Using Your Time More Effectively As a Studio Owner

Hey podcast listeners, it's Nathan here. Just a quick caveat for today's episode. It was an awesome chat between Amanda and Beck. As always, so much value for studio owners out there. But a little apology from me. In my mic setup for Amanda for the podcast recording, I made a big error which meant that the audio quality for Amanda through the interview isn't as good as it usually is. But it would have been an absolute shame not to get studio owners the error. Incredible value that these two gave from the episode. So I've still included it in and done what I can to tidy up the audio for you all. We hope you still enjoy and thanks so much for listening.

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 Principals United Podcast. Bec, my favorite business bestie. How are you today?

I'm super awesome. Excited to be recording with you. Yeah, getting into term two in New South Wales. Good times.

All the things happening. Right. Are you working towards mid year concert at the studio?

Sure am. So we're working towards all our mid year concerts. We have quite a few because we've got a lot of preschoolers. Can't wait. It's going to be awesome. Yeah, amazing.

So, so good. Hey. Today we're here to talk about the proactive versus the reactive tasks that we do as studio owners, as the CEO in our companies. Because this is something that came up a lot on my one on ones this week with different studio growth club members. So I thought we'd kind of jam about it today.

I love this so much because I used to be so reactive in my business, Amanda. And you know, I'm not going to say I'm not now. I still have to catch myself all the time. But I used to be so reactive it was crazy. And when you really change that around, I think it's such a game changer for any business owner.

Yeah, absolutely. So let's start by like defining what is the proactive task and what is a reactive. So a reactive to start with tasks are things that you have to do no matter what to run your studio. So something like replying to the email from the parent, cutting music, doing the choreography, you know, putting out the concert dates or booking the, you know, things like that. They're reactive tasks. Right? Like, what else comes up for you when I sort of talk about reactive.

Tasks, Look, I think, you know, answering a parent text message or calling a parent straight away or feeling. Answering their message on Facebook because they want you straight away, like that constant. Because it's such a high service business, I feel that we constantly are bombarded by those parents and sometimes feel like we have to react straight away to them. That's probably the biggest one for me, Amanda.

And I totally agree with that. Whereas proactive tasks, I guess proactive tasks are something that's actually going to move the needle in your business. It's actually going to make a difference. So a proactive task is, you know, creating a new marketing event, you know, doing new Facebook ads, you know, designing a new program that you're going to do something that's like proactive to move the needle forward in your business.

Yes. Scheduling your social media posts. Like, there's so many things. Right. And, and I think, like, it's just interesting because the one thing that we always hear studio owners say is how busy they are and how flat out they are. And you've got to question how many reactive tasks they're doing and how many proactive. Because the proactive are the ones that are going to grow their business.

Absolutely. And that's something I was really chatting to studio owners about this week, is the reactive tasks. You're always going to find time for those. You don't have a choice. You can't not cut your six and under jazz music. It has to be done right.

You.

You will always, always, always find time for that. And I think time's a bit magical sometimes. I think it can shift and change and we can squeeze things in when we need to. And sometimes, you know, we just don't have enough time for things. And I don't know, do you find that somewhere that, like, the dimensions of time can shift based on how busy you are?

Yes, but I also think I'm someone who will make myself busy. And I think this is most studio owners and business owners is that we feel the need to be busy all the time. So therefore, we just are busy and we have to do that. We have to do that. And it's just like you prioritize the wrong things.

Absolutely. And that's what I was kind of saying this week was like. You're always going to find time for the reactive tasks. However, if you prioritize them over the proactive tasks, you may not find time for the proactive tasks. You know, you get to the end of the day and you're like, oops, ran out of time. Still didn't, you know, start that new marketing campaign. Still didn't do that. Whereas if you flip it and start your day with the proactive tasks, I always think you're gonna manage to fill in and get everything done in the day. The proactive and the reactive. I don't know. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I think scheduling your day is a great idea as well. It's like rather than just starting answering the emails or, you know, looking at the inbox because that's how most of us start. And that just downward spiral, actually sitting and saying, okay, what things do I need to do today to move the needle in my business? And how am I going to achieve those things? And write down the times that you're going to do that in, because you don't. Look, I know we feel like that parent email is so important, but we're not. It's not a doctor's surgery, like, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter that much if we answer them at 9am or 12pm I don't think that's going to make that much of a difference.

