The Productivity Problem No One Talks About in Dance Studios

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.

Join us as we talk everything from marketing, systems, studio culture, motherhood, life, and everything in between.

This is the Dance Principals United podcast. Hey friends, and welcome to the Dance Principals United podcast.

How are you, Bec? I am super awesome. Always love being in the podcast studio with you, Amanda.

Always good. Hey, one of the things that gets talked about all the time is like, holy shit, I just didn't have time for this. I am so busy. I'm overwhelmed. I am that. We hear it all the time. I feel it all the time. Hey, one thing I want to say, just whilst we're talking about time and talking about that, is shiny objects are real for dance studio owners. I think we all have a little bit of ADHD in us. We're all creatives. We're all a bit like, oh, what's the next thing? Oh, what's the next thing? Are you like that?

Oh, and I'm also like, I'm just gonna allow— now that I've done something, I'm gonna allow myself to scroll on Instagram, or like, or I'll go on Facebook Messenger to message somebody and forget what the fuck you're doing. Well, I just start scrolling, and then like 5 minutes later I'm like, hang on, why are you on Facebook again?

Oh, you're on Facebook because you actually have to message, like Uh, it's never ending, right? And I think everyone's like it.

Yep.

I don't think it's just studio owners. I think the whole world.

It's getting worse and worse, isn't it?

I think I keep trying to eat my microphone today. I don't know what's going on. I've been told to come closer to the microphone, so I'm trying. Soft. Yeah, I see. But, you know, one of the big things we hear from so many studio owners is that they just don't have enough time in the day. And I get it between You know, helping your staff, helping your clients, helping yourself, prepping your own, you know, classes, marketing, admin, all the things. There's so much to do.

So much. I get so annoyed when Tim, my partner, tells me that he hasn't had time to do something in the day and I'm just like, no! But it's just because he's not prioritizing. Brenda, our producer, is in hysterics. It's true though, I get so pissed off because I'm like, do you know how busy my day is? And I still manage to fit everything into it. But I think that's the difference because I'm structured with the fitting of things.

Oh, okay. So that's interesting because, you know, Tim has a lot on in his day. He has a lot of children to care for on top of that, the house and all the things like that we all do, right? But it's about, you know, you especially are running multiple very large companies.

Yep.

You are being a mum, you are helping your children, you're doing all those things. And sometimes it's really about that structure and that discipline. The same things that make good dancers, right? Do you like my circle there?

That was clever.

Because let's talk about a good ballet dancer. Yep. You know, someone who's elite, they have discipline and they have structure in their days to really train them to be really, really elite. Yeah, I love that.

And they have to repeat the same things every single day.

Absolutely. You gotta do those pliés at the barre every single day of your life.

Every day.

You don't get to skip a day. You don't get to just go, oh, I just feel like scrolling today or laying on the couch, or, oh, I got distracted by looking at this, because you lose that power. And I think that's really, really important. So today we wanted to jump on the podcast, kind of give you some tips if you are feeling overwhelmed, because I get it, we've all been there. And let's be honest, for both of us as well, Bec, We have good days and bad days. Some days I'm fantastic at my time management and I achieve so much and I'm killing life. And other days I'm like, what the fuck did I even do today? Do you feel like that?

Yes, please tell me. Of course I do.

And it's so hard. So we wanted to kind of jump on and give you some tips if you're feeling overwhelmed, like you get distracted by the shiny object every 3 seconds. And you feel like you don't have enough time to get everything done in your studio.

And especially the important things. You know, I said in the last podcast, you can feel so busy. It's easy to feel busy.

Absolutely.

Tim, I'm sure feels very busy all day with all the things that he's doing, but it's not prioritizing the right kinds of things.

Absolutely. I think that's so important. Okay. So step one, if you are feeling like this, if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you feel like you're not getting the things done that matters, especially the things done that matter to grow your business is time auditing. Now it sounds scary, right? Yes. But it's not as scary as it sounds.

Right.

