Simple Ways To Make More Money In Your Dance Studio - Part 2

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.

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This is the Dance Principles United podcast.

Hey guys, welcome to part 2 of 5 ways to make more money in your your studio now. Number 3, I'm very passionate about this one.

I know number 3 is— and look, it's something that I know we've all got different budgets and we've all got different, um, different amounts of time and things like that, but the reality is to increase your revenue, you've got to spend some money and you've got to invest in marketing. Um, it's just marketing wins. It's, it's 2026. Obviously, you know, if you've been around for a while and your studio has been there for a long time, that does carry some weight. But the thing that's the biggest driver of new students growing your studio in 2026 is without a doubt marketing. Marketing wins, full stop.

Absolutely. And I, before I started growing my business, never invested in these. And as soon as I started to, and you've got to do it properly, you know, and our members are very lucky to have you, you know, supporting them with their Facebook and Meta ads and all the things so that they know exactly what they need to do because it is always changing.

Yeah, absolutely.

But it is just such a game changer. And I say to new people coming into our world all the time, how does anyone know that you even exist? It's funny, like you just, because you, it's your whole world, you think that everybody knows. Yeah, I feel like Beck and Cat are a perfect example of these. Now they're in a very rural town, 9,000 people in their town, and they thought because— and I've been to that town and you— they do know everyone. You walk into the club, it blows my mind, and, and they know— it's like they know every single person in the club, literally every single person. Um, but they started doing the Facebook ads and realized or Instagram, whatever you want to call it, Meta ads, and realized, kidding, actually no one really knew. And now we've exploded.

Yep.

And that's the thing, like, how do people know you're there, you know, unless you are? And that's where everyone is, they're on their phone.

Yeah, absolutely. All the time. And look, I'm going to be controversial here because it's something that we hear all the time, but I'm going to call bullshit on, oh yeah, no, we grow really well, it's just by word of mouth. Like, like I said, some people might stop listening to the podcast at this point because I say you don't know, you've got— don't— like, it's completely wrong. Like, from what we see, and I look at a lot of studios' numbers day in, day out, and if you're just relying on word of mouth, you might be maintaining numbers if you're lucky. Yep. If you've got a really, really super duper strong brand in your area, but You can't grow just by word of mouth in 2026. It's none of the data and none of the numbers I see in any way, shape, or form back that up.

Do you want to know what I call bullshit on?

Oh yeah.

Meta ads don't work. Facebook, I've tried Facebook ads and they don't work. And like, that just means you're not doing it correctly because billion-dollar companies spend a lot of money, you know, in Meta ads. We are all buying. I often say to people, Have you bought something this week on—

Yes.

Obviously everybody has. I buy the stupidest things now, Nath, because they pop up on my phone, you know, and it just makes sense because everyone's on their phone.

Absolutely.

It does work. If you've tried doing it and it hasn't worked, you just don't know how to do it properly.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's all it is. And look, we understand that every studio has different budgets, has different amounts to put in. So like, you know, you don't just have to think laterally about it. So, you know, investing money in it is the quickest way to get the results and get the students in and increase your revenue. But if you are— maybe like the one thing that everybody definitely does have to invest is time. Yep. So yeah, you can either be investing money, investing time, or investing both.

Yep.

Um, and like you said, like, if you're going to go like direct to the source, the best way to invest money is into Meta ads. And that's again something that we're so passionate about, that I love helping our studio owners with, because when we do it properly, we can see the results, we can track the results, and that means that we're confident in spending more money next time. Yep. I can completely understand why somebody convinced you to do a a Facebook ad 3 years ago, you spent $1,000 on it and you felt like you got no enrollments from it. I could understand why you'd be a bit jaded by that and have made the sweeping assumption that Facebook and Instagram ads don't work. But the reality is, is when you set them up correctly, when you can track exactly how many leads have come in, when you know how many of those leads then turn into enrollments, and you know that that $1,000 you spent has got you, say, 20 enrollments, and those 20 enrollments have at least paid $200 for a term by the time they've added in uniform and stuff like that. Well, you've turned $1,000 into $4,000. So when you're able to set these things up properly, be getting good leads in and tracking results, well then yes, you're far more likely to not only spend that $1,000 next time, but maybe bump it up a little bit more. And that's where either investing the time alongside the money is super important as well. Absolutely. Paws last year, you spent just under $20,000 in paid socials. The fact that Paws grew isn't an accident. It's investing that time, that money, obviously having a fantastic ads person, Bec, to run those ads. Bec gets me to be her Facebook ads person to be the guinea pig.

