Rebecca Liu Brennan 0:02
Hello friends I'm Amanda bar.
And I'm Rebecca Lu 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 through marketing systems studio culture, motherhood, life and everything in between.
This is the dance principals United podcast.
Amanda Barr 0:27
Hey friends, and welcome to the dance principals United podcast. Lovely back with a new background. New mic. New painting looks good. How are you my friend?
Rebecca Liu Brennan 0:38
I'm so good. Thank you, Nathan. For all my presence. I'm loving it. I feel very special with my new microphone, Amanda.
Amanda Barr 0:45
Well, if you're listening to this online, you probably need to get on to YouTube to see what it looks like. Because then you'll be able to see Beck's painting. In real life. It's not quite as good as mine. But it is lovely.
Rebecca Liu Brennan 0:58
It is not as good as yours. We were just laughing about your painting before Amanda saying the picture is too low. It says be a dick. But if the picture is high enough, it says don't be a dick. So depending on the day, you could be a deck or not be a dick.
Amanda Barr 1:12
Just depends what I'm feeling really. Tell me how's your week been? How is everything going in the life of Rebecca Liu Brennan.
Rebecca Liu Brennan 1:19
It's been epic has been Easter, which has been awesome. We had our big Easter picnic on Monday at the studio and Amanda, we had nearly 500 people to really oh my god, that's huge. It was huge. I think because school holidays and not in amongst it this year. I think that's one thing that made it bigger than ever. So there weren't as many people away. But the other thing is just how much effort we put into promoting it. Like I'm talking a flyer to every child in the studio, posters up posts on band consistently, posts on our socials consistently for
emails, yes, all the things. So I see that as well. And of course, the staff hyping it up. I think that has all had that effect, which is exciting. How
Amanda Barr 2:12
good that sounds amazing. It was a lovely Easter weekend, wasn't it, the weather was out. It was beautiful. It's my birthday got to celebrate the wind, I used to do all the fun things. But we're not here to talk about our Easter weekends. The time of listening to this, we are 10 days out of dance teacher Expo, which is Oh my god. So exciting. And we are going to let you know a little bit about something special. We're doing an expo at the end of this podcast. So make sure you stick around so that you can hear it at the end. But today, we're actually here to talk about time management tips, because it's something that look everyone struggles with we've got a lot going on at the moment. And we've had so many studio owners struggle with that. Right?
Rebecca Liu Brennan 2:56
Yeah, well, we know that studio owners are constantly busy, and there is always something to do. And there's always someone at you asking you some sort of question that kind of takes you away from the path that you need to be on. I think that's really tricky, don't you, Amanda, like you just, I know, we all feel like that in life. And we feel like that at the moment, even with Expo and all the things that you just it's so easy to get distracted is probably the easiest way for me to say it. Absolutely. And
that's something that studio owners, you know, all struggle with, you know, there's so many balls flying up in the air, we're doing all the things. And it is really easy, you know, to struggle with that, I guess as a studio owner, because that's how we know studio owners don't have is time, they don't have enough time in their day to, you know, do all their marketing to, you know, do all their admin work to do their teaching to give to their families, like, you know, so many of us are just like doing all the things right? Oh,
absolutely. And then the person and the things that get neglected the most, of course, is always yourself. So, you know, we get sad as well. So we thought we'd give you three amazing tips today, just on some really simple ways for you guys to get back a little bit of your time. Absolutely.
All right back. Let's hear it. What is tip number one to help our studio owners kind of get back some of their time and make you know the best use of the time that they have. Yep. So
tip number one is social media scheduling because what we know Yeah, but like I know this for myself, Amanda and you know, I'm lucky enough to have people doing my social media scheduling now for me, but back in the day, I used to do it all myself, of course. And you just do you forget because you get busy and you're running and you forget about it and then three or four days go by and then you're like Ah dammit, I was meant to do that. And then you go and do a little bit. Then you forget again and then a week goes by and we know the problem with that is it's It's not consistent enough. Absolutely. Look,
social media scheduling isn't, you know, a groundbreaking idea. But it's that thing that we all like, Oh, I'm gonna do that, and then never do it right. And it's so easy as studio owners, because we're all massive perfectionist, right? To all of a sudden take way too long to do that social post or start scrolling on Instagram and get distracted instead of doing the post, which means it just takes so much time out of your day. And as you said, it also stops you being consistent with your posting. Yep,
and you can schedule your stories as well as your feed, like you can actually schedule all the things. And it's so simple to do, like, even I can do it, Amanda. And if I can do it, I feel like anyone could do it. But it's really simple us to have to have like back in the day, remember, you still have to have apps to do it. And it was like this whole thing. But now, it's just so simple to do through Instagram itself, right? Yeah, well,
I would recommend always going through metta business suite, I don't know if that's how you would do it back. Like there's different ways to do it, right. But if you jump on to, you know, on your computer, jumped through meta business suite, you know, you can schedule everything, and, you know, just get it all done, try and schedule a month's worth of content. In one big go, you know, you should be able to do that in maybe like three hours or so. And then you don't have to think about it, as Beck said, Do your stories as well, you can also still add, you know, extra things on ad hoc things, you know, some stories in classes, you know, other things that pop up, you know, if you have some results from the weekend, or a child did this or you want to reward this, but at least if you have like a really baseline scheduled and my baseline schedule would be three posts a week, that would be a minimum plus stories every single day. You know, at least if you have that scheduled, then you don't have that stress on you. And because I know social media can feel heavy sometimes. Do you, like have that feeling sometimes where it just feels really heavy?
