Amanda Barr 0:00
Music. Hello friends. I'm Amanda Barr 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 from 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, hope you are having an incredible week. Hello, Nathan, how are you?
Nathan Barr 0:37
Hello, good to be back in like a normal kind of life right after we had you off in Vegas at your conference for a week, and then me over in vconn in LA for a week, it is always nice to do those things right, and always good to go and connect with other people and improve our own learning. But then it is nice to get back home and settle into the swing of things as well, right, absolutely,
Amanda Barr 0:58
especially when we live in such a beautiful part of the world. We had a bit of a crazy couple of weeks. Should we tell people a little bit we haven't played this, but we, should we tell people a little bit about our crazy few weeks? We both were in the US separately. As Nath mentioned, we kind of like flew past each other. We had one night where, you know, the children were grandparents, and we flew past each other as I was coming home and he was going over on that same day. We settled on our new house as well as, like, settled on our other house that we just sold as well. It was all a lot happening. Yeah, that's
Nathan Barr 1:33
what sometimes, like we were talking about the other day. I forget where we were, but someone's like, oh, have you had much going on? And we're the kind of people that are always like, Oh no, not really pretty quiet. They were like, Oh well, actually, we're sort of like, yeah, like, selling a house and buying a new and then, so, yeah, I think sometimes, and I think that's an important lesson for for all studio owners out there, to be honest, is that we quite often undersell ourselves and what we're doing a lot of the time, right? And it's always like that, oh, it's like, like, always looking after other people type thing, and sort of not, not looking after yourself and reflecting on the amazing things that that you're doing a lot of the time. Yeah,
Amanda Barr 2:12
it's crazy. We look we'll dive into this a little bit, because a few people have asked us about where we're living and what we're doing and all of those things. We actually bought a new house that we're sitting at at the moment, on the bump in day for Expo this year, decided that was the perfect day to be negotiating and buy a new house. And as a lot of our listeners know, we were living in Thailand for a period of time last year, so we actually have moved house three times in Well, is it more? We're in Thailand. We came home to a rental. We then got because our house wasn't ready, we went back into our house. Then we've sold our house and moved to into our new house,
Nathan Barr 2:54
and we're done. Yeah? We said that. Moved a lot
Amanda Barr 2:58
of times in a quite a short period of time. We've got a lot going on.
Nathan Barr 3:01
Yeah, yes. But like, it's one of those things. Like, I think sometimes, you know, I know that you wouldn't have it any other way, Amanda podcast, but like, yeah, it's one of those things. It's, it's how we like to, I guess, approach how we do things. Like to live a full life. Exactly we like to deliver full life. We've talked about, and I was talking about it on one on ones with our studio growth club members as well. I've been talking a lot with with our members about, like, their own risk profiles and things like that. And like, we're fairly comfortable having a risk profile where we're willing to take calculated risks, because we want to reach reach for bigger thing. Yeah, we want to reach certain goals and where there's always the potential for downside when you take a risk. Thankfully, touch wood that we that we haven't experienced that as yet. Our calculated risks have always paid off on the upside, which we're very grateful and thankful for, but we've been doesn't mean
Amanda Barr 4:00
we haven't had hard times exactly as well as
Nathan Barr 4:03
Yes, but yes. But over the long run, the upside has paid off for us, with some struggles in the middle there, but being mindful that if you want to achieve those big goals with your business, with your studio in life, sometimes you do have to be willing to take those risks. And if you're not a person that is comfortable taking risks, that's okay as well, like each to their own, but just making sure then that you're adjusting those goals that you're setting for yourself as well is super important. Yeah, interesting.
Amanda Barr 4:34
Totally not what today's podcast is on, but off topic on us a little bit at the moment, but yeah, let's get into what we actually wanted to talk about. The podcast was Nathe mentioned he's just been back from a are we going to call it a convention?
Nathan Barr 4:51
Yeah? Convention conference, yeah.
