Unknown Speaker 0:02
Hi, friends, I hope you are all super amazing. It's back here. And I have the incredible Nathan with me. And I've bought him along today because there's a topic that keeps coming up. And it came up in tribe today. And it's been coming up on the Facebook pages. And it's all about class numbers. So make sure that you're listening in. But how are you today, Nathan? So good to be here with you back. Always enjoy jumping on a podcast with you. And yeah, it's just something that you said, yeah, it's it came up in your, in your tribe call today? And it's a question that we just see over and over again, right? on not only the dance principals, united and tribe, Facebook groups, within SGC. Within every other Facebook group we see out there for dance studio owners. It's a really burning question. So we want to jump on and chat about it today. Yeah, for sure. And the question is, if you have low class numbers, one, two, maybe three students in a class, how long do you keep running it for? Do you keep running it? What do you do? Absolutely. And I think there's a really simple, quick, like, really simple answer to it. You keep running it until you've absolutely marketed the you know, what out of it? Right? That's what you're super passionate about. Right? Well, that was absolutely my answer today. And it was about a preschool class. And so I said, Well, have you done all things? Have you put consistent spend behind it, marketing wise? And I know you'll have a lot to say about that. Have you put fliers out to every preschool at least twice a term? Have you internally taught like there's so many things we can do to feel that class? That I think you know, you've got a question, are you doing all the things? Absolutely. And look, I love that the answer John is a thinking about the numbers, that they're sitting there. They're running projections, they're looking at their revenue for their class, the expenses for their class, their fixed costs for every class from overall as their studio. That's something that I'm super passionate about, and work with all of our members on all the time. So like I said, I love that people are looking at that now and definitely doing it more so than we've ever seen in the past. But like a slight like you just sort of touched on. I think a lot of the time they rely on that hope marketing. They've put the class on the timetable. They've sent a few Facebook posts about enrollment for this year, and maybe had an enrollment day. But that's it. And they're wondering why why the class isn't full. There's so much more that's got to go into it. So much fun. It's interesting. Isn't it nice? Because we're seeing people now, it's kind of this, you know, beginning of Feb. So it's our offseason, like we've started, because I've been doing all that marketing, hopefully. And people are like, Oh, that's how many numbers I've got now for the year. And it's full stop. And it's it's so not about that, right? Like, we know the growth is gonna happen throughout the entire year. And so this is I said to the Thai people this morning, nice. This is the start of your numbers. Yes, the start. This is not the end game, your end game should be up here. This is the start. And I think that's where people stop marketing consistently. And we know that marketing consistently is the absolute key to growing a studio, exactly like we taught, we use the example of pause back, right, because I'm helping you guys with your Facebook ads and horse preschool enrollments on a fluke, that it's not some magical number. You don't just open your classes and magically fill them up with a couple of 100 preschool students. It's the fact that last year your spurs like you did, you obviously do loads of marketing campaigns all the way through the year. But underlying that every single day, there's $10 a day going on a preschool ad. And now I understand that not every studio has the budget to go on that maybe every single day. But because that gets up to you spent just over $4,000 across the whole year, because $10 a day over 365 days adds up pretty quick. I understand that. But you had consistent spent that whole time, which means that over that time you had I think about 300 preschool inquiries over that time. And when you can if you convert even to 50% of them. That's 150 new, brand new preschool students on top of whatever you already started the year with, right? Yep, absolutely. I had said this to the guys this morning. Like because, you know, they're all thinking there's no way they could get to those sort of numbers. And I said to them this morning, remember I started with 12 When I started marketing consistently, I had 12 preschoolers. And yes, it took time and it's taken effort. And I think the thing is, as well that we have had to really think about our customer service to get those leads in as well as to keep those leads like there's a lot of hard work that's gone into it. I'm not gonna say it was an overnight thing as you said, of course, but it is that consistency of your brand being out there. That's important and if you think about the big brands, that's what they do. They're consistently in your face for a reason.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
Then because you see them over and over, and therefore you're going to opt into them. And you need to be that in your local area. But I think I started at $5 a day. No, thank you. No, I didn't start spending. And we spent a huge amount over January, as you know, but I've now got the budget for that. So I usually explain it's better. But this morning, I sort of said to them, you start at whatever you can afford. And you get those couple of leads in and they join and then you up at a tiny bit, and then you get some more leads in and they join and then you up at a tiny bit. And so you are using those leads to remarket, but that's how you increase the spin. Is that right in saying that? Or did I totally miss up to a point Absolutely. And like I said, I definitely don't want people's takeaway to be oh, I've got to spend $4,000, on preschool, that's to increase and fill my classes, that we're not it. But if you don't have that budget, you have your time. So that just means you've got to go super hard on all the other things where the only cost in inverted commas is your time. So you need to be smashing stories on Instagram, because that's free. So even like we know, organic reach down. But if you do it enough, and you get in front of enough people's eyeballs and you get enough parents to share it, then you start making traction, you need to get out