Amanda Barr 0:03
Hello friends I'm Amanda bar. And I'm Rebecca Lew 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 principles United podcast. Hi, friends and welcome to the dance principles United podcast. Hey, Nate, how you doing today?
Nathan Barr 0:35
Hello, very good trying to stay warm in this absolutely freezing freezing little period we've got down here in New South Wales, but excited to be on the podcast with you as always
Amanda Barr 0:45
amazing. Well, today we are chatting about outsourcing, right? Outsourcing is something that all business owners have to do at some point, whether that's bringing internal people in, you know, getting subcontractors, hiring external companies, it's part of like, everyone faces that right? Yeah, absolutely. And,
Nathan Barr 1:05
you know, we're big about helping you as a dance studio owner, build the studio of your dreams. So it's gonna look very, very different for everybody, we completely understand that. But at some point in your journey, you're going to be Yeah, starting to bring on help depending on like, whether it's, you know, teaching, we're gonna get into, like, all the different types of things that we start to outsource and how to do it effectively. But as you sort of grow and stop being the the one woman or one man show, it's something that Yeah, every every small business, and definitely every studio faces at some point along the way. And it's something that I guess, sometimes we see lots of studio owners do it really well. But we also see studio owners make a lot of mistakes around it, yeah.
Because we also know that our staff and contractors, external people that we're bringing in is one of if not the biggest expense that we have in our business. And it's something that if we don't do it the right way, it can really affect our profitability, right? Absolutely,
Amanda Barr 2:12
absolutely. And, and we know that we need help to be able to grow, there's no doubt about that. And if you do outsource, well, it means that you can grow your studio or your business. However, as you said, it affects our bottom line. Because any money that you're paying to any other staff members is money that's not in your pocket. That's the reality of the situation. So there has to be like a happy medium around it. Right? Yep.
Nathan Barr 2:36
Without a doubt, and it's something that we were just talking about, just before we started the podcast, is that we know that, you know, quite often, especially in like, if you do follow a lot of like, I guess business influencers or something like that, that we've got great memes, yeah, Instagram memes of like business owners, you know, living their best life, and it's all Skittles and rainbows and we only have to do every day what absolutely lights us up? Right? And is that the reality of owning a small business a lot of time? Absolutely
Amanda Barr 3:06
not. I call bullshit on that. Right? Like, it's, it's not our reality. And, yes, you know, to some degree, and at some point in our journey, we should be doing tasks that we really enjoy and love. But the majority of small business owners, if you are doing under seven figures, there are tasks that you have to do that you don't love as much as the others, right?
Nathan Barr 3:27
No, absolutely. I was thinking the other day about one of our amazing studio growth club members who had a little bit of a bathroom emergency and was literally sweeping and cleaning up poop off the bathroom floor, like, yeah, that's not a task that lights them up. I'm going out on a limb here to say, but there are some points in our businesses. And look, hopefully we're not cleaning up should a lot of the time. But there's sometimes like it's a bit of a metaphor, right? That sometimes we just have to roll up our sleeves and get in and do the dirty work, things that we're not so much enjoying, but that we can't afford to pay hundreds, sometimes even 1000s of dollars for other people to come in and do for us. Absolutely.
Amanda Barr 4:03
Sometimes that money is better in your pocket. So let's get into our golden rule. And we're talking about how to outsource when to outsource. Can you afford to outsource our big golden rule? Nice, what is
Nathan Barr 4:19
it? Yep, to make sure that as we start, that we're outsourcing low value tasks, to enable us to free up our time to do higher value tasks. So so so important, that that's where we start because we've all got to start somewhere. Yeah, but making sure that we start by outsourcing the lower value tasks first.
Amanda Barr 4:40
Absolutely. So if you're thinking if you're sitting there as a studio and going, Oh, I'm struggling for time, you know, I'm just doing too much at the moment. The biggest thing you should be focusing on is what is the lowest value task that you do currently in your studio and that should be the first one that you outsource free. Ideally, right? Yeah,
Nathan Barr 5:01
absolutely. And too often we see studio owners like go back to a place of safety. Now this is definitely not me. And as much as I love you, my amazing wife, I know, this is not you too. But for some people cleaning is something that they just let them switch off.
Amanda Barr 5:15
What do you say about my cleaning? Yeah, cleaning
Nathan Barr 5:19
is a task that just lets them switch off and just have a couple of hours with the podcast in going around and doing the studio. But at the end of the day, cleaning is an example of a low value task. That is probably always the first one that we should be outsourcing to allow us to free our time up to do high value tasks in our business. Yeah, absolutely.
