Unknown Speaker 0:00
Music. Hello friends. I'm
Rebecca Liu Brennan 0:03
Amanda Barr and I'm Rebecca Lew Brennan, and welcome to Dance principles united the podcast
Amanda Barr 0:08
together. We are passionate about helping studio owners with the business of running their studio
Rebecca Liu Brennan 0:14
Join us as we talk everything from marketing, systems, studio culture, motherhood, life and everything in between.
Unknown Speaker 0:21
This is the dance principles United podcast,
Nathan Barr 0:30
hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the dance principles United podcast, we are still here together in person. We were on such a roll recording this episode, we're like, let's just jump straight in and do part two, right? So if you did listen to last week's podcast, we are going through talking about all the different stages of growth of a dance studio owner's journey, because basically, we have the two experts in it, right, both Amanda and Becker. You guys up, don't I? Amanda and Beck both and know, you know, started their studios from small and grew them into multi million dollar studios through every phase of their life, through having kids, through doing all the things. So wherever you are in your Dance Studio, in their journey, we know that they have been there, experienced and coming out the other side, thriving. So we wanted to, number one, like jump in and within this little series that we're doing, jump in and talk through that what it was like for them, but also to give you tips as a studio owner, to help you navigate through wherever you're at and remember, like, what we love talking about is that you're building the studio your dreams, right? Guys, absolutely.
Amanda Barr 1:44
And so I believe we're talking about people who are on a revenue of about 250 to 500,000 so we're talking revenue, just to be super clear, not profit, not anything else at that kind of revenue level. But you know, as we talked about before, it has to be the studio of your dreams. And for a lot of people, this is like the perfect remedy level. This might be the perfect sort of size that you can afford to pay yourself a decent wage. You know, if you're at this kind of level, you could probably be paying yourself, you know, between maybe 80 and, you know, maybe anywhere
Nathan Barr 2:19
between 8200 really, at how
Speaker 1 2:23
well you run out, what your lease is like, what your rent in your area is like, all of that kind of thing as well. You know, you could be doing that, and that might be the absolute, like, studio of your dreams. And that's great, because that's what we're all about, right? Like,
Amanda Barr 2:36
you know, more more, more doesn't always mean better, nope. And for some people, that might be great. And also one of the big things we kind of touched on it last time, it's also profitability, because sometimes higher revenue doesn't actually mean much more profit, but more stress, it definitely means, right?
Rebecca Liu Brennan 2:54
So true. I found that a lot that there's like a sweet spot, and then there's the part where you're like, not a sweet spot at all. And, you know, and you actually making less than you probably were in the sweet spot, and then you get to the sweet spot again, yeah. And for me, that 250 to 500
Amanda Barr 3:12
I think that is one sweet spot. I think, you know, and just to be completely transparent, like, when you kind of get over that 500 maybe to like that, 758, 800 900 like, that's a hard for me. That was a hard growth period, and it was a tricky one. But I think there's 250 to 500 for certain people that might be like, Hey, I'm gonna get there and I'm gonna stick at it and stay out there. And I think that might be great. Wasn't what I wanted to do, wasn't what you wanted to do there. But I do think that that could be great. But I think, you know, taking advantage of it. So we're going to get some tips on how to make the most of being in this spot. Or also, if you want to go to the next bracket, how to get there, I guess, yeah,
Rebecca Liu Brennan 3:53
totally. And I think just going back to that zero to 250 let's say that you are in that spot where you are ready to, you know, you're getting a bit more money in and you'd like to let go of something. I think that's what we wanted to touch
Nathan Barr 4:07
on first, right? Yeah, absolutely. Like, yeah. Well, let's talk about, like, the first thing that you think you need to do back and, like, maybe thinking back to your time doing it. Yeah, we did talk about last week. You guys can't remember exactly when, because it was a quite a few years ago now, like exactly when you broke through experience, when you guys broke through that, that sort of revenue barrier, what do you think was the main things that that you started doing to help set love for success as you did it? Well,
Rebecca Liu Brennan 4:35
I don't know if you set me up for success, but I remember this because Mel bought it up in the podcast a couple of weeks ago, and so she said that, I said to her, Do you want to work a couple of afternoons a week and do a little bit of admin? Now that was probably the first admin person that I bought in to the studio, by far at the time, and it would have been just her writing some notes out. And because we didn't have email that. It. So probably would have been her typing some newsletters out. She was doing journalism at uni. She was a good friend at that point in time, and so she had some pretty good writing skills. And I probably gave her a couple of afternoons of maybe doing some letters and some writing newsletters and maybe answering the phone, and, you know, doing a little bit of that side stuff for maybe, I would say, a max of five hours a week would have been the first thing that I let go of, yeah, absolutely.