Absolutely. I mean, I think it it just feels like it's the last thing we want to do for a lot of studios and isn't, and we talk to a lot of studio owners about this. But it's the only way that you're putting yourself out there. That's the thing, because we're not doing newspapers anymore. And we shouldn't be. And you know, it's it's such a different world now, and everyone's on their phone. So you want to make sure that you're doing those posts on your phone where everyone can see you. Absolutely.
So if you are listening to this, and you are still doing social media posts every day or as you go, this is your sign, jump on try and schedule a month in advance, try to do three posts a week, you know, so that's like scheduling 12 posts, 12 posts in you know, two to three hours is kind of like a recommended time for that, that it shouldn't take any longer. This is your site and to get that done to make your life a little bit easier. Tip two back, what is it? Let me know.
Tip number two is streamline your parent communication. I know we talk about this a lot though, Amanda, you know, and we talk about it in studio growth club a lot. We talk about abstract. But I think that we need to understand how busy parents are. We're talking about how busy studio owners are, we need to remember how busy parents are you and I are perfect examples of this perfect example of the parent who doesn't read about the soccer and doesn't know when things are happening and doesn't know there's an Easter hat parade in two days.
Back Did you not know about the Easter hat parade? I
may have made a very quick Easter hat this year. But I do love the Easter hat parade. But I think you know, we are so busy life is crazy and absolute very easy to not read things. It's also very easy to do things last minute. Absolutely.
So if you are a studio owner that is thinking, Yes, I need to streamline my parent communication to make it easier for parents. The number one thing we teach inside studio growth club is we call them mini sites and many sites for big events that you're doing. And all that is is a web page that is dynamic, meaning that it can be updated all the time. But it has all the info they need on a super simple, easy to remember URL, which you know, it's just so much easier for parents rather than, you know, sending one email with some info and then then having to scroll back and go and find another email that has different info on it that and they're like which one's the right one or you have to update the time or you know, the aesthetic changes and all of a sudden it's at different times. You know, there's all of that going on. So we'd like to streamline parent communication by using these mini sites inside your studio.
Amanda you're going to laugh at this but I used my very own mini site today because we have an important dates on our minis sight. And I needed to just double check some dates that were coming up and make sure that, you know, I've been asked to do a little bit of adjudicating. So I was just checking that I didn't have something on that weekend when the adjudicating is happening. And that's exactly what I mean, I didn't have to contact, you know, my admin manager. And I know, you think it's hilarious that I don't know my own dates, but I don't. So I didn't have to contact my admin manager and say, Hey, in July, or whenever it was, do we have a compound this weekend, I could just go straight to the mini site, check it and go, nope, we've got, we don't have a component, I can do that. So easy
for you to go on your own website, not just parents, right. So, so easy. So you know, really think about how you can streamline your parent communication, keep it all in one spot for your parents is making it really, really easy. And also listen to their feedback around that, you know, if you get emails constantly asking you for the same thing, you know, maybe think about, hey, is there something I'm not giving them? Is there something that I'm missing in my parent communication? Because I think that's always really great to reflect back on it. And look, it's not going to take away all of your admin work, there's still going to be parents that email you going? I can't remember how to find that. But at least then the answer is, all the info can be found on this site. And it's just always directing people and teaching them to go back to that site. I do recommend, you know, giving that with a little bit of love and sometimes giving them more information that's needed, but it just makes it a bit easier, right?