No, absolutely not. And obviously customer service is important. There's no doubt about that. But you don't have to be available 24 7. As we said, we're not surgeons. We're not saving the world, we're teaching dance. Yes, there's things that are important, but generally those things can wait. So what I challenged, actually two of our SGC members yesterday, was to start every single day with a minimum of an hour, preferably two hours of doing proactive tasks before they check their emails, before they check their Facebooks, anything like that, that they sit down and the first thing they do is focus on the proactive task before they kind of get sucked into to the reactive. I think that's a good way to structure the day. Right.

I absolutely love that. And, you know, breaking it down as well, writing down all the proactive tasks that should be happening. Like, what would be your top five proactive tasks? Obviously, I'm gonna say social media scheduling, because we've seen a lot of, you know, new clients that we've got coming in and they're not. They're just not putting things on their socials. And so people aren't seeing them at all, which is a shame. So I would definitely say that.

Absolutely. Look at our bootcamp that we've been running in the last week. We really talked about cold leads, emails. And, you know, we chatted about that on the podcast last week, you know, finding time to schedule, because that's something that you're like, I should do that. But then it never gets done. Right. We've all been guilty of that. I've been guilty of that as well. So, you know, cold leads, emails, I think that's really important, you know, setting up a new Facebook ad campaign if that's something that you're interested in or learning. Because a proactive task could also be investing in your learning. It could be taking a course, doing some research on something, you know, and specifically learning how to move the needle forward in your business. I think they're all great proactive tasks as well.

Yeah, look, those Facebook ads, I know we harp on about it, but they're such a game changer. They're so important to have out there all the time. And it's interesting when you're talking to studio owners and you say, what are you trying to grow my preschool? Amazing. What ad have you got out at the moment? None. How are you growing your preschool? No one's seeing your preschool stuff if you're not putting money behind it. You know, we talked about this at Expo, Amanda, but we know that Instagram and Facebook are businesses, and the only way that you're going to get everything out of that business is through putting money into their business, and then they share it for you, and then that's how people see you. So you've just got to constantly think about, how am I seen in my public area? How are people actually knowing what I'm doing? We all. We know you're doing amazing things, but are people seeing it?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, putting some time and effort into learning Facebook ads or meta ads or whatever, you know, whatever we're going to call them, That's a great thing to be doing if you're talking about your proactive. Did I list my five? We got distracted. Did I list.

We got three?

We got to three. I'm so sorry. I'll keep going. You know, reaching out to local preschools or community groups to, you know, offer them free classes or do something along those lines. That's a great thing to be proactive. Even things inside our current studio, like I know Beck tomorrow on our free bootcamp, we're talking about ways to upsell classes. And another great thing, and I presume you're talking about it tomorrow, is, you know, picking up the phone to our current clients rather than waiting for them to call us with a problem, picking up the phone and being proactive and upselling that class or, you know, calling that person back that inquired a year ago. They're all really good. Proactive, you know, proactive things that will actually make a difference to your bottom line 100%.

Like inviting children to do classes and like, getting a phone call from the studio owner for most parents would be absolutely incredible. If you made that phone call to T10 of your students and said, hey, I've noticed they're doing really well in jazz. Ballet is really going to help them with their jazz technique. I'd love to invite her to do ballet. We think she'd do really well at that. If you did that today, you could potentially add 10 class placements. You know, it's like getting 10 new students because you're getting 10 kids into those classes. Parents love that stuff.

They love it. Absolutely. And look, I know that every studio owner that's listening to this podcast goes, yeah, of course that would happen if I called those parents. But so many of them don't. They sit back and they're like, oh, yeah, I'll call that parent. Yeah, I will. I'll do that. I'll remember. And all of a sudden, a whole nother term's gone past and nothing's been done about it. I think that's so easy to happen sometimes, right?