Amanda Barr 5:38
So when we're talking about low value tasks, we're actually talking about dollar amounts. Yeah, yeah. Like, very specific dollar amounts per hour. And so cleaning, for example, is an example of a low value tasks, because cleaning is what like $30 an hour depending on you know, who you are, and all that kind of stuff. But you know, it's quite a cheap task, that you can be outsourcing.
Nathan Barr 6:05
Yeah, without a doubt other examples of things like low value tasks, we had one of our members talking about, you know, stop taking uniforms and costumes the other day, that's something that if you've got a nice little system in place, and that can be done by 1516 year old junior, really, it's just just counting things, right? Yeah, that's definitely an example of that. Some
Amanda Barr 6:24
would mean like, it's an $18, an hour task that was taken by a junior or something like that, you know, and that's like a whole range of admin tasks, right? That we're talking about. And they're like, very, not all admin, because we're gonna jump into high value admin, but there are low value admin tasks that, you know, could be done by a 15 year old, that is literally like $18 an hour. You know, stocktaking is a great example of that. Taking the bins out is a great example of that vacuuming the floor at night. I know that kind of like, then goes into cleaning, but it depends if your admin team does that as well. Yeah. You know, there's so many things in there. It could even just be things like, you know, replying to Facebook comments, for example, you know, like, Oh, thanks so much for loving this, you know, like, really simple kind of things. Yeah, they're low value tasks.
Nathan Barr 7:14
Exactly. Things that aren't necessarily like, especially when we're talking admin tasks that aren't face to face client facing type scenarios.
Amanda Barr 7:22
Yeah, absolutely. Sorting props, sorting costumes, bagging costume, yes. All the bagging costumes, right, like, you know, putting them into new bags, or getting them steamed or whatever that is, right. You know, all of those are low value admin tasks that, you know, maybe, you know, a worth somewhere between about 18 to $25 an hour, maybe $30 an hour. But like, that's it. That's what those tasks are worth, right? Yes, absolutely. And some other low value tasks, like some teaching is a low value tasks, depending on you know, and we're going to talk about this because teaching is a very big range, like admin. But some teaching is, you know, 25 $30 an hour for some teachers, if
Nathan Barr 8:06
it's an assistant on the class, maybe it's even less if you're getting a junior, if you're getting a 1617 year old assistant, that's with with another more senior teacher, if it's a really big class or something like that, then yeah, it can be anywhere from and I know, some people might freak out when we say this, but like, we're talking 16 $17 an hour, if it's a junior, I know there's people out there thinking, Oh, what are you talking about? Nathan, you wouldn't believe what I pay my teachers? Don't worry. I do. I do understand. But yeah, that is something like those very, like low value teaching tasks is something that we can perhaps look to outsource early on.
Amanda Barr 8:38
Absolutely. So like, there's some examples of low value. And we're talking, as we said, per dollar amount. So let's talk about like some high value tasks. Yeah. Now, going back to the teaching, some high value tasks are teaching without a doubt, there are some teachers that we're paying $100 plus an hour,
Nathan Barr 8:57
if you're a high income studio, we totally understand absolutely.
Amanda Barr 8:59
And if that's the case, then teaching us a high value task and not something you should be giving off if your teaching is, you know, at the same level of someone that you'd have to employ at $100 an hour, for example, or $150 an hour. That's a high value task for you and something that shouldn't be giving off lightly. Right.
Nathan Barr 9:18
Yeah, without a doubt, without a doubt. And that's, I guess, that's sort of Yeah, also looking into, like your skill sets as well. It's probably something you should be evaluating when you're thinking about whether to keep or hand off these tasks was probably something we'll touch on a little bit later as well. But yes, super, super important. So we talked about some of the higher value tasks, some teaching, and this is one that I think has really changed, especially in the last couple of years lately is social media. Social media used to be that thing that we just sort of if we have time, we'll throw up a couple of posts on Facebook or Instagram here to do some Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It is now such an integral part. Part of our business, it's our main source of marketing for most of us, it's it's not something that we that we can take lightly anymore. It's got to be something that we've got to be giving specific attention to specific time each and every week to make sure that our social media game is on point, right? Absolutely.
