Surrounding Yourself with the Right People - the Key to Growing Your 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. Hey, friends, and welcome to the Dance Principles United Podcast. Bec and I are just back from our studio growth club retreat in Noosa. How are you, Bec?

I'm super awesome. We had the most incredible weekend. It was so fun, wasn't it? Just a vibe. Like, it was just the best time ever, right?

It was huge. I'm still feeling it. Hence why this podcast is a little bit late. Because we were, you know, it's like after concert. Feels right that we have all that going on, and it's like, oh, need to take a deep breath afterwards.

Yeah, absolutely. But we thought we would share some of the best parts of that weekend with you guys, some of the takeaways and all the things, because we had a super awesome weekend. Although there was a slight little debacle on the way to Lisa, wasn't there, Amanda?

A little bit of a debacle. So we thought we'd start a TikTok account. Because we didn't have a TikTok account. P.S. please go follow us on Tik Tok for Dance Principles United. We've got, like 30 followers, so if we could really up that a little bit. Be nice to have a few more friends on there. So, of course, you know, we're like, at the airport and we thought we'd do, you know, a very, like, normal kind of tik tok dance. Nothing, really. There was. There was no pirouettes, there was no leg mounts.

So simple, literally, a step clap and a hip.

And what happened, Becky?

Amanda said it to me beforehand. I had a little practice and we got there and Beck, they think, torrent tendon in her knee doing a step clap. Then had to get crutches when we got to Noosa.

Had two days of physio before you had to jump on stage. Crutches for the whole weekend. You had to do a whole new outfit, whole new wardrobe, because to cover the bandage on the knee, that was an expensive exercise.

I didn't even wear short things that often, but every one of my dresses was above the knee. And I don't know why I had that packed, but I had three above the knee dresses. And then I had to crutch my way down to age and say to them, guys, I've Got half an hour. Find me three outfits, please. They were very good. I have to say. It is such exceptional customer service in that shop, no matter when you go. But they were next level amazing.

Just gotta drop a couple of grand on some new outfits to cover the knee bandage. So how's the knee now? I haven't actually asked you since we've been back. How is the knee? Did you go to the physio again?

I've been to the physio a couple of times, and yeah, it's. It's not ideal, Amanda. That's all I'm gonna say.

Is there surgery involved in this knee?

I'm trying to not do the surgery thing, so I'm just leaving it for a couple of weeks, seeing if it. Not leaving it, doing my exercises, seeing if it gets better and then going from there. I'm trying to avoid surgery at all costs.

Of course. Of course. I love that you teach, you know, I don't know, 20 hours a week still or something like that, and have for what, 25 years?

Yep, yep. High level ballet and do my knee on a step clap.

It's the TikTok that kills it. All right, You've got to jump onto our TikTok now. You've got to see the one that we're talking about. Find it, comment on it, tell us, can you work out the exact moment where all the shit comes loose in Bex day?

How embarrassing. Anyway, that was.

Let's get off that.

That was an amusing first part, but okay, first of all, can I say if you guys don't know and have never been to Noosa, because I have to admit this to you, Amanda, so when you said noosa, I was like, is this really gonna be a vibe? Like, I felt like it was gonna be kind of this nothing there, beachy town. And I thought it was actually. I know. And I thought it was really random that you'd chosen it, but I was like, okay, sure. And then I get there.

It is legit.

One of the best places I've ever been in my whole life.

It's bougie as, right?

Yeah.

So nice. I know. That's why you love it. And it's like such a vibe. All the. Has such nice restaurants, such good shopping, the weather, all of it. It's just so good. And it was like the whole. The whole weekend was so incredible. Everyone had such a good time. Right. What was your like? Absolute. Besides obviously staying at the Softel Noosa, which was lovely, and being with me for the weekend, of course, and having beautiful Food. What was your highlight of the weekend?

Of the whole weekend or just let's.

No, let's go the whole weekend. What was the highlight?

Probably the cocktail party. And I think because we just have such a beautiful community and everyone feels so comfortable with each other. And I just loved the vibe of that. Like, it was just so much fun. Everyone was laughing, having the best time. I loved it.

Yeah, it's so nice to let your hair down a little bit as well. Right? That's always fun. Like, the sessions were incredible, and there was so much learning and connection and all of that, but making friends with people that just get it and get our world and having a little bit of fun.

Fun.