Nathan Barr 5:31
And I think that's a really important thing. I think it's what you're trying to say, Becky, is that, yeah, we are talking about quite a big range here. Like, obviously, there's a big difference between you bringing in $251,000.05 $100,000 you're not going to make that jump straight away. It's going to be something that you work at, and that means back. I think what you're trying to say is that, you know, you don't get to 251,000 think, right, I'm going to bring in a full time admin personality with help with all my admin is that, is that kind of what you're saying?
Rebecca Liu Brennan 5:58
Oh, absolutely. I didn't have anyone full time in my studio until probably seven or eight years ago? Yeah, I think, yeah. It's like, you the way I always look at business, and I still look at it like this today, is if I let go of that little thing, then I need to get rid of I need to, then make extra money here, to get rid of the next thing I don't want so that I can make extra money here. It's never just like, I'm just gonna let go of all of those things all at once. It's like, tiny bit by tiny bit. Say, how you that's how I've always done it absolutely. Even today I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna pay this person for this. What am I gonna do now instead of that, yes, however time, yeah, that's gonna then make me go to this thing. That's yeah,
Amanda Barr 6:39
absolutely. And I always thought about it in terms of, okay, well, if I'm bringing in this staff member, I need X amount of people so that I can stay on the same wage. I think that's a really, yes, come on, yeah, maybe that's really what we're trying to hone in on. I would always look at my wage and go, I'm not dropping my wage, right? What I'm at currently. So if I'm bringing on this new staff member, yes, you've got to take a little bit of a risk. But I need X amount of new students to be able to afford and do a hey, this staff member. And you can't do that if all of a sudden you bring in a full time person, because that money doesn't just magically appear,
Nathan Barr 7:10
even, like, even on, like, what a board wage now a full time person with, like, just a level three skills, we're talking close to $50,000 a year. Yeah, that's a lot of money, absolutely.
Amanda Barr 7:21
So it's like, starting it slowly, giving them a couple of hours, seeing how that works, moving it forward, I guess is the biggest thing, I guess, in this price bracket, if this is your current, like, sorry, not price bracket, revenue bracket, is really being, like, strategic with how you start getting help. I also think the biggest thing that you kind of, you know, as you start getting more help, it's like making a choice of where you want the help, right? And that could be different for different people. I think it's like going, Hey, teaching is my passion. I'm going to get a bit of admin help, or growing the business. And admin is my passion. I'm going to go to teaching help, but not both at the same time. And I think that's a big mistake we see from people like, Oh, I just need help with everything. I'm like, then what the hell are you doing? You still need to be working. Like, do you think? Like, absolutely, like, What the hell are you doing? Like, either you're teaching or you're doing the admin. And I to be honest, under 500,000 admin is not a full time job now, it's a, you know, maybe 1520 hour a week job. So you still should have at least another 20 hours to work if you're working full time in this so, you know, look, I know that's maybe a bit controversial and all of that, but, you know, I'm a big believer I'm working hard for this kind of a business, if you want to grow it, so if you want help, and you want to get out of this price, this revenue bracket, keep moving forward, it's making a choice. Do you get the help on the teaching or the admin? Probably not both. Yeah. I
Rebecca Liu Brennan 8:53
totally focusing on one, yeah. And I think it is working out what you truly love doing in your business. And also what your superpower is. We talk to our people about this a lot. But what is your superpower in the business? What is the thing that you are the greatest at? And I know, like something that you were great at was that front facing, chatting to clients, you know that I am so bad at that it's really like, I I'm really good at selling
Speaker 2 9:17
to clients. And I think really under selling yourself on that back, honestly, I can
Rebecca Liu Brennan 9:22
think of nothing worse than sitting at the front desk and doing small talk with people.