Very lucky.

But yeah, the reality is that's the The best thing we can do is invest that time and invest that money to be able to do it more confidently.

And it's interesting, like I know people are probably listening to $20,000 and thinking there's no possible way that I could spend that. But you will spend that on a high-level teacher without even thinking about it. But you won't spend it on growing your business. It's just a very interesting way of looking at things, you know, way more than $20,000 actually on a HighLevel teacher.

We've had a couple of members recently talking to us about, you know, local schools have reached out for like community fêtes and stuff like that. And I was talking to a member the other day that the schools are asking to set up a fête at their stores, like $3,000. What? Yeah. What? Yeah.

You're joking.

No. So like—

Like a primary school or something? Yeah.

And so I can understand wanting to support your local community and wanting to get involved and help those sort of things out. But at the end of the day too, that's a real business transaction that sort of steps out of the realm of community sometimes. But yeah, if that's something that you've seriously considered supporting your local community by doing something like that, then I'd maybe like think about looking at sort of investing that into some paid ads or something like that, or even half of it, or even a third of it.

There's all sorts of things like that. There's the doctor's surgery that's got the TV and there's the, you know, we've all been, you know, gypped by that stuff and they call and say, how can I fix it?

Great salespeople.

Oh, very good salespeople, but it's, nothing's going to beat where everyone is every single day and that is on their phone.

Absolutely. And look, so I guess that the next part of that is if you're maybe struggling with budgets and things like that, then you can still get really good, well, sorry, organic reach and organic posting on social can still work if you've got the time to put it in. Right. And we're not talking about just doing like one post here or there or a couple of posts a week. If you don't have the money to invest on the paid side of it, you've really got to go like next level ninja on it. So like you've had Chloe and Kiralee from The Block.

Yep.

Sorry, not The Block. That was Kiko. Kiko Studios on the podcast. and they also invest in paid marketing, but they then also take their organics to the next level. So they did like a little chat at, um, our, our Connect Day with our Studio Growth Club members the other day, and Chloe outlined how she sets up her organic stuff. And like, I highly recommend, guys, jump on and check out Kiko Studios and look at how often they're posting and just the level of content that they're also doing. And that's because they see it as vitally important for their business and they invest huge amounts of time, not huge amounts of time, sorry, but they allocate 3 to 4 hours a week as the important part of their business that it is. Absolutely.

It is so important. So, so important. Something simple to do with organic socials is tag the kids and parents, or not the kids anymore, but the parents, because Like they will reshare it. That is, I don't understand people who don't do that for a starter. Like, yeah.

And look, it was something that came up on our, on our call the other day, right around Midyear Concerts, about you talking about you at Midyear, you let the parents film, right?

100%.

And why do you like, what's, what's the benefit of that for you?

Exactly that. They're going to share, tag us. I ask them to tag us. Often we'll do a competition for them to tag us at those types of events because we want them to. And it's then on their socials, the amazing things that we're doing.

Yeah, 100%. And so like, you know, back to like talking about Chloe and Kira's story with what they're doing. So because they've built up this flywheel, they're in a town of— sorry to those in Bargo that I don't know the exact population of your town, but we're talking like small country town, 10,000 people or less easily. And within their area, they've been able to generate because with their socials they're generating 142,000 like views a month on their content in a very small country town. Now I did like a little like looking back at like our Expo ads, for example, to generate that sort of views on our content cost us about $5,000 to $6,000.

Wow.