So easy to happen. Now, Amanda, before you mentioned doing marketing campaigns, and I think this is interesting, like planning a few times a year when you do that marketing campaign.

I am very big on that. I'm a big believer that advertising should be done all the time. Yeah, you should be having ads out all the time. However, you should have a few key marketing events every single year that, you know, are real big pushers. They're the big drivers. The other stuff's always going in the background, but those marketing events are the big drivers. Like, let's think about in retail, right? In retail, there's always, you know, emails going out. There's always little, hey, this is two for one. Or, you know, probably not two for one. You know, including. But this is a 20% off discount code. Hey, here's our latest catalog, things like that. But then they have a couple of big marketing events. Black Friday. Yeah, Black Friday is always one of their biggest marketing events of the year. You know, the Boxing Day sales is another one. And depending on the type of company, it might be like a winter sale or, you know, a start of winter sale or something like that, depending. And even though they're advertising and still doing marketing pushes, all the Way through the year. They put so many more eggs in the basket during those big, like, marketing events events. And we can do that too, as studio owners.

Yes. I love this. I know you were talking to our studio Growth club members about this yesterday, and I, I really do think that one. What I love about this is we're not just focusing everything in January. I hope that everyone out there now knows that you can get students any time of the year into your classes. But it's also just like you said, putting all the eggs in the basket. Now we're. When we see our members get really, really great results, it's because they do everything. And we did a little checklist for them yesterday that ticked off. Okay, yes, you're doing your Facebook ads, but, you know, say it's a preschool, for example. Are you dropping the flyers to the preschool? Are you offering a free class at the preschool? Are you maybe doing a shopping center promo? Are you putting stuff around in and around your local area? Are you posting on the local mums groups? Are you tagging clients so that their photos are seen on Instagram and social so that the parents share it? How many things are you doing? Because so many times, Amanda, we see someone say, oh, I'm trying to grow the program. I put a post out on Facebook and an email out, and that's it.

And it's not enough, unfortunately.

Not enough.

It's just not enough. So it's really about doing all the things, especially for those marketing events. So if you're looking for a proactive task to do, you know, it could be planning your yearly calendar and planning those events, because that's where we see a lot of studio owners sort of like fall down as they're like, oh, we just, you know, I just had five minutes. So I threw a post up about it rather than going, hey, what can I plan? How can I plan to do all the things and release this new program? You know, really push my. Whatever it is for you, but do it really, really well, including all the things. So spending your proactive time doing that would be so valuable.

Absolutely. Interesting. Totally not. Well, it's not off topic, but interesting Self reflection on exactly this for me yesterday, Amanda. So, you know, I've got my team in charge of doing the marketing stuff now. And my circus teachers have said developing a new adult class for circus and it was supposed to start yesterday. Now, we talked to the team about it a couple of weeks ago. They put a couple of social media posts up. I'm going to be honest, I completely forgot about it we put an email out. So one email, I think probably two social media posts. Right. Two people turned up to the class and I knew yesterday when I said to them, what have we done for this? And they told me that it was going to be dismal. So that's okay. Live and learn. So what we're doing in three weeks time is we're having a launch of the program. We're doing it on a Friday night. We're going to have a pizza. What are those pizza vans that come to you parties and stuff? Yeah, so we're gonna have a pizza van. Come. We're gonna have a glass of champagne after the class. They're gonna mingle with myself and the circus teachers and they get to come and do a class. Now that's a great way to launch a program. You know what I mean?

Make it a party. Make it a launch party. Make it a VIP launch party so far.

Exactly. But talking about being proactive. So now we've scheduled in. How many posts are we doing? When are those posts gonna be? How many emails are we sending out to parents? What are. We're also making flyers for every child who does circus saying, hey, jealous of what your kids are doing in circus? Why not come along and try it for free on this Friday and have pizza and drinks for this after and meet some new people. So it's like we're doing invitations. So now watch this space. But I feel like this is going to be huge now because we've put the work and effort into it. And that's the thing. Like, if you want things to be an event, if you want to push something new or even just push something in your studio, you've got to do everything, right?