Unknown Speaker 9:27
I you have done it because you had to at some point.
Rebecca Liu Brennan 9:31
Yes, each I was always in the classrooms. I think, if I don't know that, like I definitely went out and spoke to people, but it was never that I'm going to sit there for four hours and small talk with people. I just didn't have a receptionist, and I've always sold to clients, and I've always enrolled them and got them to sign up to lots of classes, and I've talked them into doing more classes and that sort of thing. But I didn't have a front desk person when the business first started. They just used to take their kids in. Yeah,
Nathan Barr 10:00
cash,
Rebecca Liu Brennan 10:01
yeah, we didn't really, exactly, well, we had the, did you have the letter box that you put the you probably didn't, and that's what we had, yeah, we had the letter box that you put the envelopes of cash in. So I was never, I was never that front desk person, and I never can be. I'm not a small talk kind of, I find that those conversations quite awkward.
Nathan Barr 10:20
Yeah? And look, I think just tying back into it, couple of things that you guys said, just giving your quick opinions on it when you were talking about, you know, giving away tasks. I think a really big thing that people miss is that we need to give away lower value tasks, yes, in order to take on higher value tasks. The easy example I always go to is cleaning the studio at one stage. Man, I know you used to clean the studio. Don't help, because we've been together that long, everybody, I'm sure you did the same bit. But in Yeah, these days, cleaning is probably something you can outsource for $30 an hour. So let's outsource that low value task. We know that if you all say the best ballet teacher in your studio, we know that bringing in a high level ballet teacher is going to be a lot more than $40 an hour, right? So, like, you can't be outsourcing the $60 an hour task or $80 an hour task of teaching that high level ballet to still do the $30 an hour task of cleaning this year. Yes, be smart thinking about that.
Amanda Barr 11:12
I love that. I think that's so so important, right? Because I see that way too often that it's like, Oh, I'm gonna get this ballet teacher in but now I'm so broke that I'm cleaning my studio and you're like, cool. Look like, you know, no shade on people cleaning their studio. Like, I totally think people should be cleaning their studio a lot of the time. But like, wouldn't you rather be teaching the class and paying someone to like, yeah, that doesn't make sense to me, because, you know, that's your superpower. Most of us, that's our superpower, is teaching. So be in the classroom and spend the most amount of time doing that, I think is the biggest thing, right?
Rebecca Liu Brennan 11:49
Yeah, absolutely. I
Nathan Barr 11:50
think another thing you touched on, Amanda, and I think this is maybe just a better way for our listeners to understand. You talked about like, getting somebody in to get x new students, or something like that. And in our coaching group, somebody talked about it. They see every hire they make, they need a return on that investment. Investing, getting new staff isn't an expense, it's an investment. So if you bring somebody in for eight hours of admin a week, that means you're expecting like that might cost you 25k for the whole year. That means that you're expecting to add 13 new students, whatever that is for you. But like doing the maths around that and having that expectation around getting a return on that investment of a staff member, I
Amanda Barr 12:29
love that, because that's kind of what we were talking about in terms of, yeah, not dropping back your wage, right? It's like continuing investing in that and yeah, rather than new staff members just coming as an expense, and just coming making, you know, your total profit or your total wage come down. It's like, well, no, I want to grow with that, and that's regardless if it was an admin person or a teacher, because a teacher should be bringing in new students as well. Because you've now got this incredible, you know, maybe you didn't teach tap, so now you've got this awesome tap teacher who should be bringing in new students, or getting kids to take an extra class a week, or whatever that is, so it's bringing in more revenue into
Rebecca Liu Brennan 13:05
your business, and being smart around that as well. You know, especially with those teachers, I think it's interesting. We're saying tap and ballet, which are two very niche things that we, most of us, have to either get a tap or either get a ballet, right? Yeah, we kind of it's one or the other. Yet it's probably the two things that the majority of studios put the less, least amount of marketing out for. Yes, isn't that interesting? And they're probably the smallest classes in the majority of studios that we're talking to. I know there's exceptions to that, obviously, and there's, you know, beautiful, amazing ballet studios out there, and some type studios that are huge, but majority of studios, they're the least. It's probably the most expensive. And you've got a question, why we do that, why we aren't putting it out there more, and why I question it within my own studio. Absolutely, you know, it's something that we really have to think about and look at within our studio, is, why aren't we putting ourselves out there more for that? And
Nathan Barr 14:00
absolutely, now, I think a big part of if you're looking to number one, like move out of that previous revenue category into this one, and then definitely like getting towards that $500,000 mark. I think the importance of having good systems. So what would you say are the key systems you need to start looking at in your business to help you, number one, like get into this 250 to 500k and then move through it profitably. Yeah.
