Simplifying Your Studio's Timetable: A Game-Changer for 2025

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.

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This is the Dance Principles United Podcast.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Dance Principles United podcast. Obviously you have Nathan here because I sound a little bit different to Amanda and Beck, but I am joined today by the amazing Rebecca Lu Brennan. How are you today, Bec?

Super awesome. It's been an amazing week. It's our one on one week with our SGC members and I love chatting to all of them, don't you? It's like such a fun week.

Yeah, absolutely. Like Beck said, each of our studio Growth club members get a one on one call with either Bec, Amanda or myself and it's always a huge week for us, but a week that we love because at the end of day we are business nuffies at heart and just absolutely love jamming with studio owners on their businesses on ways that they can improve their business, build the studio of their dreams and all of the things involved in that. So we absolutely love it. It means that we're on back to back zooms for the whole week, but we absolutely love it. And first of all, apologies to podcast land out there. You probably noticed that we are a couple of days late on our regular podcast episode this week just because I of a few other things that went on behind the scenes. But we are back in your ears and what we want to chat about today was something that came up in one of my one on ones this week and it's got to do with, and I know some people might sort of think, oh my God, Nathan, don't start talking about this now. But it's got to do with timetabling for 2025 and it's about a change, a big change that you made in your studio a couple of years ago now, Beck, I think it was, wasn't it, when you went from having a whole bunch of different, you used to run classes, all sorts of different durations and you followed the model that we'd always used or that we'd use for a long, long time to bring everything back in our afternoon classes into just classes of 45 minute blocks. How long ago did you make that change?

Yeah, I think it was two years ago or a year and a half ago, maybe the beginning of last year I believe is when we did it. And yes, you definitely took it took A lot of convinc, Nath, from you to get me to that point. Right. Like, it was a lot. But as always, with the things that you convinced me to do, Nathan, it was probably one of the best decisions I've ever, ever made.

Oh. Oh, thanks. You make me blush. Which you can see if you watch this on the YouTube, I guess. But you know, when. Whenever we discuss this with, with studio owners, we know that sometimes when I do mention it to them, I can sort of almost see the objection starting to like, swirl around in their. In their. Ey, what were, I guess some of the objections that you originally had? You know, when we first floated the idea to you, what were some of the initial objections that you had around shifting all of those classes to the same duration?

Well, I think the main objection is we're pretty high in school and I just felt that taking that 15 minutes out of every class was going to really reduce the standard of our school. So that would be the biggest objection. And I think the staff had big objections to that as well because they. And they still do at times. I have to admit, Nath, they'll still draw the card of, oh, that 45 minutes is not enough time for us to get through what we need to get through in that class. But we've really worked out that that was actually okay and that it can be done and with training and constant tweaking, it's. It was fine.

Yeah, absolutely. So what sort of duration classes did you used to have? Did you have like 60 minutes, 30 minutes as well as 45 minutes and other ones as well. Like what did you used to run?

Yes, we literally had so many different time slots, it was insane. So we had like preschool. Some of our preschool went for half an hour, then others of our preschool went for an hour. Then I know that our ballet classes some went for an hour and then our higher level classes went for an hour and a half. I covered, believe I'm saying this now that it's so crazy, but then we did have some 45 minute classes as well. I don't know why. So, yeah, just a shamozzle of literally whatever we thought was needed for that class was happening. And I think the main reason that you told me to shift, apart from it being stupid, is that, you know, it was just so difficult for our software at the time to understand it. And that made everything with that software so manual. And so you were like, beck, you are going to cut so much admin time down by changing these classes up.

Yeah, absolutely. And I guess this is why we thought it was great for both of us to jump on and chat through this because we've come at it from such different angles. Right. Obviously you can give the insights and the expertise on the dancing and the dance teaching side of things. And for me, it's obviously all about the numbers. I come in and look at the. The numbers side of things, but exactly as you pointed out there. And this is always the conversation when, like when I drill into it with studio owners that sort of ask me about, oh, should I make the change? And things like that. When we start talking about their current class lengths and all the different levels of classes they've got, they often get to the point that you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. And that's what, like, one of the biggest benefits of making that timetable simplified from, from my perspective, from purely the number side of things is that you're able to make your price list and you touched on it before, you're able to make your price list just so much more user friendly for our customers. Right. We know that people think maths is hard. Right. We know that the more that we make people try and do calculations and all those sorts of things, the more that they're going to opt out or the quicker that they're going to opt out. If they look at your price list and they've got to try and cross reference a timetable that's showing them their 45 minute ballet class, I think I.

Totally agree with you. It's just so 30 minute acro class.

Plus stretching class and then they've got to come across to the pricing list by hours over here.

We really had to tweak a few things for sure. And we do a lot of coaching Nath around with the staff. The fact that they've got to stay on time and be respectful to other teachers as far as that goes, because the changeover needs to happen. But I'll tell you what, the game changer is so much as. I thought that meant that our school was going to have a lower level. It's the opposite because kids are now doing four classes a night instead of three. That's the game changer. Sometimes five classes a night.