Because we all deserve a bit of fun as business owners too, right? Like, you know, life's hard sometimes and it's tricky, and it's nice to let your hair down and get dressed up and have a bit of fun.

Absolutely. What was your highlight?

Oh, the cocktail party, for sure. I think just seeing so many new friendships come together and as well as, like, people reconnecting, like, loving seeing on, you know, studio owners, Instagrams and accounts and Tick Tocks and all of the accounts that everybody has. Love seeing them all, like, with their studio, group of besties, people that they know have got their back and seeing those connections form, you know, there was. Some of the young studio owners all went out for a drink afterwards. I saw some of the, you know, other studio owners in the mornings having breakfast. Like, you know, we've all got to do our vibe, right. But I love that so much that people can find those connections and find people that just get it.

Oh, you know what another favorite moment was? Spill the Tea.

That was fun. I was so nervous.

You were. So we. We did this session with all of the studio Growth Club members, which was called Spill a Tea, where everyone got to go around the table and ask other student as a question they've always wanted to ask, which went really well. And then we had this incredible speaker, Anthony Ikin, and he came in while they were all doing Spill the Tea. So he told his amazing journey, which we'll tell you guys a bit more about in a second. Then he was like, all right, it's the end of my session. I'm going to do Spill the Tea. You guys can ask me any questions. So then Amanda, Nathan, I, the next day were like, we should do Spill the Tea with everyone. So we actually put ourselves up on stage and let everybody in the audience ask any questions they wanted. And I loved it. It was fun. It was so much fun.

It was super fun. There were some really great questions, you know, really great questions about, like, you know, our finances, how we structure our life, how we structure our mornings, why we do what we do, you know, parenting, mother guilts, like, all of those things. Like, it's always really interesting. Right. Because sometimes there's just questions you really want to ask people that you're scared to. Right?

Yes. And it was such a beautiful moment. One of our studio growth club members, who's quite new actually to sgc, said, why do you guys give so much away?

That was. Brad, that was so nice.

But it's true. Like, why? He was just like, why do you guys give so much away when our industry is so used to closing everything in? It was interesting, actually. And we do. We're such open books, and not just for SJC members, for our tribe members.

Absolutely.

You guys on the podcast, like, I am a complete open book, and I know you are as well, Amanda. And if you guys ever have questions that you want to ask us, just reach out. We will definitely ask it on the podcast, because we are. I'm. It's. I love being an open book for everyone. It's how we learn.

Absolutely. That was so, so great. Right? All right, should we go through some of our sessions and kind of give a bit of a. A recap? Like, we started off the weekend with Anthony Icahn, who was absolutely incredible. Those that don't know Anthony Icahn, he had an incredible career in the dance world. He owned a studio. He was a Moulin Rouge dancer. And, you know, he was. So. You think you can dance. Was it top 10? I think top 10 back in the day, and did some incredible things. But he talked about his. His journey growing up as a child, being part of a very big football family, and reaching for his goals. It was super inspiring, wasn't it?

So inspiring. As straight. As soon as he finished, I went up to him and said, I need to get eat in my studio because I want my boys and girls, but my boys at the studio to hear your story. Because he really, despite all the bullying and everything that happened to him, he really stuck to himself and his own goals. And that's obviously why he was so successful. Absolutely. His journey was just incredible. And just his work ethic, I think, and the way that he conducted himself as a professional was insane. His story was incredible. Anyway, we're inviting him to expo, I think now because we just feel like everyone needs to hear from him because he was so amazing. Right?

He was so so good. He helped our members set really great goals and focus on their goals, not worry about what everyone else is doing around them, which is, you know, what he felt as a child and had that pressure of like, let's all play football or whatever it was, but really stay in your own lane and focus on your goals. So he really helped our members set some incredible goals. And it was like, it was a very powerful. It an emotional session too, right?

Yeah. You know, one of the things that I loved that he said about goals, Amanda, was make sure your goals are not just a to do list. And he's like, I see people set goals a lot of the time, and it's actually not a goal, it's actually a to do list. And that our goals need to be more big picture kind of, you know, really big thinking stuff. And then your to do list goes underneath it. And I. I really liked that. It's. I definitely a different way of looking at your goals and more looking at, like, how do you want your life to look and then setting the goals underneath to get your life to that point. I thought that was really cool.

So clever. He had so many great takeaways. I love so many things that he spoke about. What other sessions did you really enjoy, Beck? What other ones? Should we kind of give everyone a bit of a rundown of what happened at Look?