Amanda Barr 4:53
Very big event. How many people were there? Maybe 7000
Nathan Barr 4:59
Yeah, maybe 7000 and it
Amanda Barr 5:01
was called V con. Now, can you explain what V con actually is? Because people ask me, and I had no idea to tell them where you were, so you could explain it to me at the same time? Yeah,
Nathan Barr 5:12
absolutely. So I'm a massive, massive fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, or Gary Vee as a lot of people might know him as. And about, sort of three years ago. It was during first covid lockdown. He, like people might have heard me talk about this before, but he started a an NFT project. Now this isn't the place to talk about nfts or anything like that, but what Gary Vee did that was very different, was that when he sold his, you
Amanda Barr 5:40
bought lots of nfts. That's
Nathan Barr 5:43
a story for another time. But he sold his NFT and with it came tickets to three years worth of business conferences this V con, the first year I went, it was in Minneapolis, over in the States, and it was awesome. It was very focused on all things NFT related. They call it web three. But as that space is sort of like, let's be honest, it's fizzled a little bit. This year's vconn was much more about business, business speakers talking about marketing, talking about like, well, being around business, but very business focused, very advertising and market, a lot of content, a lot of content creators and stuff like that. But yeah, like I said, just all about, I think what he's trying to do now that that whole NFT web three space has sort of died down a lot, like I said, this was the third year, and there was big speculation like, will he keep them going now that he's now, he's done it for three years, but he was this year definitely trying to focus on more, bringing in more, more of the business community, which made it a really different event, but a really great event. Yeah,
Amanda Barr 6:51
and all of them have also focused on art and pop culture well as business. It's kind of like all intertwined, is that, right? Yeah, yeah.
Nathan Barr 7:02
He's sort of like, yeah, trying to bring it all together. He gets, like, amazing speakers in from all walks of life, lot of pop culture, but the people that he's bringing in from pop culture, like, you know, I heard, will I am speak, and lots of other, like, like, lots of other incredible, people that are like Danica Patrick, who's like a NASCAR driver, who's huge over in the States, not so much here in Australia, there was Flavor Flav was there, like, all these incredible, like, sort of pop culture icons, but them coming at it from there, what they're doing on the business side of things as well.
Amanda Barr 7:38
Yeah. And that's interesting, because some of those big, you know, obviously, like, I don't know if we call them pop stars or rappers or, like, whatever, you know, they are pop culture icons. They have very clever business brains on them, and a lot of them are doing very amazing things. So it's interesting to hear. So you kind of, like, you gave a bit of a few people that you want to give us, like, a sort of, basically, highlight of who was there? So you said, Will i am from Black Eyed Peas? What was the NASCAR driver's
Nathan Barr 8:08
Danica Patrick, she was amazing, like, a female NASCAR driver, yeah. So, like, and she actually, she absolutely tore shreds off. The poor moderator asked her some question about, basically, like, you know, something about, especially for you, being like, a female and a mother, and she tore him to shreds. Like, it's not anyway that she was. She was incredible.
Amanda Barr 8:32
Flavor, flav, flavor, flav,
Nathan Barr 8:35
Nick Cannon, like, he's, like, absolutely amazing. We used to watch years ago, when we were when we were younger, like, well, it was his, what was he saying? Something can out, but he's got, he's had an incredible career as a comedian himself, but more so he identifies the amount, like he rattled off, and I didn't write it down in my notes, but he like, the amount of comics that he's unearthed is just like, ludicrous, like Google that, if like, Nick Cannon and the people that he's unearthed and stuff like that. Like, absolutely amazing, amazing. He used to be married to Mariah Carey, just as like, as well. But like, just like other
Amanda Barr 9:15
Nick Cannon as well. Who else you said? Who else was there? The bluey creator,
Nathan Barr 9:19
the creator of bluey, the Aussie guy. He was on a panel with two other incredible content creators.