Yep.

Yeah. So it actually meant that our class placements are so much higher because the kids can do more classes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And that's what, like, one of the biggest benefits of making that timetable simplified from, from my perspective, from purely the number side of things is that you're able to make your price list and you touched on it before you're able to make Your price list just so much more user friendly for our customers. Right. We know that people think maths is hard. Right. We know that the more that we make people try and do calculations and all those sorts of things, the more that they're going to opt out or the quicker that they're going to opt out. If they look at your price list and they've got to try and cross reference a timetable that's showing them their 45 minute ballet class, plus their hour and a half exam class, plus their 30 minute acro class, plus their 25 minute stretching class, and then they've got to come across to the pricing list that's by, by hours over here. And they've got to, they're done most of the time, right. Like they, when we, like because we did that, that switch to the 45 minute blocks years and years ago. It's just, everything is just Our timetable is 1 class, 2 classes, 3 classes, 4 classes, 5 like, and parents can just be. They're informed and straight away they're like, oh yeah, I'd love to do the ballet, jazz and tap. Yep, no problem. Three classes, that's whatever it was per week. And that's the same switch that you made, right?

So much simpler, so much easier for your admin team as. And now that you're saying that. Because I haven't even thought of it that way, to be honest. But now that you're saying that, I'm like, yes, we used to have to sit there with every parent and work out, okay, this is worth this much and this is worth this much. And why, why did we do that? It's so crazy. It is total game changer for parents. I love that.

Yeah, absolutely. So you talked about when you first floated it, you had some potential objections from staff and you overcame most of those just by some training around that and trying to, I guess, build up their confidence and skills in how to still deliver the same level of quality. What. What did. With slightly shorter time, what did some of those like, what were some of those sort of trainings focused on?

I think the main thing that they were focused. Well, it's just telling them you're gonna have to get through stuff quicker. Like, it's really just explaining to them that they're gonna have to explain things quicker. They're gonna have to put a bit more energy into what they're doing. You know, the rad ballet teachers were ones that were the most concerned and I guess our troop teachers and they just had to learn. And I think they're much Better at it this year, going into it the second year than they were last year. But I speak to them every week and I just say to them, where are you at? How are you going? What are they up to? You know? And also I think offered them extra time in the holiday rehearsals if they needed it. But guess what, Nath? They didn't need it. It was fine. We actually got the best results we've ever gotten with R Ballet last year because most of our ballet students picked an extra class. So therefore they're more coordinated, therefore, you know, they're, they're better dancers. Right. So we had the best results ever. This year I'm teaching some of the ballet myself and it is insane. The standard this year, it is so much stronger. And that's because most of them have picked up ballet troop this year. So it's just because we can. They can do more classes in an afternoon instead of doing two 45 minute classes. They're actually doing three 45 minute classes of ballet now because they're adding that extra troop class in. So they're actually getting an extra half an hour of ballet per week than what they were back when we were doing the hour. So I think you just got to switch your way of thinking on it.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes there's, you know, there's this thing called Moore's Law, which is that something will take the time that you allow it to. And like, sometimes that can be like, with any class. People know. I've never taught a dance class before, but in another life I was a maths teacher and, you know, class structure. So I do sort of understand trying to plan and deliver a class. But, you know, if you have an hour, then sometimes you faff about for a bit and you take seven or eight minutes, marking the role when it could be done in two.

Yep.

You let that drinks break in the middle because everybody's having a bit of fun. You let that go on for four minutes instead of the one that it needs to like. And by the time you do three or four of those wrong, the whole class, well, then you've shaved off the 15 minutes pretty, pretty quickly and easily. Right. And you're more efficient.

Exactly, exactly. And I think that's what we've learned to do with our classes. And yeah, it's, it's totally great. It's worked really, really well.

Amazing. So that's definitely one thing. Whenever I have this conversation with studio owners, one of their. Their objections they're thinking about is the objections their staff are going to have another thing that they're worried about is potential objections that clients may have. So I guess two part question number one. What were you like, did you have any concerns about objections that parents might have? And then were those concerns founded? Did the parents actually have any objections?

I don't think so. And it's interesting. It was just how we sold it to them and the way that we sold it to them is they would have to come less days. So it's always the high end parents that are going to have the objections generally I think. So the way we sold it to them was they would have to come less days. And because we could put more on in one night, which is always a good thing. And also that the kids could do, you know, something a bit extra. If it was like a wreck kid or something like that that had an objection. I don't think many of them did have objections. And Nath, I was a little bit cheeky because I didn't change my prices. So I, I still charged the same that I was charging for an hour class and just made it a 45 minute class. Which is interesting. And I don't think I got many objections about that either.