I think it's important to talk about timetabling, especially now. And that was something that we just kind of a little bit dabbled in for our studio Growth Club members to start thinking about, because obviously we're doing a whole release on that next month, although this month, jokes this month, October. But I think that thinking about your timetable now and how you're going to put things together for next year can be a real game changer. Are you going to introduce something new, fresh and exciting into your studio for next year? You know, is it time to change up your preschool program or is it time to, I don't know, change up your acro program or whatever it might be? Yes. Is it time to start thinking about that? And also, you know, I know you always talk about thinking about the parents point of view and trying to put things together so that parents can stay for a little bit longer, Right?

Absolutely. I love talking about timetabling, and I feel like we'll have to come back and do, you know, 400 podcasts just on that, because a good timetable can make or break your studio in terms of your class placement. So I love chatting about timetables. I think it's really Important to make sure, as you mentioned, that we're making it for the parents and we're packaging it well, that it's really clear, it's really well designed so that the parents can have the children do. If you want the kids to do three classes a week, if that's like your aim for all students, then they can actually do three classes in an afternoon because you can't go, oh, my goal is to get all my students to do three classes a week, but actually they have to come three different days because I only have a ballet teacher on Monday. My hip hop teacher come. You know what I mean? That's not gonna work, right? Obviously some kids will do that and come three times a week. But if your goal is really for that, you really need to make it easy for those parents. So now's the time to be thinking about that timetable, if you haven't already.

Yeah, absolutely. And I, I like what you said as well. Like to just imagine that you're a different parent. So imagine that you're that 18 under, I don't know, troop kid and you're that parent, and then how many days do you have to come and how difficult is it going to be? And all of that sort of stuff is really, really important as well, right?

Ah, so, so important. Making sure it's all so well designed, it's easy to read, it's clear, the parents understand. Like, you know, I've done a whole nother podcast, like, what the hell is gold star tap? Like, no one knows what that means. You know, is that a gold star for a 5 year old or for a 15? Like, do you know what I mean? Using wording that the parents understand. So it's super clear. Because a confused parent or a confused client doesn't buy. So I think that's really important.

I'll tell you something, I've changed in my timetable since thinking about that is the rad ballet grades. So I used to have grade one, grade two, grade three, and then parents, of course thought that they would do grade one ballet if they're in grade one at school, which makes complete sense. And that's not the case at all, of course. So now we do seven years ballet, eight years ballet, nine years ballet, ten years ballet. And that is not just simpler for the parents, but actually simpler for my staff, because my staff never understood the age. Like that is tricky to know the age of the exams for rad. So they never really got that in their head. So that makes it really simple for them.

Absolutely. And then it's like you can just put them in whatever grade they need to go in regardless. It's just easy for the parents. There's no confusion. I love that so much. Much so. Yeah. That was most of our first day. Oh, we did a big self reflection as well on our first day. There was heaps of other stuff in there, of course, but we'll give you a little bit of an overview of the self reflection session as well. Like, that was so, so great. Beck. Beck did a real journey of when she's been attending different gyms. Because you're a bit of a. An addict to trying new gyms. Is that what we're going to call it?

Yeah. I don't know if I'm an ag. I want what I had before. Like I had this amazing gym that I was so much a part of. It was like my family, I guess, as a lot of students feel their dance studio is. And when I left it, I had a real void in my life. And so I've tried so many different types of gyms and inquired it even more to try and find that again. And I think the self reflection was just on why, why didn't I choose those? And then maybe sometimes we need to look at our own studio and go, okay, people are coming through the door but they're not joining or people aren't coming through the door or people are leaving and just trying to self reflect on the different reasons of why that could possibly be. And there's so many things that we can look at, obviously. But one that sticks in my head is just the look and feel of the gym. And I'm probably more sensitive to that at the moment, Amanda, because I'm, you know, renovating the new studio and making it, trying to make it look as beautiful as possible. But those first impressions are so important. And I think I said to everyone at my other space, this, the floor when you first walk in at the moment is actually gaffer tape because it's lifted. And that's a perfect example of something that you just step over every day and don't think about. But it looks terrible and it absolutely. It's, you know that knob that's not working on the door that you just kind of go past or.

