troop. Or the fact that the lyrical teacher wants to put this trick in and. Or the fact that little Susie's, you know, parents had an awful separation last week and she's going through like, you know, there's so much that we need to collaborate on. Not just come teach my class, leave, have nothing to do with what happens with those students in any other classes. Because it is. It's such a big environment.

Absolutely. And the kids feel it too. They do all different classes. You know, one of the things I do with my team every staff training is we have something that we are all working on together. So for example, last year, the last term, we were working on dynamics. Now whether that's dynamics in a Batman glisse or whether it's a smooth and sharp in your lyrical or whether it's dynamics in your hip hop and getting everything really sharp. So I did like a whole session around dynamics and then we all worked in teams and worked out exactly how we were going to bring those dynamics.

Into play for different styles. That's cool, right?

So then we're in class saying to the kids, okay, you know that this term we're all working on our dynamics. And so every teacher is coherent together.

I love that. And they hear the students hear that from their tap teacher, their ballet teacher, their comp Te, you know, all the things. And you know, I think that's really important for the kids too, because then they really learn that lesson on dynamics, for example, because if they just hear it from one teacher, they're like, oh, that one teacher always goes on about, you know, like changes the environment. Okay, so teacher training four times a year, you think twice as a minimum.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And I think that's a great way. So what do we cover? What. What are we covering these days? What do you think is really important?

Look, I think the process of a student, especially at this time of year, the beginning of the year, coming in from the second they leave their car and what their first class journey looks like as they walk through the waiting room, as they get into their classroom, how you want them to then enroll, how you want them to, you know, what you want the teacher to say to Them at the end of class. I think that is so important right now. And you is talking about that ballet teacher. Do they know that process? What's their role in that process? At the end of the class, are they expected to go up to the parent and say, okay, great, let's get you enrolled? Are they expected to hand them off to the admin team? If there's no admin team there, what's meant to happen? Like, that's so important.

Absolutely. So I can hear a lot of studio owners that are listening to you talk at the moment go, oh, but my ballet teacher doesn't like she. They just teach the class. They don't come out. They don't have anything to do with the admin. We've got our admin side. What do you say to that kind of thing?

Well, I think it's. That's a studio that's probably not going to grow very well, because imagine doing a trial of anything new, and then the teacher doesn't come up and talk to you at the end, and then you just kind of awkwardly walk out. Like, if you relate it to a swim school, for example, I'm positive that that would not happen at the end of the first class. Or a gym, you know, if you go gym for the first time, I'm sure they wouldn't just awkwardly let you walk out, but they'd actually have a conversation with you about enrolling or about.

Absolutely. And that doesn't mean the ballet teacher needs to know how to take the payment, go into the system. All that might mean is that they know the process, which is like, hey, she did so well in class today. We had such an awesome time. Can you just go and see Jess at the front desk and Jess will get you all set up and enrolled for that.

Exactly. And then. Yeah. And so if you want to even go to boss mode with that, you could teach your stuff to upsell the class after. Oh, she did so well in ballet. Now, the next class, which all of her friends in that class are doing, is lyrical. She'd be great in that. Why don't you try lyrical next week? Or would you like to give a bit of lyrical ago or have a watch? It's just teaching them those simple things. That sounds, you know, so easy for us because we're the business owners and of course, that's what we do. But it's not simple to them, and.

They haven't been trained on it. They don't know what to say. They don't know if they're allowed to do it, you know, like, let's think about it. Do your staff know? You know, are they allowed to take free trials or do they have to pay for, like, pay for it? Do they know what information they get sent before the first class, what they get told to wear? You know, all of these things. It's so important that your whole team is across it. Okay, so going through and making sure that the whole team knows that process when they first come in for a trial, what else do we think we should be going through?

Look, I think goals for their classes and we always talk about goals in set the goal, measure the goal, then share the goal with parents and then celebrate it. Sharing the goal with parents is so important. Right? Like, we forget about that. Like, let's. I'll just do something really simple. Okay. Our technique class, we want to increase all of their flexibility. How are we going to measure that? We're going to take photos of them every single week and show them the improvement. How are we going to share that? We're going to share the photos with the parents on a platform like Band so they can see the amazing work we're doing. And then at the end of the term, if everyone increases their flexibility, we'll have a pizza party or like, that's just so simple. But the thing that people often forget is they either get inconsistent with the measuring or they get inconsistent with the sharing. And then parents don't see the value and that ruins retention.

Yeah, that's interesting that you said that because, like, so many of us have done, you know, a splits party or, you know, whatever, like, we've done those kind of things in our studio. But are you really sharing that with your clients so they actually see the value of it? Are you just doing like one post at the end or are you showing the journey along the way as well? Because if you just wait until the end celebrations, then some of them don't make it that far. I love that.

Absolutely. A few other things, like I said, values I think is really important. Obviously going through your important dates for the year, maybe you've got some events that you're going to be running and it's good to get different team members involved in that. Sometimes you have a team member that you didn't think would want to be involved in an event and they're like, I would love to be a part of the Halloween party or whatever it is. I think that's really important.

Awesome. I love that. That's so important. The other thing that I really love that you talked about was values. In there because, you know, to me, I think it's really important, you know, some of us have like values stuck on a wall or, you know, something like that. And to me I'm like, what does that actually mean exactly? And how does that translate into your studio? It's all well and good to go. We are family oriented. I don't know, like just. That is a perfect one, inclusivity or like something like that, but then not actually live through it. And to me, the way you teach your staff about that and what I used to like to do is to talk about scenarios and how those values relate to scenarios. For example, if it's around inclusivity, you know, the value. Well, what does that look like at the concert when the kid shows up without their shoes? What does that look like, you know, in class with the kid that just can't seem to get that move correct, you know, and how does your staff actually put that into practice? So we would talk about a whole heap of different things. You know, I especially love talking about that at concert time, like all the things that could go wrong and then talking about how we would handle that as a team that lived up to our values. Do you do stuff like that?