Amanda Barr 9:26
Oh, you said the guy from the Tiktok guy,
Nathan Barr 9:30
he was like, the he's like, an Italian guy that he doesn't speak on his Tiktok. Like, I'm sure everybody that's way cooler than us, Amanda and our younger studio owners out there, especially going well, of course, like carby, like he's the guy that is there on Tiktok, and he reacts. He just reacts with his facial expressions and these like, and his body movements to things on Tiktok. And he's got, like, 163 million followers. It was super interesting, right? Just in terms of, I think, how the world's going, he was the session. Directly after will i am. And he had just as many, if not more, people try to get up to the front of the stage to take selfies, selfies with him. Yeah,
Amanda Barr 10:10
it's funny, whereas I would be like, yeah, all about Will i am, yeah, cool. Who else is there highlights? And then we'll go back to like, what some things that you actually learnt, you said, Who did you see perform.
Nathan Barr 10:20
Yes, sweetie, I'm so sorry. I feel like, I feel like so many eye rolls are always coming back at me through the podcast AND T PAIN performed on the on the Sunday night and the closing as well. Yeah. Who look like I went in with no expectations. To be honest, I didn't really know heaps of his stuff, but, like, he was absolutely incredible performer, and just just really good, really good vibe to Finish, finish off the conference as well.
Amanda Barr 10:50
Yeah, amazing. Any other incredible speakers? Yeah,
Nathan Barr 10:53
absolutely. I was just sort of going through my notes, and, like, it started off one that I sort of wasn't expecting. But as the guy was speaking, I'm like, I've actually seen a Netflix show on you, yep, and his name's Will Guidara. Guidara, he runs an amazing three Michelin star restaurant called 11 Madison Park in New York, and his session was all about incredible customer service, which I know, something that we really, really focus on, especially
Amanda Barr 11:21
in restaurants. They love good customer service in restaurants, yeah. But
Nathan Barr 11:25
like, but thinking about, like, you know, I always sit there. And we always talk about that, that we sit there. We're all business nerds ourselves. And whenever we're hearing like anybody speak, we always think, How can we relate this? Back to dance studio, yeah? And so he's talking about, like, how did he get his restaurant? Like, he's not a cook himself. He comes from the front, front of house restaurants, but he just wanted to create one of the best restaurants in the world. And three Michelin stars is pretty much saying that you are one of the best restaurants in the world, right? Like, that's an incredible, incredible honor. But he talked about that. He just wanted to focus on the absolute best customer service that he could, and he talked about it as a one fits one size, fits one approach, and he wants to, he wanted to approach his customer service from that, and that's something that we always talk about like, you know that we love systemizing and automating and making our lives easier around so many of the especially the mundane admin tasks In our studio. We want your lives as a studio, anybody that we're working with, to be easier, right? But at the end of the day, as well, we are small businesses, and people want that, that human connection so well, there's definitely a place in our studios for all these amazing automations that we're teaching. There also comes a point where, as a small business owner, we need to be providing really great customer service on a personal level, absolutely, we're businesses in our local communities, and so he talked about, like, a couple of amazing stories, so like, things like that he did like that just didn't have to cost a lot of money. But he talked about wanting to go that one size fits one approach, to really take things to the next level for his customers. So some of the ones that he talked about were like, like, I said, we're talking a three Michelin star restaurant, right? So we're talking about people that are paying, what, probably like, 300 400 US dollars a head for their meals by the time they're including wine and whatnot. Oh yeah. So like, we're talking about super expensive stuff. So these people are, like, coming in and dropping an absolute bomb. But one that always stood out in his head was that he was walking past, like during service, and heard one table talking about how they'd been in New York for six days now, and they were leaving first thing in the morning, but they hadn't experienced a New York Street hot dog yet, and that was one of the things they just wanted to do, like, was experience a New York street dog, and they hadn't done it, and how sad they were. So he took a gamble, and he went outside, he got $2 street hot dog, and he came back in, he's like, this is the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my restaurant. Convince a chef to serve a $2 street hot dog three Michelin star restaurant. That's crazy and so, but he said, like, so, the chef cut up the hot