Yeah, the little hole in the wall. Yeah, yeah. Where someone's cartwheeled into it. That's always the, that's the go to. Right. Where the bloody kids cartwheel through the walls and there's like a hole in the walls. I don't know how many times I've had cartwheel like feet through my walls. Yeah, all those things. And it is. You kind of get used to seeing it. Right. But a new parent notices those things. Or maybe not even a new parent, maybe an existing one. We get used to it because we see it every day, but impressions matter.

It's also like a lot of our parents do sit in the waiting room for probably 10 to 15 minutes. I don't know if you're like this, Amanda, but if I'm sitting in the doctor's surgery, for example, for 10 or 15 minutes, I'm always just like, looking around at the different things and seeing what's. I can see that that hasn't been cleaned. Are you this person or. Yeah. Or my hairdresser, for example. I'm like, that looks disgusting.

Kills me. Yeah.

I hate seeing, like the hair in the corner of the little. You know what I mean? Like, I just. I absolutely hate that stuff. So that's a perfect example. And I think your parents probably sit there and think the same.

Absolutely. And if you want to offer high quality instruction, if you want to have a high price point, those things matter. You know, it's like we were talking about with AJ before, or Asia.

Yeah. How do you say that?

To say that? Anyway, we're talking about that store in Noosa. And like, you walk into the store and it's absolutely stunning, right? Like, absolutely stunning. If you want to have a high end price, you've got to offer a high end facility that looks clean, is always on point. Isn't like having a, you know, as you said, a doorknob that's falling off or, you know, a lifting floor or whatever it is. Because we all have that shit, and sometimes we just got to get it fixed.

Yes. It's also the customer service that comes with that. Like, you know, I'll compare it to Kmart. You walk into Kmart, no one really greets you. They might give you a her. You know, there's not people there to help you with your clothes or to help you pick stuff out. You pick it out yourself. There's rarely anyone in the change rooms. Like, it's very isolated. Right. You go into.

Which is fine because you're paying Kmart prices.

Exactly. You go into a store like AJ and straight away they're asking you how your day is. They're getting you things. They're giving you suggestions on what you might like. Like, it is. They are with you in the change room the whole time. They're giving you other ideas of things to wear. They come out. So it's just. I agree with you on that. You've got to think about your price point and are you really creating that incredible service? And if you are, great, amazing. And if you're not, then think about that.

Absolutely. So that was kind of our day one. We then hit a cocktail party that was super fun. We had so many other incredible things in between before we went for day two again. Should we kind of give a bit of a recap on day two as well back? Have we got time for this? Let's keep going, shall we?

I think absolutely. The day started off with Nathan doing profit first. And God, he was clever. Actually, I think it was your idea. But it was really clever how he kind of had bucket.

All good ideas come from me for my husband. Careful, he's gonna listen back to this and kill me.

Nathan is a rock star at helping people like myself understand money. When I find n maths and all of that stuff, you know, most of us are creatives and we find that stuff really, really hard to understand. And he is a rock star at teaching us that. But yes, the brilliant idea did I believe come from you, Amanda, was that he had these little glasses, vases or something like that, and then they. He had money. And he was showing how when the money comes in, you should be distributing it. And I think that visual for me was really clever in him just going, okay, this, like, a lot of that money's not yours. That's what he was saying. Absolutely. This much should go in this one for tax, and then this one should go in here for this and this. And just putting it like that was. And then you've got money to spend. I like, I loved it. I loved it.

Yeah, it was so, so clever. And he gave all of our members, like a really easy to follow plan of what their goal should be, percentage wise in terms of how they're dividing their money, how much they should be giving themselves as profit as well as their owners pay because they're such a rock star star. Yeah. It's always really interesting to sort of see what other people are doing, you know, especially when we talk about percentages, percentages of your revenue and how much you're kind of paying yourself and what the goal is, Right?

Yes. And making sure that there's so many people that come into our world who aren't paying themselves either at all or definitely not enough. And that was one of the things that Brad and that we said to Brad when he asked us that question, why do you do this? And the three of us all agreed that One of our biggest passions is making sure that Stewart owners are getting paid what they deserve, because we know how hard they work, we know they're doing incredible things, and just making sure that they're actually getting paid what they deserve for that is one of the things that we're most passionate about.

Absolutely. Because otherwise they leave our industry, and we love this industry so, so much, and people need to be paid what they're worth, so. Oh, my gosh, that was such a good session. I know. Our members got so much out of that. So many of them, you know, since they've gone home, have, you know, already told us about how they're setting these new goals and what they're doing and how they're changing up their financials, chatting to their accountant about it. Yeah. So. So exciting. Numbers can be so fun.