So for investing 3 to 4 hours a week of their time and doing it consistently, they're getting $5,000 to $6,000 worth of paid ads. So it's that notion of, right, you don't always have to invest the money, but if you're not going to invest money, you've got to invest the time to maybe get some sort of results that might be able to convert into getting more revenue for you.

So important. Yeah, so, so important. All right, what is number 4?

Number 4, look, something that we love doing with our members and we talk about, it's getting good at events. Yeah, so making sure that whatever event we run at the studio, whether it's our, our big event, our end of year concert, whether it's a mid-year concert, whether it's holiday workshops, whether they're the dance version or just the sort of more childminding version if we're honest, um, uh, whether it's discos on a Friday night like for parents to drop and go, like whatever event you're running getting good at them, right? We know that so many businesses like spend so much of their time, effort, and energy trying to find customers that are as loyal as ours in a dance studio. Yeah, like our customers are really, really loyal. They love what we do. They love the positive benefits that we have for their children. And so many of us don't unlock that. They don't unlock the full value of those relationships. And I know it's something that you do super well at your studio, right? Like something like Pep Rally, for example.

Yes, yes, we just were talking about that, um, on a call on Tuesday. Yeah, um, Pep Rally, we just really get our parents involved. So, um, you guys can check it out on my socials and how epic it is. Um, but the parents dress up, they have posters, they have heads of their children, literal heads, like at the footy. Yeah, um, it's a super fun day and event, but I think we We do prizes, we do a fashion parade for parents, um, and it just gets them involved in their kids' sport. But you think about the football— I talk about this all the time— you think about the football, yeah, everyone's wearing the football jersey, they're there screaming for their team, yeah, this is their kids' team, you know, they want to wear the jersey and they want to be a part of your brand. And if you allow that, they actually love it. Everyone wants to belong. Yep, that's the thing. And if you give them a sense of belonging, they'll stay with you.

Yep, and they'll stay loyal, of course. And so that means that when you are giving them something of value, then they're happy to pay some money for it and for you to make more revenue and more profit from it. There is that fine line that sometimes we do have to be careful. Like, we've got to make sure that we are providing value. Oh yeah, when we're asking for, for money in return, we can't just keep asking them to dip in. But if we're providing— that's what we're, like I said, passionate about, getting really good at these about going all out, about when we do holiday workshops that we've marketed the shit out of it, that we've put it everywhere. We haven't just put one post up on Instagram and wondered why nobody signed up. That we've been— we've got all the teachers to rev it up in class, that we've got the posters all around the studio, that we've put it out on band emails, SMSes. We might have even run a couple of ads to it. Like, there's so many things that we can be doing Because the reality is, like, regardless of what the event is, the, like, the, the key behind making it successful, behind it generating good revenue and therefore good profit for us, are all the same. Yeah. And the one thing that we see people miss the mark on a lot is missing the, the goals of the event. Yeah. And the one that I always, I see people missing is Bring a Friend Week, right? Bring a Friend Week can be great, but what is the goal of Bring a Friend Week? Too many people feel or see the goal as having as many friends come along that week as possible, and that's not it. The goal of Bring a Friend Week is to enroll as many kids as possible.

Yep.

Yeah, we don't necessarily want little Susie whose mum needs someone to look after their friend for the hour and a half to come along to those two classes.

Yeah.

So we need to make sure that when we're setting up something like a Bring a Friend Week, for example, that we're seeding the sale, that we're telling somebody, if you're coming along to this Bring a Friend Week, we'd love you to come. We're going to hit you up about signing up for club, like, and do all those sorts of things.

Maybe like make them an offer, whatever it might be.

Yeah.

It needs to be there. And we hate thinking about ourselves as salespeople, and I get that.

Yeah.

But we are.

Yeah.

And if you want to affect more kids' lives positively, you have to be okay to sell.

Yeah. Yeah. Without a doubt. So like we said, like if you want to be getting good at those events about events that are actually going to move the needle for your business. Yeah. Because we need to be running these events at time. You know, we have our studios run for 52 weeks. We have times where we're not taking tuition revenue.

Yeah.