into the community events more you need to, like you said, get out to the preschools more and just drop some fliers off. And all those sorts of things I completely understand if you don't have the budget to spend on that. But that just means you've got to go a little bit harder with your time investment, to do all the things consistently for the whole year to be able to build that up. And then it's just like it's a it's a flywheel, right. It's a Jim Collins, if you've read any of his books, absolutely amazing business rider, but he talks about the flywheel. And it's one of those massive, super big wheels, right? That like we're talking like, you know, twice the height of a person or three times the height of a person. To get that flywheel turning requires huge amounts of energy to get the first quarter of a turn the first half a turn, the first full turn of that flywheel. And then even to get like the second rotation still requires you to be sitting there putting in your shoulder and really pushing it along. But once that flywheel gets going, it's almost harder to stop it than it is to keep it going. Right. So that's what we're always really passionate about, about doing whatever you can, but doing it consistently across the whole time. I love that. I love that you said getting your current families to share. I think that's so important. And at the end of January, we were opening obviously. And so I put out a little competition nice to all of my students and said reshare this post on your socials, which was three more sleeps till dancing, you know, we can't wait to be back kind of thing. Try for free. And so we had all of these families reposting it. And I think we're giving away a new uniform, we're getting some new in form out. So we're giving away an item of new uniform. But that is so worth it to put out to your families and to get them to reshare it that is free advertising. Really I mean, okay, it cost me maybe 30 or $40, uniform item. But that is like huge, don't you think? But without a doubt? Absolutely. There's so many so many things that you can be doing. Love the one of the, like I said, getting parents to reshare because we know that that social proof, that proof like people buy from because of people, right? And sometimes in our studio, that's us getting on socials and talking like that. But if somebody sees their friend that's taking their little preschooler along or their son or daughter along to your afternoon dance classes, and they're speaking it. Well, that's like five times more trustworthy, as astute as it is. For us. That's five times more trustworthy than us getting out there and stroking it, right. Yep, absolutely. And need someone came on today as well and said, What do you do to get an 11 to 14 year old in some classes? So obviously, they've got lower numbers in there. And my answer to that was go to your local high schools and say you'll teach a dance group for free. I think sometimes you've got to put the hard work in and do things like that to get people in. And you know, I have five kids, three businesses, life's crazy, but I still go on teach free dance group at the local schools at 8am. Some mornings, and that's just what you do, because I know that some of my best kids have come from that. Yeah, absolutely. We know that. Like I keep saying like the 11 to 14 year old dancers or anybody really like 11 Plus is far more expensive in terms of Facebook and Instagram ads, then those that are younger, without a doubt. It's really, really difficult to get them guys. But again, that's where it's and it's not free because it's our time I know, but our time is the best resource that we can use in these scenarios. Going along and teaching the school group we know like a lot of I used to be a school teacher and
Unknown Speaker 10:00
But each high school has they have to do allocated sport. It's usually one afternoon a week like, you know, your seventh and eighth OB or Tuesday or things like that, whatever it is. But they're always looking for activities to do for that sport programme. So if you were to ring the school and say, Hey, I would love to offer afternoon sport,
Unknown Speaker 10:20
I can come to you, or if you're close to high school, even the kids can come to me here.
Unknown Speaker 10:26
If you're willing to hear, you could charge $5 ahead or something like that if you want, but to be honest, you might get 20 kids in $100 a week, the school is going to absolutely jump at it. If it's like no charge, no charge to the school, you guys can on charge whatever you like, the school is gonna think that's absolutely insane value. And you're gonna get 20 to 30 of that target age group through your studio every single week, building a relationship with them building a rapport with them, you're gonna be absolutely crazy. Obviously, if you've got it, like if you're not teaching yourself and you're gonna charge a teacher, then just put the nominal $5 A head on to cover your cost type thing. But things like that can be just super, super valuable and a great way to build those older age groups as well. Yeah, I love that. And it is thinking outside of the box. And especially if you don't have the money yet to spend there are definitely other ways that you can do it. And you know, another thing I said neath today I was on a bit of a rant today, but I just said to everyone, like, please don't think that anyone has become successful without hard work like it is, honestly, every single person who is successful has worked their guts out, you know, it's been really hard work for us to get the studio to build to where it is. But when my studio was really small, I wasn't working hard at it. So, you know, that's, that's the thing, if you work hard at your marketing, if you work hard at all of that stuff. And I'm not saying I didn't work hard as a teacher, but I didn't work hard on my business growing. When you work hard on it growing, you will see the benefits. It's that simple. Yeah, without a doubt. And so like, you know, sort of like circling back to our initial question like, you know, when do you do cancel the classes, I said, before you ever look at those sorts of things, I really hope that you look at everything that we've talked about so far. And to be honest, we talked about preschool as like the first thing of the bat. And even though I'm all about the numbers, and making sure as many classes running as possible, are profitable. The reality of our industry is that not every single class on our timetable is going to be profitable, or advance to ballet, probably not going to be profitable.