So good. So good. And then you guys, you and Nath did this incredible session. So you created these AI bots for all of our members to use to save them so much time. I'll let you talk about them. Yeah, they were cute. They were cute, but because they're cute. Yeah. Well, one of them keeps coming up on everyone's accountability channels. The checking in.

Millie Motivation.

Nearly. I was going to say maybe. I don't know why Millie.

No, Millie.

Tell us. Tell us about Millie Motivation.

Well, Millie is designed to help you set goals. She makes sure that you're staying accountable to your goals by checking in on you, making sure that we all know your goals, and just giving you, like, a little bit of a friendly push in the right direction.

Right.

Using inspiring quotes, you know, linking you to other great articles and books and podcasts to read. Yeah, I'm a little bit obsessed with all my AI bots, my little army of bots. There were seven that we gifted to all of our members that I know that they're going to love using. I know so many of them have set them up already, you know, making it super easy, because we all know that we should be using AI, but sometimes it's just really hard to get our shit together and start doing it. Nowhere to start. Right.

I think it's just hard to even wrap my head around Amanda. Like, I don't know, I feel like, you know, it's. You guys are much better at it than me, but just even wrapping my head around how it all works, and it's so endless what you can do with it. And I think that was great with that session, was just like giving everybody some simple tools of exactly how to use it in our industry to make things so much more simple and.

Absolutely.

In our life as a student. And you know what else we need time saving.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm going to get you on to Trixie, my teaching assistant as well, because Trixie is like, on your phone while you're driving home. She's going to help you with all your teaching notes. Make sure your class positions are in the right spot. Make sure you remember that, you know, the next part's meant to be a canon in your routine or that you're up to 52 seconds and you've got to remember to hurry up and cut that bit of the music out, like, so. Good.

That's insane. It's crazy. I feel like we could do a whole podcast on that.

We absolutely could. We absolutely could. Our last main session that we kind of will wrap up on was the incredible Heidi Anderson. I think we're gonna have to ask her to be a guest on our podcast as well. She is a PR queen and she helped our members, you know, find ways to PR themselves and get really great media coverage, at least, like Instagram, you know, coverage, you know, to really market their business and position them as an authority. Because that's what she was really talking about. Like, positioning yourself as an authority can really help, like, skyrocket your studio.

Absolutely. And did. She had an incredible story as well, I think. I think she'd be great to get on the podcast. Just about how she's gone from someone with absolutely pretty much zero self worth and confidence to having this huge confidence within herself, which is a really cool story as well. And so something that I think I'd like to say to everybody who's still listening because this has gone for a long time, this podcast, but still listening to us out there, you know, it's something I've talked about a lot with our one on ones this month. Amanda is having the confidence to believe in what you want as a studio owner. And even this morning I was talking to one of our amazing members and she was unsure whether to change it up the way she was doing comps or not. She's doing All Star at the moment. And she was like, do I start doing dancer steadfoods or do I just stick with All Star? What do I do? And my answer to her was, well, what do you want? It's your business. Don't do it because parents are telling you to do it. Don't do it because you think, you know, All Stars too expensive and there's a parent that's complained about that or whatever it might be do it because it's what you want to do for your business. And I think there's too many of us that get swayed by all the shiny objects school down the roads doing it. So I better do it or you know, oh, that parents complained about it. Maybe I should be doing it. So just stay true to yourself and have confidence in your own self and your own abilities.

I so, so agree. Hey, if any of our members, our Studio Growth Club members are listening, we cannot thank you enough for coming along with us for the ride. We had the most incredible weekend. It was so much fun. I love those kind of weekends. We are so excited for our SGC mansion next year. It's incredible. Yeah, we're pumped for all the things that are coming up for our members and hopefully you guys have really enjoyed this little takeaways that we've kind of given a little glimpse behind the scene of our retreat.

Absolutely. The other thing is that we've got expo coming up next year on the Gold coast on the 5th and 6th of April. We're super pumped about that as well and we know lots of our podcast members come along to that. We'd love to see you there. But if SGC is something that you are interested in joining, we are keen to chat to people at the moment. We're taking a few people in right now, so if you want to reach out and we can have a chat and see if it's the right fit for you. Perfect.

Thanks so much friends. Hope you have an awesome rest of your day. Thanks Bec. Thanks. 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 Principals United Tribe. We would love to see you there.