dog into six pieces. We put it out as, like, a in between, course, swish some extra ketchup and mustard on it. And he said, The look on these people's faces, he's like, it was in between some sort of, like, you know, slow wage, comfy and dark and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and some other, like, bullshit fancy. Course, like but the absolute look of joy on these people's faces, that was what they left his restaurant remembering, remembering absolutely the $2 street hot dog and another one, he said, like he overheard a businessman talking that he's again, he was on the red eye back home after the meal, and he forgot to buy his daughter the iHeart New York teddy bear. And so sent one of the team just across the road to the bodega, or whatever it was just around the corner. Spent 10 bucks on the iHeart New York Teddy bring it back, put it on the on that businessman's desk. Like how mind blowing is that sort of level of customer service. And in the scheme of things, for such a small amount of money, I think sometimes we get caught up in our customer. Service. Things having to be these big, epic expenditures, but it's so much. Sometimes it's about the thought, it's about the thought, it's just about listening to our clients and reflecting back what they what they want. And he talked about with all this customer service, that what he wants to like, what he's driving force behind it is, is that somebody, you know, somebody, will come along and almost certainly, in your area, be better at your product or service than you. He's like, I live in New York, for God's sake. There's going to be somebody that's going to be amazing restaurant open nearby that is probably going to cook better food than us, right? But if I'm building epic customer service and relationships that's impossible to replicate overnight. Oh, yeah, it takes years. The relationship building and the relationship building, they're the things that takes years and years to build, and nobody's going to be able to replace that overnight.
Amanda Barr 15:50
Oh, I think that is such a You haven't told me that you're opening you. We actually haven't had time to discuss this trip very much, obviously. But I think that is something that's so, so important, because, you know, there's incredible dance teachers everywhere, right? Like, there are so many incredible dance teachers. There's always new studios popping up and, and so there should be, like, you know, that's, that's what the world's about. It's, you know, about creating a marketplace and all of that sort of stuff, and competition is a good thing. But like you said, customer relationships, and not just relationships with your current customers, but what you're known for in your community that takes years to build, and a new studio is never going to have that straight away. So if you can keep focusing on building that sometimes it doesn't matter if someone's food down the road is slightly better, because we like going to the place where we have a relationship, where we feel comfortable, where we feel comfortable, where they've gone above and beyond for us, where we feel at home like a family. Yeah, so, so important. Such a good lesson, absolutely.
Nathan Barr 16:53
And that sort of ties in with, like, like, before I go into some of the other, like, a couple of the other sessions, not that I can go through everyone, because we don't have six hours for the podcast, but, um, but I was telling you about, like, one of the most important things when I go to these events is the connections that you make and being in the same room of as other people that are on similar journeys to you. Obviously, I didn't meet any other dance studio coaches, but people that are entrepreneurial, that are looking to better themselves and looking for new opportunities that you never know the relationships that you're going to build, where the conversations you're going to have, well, the conversations that you're going to have, you never know where that's going to come in. But, you know, I was talking to some, like, super impressive people that I actually connected with two years ago because I didn't go to last year's event, right? And some of these people that was like, you know, in the in the web three space, they're not in the wider space yet, but they were pretty big deals. But I bumped into them this time expecting them not to remember some rando from Australia, and they're like, oh my god, Nathan, how's it going? Like? And had a full on conversation, and could remember so much about and that immediately made me feel, again, a sense of loyalty to them, to their brand. And I jump on that night and like the person that I was sitting next to, I was telling her about it from Australia as well, one of the friends that I connected with, and she went on and bought one of their products straight away. Like it's just like, you never know when those relationships, those
Amanda Barr 18:16
basically because they treated you like family. They remembered you. They remembered you by name. You didn't expect any of that, no.