Amanda Barr 10:17
And it's a high value tasks, like, we've seen people who outsource their social media that are paying, you know, $100 an hour sort of amount, if not higher, to some third party company and party companies that do that kind of stuff. That means it's quite a high value task and not something you should be passing off lightly. Because at that quarter price, you could be doing it yourself, right? Yeah. And
Nathan Barr 10:43
look, I don't, I always sometimes worry about being too negative when I talk about these sorts of things. But if I'm being brutally honest, guys, I've seen way too many studio owners get taken for a ride on outsourcing this to third party, like companies that say they're going to do it, I had one of our members that we were talking to, and I think they were paying upwards of 100 and something dollars a week, like maybe 110 $120 a week, probably is it guys? Yeah, this was a couple of years ago as well. And we Okay, let's pause and have a look at this. Because we're looking at like how to cut some expenses. And when we drilled into it, they were paying, like I said about that $120 A week mark. And we scrolled back through their social pages. And there had been something like, three posts in the last six weeks. Right. And so like, is it like, it's one thing to outsource these tasks as well. And especially if we're talking into these high value tasks, as well, as you move into these high value tasks, if you're outsourcing not only do you have to outsource effectively, but you've got to make sure that you are holding whoever you're outsourcing to, to account.
Amanda Barr 11:46
Absolutely. And in the case of this, you know, that specific studio and and could have done better, like so much they were more than capable of doing a better job that they had a better understanding of what their client was looking for what they should be posting on social media, you know, all of those things than that company did. And they're paying a company a huge amount of money, you know, and that's what we're talking about, like $150 an hour when you could be doing it yourself. Here's
Nathan Barr 12:12
the absolute better. Here's the absolute kicker, this studio owner was the one that was providing all the photos and videos to this company, they were sending them through to this company, and they just weren't posting them for Yeah.
Amanda Barr 12:22
So you know, things like that. You know, it's really important that you look at that as a really high value task. The other one I know that you're really passionate about we've been talking a lot about at the moment is bookkeeping as a high value task, like at an incredibly high value task.
Nathan Barr 12:40
Yeah, absolutely. And I think something I was just going to quickly jump back because of social media, but it works for the bookkeeping, as well. I think sometimes, too often, studio owners don't give themselves enough credit for the skills that they have. They think, ah, like I couldn't possibly do social media, as good as this company that I've seen, or I couldn't possibly I'm not a numbers person. I'm doing an inverted commas, which never translates on the podcast, but they like tell themselves that they may be not a numbers person, so they couldn't possibly do the bookkeeping. And when we like, again with another, another client that I was working with one time, we were looking at bookkeeping, and they were outsourcing. They didn't really like I said, they talked themselves into that negative mindset of I'm not a numbers person. So therefore, my bookkeeping is something I need to outsource. And we had a bit of a chat about it. And again, they were paying about $450 or 440 $450 a month. And when we drill down into it, we look like Do you understand what you're paying that for and $50 for like, not really. And so we jumped into there, they were using zero, but my QuickBooks, whatever we're talking, jumped into their accounting software. And we looked at what's called the bank reconciliation, which is when your expenses or your revenue comes in just saying, Oh, I spent that money, what did I spend it on? I spent it on advertising, or I spent this money on cleaning, or I spent this money on some travel. It's just categorizing all your incoming money and expenses to specific categories. Yeah. And about 45 seconds into that chat. They're like, wait, what? That's it. That's all. Yeah, that's all I do. That's literally all they were paying their bookkeeper for? Yeah, but because again, like it was a bit of negative self talk, I think around numbers and money mindset, that they've convinced themselves that they weren't able to do that. And straightaway, the studio owner took control of their bookkeeping. Which number one, your bookkeeper is the person that's got the finger on the financial pulse of your business? Which is super, super important and
Amanda Barr 14:48
probably something you should be doing if you Yeah, absolutely.
Nathan Barr 14:51
And so they took control of that and we're able to up their pay by weed like we just started. So Why don't you take control of yourself and just up your pay by 250 a month? And then you still got some money spare in the business? Right? Absolutely. Because that's exactly what you were talking about, like, the more sometimes that we take on, especially if it's the high value task. If you take something back on like that up, you pay a little bit, because that's, that's one of the benefits of owning the business. Right?
Amanda Barr 15:17
Absolutely more money in your pocket. And, you know, I think that's both the social media and the bookkeeping are really good examples of super high value tasks that people outsource way too early. Yep. And
Nathan Barr 15:28
too quick. Yeah, too quickly, too early.
Amanda Barr 15:30
Yeah. Have this negative mindset around it. They, you know, outsourcing bookkeeping, but then they're doing their cleaning, which makes no sense whatsoever. Right. Yeah. You know, because, like, let's talk about it. If if bookkeeping is probably 150 $200, an hour task, cleanings, $30, like how many hours of cleaning do you have to do for one hour a book, you know what I mean, it just doesn't quite add up.