Yeah. So if you haven't done this before, a time audit is a great way to kind of really get clear. Cuz I think sometimes we think things take, in our heads we're like, oh yeah, that'll just take me 20 minutes. And it actually takes longer.

Mm.

Or vice versa. It takes way too long because shiny objects. You started scrolling.

That's the problem, right? Yeah, that is the problem.

Absolutely. So if you haven't done a time audit before, a time audit is a great way to really get clear because we're big on time blocking. Bec, you're really big on time blocking and making sure that you have that discipline and structure in your week. But how do you know how long to allow for certain tasks in your week if you don't time them to see how long they take.

I love that.

So what we'd love to encourage you to do is to do an audit of your time, to sit and do the tasks that you have to do repetitively every week and actually record how long they take you. You know, this is great if you're competitive as well.

Well, the other thing I like about it is I think you probably wouldn't get distracted by the shiny object because you know that you're timing yourself.

Absolutely. Because that's that— it's that competitiveness, right? Like, you're like, oh well, I'm being checked, so I better do it properly and I I better do it quickly and right because it's that internal competition with yourself. I love it. So, you know, if there are things that you do every single week, what are the types of things that you do every single week in the business? You know, is it, you know, social media posts? Is it, uh, invoicing? Is it, you know, processing the direct debits? You know, whatever those things that you have to do every week, what I want you to do is step one is record. How long they take you. You know, there's so many great like apps that you can do. We actually have a great download, we're going to link it in the show notes, that you can try with. You can just do it on your notes on your phone, right?

Yeah, you don't have to make it complicated, but knowing that is power.

Absolutely.

And I reckon as well, knowing what the distractions are, like, I think the week that you do that, it will make you so aware of the distractions And like sometimes the distraction is a toddler or a child, and I totally get that as well. But then being aware of that and going, okay, okay, this is what happens. They're awake at this time and this is not the best time for me to do my social media because— so I'm actually going to instead give them an hour here, and then when they're asleep, I'm gonna— you know, it is knowing that stuff as well because I get it, when you've got kids, it is hard.

Absolutely. I was talking to, um, Kira, one of our Studio Growth Club members from Hobart, and she has 3 little people, 2 at home.

Yep.

And she was talking exactly about that, that she needs to be better with, you know, when they're awake and, you know, they are very little and, you know, things don't always go to schedule. Children do not go to schedule.

They don't.

But, you know, really making sure she's present with them at some times and then making the most out of her time when they're asleep or when they've got care or whatever that is. Right. And so I think that's So, so important. So, you know, you can sit there and you can record how long everything takes you. Alternatively, you could set an alarm in your phone and like every hour, you know, and go, okay, so in the last hour I have this, this, this, and this, and kind of just get a bit of an idea. But AI is great to help you with this as well.

Tell me about AI.

Well, depending on what, how you do it, like I would be putting this into AI and going, okay, give me a bit of a time audit. Let me know exactly where I'm spending my time. You know, putting that into ChatGPT, into Claude, whatever that is, and kind of going, hey, here's all my notes from this week. Can you make sense of them? Can you put things into like buckets of time, for example, or categories like, oh, that's social media, that's marketing, you know, the newsletter, that's, you know, business operations, the whatever that is, and kind of get really clear with like where your percentages are going.

Guys, Amanda is so good at AI. It like, it's crazy. She's doing this whole AI stuff with our SEO Growth Club members in 2 weeks' time, and I am so excited about it, like, to learn for myself.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm so pumped for it. And, you know, um, we might start chatting about a few more AI things on the podcast as well because I feel like there's so much to learn. But, you know, jump in and give it a try. Like, you know, I did a time audit on myself recently just, uh, talking to ChatGPT. Like, instead of writing it down in my notes, I just, you know, every hour went, hey, in the last hour, record the time in the last hour I have done 4 emails, I made a phone call, I got distracted and made a cup of tea, you know, like whatever that is. Um, and then just like, you know, did that throughout the week and kept going back to the same thread, and then it just gave me a breakdown. Like, so I think there's so many great ways you can do that, because how can you do your time blocking or fix the problem if you haven't actually like looked at it first and know where you're starting from? Love it.