Amanda Barr 14:30
Okay, so I think this is a really interesting conversation, because I think this is a key pivotal time in your studio. If you're under 250k you can know every parent's name. You can know where they're up to on their you know, in their fees. You can know a lot of that off the top of your head. You can do a lot of things manually as well. You can almost be doing it all yourself absolutely. And that's fine. That's really great. But as you want, if you want to grow through this, it's the per. Perfect time to put systems in place so that you can grow with ease and not get this like, Oh my God, all of a sudden, I've got these new kids, and I don't have enough time, and I don't, I can't do this, I can't do that. And then you like, make this, like, you hire someone, because you're all of a sudden overwhelmed, and you make this terrible to see. You know, all this we've seen happen, right? So I think it's really important number one, that you get really good software systems, studio systems in place. You know, we're talking about enrollment systems such as Jack Rabbit dance show, pro class manager, Studio Lab, any of those great programs that you get in. I think that's really important. The other thing I think that's really important is for you to really make sure that you are understanding these systems. We touched on this in the last podcast as well, but understanding these systems really, really well yourself having a really good general all round knowledge of every single system that goes into your business and every single part of your system. So at this point, I really think if you want to go past it, you need to be investing in your own learnings, just like we tell our dancers, you need to invest in your own learning. You've got to invest in your own learning. You need to learn the basis the basics of marketing, how to run Facebook ads. You need to know how to run those Studio software systems. You need to understand about having a good CRM and about lead management, you need to understand, you know, all of these kind of parts of your business have had a really good general, broad knowledge of everything. So then, as you start to
Speaker 3 16:30
go past that, you can, like, start giving that off. I think that's a big thing for me. Yeah,
Rebecca Liu Brennan 16:34
I the thing that I was going to say straight away is direct debit by far, and I know that a lot of those systems do, that anyone who's now saying that they're still invoicing people and getting them to pay the term by term is just such craziness to me. Everything in our life is direct debit. Everything's just taken out. It's such a natural thing now. And I know that's the biggest not just Game Changer money wise, but Game Changer time wise, like systems that
Unknown Speaker 17:05
do it, yeah? Systems,
Rebecca Liu Brennan 17:06
yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 17:08
It's crazy, because I you know we, we've worked with studio owners before, and we talked about this on the last one, you talked about people just being busy for the sake of being busy, if you are spending huge amounts of time, invoicing, chasing payments. You know, fixing accounts, direct debiting manually, like some of those, through some of those older systems have to, like, go in, fix everybody's direct debit you are wasting huge amounts of time and time that could be spent on so much higher revenue generating activities that could grow your business? Yeah, I
Nathan Barr 17:44
think what I see a lot of studio owners for that a lot of the time, is the cost in investing in X Studio software, system, whatever, whatever it happens to be, like, oh, that's like, $100 a month, you know, $1,200 a year. Like, that's a lot of money. But I think we need to flip our mindset. What's the cost of not investing in that? Like I said, like we, you know, the studio software we use, lots of people know we use Jack Rabbit. That means that in an entire year, we spent maybe, maybe an hour setting up the invoicing for the year to run, because we had it done automated, yeah, one hour. So that means, I know that there's studio owners out there that either themselves or get the staff member in and spend at least, what, five hours a week, invoicing, invoicing, then chasing out, then reconciling like so even if you just spending five hours a Week on that guys, 200 hours a year, 200 hours testing my maths here, but 200 hours at $30 an hour, please check the maths is like $6,000 a year, so you're already paying five times more than you would have been. And I think that's just the tip of the iceberg, right?