Nathan Barr 15:54
And what I'm big on with those sorts of things, as well is, no matter how good a cleaner you are, in your business, if you can scrub your floors, really, really well, it's probably not going to add to the bottom line of your business, it's not going to help you bring in more students not going to help you save your expenses really, in the long run, it's not going to help you generate, generate more more revenues and more profits for your business. But if you work on upskilling, yourself, on the bookkeeping, there's so many resources out there in 2020, for so many free resources out there. Like I said, every single accounting software package that you could possibly use under the sun, they want you to use their product, like there's so many amazing trainings on all of those onto YouTube. Yeah, jump onto YouTube, jump onto all those things. And if you upskill yourself in those sorts of areas, then you're going to be adding value to the bottom line of your business.
Amanda Barr 16:54
Lately, absolutely. High level admin is one of the other like, really high level tasks that we see outsourced? Way too early. Yeah, you know, when we're talking high level admin, we can talk about a range of things, it can be calling that parent back that has inquired about your classes. Yeah, that is actually a really valuable task and not something you should be giving to a junior with no, absolutely not. Or even, you know, a new admin person that's not great at that. That's something that you can do so passionately. And if you are the one that's picking up the phone to the inquiries as an example, you probably have a heaps better chance of getting them in the door, that's actually making you money in your business. So that's something you shouldn't be outsourcing like, you know, until you're doing really, really well, I believe, yeah,
Nathan Barr 17:42
absolutely. We're talking like, even like, you know, I don't know, can we can we put a student mark on it as like a rough estimate or things like that? Or is that a bit hard?
Amanda Barr 17:51
It's hard. But I think unless you've got over like, absolute minimum, two or 300 students, you should still be coping with doing the inquiries yourself? Yeah. Because I think there's other things that you could give away first, yes, because that is a really valuable task, and no one's gonna do it as well as you do it. Nobody's
Nathan Barr 18:10
gonna be as passionate about your business about your classes as you are. And like, even when, you know, obviously, we ran a very, very large studio. But I was talking to somebody the other day, like, I honestly believe the reason that our staff was so good at it was because every single staff member that worked at dance sensations heard us doing it, oh, yeah,
Amanda Barr 18:35
like I still picking up the phone and doing it, there was no doubt about that, up until the very end of our studio journey, I did it solely by myself until at least the 500, sort of 600 student mark, without a doubt, until we sort of brought on some other higher level team members. But that is a super valuable task. And if that takes you two hours a week, it is so so valuable to do that, if it's you know, 20 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, you know, whatever that is, that is something that's super valuable that you should be doing. But yeah, get rid of the low value tasks, don't do the stocktake don't do the cleaning, don't do the bagging of costumes that are cheaper, like that makes more sense. The other like really high level admin things or like, you know, designing marketing strategies. You know, I think so many people like I bought this new person in and they're going to, yep, I'm just going to let them go with the marketing like, and quite often those people don't really have that bigger idea about what they're going to do. They don't know how to design a marketing strategy. They don't know how, like, what you want or how that all works. Whereas you know what you want, if you could, like learn about that, if you could do you know, upskilling yourself, like nice, talked about, whether that's, you know, joining a program, whether that's just, you know, researching on YouTube, listening to podcasts, whatever that is and designing an incredible marketing strategy. That's going to be so much more valuable, the new cleaning the floor, let's go back to the cleaning of the floor, right? And you're gonna do because if you were to bring someone in to do that for you, that's a 200 $300 an hour task. You know, if you're bringing someone in to do that, that's a really high level task.
Nathan Barr 20:15
Yeah. And ironically, a lot of times, they've managed to talk their way into you paying them, because they've been a really good salesperson. And that's what you know, if it's in terms of like, a high value, like admin strategy or things like that, like, that's what you're trying to build. And so like, that's the biggest thing that we often have to work with our studios around is, you know, you being the marketing and sales person, for your business, that's really something that you've got to lean into. And that's something that you've really got to look to upskill yourself in, if you want to be a dance studio owner. Absolutely,
Amanda Barr 20:52
absolutely. So, you know, as small business owners, we need to wear all the hats sometimes, right? Yeah. But you know, it might be time for some of our listeners to think about, like outsourcing one of those low value tasks. Yep. So how does that look? How do they know if they can afford it? If they're ready, all that sort of stuff?