All right, so we're doing our time audit. And then we want to go into our time blocking.

Absolutely.

Very passionate about this because I was that person that always was very busy but didn't ever really get anything done. Exactly what you said. You know, you can go through days like that. Definitely. My life now is so insanely scheduled, it is crazy. Um, and I sh— you know, if people say, can you come for lunch? I'm like, no, I genuinely can't because every single hour, like, people have to book me 2 weeks in advance.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, but there's things that happen every week that are on there. Yes. You know, there's time for myself. So I even schedule my walk, my gym with friends, you know, like I like to go to the gym.

I see that pop up in your calendar. We have shared calendars. I see gym with friends because it's important and it's important to me and it's important for you to be your best self. And that's so fun. So you need to schedule it in. Otherwise it's something that goes by the wayside.

And I like that you have access to that. And so does my team. So my team knows on a Wednesday from 5:30, to 6:20. Don't contact me. Yeah, so don't call me. Yeah, I don't care what's happening. I'm going to the gym time and at the gym.

Absolutely.

So you should schedule that stuff in. Obviously my schedule looks a bit different because, you know, I've got a studio manager and all the things. Yeah, but I know that for a studio owner, social media is so important, guys. I cannot begin to tell you, there should be at least 2 hours of your week where you're doing your social media.

Absolutely.

Like Amanda said, accounts, you know, checking your numbers. Every Monday the numbers get sent to me and it's in, you know, Lisa's time blocking, who's the person who's in charge of sending the numbers. And every Monday at the exact same time we get the numbers and we have a little chat about it. You know, call studio manager is in mine because I need to call Justin pretty much every day to check in. And so all of that stuff is in there.

Absolutely. And it's So important, so important, because you need to give structure to your day. Otherwise what happens is you have 4,000 tabs and you get distracted. Like, who hasn't been that person that like an email pops up and you're in the middle of doing something, you're in the middle of doing something that's quite important, and then you jump over and start answering that email? Or even worse, you're like, no, I'm doing something, but you can like It was a complaint email and it starts ticking around in your brain and you like start working at half speed or 20% speed because all you can think about is that email from those parents.

I was thinking more that there's an Age Sale on and I'm like, I'll just quickly, just quickly get this done. I'm gonna need to present in.

Absolutely, like it's so true. So you need to like put those limits on yourself. You know, um, I had a staff member that worked for me who was a junior accountant, or like, you know, straight out of uni, like first job, an internship, whatever that's called, right? Um, in an accountancy firm, in a big accountancy firm.

Yep.

She had her time tracked by the 5 minutes. Whoa. And we're talking, this was a while ago, absolutely tracked by in 5-minute increments.

Crazy.

So much so that she had to pause it to go to the bathroom in the middle of the day. If she was too long in the bathroom— no, they didn't say anything, but it was noted. So she could see it at the end of her day report, like, you know, the pauses. And I think obviously for, I don't know, whatever HR reasons— and look, this was probably maybe 10 years ago, maybe. Yeah, also, um, and maybe for HR reasons. And I'm sure if you've worked in a big corporation, there's similar versions of this. Yep. Um, but it's about billable time, right? Um, and, you know, she'd get like reports and there was the pauses in there which were obviously like a bathroom or, uh, you know, grabbing something to eat kind of like breaks. And it was apparent.

I like this though, because yeah There's a lot of times that I think my staff are taking the piss.

Yeah.

And just what are they doing, you know? And, and how are you even saying that that took you 3 hours? So I kind of don't mind it.

Like, I actually think there's a version of it, and I think it's really important, you know, to me, you know, if you are hiring someone new, if you— or not, just like working on the management of your staff. Yeah. Like, how can you tell your staff what to do if you don't actually know how long it takes to do it? So to me, you know, I, you know, I was I was talking to somebody the other day who was, uh, moving their direct debit to one of their, um, team. And so they were no longer running the direct debit each week. And I'm like, cool. They're like, oh, so employing someone to do that. I'm like, okay, how many hours are you employing them a week? Oh, maybe about—

yeah.