Amanda Barr 18:55
Absolutely. I think that's a really important thing, is to really make sure that you are being smart around that, being super smart around how you're investing your time. You know, if you're spending five hours a week on accounts or invoicing or even two hours a week like, wouldn't that time be better teaching a high end ballet class for you, rather than bringing out a ballet teacher? You know, because you were so busy and didn't have time. Wouldn't it be better on, you know, spending an hour learning for yourself Facebook ads and an hour implementing each week, that would be such a more beneficial use of that time. Okay,
Nathan Barr 19:34
so if you were looking what to scale past that 250k revenue Mark, what would be your first thing you would do to get that going?
Rebecca Liu Brennan 19:44
Well, something that I think a lot of master your owners are missing is being strong in their social media game. And obviously, back in our day, that wasn't really a thing, and we had newspaper ads right? Like that was the thing then, but the social media is where everyone. It's at and I think something that we hear so many student is say all the time is that they're just not into it. They can't be bothered with it. It's always the last thing on their plate, like they'll happily spend hours upon hours doing their costumes or working out what songs to use, or all that sort of stuff. But the power in that social media is hectic. Obviously, you know, I'm a huge believer in knowing your Facebook ads and getting those out there consistently and all of that is a game changer, but just your organic socials as well. Because the way that I look at it is, and I don't know if you guys are like this, but if I ever see an ad pop up that I'm interested in, the first thing that I do is either go to their social media page or I go to their website. Is that not? Absolutely, I don't think anyone actually buys straight into that ad, especially it's the first time seeing a brand, Right exactly. So if I was looking for a school of subtype for my kids, then I would straight away go into that and I would look through what their social media is. Now, if there's nothing on their story, and nothing representing that ad in their feed, and they haven't put anything on their feed for six months. I'm never going to opt into the brand. If I look at
Amanda Barr 21:10
the dates, I always look at the dates, because everyone does, yeah. I'm like, Oh, this was posted eight weeks ago. What the hell they doing in the last eight weeks? Yeah? Like that just blows my mind. You know, what else I really think people need to be focusing on at this kind of level is doing it all yourself. The people that tell me that you know that they're getting a social media expert in or they're getting a content creator, an SEO,
Rebecca Liu Brennan 21:35
oh, Nathan, an SEO, absolutely not.
Amanda Barr 21:40
We are small businesses. Do it yourself. Don't get me wrong, like a photographer for a once a year promo photo shoot, use those photos or whatever, great. Or, you know, maybe if you get one video made that you use consistently for two years, perfect. But generally, your organic socials should be done by you and done well and putting like, effort and time into them not being an afterthought. Like, oh shit. I didn't post the kids winning at that comp last week. I should make sure I put a photo of them up with the trophy. I
Nathan Barr 22:12
think would be fair to say that we look even I'm guilty of this. Sometimes. Do you feel like you're playing on your phone, like you feel like you're not like, I think we need to let go of that mindset. Yeah, but like, being on our phone to do our social media stuff for our businesses is actual work. Like, it's okay to sit there for an hour and a half on your phone if you're doing productive work for your business, right?
Rebecca Liu Brennan 22:33
I think people always just say to me that they forget, and I totally do get back, because I think I have gone through periods of the business where we haven't had great social media, and now I know that it's just a habit forming thing, and you know, it's just you have to pick like when you get used to it. I used to go to comp and never take any photos or videos ever. Now I'm the person taking all the photos and videos all the time, because I know how powerful that is, and I think that's the key. Like you do just need to get used to it and it. When you learn the power of it, you do start to get obsessed and excited by it, like anything, but you've got to get yourself into that habit first.
Nathan Barr 23:11
Yeah, I think the analogy I've always heard that I really liked is as we're sitting here overlooking the city. David Jones, it's just over, over the back there, if you're watching on YouTube. And with all that, big thing in Sydney was always the David Jones Christmas window displays as we come out of Sydney, and I know that Melbourne's got lots similar as well. I'm sure all the capitals, like the big department store that had the incredible window display. And lots of times in all businesses, that window display in the high traffic area was super, super important. Now those businesses aren't going to have spend all the money to be in the middle of the city and have a ship shop front window. Well, we don't even need to pay the money to have high traffic areas in the middle of the city anymore. With social media, we've been able, like, our shop fronts are essentially in people's pockets. So if you're not keeping your socials, your organic socials regularly up to date. That's like you having shopfront in prime location that you're just covering with newspaper, or letting look all old and cramping, having dust form on it, yeah.