Nathan Barr 21:10
Yeah, absolutely. And look, sometimes in business, we do have to take calculated risks. You know, there's that thing between, you know, we can't always like, you know, save up all the cash reserves that we need to be able to do it. But if we're talking about something like cleaning, how I would approach or attack it, is that I would think, Okay, I'm going to be outsourcing this cleaning. Let's think of as might be an I found somebody that's $30 an hour, and they say it's going to take them three hours. So let's just call it 100 bucks a week. Yeah. Right. So do I have $100 A week cash spare each week? And will I have the cash reserves for maybe six weeks? Because ideally, I'm going to be taking that time and using it to generate more revenue. But I can't just flick a switch and expect the money to start pouring in. We'd love that. But that's not our reality. So do I have six to about what five to $600 to be able to support this for four to six weeks, whilst I try and transition into those high value tasks to start bringing the money in? So that's how I approach that really basic one of engaging and cleaner. Yeah,
Amanda Barr 22:19
okay, awesome. So, you know, you've got a cleaner, you were before spending three hours, four hours, five hours, maybe doing the cleaning, because we know it takes us longer than it would take a professional cleaner, because you get distracted along the way and there's bright shiny objects, and then you do this, you do that. So if you're thinking about, like, going back to that simple idea of cleaning, you know, if you are currently sort of like calculating your time and thinking, okay, the moment I'm spending about four or five hours cleaning, what could I be spending four or five hours doing instead? And that's that, that's the thing, right? For most of us, it's not a, hey, let's have four or five hours off a week? No, that shouldn't be what it is, it should be like, what else could I be doing? That is going to be a higher value task, that's going to make a difference. If you aren't already, spending four or five hours on your social media or week would make holy crap. That would be incredible social media, if that was the case, spending four or five hours, you know, like, which is overkill, you shouldn't need to spend that much time but four or five hours chasing leads that have come into your business, picking up the phone, having conversations with them, you know if that has cost you $100 A week in a cleaner, but you could get one new student a week by being better on following up your phone calls. Well, in front one will one new student a week is much more than that. Right? Yeah. Like, you know, it's so so valuable. So what I think it's really important is to see how you can replace your time doing something that's more valuable in your business.
Nathan Barr 23:53
Yeah, without a doubt, because that's like I said, that's what we're all about. We're all about helping studio owners build the studio of their dreams. And you know, we that's something that we always like we talk about that we know that so many of our amazing listeners Scott into owning a dance studio, because it's their, their love their passion. But at the end of the day, guys as well. You're gonna be passionate about it for longer if you're making good money out of out of it as well, right? Yeah,
Amanda Barr 24:20
absolutely. Absolutely. So let's really think about the golden rule when we are outsourcing something. First thing, if you're thinking about outsourcing, think about how much per hour task is this? That would be your first point, think about how much is this worth per hour? Am I happy to pay someone else for that? Or would I rather that amount in my pocket? Or what could I be doing that is a heaps higher value task in those same amount of hours? What could I replace in terms of time? I think they're the like really important things to be thinking when we're thinking outsourcing. Outsourcing.
Nathan Barr 24:55
Absolutely. And don't be afraid to think about like You might have to upskill yourself as well. Like it might be something you know, we always talk to our students about making sure that they're working hard at bettering themselves and upskilling themselves to learn like parts of dance and choreography and things like that. Being a business owner guys is exactly the same. Sometimes the skills that we have to work out, it is very different to being a great dance teacher and a great choreographer. Being a business owner is a different skill set that sometimes you have to have to do a little bit of workout. Absolutely.
Amanda Barr 25:29
So thinking about spending that time upskilling yourself, doing trainings, learning things, you know, listening to podcasts, whatever that is for you, right? Or just doing a bit of trial and error is so, so important. Yep. Anyway, I hope that you have loved this podcast. And if you're thinking about outsourcing, just really think about those golden rules that we have. Thank you again for listening to the podcast. Thanks, Dave.
Nathan Barr 25:54
Thank you so much, guys. If you have enjoyed the podcast, we would so so appreciate you jumping on and giving us a little follow or even a review it would mean the absolute world to us. It
Amanda Barr 26:04
does it helps more people find our podcasts and it absolutely means the world. So if you have two minutes spare jump on Spotify or Apple and just leave a review. We would love it forever. Thank you so much, guys,
Nathan Barr 26:14
guys. Bye.
Amanda Barr 26:16
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 two weeks free in dance principles United tribe, we would love to see you there.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