Oh, absolutely. And also, like, at constant time, it's amazing, because rather than, you know, usually, well, I used to do this m&e, I don't know if you did, but you'd send out an information about the hair, and then an information about the costume and then an information about arrival time. So they've got three or four different emails about the one event. And that's hard for them to look through. But if that's all on one constant mini site with all of those things on it, how simple for them?
Absolutely, absolutely. So really think how can you stream yard, your stream yard? That is the platform that we're using? Not how what we're doing? How can you streamline your parent communication, I think is the most important thing. And that will help it'll start teaching parents, it's not going to happen overnight. But it will happen, that you start training your parents and they'll stop coming to you with, you know, questions about the upcoming asset for the exams, the concert, you know, what dates there acquired for things, you know, as you start to train your parents, it will start start to slow your admin work in terms of that as well.
Yeah, I love how you're saying train your parents, because that is the key. We have to constantly when they start something new, they have to constantly be referred back to it. And I completely forget about that. But that is so so important to do consistently and get your admin team to do if you have one is to constantly refer them back to Oh, yeah, it's on the mini site. It's on the mini site. It's on the mini site, and eventually they'll get the idea, we hope.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Amazing. Tip number three back, what isn't my
love. Tip number three is manage your time with focus hours. And I know this is something that you are very, very passionate about.
I have some days, and I do my best to do it. We're not always perfect, I do my absolute best. But our focus hours focus days time blocking, you might have heard any of these words. And they all really mean the same thing, that it is hard for our brain to jump from one thing to another thing to another thing in quick succession. Because every time you change your tab on your screen, you you know change what you're thinking about and what kind of role you're playing in our studio. Because as studio owners, we all have so many roles that we do, right? Like, we were the teacher hat, we were the studio owner hat we wear the, you know, customer relationship hat, the admin manager, you know, the invoicing, there's all of these hats that we wear, and every time you switch, it takes time for your brain to you know, to adjust, I guess. So it's so much better if you can, you know, group those projects that you have to do, and really just stay focused on them. So focus hours basically means, you know, doing something like Mondays between eight and 12 I am doing my financial work, I'm fixing up my invoices, I'm reconciling my payments, I'm doing my pays for my staff, and then from 12 till three it's my prep for the week for teaching. I'm cutting music. I am you know, doing that quarry, whatever that is alright. And you know, really just allowing those two tasks to happen. Yes, you might have emails or something that you might have to you know, something might sometimes come up, but generally they're the only two tasks that on Tuesday it might be you know, marketing in the morning, and then something else in the afternoon. You know, whatever that works in your studio, but really putting focus hours in makes a huge difference.
Yes, what I love about this as well is we tend to not put time into the really, really important thing. So marketing your studio is how you're going to grow. And no one else is important. It is. Because if we're not telling everyone in our area, the amazing things we're doing, how do they know? And how are they going to come to you. But that's always the thing that we find a lot of clients put as last thing to do in their studio, because they're just constantly dealing with the clients in their studio, and they're running, and they're doing all the things, but that should be one of your priorities, if you time block it, or if you put that in there somewhere of your week and say, I'm going to prioritize these at this time. It's an absolute game changer.
Absolutely. And the really important thing about doing these focus hours is to make sure you're focused on the task at hand. During that time, if marketing is something that you do for three hours a week, or if your own personal learning, because I do think that's really important is to prioritize your own personal learning, whether that's studio ownership and Business Learning, or regarding your teaching, and upskilling, your teaching, as well. You know, putting those things in, but not getting distracted by that email that comes through and responding to that straightaway, or the Slack message, or the text message from the teacher or whatever that is like, obviously, there are sometimes things that we've got to do straight right now. But yet, we're not surgeons, you know, that email can wait for two hours till it has a reply, you know, we're not dealing with a life or death situation. So use the focus mode on your computer, use the focus mode on your computer, use the focus mode on your computer properly, and turn off those notifications on your phone as well. And, you know, really make sure that you are focusing on the tasks at hand, you know, I like to also schedule in. So I schedule it in my day, you know, 15 minute or 10 minute blocks, like three of them, to check my emails and to check my Facebook messages. And I respond to those during those times. So I'm still replying to emails three times a day like to be fair, that's probably overkill. It's just at the moment, that's how I need to do it for Expo in the leader. But that's more than enough. And I don't need to be checking them every two seconds. Because if you see that pin across, we've all had that, right? Like you see it come across your computer. And it's that email from a parent you like, and then all of a sudden just takes up your headspace and you can't think about anything else and get anything else done anymore until you get that out. Yep,
so many times I've had that happen, and then you go deal with that. And then that's a whole thing, and then an hours gone. And then it's crazy. And I think it's just about us as studio owners becoming less reactive and more proactive, because we're just so reactive to everything, I've got to deal with it, then I'm gonna deal with it, then that's why it feels like you're always running. But as Amanda said, we don't have to deal with it, then it's not life or death, it's going to be okay, if it waits an hour or so. And it will just allow you to actually start working on your business.