Those dreaded summer holidays. We all like whatever event we're going to run. We need it to be profitable. We need those other revenue centers in our business. And so the things that we're doing to get those events successful, to get them bringing revenue in, are all the same. Like we said, it needs to be more than just posting a story.

Yep.

We need consistent, regular posts in the 2 to 3 weeks leading up to it.

Yep.

We need all of our staff on board. Yeah, like, you are amazing at the staff training around those things. Like, people don't just turn up at Pep Rally, or staff don't just turn up and Oof, that's a success, right?

Right.

Yeah. And we need to be like, yeah, hyping it up left, right and center in every single way that we've got. We need to market the shit out of it. Like you said, marketing wins.

Absolutely. And that's the thing. Like, I think people think that, you know, I just get a bazillion people to an event because I'm just lucky. And it's never that.

It's—

there's so much more to it. There's so much work that goes into it for it to be a true success.

Yeah.

We always have posters up around our studio for what's happening and coming up next. Always gets everyone excited.

100%.

And it's so cheap to do that.

Yeah, without a doubt.

Shall we do the very last one?

Very last one. Very last one. We have waffled as we thought we would.

That's all right.

But look, the very last one was something that I talk about a lot more now, Bec, and it's because of you. It's not—

I never thought I would have seen this in a presentation. I was going to say that.

I know. But something that, and it's that notion of the most effective thing we have or the thing that we have the most of as business owners to give and invest is our time. And it's about making sure that we invest that time wisely, that we are doing as few of those $18 tasks as a business owner as possible. And taking on as many of the $100+ an hour. That's where we see a lot of studio owners that successfully make the shift to be successful and profitable is that they're the ones taking on more of those $100+ an hour tasks and then letting go of those $18 an hour tasks. So one of the biggest and easiest ways to do that is private lessons.

Yep.

And I know for some people are out like, you know, either one of two ways, or either thinking, oh my God, I would love that, I just love teaching solos, they're the best. And other people are sort of curling up into a little ball and rocking back and forth maybe. But I think it's because they're not framing privates in the right way.

Yeah, it doesn't just have to be solos though, 100%, you know, it could be a technique private, it could be an acro private. Like, every surfer has their superpower.

Yes.

You know, most of them. And so I think that that's where you can use that superpower to, especially in school holidays.

Yes. And that's where, like I said, like whenever we— and that was for so long, like in our studio, we just always equated, oh, a solo lesson has to be a comp routine that's going to be done at solos. And that's a lot of work for a teacher. Like, I understand why some, even some teachers, like, might— that might not be their jam. Because the investment in the creative, the creating the routine, the cutting them, all those sorts of things. But like you said, like the amount of— every studio owner has a superpower.

Yeah.

And like what one thing that we did with our SGC members was talking about just holiday private lessons. And it's something that you guys did really successfully at PAUSE, right?

Yeah. So we— well, you made this incredible. Booking form for us to use.

Thanks.

We put out, I think, 5 or 6 teachers. I wasn't on there, to be honest, with you, Nath. And I think we sold $8,000 in 30 minutes of privates in the school holidays.

Yeah.

Isn't that crazy?

Absolutely.

And these are a lot of those kids didn't ever do privates before. Yep.

So these are kids that are just like looking to, for example, like, are they just looking to get better at one particular skill? Like what's like—

So we had an acro teacher there. We had a circus teacher there. We had a tech teacher. Yep.

They know if they're booking a private as a one-off with Miss Sam that they're going to be able to do their circus better.

Yeah, correct. And, and yeah, it was really insane. It was really insane. Mind you, we put a lot of FOMO behind it.

Yep.

You know, we did an Instagram post saying something exciting is coming. We did posts in band, we did emails out. We put so much FOMO behind it.

Yep.