Nathan Barr 18:24
And it was like, I think it's just like, it's just such an underestimated thing that we that we do in our businesses, that connection, that customer service, and what's going to flow on from it. I think we really, really underestimate it.
Amanda Barr 18:36
This is really good podcast, because this is a conversation that we haven't had time to have since being a dancer. This conversation on the podcast. All right, one more session you want to tell us about? Give us one, because I think we should make this and let us know if you want to hear more about Nathan's learnings at this conference, I think we're going to do one more session, and then we're going to break it up, and if everyone wants to hear more, we'll do more on next week's podcast as well. So what's one more session you want to share with us? To share with us? Oh, gosh,
Nathan Barr 19:03
I might save that one there.
Amanda Barr 19:07
Oh, this is a real team. Look, there
Nathan Barr 19:13
was one. And look, I was attracted to the session because they were a husband and wife team. And look, they had, and it's something that we talk about with our vendors at dance teacher Expo, right? Having, like, a catchy title makes a difference, like, makes it such a difference. So
Amanda Barr 19:29
what was their title?
Nathan Barr 19:31
Shoveling shit a love story, like, So straight away, that makes me want to click on the app and think read a bit more what the session's about, right? Yeah. What does this mean? Exactly? Because I had no idea who Cass and Mike Lazaro were, yeah, but turns out they were amazing husband and wife team. They started out then I find that they started out with golf.com so another interest, I'm like, I'm in I can see Amanda's like, almost like, rolling her eyes here, going, oh
Amanda Barr 19:57
my gosh, for those that you don't know. Nathan's goal this year is to improve his golf handicap by what, just
Nathan Barr 20:04
wherever we get to. That's the plan.
Amanda Barr 20:08
There's too much golf chat going on at our house at the moment. Everyone's got a hobby. So they so these people, you didn't even know, but they founded golf.com Yep, that was
Nathan Barr 20:17
where they started, and then moved on, like, up through other things. To be honest, they didn't really talk that much about afterthegolf.com they just sort of mentioned their businesses, but it was more like how they work together, how they make sure that they, you know, work together without killing each other. So
Amanda Barr 20:35
did you get any tips so that we don't kill each other? That's the big question. Well,
Nathan Barr 20:39
yeah, lots and lots and lots. And lots but, you know, they talked about, you know, lots of things that we sort of focus on, that we look through as well. But the idea of, I know it's something you're big on, that it's work life integration as a small business owner, yeah, that, you know, work life balance. You know, we know that the guys, we know that the influencers there on Instagram do show that, and they can show themselves sitting by the pretty pool and things like that. But what you don't see is all the hard yards that those people put in, like they work 40, 5060, and
Amanda Barr 21:11
whilst they're taking a photo, is working by the pool. You know, that's the thing, right?
Nathan Barr 21:17
Absolutely, that there's, yeah, work life balance is something that, just like, you know, we honestly think it's a bit of a myth. As a small business owner, it's not something that we, that we that we preach, because it's not something that we practice as well we want to be authentic.
Amanda Barr 21:31
Absolutely not. We are sometimes talking business at 11pm at night, but then other days, you know, we have the day off and we go and do things that we want to do. We play golf. Go play golf in the day. You know what I mean? Like, it's, it's not like a hey, we clock off at five o'clock and we don't talk about business again, because that's just not reality. Some days we're inspired to be still up at night, working late and doing things. Other days, we're having a day off and not doing that. And I think that's okay. So what do these people say about that? Absolutely,
Nathan Barr 21:58
so, like, especially, Cass was saying that what she really wants to do is she wants to model what working hard and being successful looks like for her children. Yeah? That like, she thinks that that's super important, and that's a value that she really wants to instill on their kids. And that's something that we talk about all the time as well, because we all get the parent guilts, right? Yeah? Like, we're, we're definitely here. We've got book week parade coming up this weekend. Oh, sorry, this
Amanda Barr 22:28
week. Can you hear the virtual eye roll? But
Nathan Barr 22:31
it's, yeah, it's one of those things that, like, you know, you end up doing these things that, like, we are going to book parade this week, guys. But there have been, there have been some things that we've missed at school this year. And you know, we can see that our kids get a little bit upset and disappointed by it and things like that, and we feel the guilts just like anybody does, of course, but we have to say to them, guys, Mum and Dad, have to work as well. And we're really big on trying to model that for them as well. So I think that's just something that really resonated with me, absolutely. But yeah, like I said, and then, like, just one quick one, like, I said that carby, lame guy.