Yes, rather than run, run, run, run running in all of those things, which I think sometimes is so easy to do. So really make sure if you haven't done this before, you know it's I'm we work with our studio growth club members with a lot is this time blocking we work on it. We've been working on it every time and really like focusing on how they're going to spend their time. Because it's important to spend the time doing things that are important to grow your business to the next level, not just responding to those emails and working in your business, right. Yeah,
absolutely. And we wanted to tell you guys today, a little bit about what we do is to growth club, because we just had an awesome project release this week. And it was for media concert. And I think the game changer with what we do with our studio growth club members is we do buy them time, right? That's the thing that we buy. And we yeah, we give them like all of the tools. So maybe you need to jump in here, maybe but we give them the email template, their mini site done for them.
Their social media scheduled. Yeah. And like that's such a great thing, like, you know, to talk about, like in terms of how we, you know, do our project releases each month, because, you know, to be honest, we haven't really shared that a lot. And we've had two new studio growth club members join this week who have been like, Oh, I didn't actually know what's included. And so we give them their time back. We you know, really believe that. So many studio owners that have joined studio growth club, talk about that we've replaced a whole staff member. So getting back to that project release we did yesterday, you know, what did we do for them? In terms of our big concept, we gave them the mini site all done for you. All they have to do is change the colors like it's even their logos are already in there. They change a couple of images to be their kids. They changed some dates and times. You know, they got that done. They've got all the emails written for them and the automations around the emails. They got the band posts ready to go they had the socials all ready to go I think it was something like 40 socials that were all ready to go inside it. You know, they had the text messages to parents, they had the postcards all done for them to, you know, hand out to their kids with flyers with QR codes to the mini site. They had, you know, big posters to put around the studio, they had so many things as well as the coaching that we offer, which is, you know, we'd like to think that that's pretty great because we work so closely with them as well. But there's so much time that we buy them, because that's all done for them. And they don't have to do it, right.
Yeah, it makes their lives so much more simple, not to mention also talking to their staff, and how to talk to their staff how to train their staff how to make a successful concert with critical parts. Absolutely. It's, and that's why we know it's working. I mean, if you see some of the results with studio growth club, it is so exponentially epic, and how much they've increased their student numbers, their student class placements, and their revenue is incredible. And that's how we know it's working. Right?
Oh, my God, I'm just so proud watching. Some of them do so well, because we're literally replacing like a high level admin, full time staff member, you know, someone that would be, you know, 6070 $80,000 a year kind of thing, and doing all the work that that person would do, which is so amazing, because we can do that on scale and help all those studios. Do that, which is so so great. Hey, should we tell them about our exclusive invite only thing at Expo? Yes.
Tell them all about it. Amanda, I'm so so pumped.
Absolutely. So if you are coming to dance teacher Expo, we are having a little bit of a invite only after party on the Saturday after the cocktail party. It's a chance for us to meet a few studio owners, it's just going to be super intimate, meet a few studio owners chat to them about their studio and let them know a little bit more about studio growth club and just get to know a few studio owners a little bit better. It's an invite only event. So if you would like to be invited, we would love to have you please drop us a DM on Instagram. And we can let you know a few more details about it. But yes, I ordered the menu today back I finalize the menu for that as well, which will be lovely and have it already because we're excited to meet a few more studio owners. It's so crazy at EXPO so it's so nice just to be able to meet with an intimate group of people at some point as well. Yeah,
it's gonna be so awesome. And two of the members that just joined us now, I mean, know us from the podcast. So we know there's lots of you out there who are listening to the podcasts and interested in you know, growing the studio of your dreams and becoming a part of studio growth club. And yeah, we'd absolutely love to meet you and have a champagne with you. It's what we like to do.
Most definitely. So drop us a DM if you're coming and you would like an invite to that. Let us know drop us a DM even if you're unable to make it because we might be able to make something work on a different day as well. But I hope you guys all enjoyed this little, you know taster about some time management tips and what you can do to save time in your studio. Make sure you take those top three tips and implement them into your studio today. We cannot wait to see you in 10 days time at dance teacher Expo. Oh my god so exciting.
So exciting. Can't wait to see you guys all then have an amazing week everyone. Bye. Bye friends.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