And then released it, which I think is why it sold out so quickly. And then we had people emailing, oh, I missed out on the privates with, you know, Bibi, can I— is there any possible way, blah blah blah. So yeah, you can definitely do it in school holidays. The other thing I want to say is, and you know, I'm going to be a bit controversial here, people will say to me, um, we've only got 2 studio spaces and we're completely full. And I'm like, cool, are you working on a Sunday? And it doesn't even have to be the studio owner working on a Sunday, but why can't you have privates running on a Sunday? Why aren't we doing classes on a Sunday? It blows my mind that people will say their whole school is full and there's nothing they can do about it, but they have Sundays off.

Yep.

And then their thing is, well, I want a Sunday off. I'm like, okay, well, I get that. I get that too.

Yeah.

But my studio is operating on a Sunday and I don't necessarily have to be there. You know, we have kids taking privates. I don't think you necessarily need a reception person there if it's privates because you're taking one kid in, one kid out, and the other kid's waiting with their parent. But why can't you run that on a Sunday and make some extra money?

Yeah. And look, that's the thing, like I said about that, you know, $18 task versus $100 an hour plus task. So you charge $65 per half hour private at Paws.

Correct.

Which is something you never thought you just kept like something you never thought would happen in your studio. Right. But it's, it's where the market is. I said like the reality is like if you went out there and tried to charge $4,000 for a 30-minute private, nobody's booking you. No, but we operate in a market, guys. And if you're saying that you're so full, it probably means that you're charging too little, right, with your privates and things like that. So like we operate in a market. So like put them up $5 and you might— some people might drop off, but then some people will pick it up. It's important that we understand that notion whenever we're pricing anything. But the reality is, as a studio owner, you're the expert in your studio. You're the one that your students look up to. You're the face of your studio. If you put out on a Sunday— and this is like another challenge for people to do— that if you put out, hey, Miss Beck's teaching, got some availabilities for private lessons where we're going to do working on their turns, $65 for half hour, book on this link, and you make yourself available for 3 hours on a Sunday for $130 an hour, I feel like that's worth a Sunday morning. Like, and if I—

Sunday afternoon.

Yeah, or a Sunday afternoon. Or like, if you've got, you might have gaps on a Friday, but something like that. But if you're happy to set aside 3 hours to bank $400.

Yep.

And if you do it once and it fills up, well then maybe you're onto something.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I also want to say, I don't think it's just for elite kids.

Absolutely.

And like, I know I always revert back to poor old Phoenix, but you know, he's 9, he's doing soccer. He's not the best soccer player. He doesn't work well with the group training because he gets really upset when he can't get things right straight away. I would kill for him to have private lessons. I have Googled it so many times, Nate. Yeah. It's like an impossible thing to get.

Have you got— So, yeah, it's interesting.

In our area anyway, I can't find it. Maybe I'm not looking. I mean, this is the thing, right? There possibly is something out there, but no one's advertising it, so I can't see it anyway. I would happily, happily pay $100 for him to have a lesson on his own to learn some better skills. Now, I don't think Phoenix is going to become an elite soccer player by any means. I just want him to feel better about the way he plays. Yeah, and that's the thing, like, they might just want their kid to get a little bit more flexible because their kid really wants to do a mount. It doesn't have to be this elite thing. Normal parents do want their kids to just feel better and get better.

Yeah, and that's like so, so overlooked. Like you said, like parents just want their kid to be happy.

100%.

And if they're, again, we operate in the market, guys. If you put a price out and people are happy to pay it, then everybody's winning.

Absolutely. I know you said to me a few years ago, because I said we have so many privates, and you're like, well, it's supply and demand. Put your price up. We put the price up $10 per half hour. Not only did we increase insanely, but not one single person complained. And you know, it's crazy because it's the perceived value as well.

People are happy to pay for what they consider a premium product as well, which is what you're offering.

And we do market privates a lot.

Yes.

You know, like we talk about them, we email about them, we do that whole shebang. So it has, it's out of control at the moment. I can't believe how many. Privates we have for dinner.

Amazing.

Yay! Thanks so much, Nate. That was so incredible.

Love chatting money.

Yeah, you do. So many valuable takeaways there. Thanks, guys. We hope you have an incredible week, and we'll see you next week.

Bye, everybody.

Bye!

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