Amanda Barr 23:05
Oh yeah. Okay, the
Nathan Barr 23:06
movie got from them. Yeah, the tiktoker with he's 160 3 million followers that I'm sure everybody else knows. If you don't know, if you've got to check it out onto Tiktok, K, H, A, B, y, I'm pretty sure he'll come up, if you just type that. But what I loved about his approach was just how he didn't seem to overcomplicate it, and it was all just like, so his story is that he was working just in a factory, just like a menial job, and came home one day and, well, ended his shift one day and got fired. He's like, Oh, so I just started Tiktok. But everything he did, like, he got asked questions about
Amanda Barr 23:49
your Italian accent. I'm not really 100%
Nathan Barr 23:52
sure what, but it was just like, it was just a like, just everything like, he got asked like, you know, you gotta he ended up getting a deal with Hugo Boss, and they're like, so how did you get that? And he's like, don't know. They just turned up and they asked me to wear these nice clothes and pay me money. And I did, yeah, like everything, like, and like, he was obviously, I'm sure he was trying to put his like, little comedic spin on it, but like, at the at the heart of it, everything was just so simple. It was just like, he hadn't over thought things like, he, apparently he's got a movie coming out. They're like, you decided to speak in the movie,
Amanda Barr 24:23
yeah, because he doesn't speak on his Instagram. Why
Nathan Barr 24:26
did you decide that he's like, because I wanted to, like, there wasn't, like, a huge strategy or anything, yeah? Like, he just, all the way through his interview, everything was just like, he did things because he wanted to do them. Yep, he just did them because he wanted to. I don't think he'd overthought a thing in his life, yeah, he just something like, yeah. Felt good. He went for it and he executed, and things worked for him. I think sometimes, I think sometimes, as business owners, we can really overcomplicate our decision making process, which
Amanda Barr 24:53
then causes us to procrastinate, take too long on decisions that we could have just already started to do.
Nathan Barr 24:59
Move forward on absolutely, yeah, absolutely, awesome.
Amanda Barr 25:03
Hey, I love some of those learnings. What other great sessions Do you want to share with us next week? Podcast, if people want to hear about it, I want to hear about Will i am's AI,
Nathan Barr 25:14
yes, absolutely, will i am and his AI startup was something I went to, as well as a really inspirational guy called Inky Johnson, who was a, like, college football star projected to go, like, in the NFL draft, and then eight weeks before the end of his senior year, copped a hit in the game and was paralyzed down the right hand side of
Amanda Barr 25:34
his arm. So you tell us about his learnings on next week's podcast. So his
Nathan Barr 25:37
football career was over, and then how he shaped his life after that. That was super, super interesting. And then just yeah, there was a really interesting guy, Tom Ferry as well, and about his business. Now, his success in business and things like that. He was pretty, pretty inspiring.
Amanda Barr 25:53
Okay, sounds good. Now this was only meant to be a one part podcast, but it seems to have gone for too long already. So if you would like to hear about those people next week, drop us a message and let us know, and we will make sure we record part two of this podcast for you guys next week.
Nathan Barr 26:10
Amazing. Thanks so much everybody. Awesome to chat as always. See you. Bye.
Amanda Barr 26:14
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 you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