Unknown Speaker 12:34
Probably not almost certainly not. But those you know, the way that I always used to think about it is the kids that are in advanced to ballet have been with us for so long. And in those full classes when they were under six is underwrites all those things all the way through. So for that it's always a little bit of a reward to be running the advanced to Bell, and it's good for the standard of your school and all those sorts of things. And then on the other end of the spectrum, I am look, I'm never happy to run a class for a loss. I was never happy. But I was more willing to be running a preschool class for a loss just based on the lifetime value of those preschool students. Yes, absolutely. And I know Amanda's talked about this a lot. But if you haven't worked out that lifetime value, we actually did it with some of the little Groovers studios, because we're helping them with their marketing at the moment. And we did it with them yesterday, Nathan, it was really interesting for people to work out that lifetime value because it can get up to like 75,000, right? And then you're nearly 100,000 Plus, yeah, right. And then you'd like really happy to teach that preschooler on their own for you know, a few weeks if that's what happens, like, it's not that big a deal. Yeah. And we also talked about at the start of the year, if you do have those class numbers, suddenly, we've been talking about with a few of our SGC members as well. It is what you make it that sort of like that low class numbers at the start. If you walk into week one, and you like a new one, the teacher walked up to the parent, like, there's just like, there's just you this week. Yeah. Okay. Like, it's such a difference to like walking in and going, Oh, my gosh, well, it's just me and you this week. But how amazing is that gonna be amazing. We get to do all of our fairy runs just us together, and you're gonna learn so much this week and talk to you, obviously, you don't want to probably like go too hard, because then mom's like, oh, well, there's now three kids and I'm out. There is the fine balance. I get that. But the energy and the excitedness of the teacher in that first couple of weeks when there is some low numbers is super, super important because you don't want that once one or two students to drop out because they think oh, well it's not really worth it. Yeah, I love that. And I like you know, we were talking today about the fact that you can say people are starting to really market well, an eighth and they're bringing these students in and that's great. Your team has to be on board with being that positive, happy person with getting those students enrolled with the sales
Unknown Speaker 15:00
side of it. I know we don't like thinking about it as sales, but they have to be they're doing that. Otherwise, you're spending all this time and effort, and they're not even really coming in. So I think that stuff is so imperative for those parents to feel welcome to feel like they're, you know, it's an easy process for them like this. There's a lot more to it. I know than just that Facebook marketing or just bringing those leads in but bringing, focusing on your marketing, focusing on your sales, it's so important. Yeah, absolutely, like super, super valuable. So I guess circling back to things we sort of talked about is, and I don't want anybody to take away from this, that you never ever cancel a class, because it's like, at some point along the line, you may have to, but please don't be doing it this early on in the term, I think the key things we talked about are that it's got to be like, before you even think about cancelling it, you've got to put a solid, what at least six to eight week campaign of consistent solid marketing, paid marketing, if you've got the budget for it, if not going super, super hard on all the free things that you can do, to try to try and get people in flyers at the local preschoolers for those other ones
Unknown Speaker 16:17
offering to teach sport at the school for those older classes to get some people in things like bring a friend weeks, if there's like two or three in there, and you want to build it out to at least sort of seven to 10 Try to bring it bring a friend and incentivize the current students in the club are the parents of the current students in that class with something to bring them along. But so so many things that you can try before, like I said, before you even think about I don't think we should be thinking about cancelling classes, at least till the end of first term, right? Absolutely. And even sharing it with your current families. Like they might have a cousin or a friend, he's got a little person and they might not even know that you do that class at that time, on that day, or that you even offer that. I think sometimes we think that our families know everything that we know about our studio. And I said this morning, nice. Like I had a circus client come in, you know, quite a few years ago now. And I sorry, a non circus client and she came in and said to me, I can't I didn't even know you did circus? And like, how could you not know, we've got circus equipment everywhere. But that's our big thing. You know, it was our big thing at the time. It was like when I was doing all the circus things that operate everything she didn't know, because I hadn't told them. I hadn't told my current clients what we were doing, I might have it on social media. She might not follow our social media. It might be my whole world. But it's not hers. And she was excited to optic kids into circles. I think we forget to mark it to our current people. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So look, I hope that you've taken some value out of this for basically all of our studios are back. I know like Queensland friends and whatnot have been back at classes for a couple of weeks. Now, a lot of New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, are either back this week or back next week. So I hope that you've taken some value out of this, that even if you do have a couple of classes that are a bit lower numbers, you've picked up some tips to try and really push to start filling them and that you can just keep growing and growing and growing all the way through turn one and the rest of the year. Absolutely. Have a great week, everyone and we'll talk to you soon. Bye. Thanks, everyone. Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