And I'm like, well, like, if you don't know how long it takes you, how can you then decide how many hours you're going to put a staff member on for? They were not just doing that, but they were like, oh, they're going to do this and this and this. And they like rattled off like 4 tasks. I'm like— and I think they were talking about them being like 30 hours a week. I'm like, do those 4 tasks take 30 hours a week?

Yeah, exactly.

You know, I'm like, okay, so here's what you should be doing. Doing the accounts, um, you know, the direct debits and running them. Time it, see how long it takes you, because that's actually how long you should employ someone. And I said, look, you know, you could like do— add 20% for someone else for sure. No one's going to be as effective and as, you know, they're new to it, it's going to take a little bit more time. You have to give them a bit of allowances. You don't want clock their toilet times. Yep. Right. But you know, at least have a starting point to go, hey, I know that that takes me about 2 minutes, uh, 2 hours and 20, not 2 minutes, 2 hours and 20 minutes a week. Yep. Right. So therefore I'm gonna allow the other staff member 3 hours a week to do it. So therefore that makes sense. However, if they're telling me that they are too busy and they can't do this task, like then alarm bells need to be ringing. So I think it's really important that you know how long it should take. And then, you know, schedule it into your time or somebody else's time.

Absolutely. Now you don't need, you can get apps and stuff for this and we'll talk about the one that we love most, but you can just genuinely do this in Google Calendar.

Absolutely.

I actually like making different things different colors.

Absolutely.

Um, just cause I like pretty things, but also because it tells me for me, like, you know, my color for the stuff I do is green. So then when I'm going to the gym or a walk or whatever it might be, that's me time, so I can see how much green time there is. And then I can see, you know, orange is family time in mine, so I can see how much family time there is. And then, you know, different businesses are different colors, so it just allows you to see how much time you're spending on different things.

Absolutely fun. Absolutely. And you know, we're just chatting about like the fun of AI. What I'd be doing is screenshotting that that you've already done, Bec, chuck into ChatGPT and go, okay, give me the percentage breakdown. Ooh. You know, how much of my time is me time? How much is family time? Because one big thing that we see studio owners doing is spending 95% of their time servicing current clients.

Yep.

And only 5% growing their business.

If that.

So ask ChatGPT that. Go, okay, how much of this work is current client work versus how much is marketing or growth, business growth work? And, you know, ask it for the percentage, check it out. If you don't know, just screenshot it. Like, it doesn't have to be hard, you know, just screenshot whatever you've got at the moment and really put it in to kind of see like what you're doing and go, okay, so how can I change this?

Wouldn't that be powerful to know as well if you do have young kids and it's like, okay, I, I started this task for half an hour, but then I had to go and see to this, which took another half an hour and knowing how much time is spent on that as well.

Absolutely.

And then you could make educate— sorry, I'm harping on, but then I think you could make educated decisions on, okay, if I actually grew my business, I could probably make more money. So do I therefore get someone in to look after my children from 12 to 3, or whatever it might be?

Yeah, yeah.

So that then, you know, I'm paying them $20 an hour, but I'm actually going to end up making X amount more.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, I think that stuff is so important to know, you know, like you and I both have cleaners, and I know that people— not everyone can afford it, but I do look at it as I'm buying time.

Absolutely.

You know, and, and that time is, for me, spent much better than me cleaning my house. And I'm, I'm pretty anal about cleanliness and everything being in its place. It's better for me to spend that growing my business than it is to spend it scrubbing my floors.

Absolutely. And to me, it's buying back time.

Exactly.