Absolutely. All the things. Our members keep laughing at us because we keep saying all the things, but that's totally it, right? You've got to do all the things to make it work. And I love hearing about that because, like, we all have business fails, right? You know, your circus class last night, it's fine. But it's how you fix it and what you do next and how you change it that really, you know, defines what kind of business owner you're going to be.

Imagine though, if I just was doing the reactive tasks all day yesterday. Imagine if I was just answering the emails and the messages and the, you know, and doing all of that and just being reactive. I wouldn't have put the time into then planning that event and I wouldn't have the success. And that's what we're saying to you guys, like, it would have been easy for me to not do that. It would have been easy for me to, you know, answer and do answer the parents. And I had a lot of messages from parents because, you know, I'm taking solos and a lot of my soloists are doing stuff at the moment. And I probably had about six messages saying, can you please send the solo music to me? Can you send the solo music? Which I haven't cut yet. I could have spent the day doing that, Amanda, but I didn't. I really took the time to be proactive about growing that program. And. And that's what we're trying to say to you guys out there. Are you being proactive or. Or are you doing the reactive? Right?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So if you're listening to this, we would love to challenge you. We would love to challenge you to spend at least the first hour of your working day, every single day, doing something proactive for your business rather than reactive. So when you get in, make sure your email isn't open. Make sure your slack channels aren't open. You know, make sure that Facebook tab. Oh, my God, that Facebook tab. Close the Facebook. Close the Facebook messenger. I know. It's like that, isn't it?

Oh, my God, it's so addictive. So addictive. Yeah.

But starting the day by doing something proactive. The other thing I said to a couple of our SGC members that you might find interesting bec. Because I know sometimes what it's like as a, you know, creative with. We all get a bit like, oh, what am I doing? Where's my head at? I'm not in the right headspace today. I don't have any inspiration to do anything proactive, you know, and so what I suggested to one of them was to actually write a list of proactive tasks I should be doing when I'm not sure what I should be doing.

Oh, I love it.

You know, I actually have always have one for my receptionist, you know.

Yes, we have it, too.

Yeah. Things to do when you think there's nothing to do.

It's stuck. It's stuck on our front desk. Exactly.

And it's probably things like, you know, take the bins out, you know, recheck stock levels or refold things or, you know, things like that. Branding stuff. Right. But for you, what are the proactive things that you could always be doing? You could send another email to those cold leads. There's no such thing as too many emails. So, you know, to cold leads, like, there's no problem with sending one once A week? Week. So if you're like, I haven't done anything, what am I gonna do? That's the right thing to do. You know, what else could it be? It's making sure your socials are scheduled and a social for, you know, at minimum three times a week for the next month, all scheduled and all up to date. What about story? You know, there's so many things to do that I think if you're ever like lacking inspiration, creating that like, go to list can be really like, it can help you get you on the right track.

Yeah. Picking up the phone and talking to clients like we said and adding classes on. It's interesting. One of the studio owners that I had a one on one with this week said to me, becca, I feel like I'm just always hustling. And I said, good. That's what a studio owner should be doing. If you're feeling.

That's what any business owner should be doing, 100%.

The more you hustle, the more you do that stuff, the more you're going to get more students, more class placements and make more money. And that's, that's what we want for you. You're doing a great job. We know you're doing great things for kids, but you deserve to make money for those things. But you've got a hustle to do it.

Absolutely. Hey, maybe we should leave you with this. That business isn't an end journey. There's no finish line. You don't get to the end and go, hey, I've got it under control. There is nothing more to do in my business. I am done. Never going to happen. You have to keep working, you have to keep learning. You have to keep creating new things, which sometimes means keep hustling. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. And, and we want you guys to really think about this today. So proactive versus reactive during your day, ask yourself as you're working. So proactive task or is this a reactive task? The first step to this is being self aware. And just try and change it up, guys, because that will really change how you do your business.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us on the Dance Principles United podcast. If you're going to do this challenge, let us know. Drop us an Instagram dm. We love to hear from you and we can't wait to hear speak to you again next week. Be back in your ear holes. I don't even know what it's meant to be. Thanks, guys. Bye, babe.

Thanks, guys.

Bye.