Evan Carmichael advises a mom-focused reggae/soca aerobics instructor to skip radio ads and flyers, instead building word-of-mouth through an exceptional class experience. His Toronto dance studio teaches 5,000-6,000 students yearly by making every interaction fun, designing classes for confidence-building, and providing extras like playlists and video demos after class.
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Focus on your customer experience. If you don't have big budgets to spend on TV ads, on radio ads, to really market your business, which I'm assuming, you know, most entrepreneurs, we don't have that, the best way to grow your business is to focus on the customer experience. Make them love what you do. Make them can't wait to come back to experience it again, to tell their friends about you, to talk about you, to share your website. You have to make your customer experience rock solid because otherwise you're forgettable, and it doesn't matter how much you spend on radio, TV ads, whatever it is, you're not gonna get the traction that you need with your business. It's gonna be money wasted. I got a question from a reader, Chalina. I hope I pronounced that right. Chalina wrote a crazy long message. We need to work on condensing our messaging. Anyway, long story short, she's a part-time entrepreneur. She wanted to start an aerobics class where it's reggae, soca music, teaching moms as a way to dance, lose weight. Have some fitness in their lives, and she's had some success with the first class and wants to grow it, and she's spending money on radio and flyers and it's not working out. Wants my help, wants to be able to make this a full-time job and not have to, you know, stay at her current business being an employee and wants to know how to make this thing fly. So congratulations, this is a tough step to start a business and it's great you already have some customers coming in. I am an investor and part owner in a dance studio here in Toronto, and we don't teach soca, but we'll teach salsa, bachata, kizomba, merengue, cha-cha, and we teach maybe 5,000-6,000 people a year how to dance. And I get what you're doing. It's a great feeling to know that you're helping somebody out, that they're coming in having a great experience dancing off, you you know, they're fat, and making new connections and loving their lives a little bit better. Here's the thing that helped us a lot and that can help you with your business too. You really need to focus on your customer experience. You need people to walk away from that class feeling like it was the best part of their week. Every experience with your company has to be amazing. Don't offer the same reggae soca class that everybody else is offering. You have to step it up a notch. What makes yours so amazing, unique, and different? Because you want the people coming back over and over and over again, but more importantly, telling their friends. You said you're targeting moms. Moms are one of the most connected groups of any group out there. You don't need to spend money on radio deals, on flyer drops, and I don't wanna see you wasting your cash because you said yourself you can't keep continuing at this pace. The moms will tell each other. They love talking about what they're doing and what's working for them. Why aren't they talking about your business? It's not the promotion that's wrong. There's something that's wrong with your classes. And it's not that it's bad. I don't think they're going out saying, "Hey, this was a terrible class," but it's not great. It's average. It's okay. And we don't talk about average or okay things. I don't tell my friends about average or okay things. I don't make videos for you guys about average or okay companies. You have to improve the customer experience, make it amazing, so that they will want to talk about you. Here's a few things that might help. Here's a few things that we do that are successful that may help you with your company as well. First off, your website, your marketing material has to embrace the fun element, right? People are coming for fun. Everything has to be fun. Okay, this is not to learn how to soca, learn how to reggae, or whatever it is. It's about having fun. So your instructor has to be fun, your website has to be fun, your marketing has to be fun, everything is fun. Step 2: from that first class, when they come in, people are nervous. The first class, if they've never done a dance class before, they're nervous, they're not sure what to expect. Again, it has to be fun. It's not about teaching technique, it's about making them love the experience. And this applies for any service business. You have to provide an amazing experience. Make them want to come back. Make them feel confident. Make them feel like they made a great decision, and they'll keep coming back. Structure your outline of your courses so that it's easy to learn. They feel like they're making progress. People have come to our schools where they've tried to learn salsa before, they've never been able to pick it up, but because of our methodology, because we make it so easy to learn, and so hard to fail, that they keep coming back and they love it and they tell their friends. Most of our business comes from people coming back. They start in Level 1, and they go to Level 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, specialty classes, different dances with the school, repeat customers, and referral business. Because that's the— our classes are the best part of their week, and they'll tell their friends, "I just went to another class, I feel great, I'm learning this new move, I went to one of their parties," whatever it is. They love it. People need to be talking about your business like that. And then the third thing is try to add something on top of just the classes to make it easy. So send them a list of the moves that they're learning, send them a video of the moves that they're learning, send them some sample music that they can practice to. Go above and beyond what's expected from just a single class to get them talking about your business. So stop spending money on radio, stop spending money on your flyers, and invest in the customer experience, and it'll pay off humongous dividends for you, and it'll let you quit your job so you can focus on your business full-time. I know it's hard because the models out there may be average. If you look what everybody else is doing, It's average. You have to come up with something new. You can model success from the top guys or people in different industries, but you have to break out of your comfort zone and think of new ways to add a ton more value. And when you do that, you'll have a lot more success. From reading your email and the enthusiasm, I believe you can do it. You know, you're a hard worker, you really want to make this work, you're creating it for the right reasons. And that'll come through. You just have to focus your efforts on the right places with your business. Belief. Thank you everybody for watching. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up below, and I'd love to hear what you have to think. Leave a comment, let me know what you think, let me know what you liked about it. If you didn't like something, let me know too. And if you have a question for your company, leave it below, I'll make a video response. Thank you, I'll see you soon.