And I think, you know, that's so, so important. And for us, I'd rather be working than cleaning. Look, and that's not the same for, um, you know, always for your children. No. Like, you know, you might— like, not you might, you should be like enjoying spending time. It depends what the version is, right? And it might be putting them in daycare 2 days but still having a special day with them or whatever, right? Suggesting that. Yeah, absolutely. So it's working out what works for you. But absolutely, like usually the time, if you could actually focus your time and hyperfocus, whether that 3 hours is, you know, getting a babysitter in for 3 hours. That's what I used to do. I was telling someone else about that, that I used to, um, you know, just go get a, when before I had, like when my children were little and they weren't in care and I didn't have a heap of help, just getting a babysitter to come for an hour and put them in the pram and go for a walk. Like, because I was like, if I could just do an hour's worth of solid work at this time, that is such a game changer for me. Not having the whole day, not having them in daycare for 12 hours, just an hour or 2 hours or whatever that is for you, and can make a huge difference.

It's crazy though, because if you think of people in a normal job— yep, right— and we are very lucky in that we can go to the school assembly or go to the things, but anyone in a normal job would have to put their child in daycare because they have to. They can't take their child to them when they're a nurse, for example. They can't take their child to the hospital with them.

Absolutely.

So like, why do we then go, well, I should still have my child at home with me when I'm trying to get all of this work done. Because it's interesting, right?

I look, this is definitely not, this is definitely not where we saw the podcast going, but I, um, absolutely agree. And I don't think it's fair.

No, it's not. It's not fair to yourself. But I, I did that too. And now that I'm self-reflecting on that, I'm like, why did I do that? Why did I feel like I could be a mum looking after my children at home.

Yeah.

But also then expected myself to run a business, which is actually a full-time job.

Yeah, yeah.

Well and truly. Well, exactly. And make financial money off that.

Yes. And also be a good mom. Yeah. On top of that. Absolutely. And look, that's a big thing that, you know, I feel awful for some studio owners that feel like they have to be doing it all because we actually can't be doing it all.

And it's impossible.

You like, you know, uh, we're both mums. We love spending time with our children and all of that, but you can't do both. Like, you know, I think there's sometimes where it's like, hey, sometimes you've got to make a choice. Are you a mum at the moment or are you a business owner at this point in time, in this 2-hour block, this 3-hour block, this day? Like, we need to be able to, um, you know, do that and effectively spend our time because if you're being hard on yourself, That's what, that's what kills me is I've seen a couple of studio owners recently being so hard on themselves going, you know, I've only grown my business this much. I'm like, wait, do you have much help with the kids? They're like, no, I do it all. Like, how are you doing all of this? Don't be so hard on yourself. If you're being a full-time mom, taking the child to the studio with you, as well as trying to grow your business, run the marketing, run it, you can't— like, don't be so hard on yourself.

And you know what else? I just think that it is so that is, you're not going to be a good mum in that situation because you're going to be working, and you're not going to be a good business owner because you're going to be trying to look after a kid. It's like you cannot— there's no possible way you can do both of those.

Yeah, well, always at the same time.

Yeah, exactly. But the time blocking thing could help.

Absolutely.

You know, and if you go, um, thanks for bringing us back, I am gonna do an hour of playtime with my child and not look at my business stuff at all. I'm going to give them a solid hour and then I'm going to do an hour of work.

Yes. And you know what, they're going to be in the bouncer or, or they're going to— I'm going to set them up with some craft and hopefully they get whatever that is, right? It is. Yeah. Um, I 100% agree. Like, yeah. And being like, rather than go, oh, today I've got to do all these things and look after my child, be like, hey, no, this is child's hour or child's 2 hours. This is my business 2 hours.

Yep.

I think that's so important.

So important.

Yeah. Look, we've gotten off topic, but, um, shocking, shocking news.

Shocking.

Um, but I think it's so important to be deliberate with your time. And I think that's where we're coming to, like, you know, whatever you choose, but it's being deliberate with your time and you can't be structured and deliberate with your time if you don't first know how much time everything takes.

Love.

So start by doing a time audit. Then work on your time blocking. We have heaps of resources— check the show notes, um, out— that can help you with this.

Yep, absolutely. Thanks guys, we hope you got a lot out of that, and we will see you next week.

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 2 weeks free in Dance Principles United Tribe. We would love to see you there.