No, because like I said, like to be honest, it's you, they're probably like we talked about, it's. You're probably still getting the same level of. No, not probably. You're definitely getting the same level of class. It's just being more focused and more efficient and people, people like more efficiencies. Right. There's reasons that people pay big monies for efficiency. Coaches in businesses and things like that. Like people just like to be more efficient in their day to day life and people are willing to pay for that a lot of the time.

Yeah. And it, it is a game changer. Like if I, I'm just thinking about it in my head, you know, even like on a Tuesday our kids do circus acro and then they do musical which goes for three 45 minute classes they would never been able to do five hours before. But because it's reduced, you know, they're getting there at 4, they're leaving at 7:45 and doing five classes in there. It's pretty crazy, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So talked about that. Yeah. There weren't really that many objections from the parents. And that's something that always comes into it. Right. Like I think sometimes the studio owners, we like catastrophize what the reactions are going to be for parents. Right. Like oh my God, like everybody's going to hate it and Think we're going to leave. And that's what in the discussion I was having today, exactly like you talked about a lot of it is in how you present it and sell it to your parents. And we sort of like played out the scenario of talking about it. Like you know, if you tried to Brazil, like let's just pretend that your studios, right, we're gonna everything to 45 minutes instead of our like hour and 20 or hour and a half classes and we're gonna go to 45 minute blocks. If you lead the conversation to people like this, hey, hey, hey, families like I'm so sorry but from next year, what we've decided, like we've made the really hard decision to unfortunately bring everything back to 45 minute classes. Right. If that's how you start the conversation, well then of course straight away all the parents are thinking, oh well this is rubbish, blah blah, blah. And then all their negative objections start around it. But I'll let you do the positive self because that's what your, that's your jam back. How would you, how do you positively frame and build the hype and FOMO around it?

Yeah, I'd be like, we are so excited to announce that next year we will be running 45 minute classes. What are the benefits for your child? This means that your child will probably have to come less days. This also means your child can do more classes, meaning that they can have more fun. Like we would just benefit, benefit, benefit driven it, you know, more time for your family at home, like which is what has happened. It really is what has happened. You know, they'll get to try more styles. If you're only available one day of the week, that's perfect for them because now they can do more on that one day. So yeah, giving you more time as a parent there's so many benefits.

Absolutely. And look, another huge benefit that I always found was in the actual timetabling itself, right. A timetable is just like in maths we call it an optimization problem. And that's all a timetable is at its heart, which I know is like putting people to sleep already, so please stick with me. But if we're trying to like, if you've got two even like two studios or especially when you start getting to three or more studios, if you're trying to timetable with 30 minute classes, 45 minute classes, 60 minute length classes, like man, is that hard. And I've literally got a degree in mathematics, right. And I think that is ridiculously hard just like to try and balance all of those different Variables by the time you add in teachers and this and styles and making sure that we've got the right age group. And when you've got too many variables and it's too complicated, guys, the people that end up actually losing out are your students because you can't build your timetable for your students because you have to build it around too many other things. So bringing it back to that uniform class length for the entire afternoon classes, like full disclosure, like, our preschool classes which ran during the days were 30 minute classes, because that's a preschool attention span. We know, but having that same 45 minutes in the afternoon made that timetabling so, so much easier. And exactly like you were saying, Beck, like allowed us to have, you know, we're super passionate Mandarin. You always talk about having three options of an afternoon minimum for each age group, right?

Absolutely. And, and parents like that because what can. They can't do anything otherwise. But if they can drop their child for three different classes, they can actually go and get groceries or go and do what they need to do or have some time for themselves, God forbid. And you know, like, they actually get that opportunity then. Whereas if they're only doing that one 45 minute class, one. They'll definitely. Or one hour class, they'll stay in your waiting area, which makes it crazy busy and they can't get anything done in that time.

Yeah. Yep. So look, what we would love for you to think about, guys, we've talked about, like, all the benefits that come from it, right. We know that it can be a scary thing. If you've been thinking about it, maybe you've been on the fence, maybe you've heard about us talk about it in the past and you're thinking, oh, no, I don't think I could ever do that. We completely understand and empathize with those objections because they're objections that Beck herself had. But if you are starting to think about it, now's the time to sort of start putting a couple of those ideas into action. We would love you. Like, please, like reach out to us, like post in the comments either here on the podcast on Apple or Spotify or just jump into the DMS on Instagram, we would love to hear from you. We love hearing feedback about the podcast. But yeah, if you are starting to think about it or thinking, yeah, like all of those positives do actually sound good. And those objections are the ones that I've always had. Like, now's the time to start thinking about it, right?

Yep, absolutely. I think it's, you know, it's a good time to change and it's a good time to remember don't do things. Amanda and I have done a podcast on this don't do things just because that's what's always been done. That's what your dance teacher did when you were growing up dancing and therefore that's what you do. You know, it's really good to change it up and you'll be pleasantly surprised, believe me.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much as always for listening, guys. It means the absolute world to us and we will catch you next week on the Dance Principles United Podcast. Thanks so much everybody.

Bye.

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