Yeah, and we talk about each value, what it means, and then we get them to workshop how they're going to that value into their classroom. So, you know, if it is, I don't know, inclusivity, how are you going to bring inclusivity into your classroom each time that you teach? What sort of things are you going to be aware of in and out of the classroom to help with that? And doing that workshopping together, I think is that is a great team building stuff as well.

Oh yeah, I love that. So, so good. So what other great things do you have for us around staff training?

That's probably it for staff training. I think we might move on to our second thing of getting our team in order for 20. And that would be watching your staff teach.

Ah, yes.

Now, this is tricky if you're someone who teaches a lot yourself, and I totally get that. But it's when you get to the end of the year and you've got that routine on stage that is absolutely horrendous and the kids have no idea what they're doing and you're positive that every parent from that troop is going to leave, that you kind of have to self reflect and go, did I watch them teach? Did I get them to show me videos of what they were doing of their corrie?

Yeah, yeah.

Did I? Did I have my hand in all of that. And if the answer is no, then I think you need to look at yourself as a leader. Because watching them teach and giving them feedback is so important. No other job on earth would you ever not get feedback from your boss. Right.

So, so important. I love that. And I think so many of us have got a story like that, that, you know, you saw the dance at dress rehearsal or concert day and you were like, oh my God, what the hell has the teacher been doing with that class? Or whatever. But like you said, like that's on us as the studio owners. So what kind of check in points do you have? Like, are you meeting regularly with your team? How often do you think's appropriate and what kind of things do you go through?

Depends on their role in the studio. But at least once a term I have a sit down one on one with every single teacher. At least once a term either myself or one of my senior staff members will watch them teach. And you know, we've just started Little Groovers back already. We started it back last week and my studio manager has been going into every classroom because we've got new Little Groovis teachers this year and watching them and then giving them feedback and saying, you did this great. This needs a bit of work. We think we'd like to see you do. Like that is so important, isn't it?

Absolutely. You know, and they're learning. You're doing them an injustice if you don't absolutely do that. So I think it's really important that you're giving that feedback. You know, I used to like to see choreography videos. If I couldn't make it into the class, I'd ask them to send me videos with updates. I'd also ask my staff to tell me where they're up to in the music. Like they're, you know, up to 2 minutes, 10 of a 3 minute track. So then I could like gauge how, you know, how far they were and if they could actually, you know, so often we're like, oh, that dance isn't quite finished and it's concert next week and. And then the teachers all get in a stress and the end's a bit of a hot mess. And you know, we've all had that situation. So to me that was really important. Checking how they were going time wise. Yeah. And I used to actually get my stuff to send me videos as well of their choreography, to check it quite regularly.

That's why I love band because we post nearly every week for each class. So you can see Genuinely and jump in if they're doing a routine, how far it is, what it's looking like, all that sort of stuff. But the parents are seeing it as well. So, you know. But it puts a bit more pressure on teachers, I guess, in that sense to really step up. But, but I think all of that is. It's. Yeah, as a leader, I think you need to lead. And that's part of that is going in, sitting down, watching them and giving them feedback.

I love that so much. What a great way to set your staff up for success.

Absolutely. So, guys, if you're someone who listened to this today and you're like, yep, I definitely need to step it up as a leader, I guess I'd like to say to you, I did not do any of this with my team for many years of running my studio. And when I did start doing it, it's why I became so passionate about teaching it to. Because I realized the difference it made. And your team is everything. It really is, isn't it? You know, I was at a beautiful hotel the other day, Amanda JW Marriott. It's my favorite hotel. And the reason it's my favorite hotel is the customer service. From the second you walk into that hotel, every single person knows their role. They are beautiful to you. And you just get this incredible feeling no matter where you are in the hotel. And I was amazing thinking about that, relating it to our studio. So it's not just the owner of the hotel that needs to be.

Or the front desk person.

Yep. It's, you know, the person that's serving you coffee. It's the person that's cleaning the toilets. It's the person that's. There's so many different people in there. And it's the same with your studio. Okay. You might. They might be getting a great front desk person who's giving them a really amazing experience. And their jazz teacher's really great, but their hip hop teacher's not so good. But this isn't so great either. And like all of those parts is your team and your team are the face of your business. And if they aren't great, then, and I mean every single one of them isn't great, then that can create retention being really bad.

Absolutely. So now is the time to take control of your team for 2025. Set yourself up for success this year. You know, start with a great training day. It's not too late. If you haven't done it yet, don't worry, it's not too late. Jump in and do it. It start with the meeting. Start slowly. Just start somewhere. I think that's the biggest thing we would like to say. Hey friends, if you fancy a sneaky trip to Melbourne, we are doing a one day event in Melbourne next week. We would love to have you there.

It is going to be so awesome. We've got heaps of studio owners coming. It's going to be amazing. I always say be brave, come to this event because you just might meet your business bestie just like Amanda and I met at one of those events. But it's going to be great and it's going to give you a whole day just to focus on your business without distractions. And we know that's where the magic happens.

Absolutely. Check out our Instagram or drop us a DM for all the info. Can't wait to have you next week on the podcast.

Bye guys.

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 to see you there.