Amanda Barr 24:13
And I think if you are really aiming to kind of get out of this bracket and to move forward and get over that kind of, you know, the top end of this bracket that we're talking about, towards the 500k Good socials, is where it is at, and investing the time, you know, putting aside the time prioritizing it, prioritizing the right things. You know, you talked about, what else in terms of systems and stuff. I think prioritizing the right things is really, really important in this and really making sure that, you know this is a big part of your week, is planning your socials, putting time into it, making it a thing, not just letting it be a afterthought. And good
Rebecca Liu Brennan 24:50
socials doesn't mean you have to have a perfect background with perfectly dressed children looking immaculate, doing everything you know, to the nth degree like. Organic is where it's at, like, it's fine if their hair looks a bit ruffled or they're, you know, not in immaculate things, that is totally fine, because that's actually what parents see as being realistic, and it's okay to have that right, absolutely, yep,
Nathan Barr 25:15
without a doubt. Now we did sort of talk about, I just want to circle back to it again. I think in this phase, the importance of those systems for two reasons. Number one, making sure you've got your systems. Because if you do find this is your studio sweet spot, having really good systems in place helps you be significantly more profitable, which is putting more money in your pocket and building the life that you want for yourself or the other side of it, if you do want to grow past this and out of it, setting up and having those systems tight in this phase is absolutely vital to go past it. So is it like you talked about Studio software Beck, you talked about having direct debit with that? Is there any other sort of systems that you can think of off the top of your head that's
Amanda Barr 25:59
important? I think at this stage, this is the most important thing. And like what you said, Nathan, you know, making yourself profitable, if that's where you want to stay, is really important, so making sure that you and you continue to be like that. Because don't forget, if you decide that this is your sweet spot and where you want to be, you can't just go I don't need to market because I don't want to grow. You don't always have a dropout rate. You've got to keep marketing. So you need to make sure you do, keep doing those things. So I think it's really important to kind of start working on those things, working on those systems, prioritizing the important things in your business, so that you can be profitable, or if you want to grow up, that you, you know, prioritize those things even more so, so that you can get past this and really grow your business whilst investing in yourself as well. Yeah,
Nathan Barr 26:42
absolutely. Now I've still got when I grow up going around in my head already, but Yeah, is there? Let's sort of we wrapped up, like we sort of talked about at the end of last podcast on our top tips for those that maybe want to move out of this bracket and grow their studio past the 250 to 500 so what are the top tips we are looking at for that? I think
Amanda Barr 27:07
we've just covered them a lot, but hopefully, to recap, you know, definitely, you know, start small, start giving away jobs small. Don't jump all in. Yeah, you should still be doing a lot of it yourself. Hard work equal success. And I think that's a big thing for me.
Rebecca Liu Brennan 27:24
I've got a lot to talk about here. The first thing I want to say, yeah, like, first of all, when you do get a full timer, and I've seen this mistake so many times, people only calculate it over the 40 weeks, so they're like, Oh, the full time is going to cost me $900 a week, right? It's a cheap, full time Rhino. And then they work that out over their normal 40 weeks. But they have to remember that they have to pay them for the full year, obviously, also if they are sick, you have to replace someone with them every single time that they're sick. And that's such a huge one that you're paying two people, you're paying two people, and that's such a huge one that you don't realize as much. So I think that side of things to grow, sometimes you have to lose almost to be able to grow. And that that can be really scary at times, you know, if you're taking risk, yeah, right. So if you need to grow and then take on a bigger premises, is a perfect example that I'm thinking of right now, then you're gonna have to invest money in that. That's money you're gonna have to pay back. And there's just so much to it when you start expanding that you don't realize more students doesn't always equal more money. And like I was saying before, there's those sweet spots where you do go, Yeah, I'm really killing it. Now, do I want to grow, or do I just want to sit in the sweet spot? And if you want to grow, you've got to realize that there's risk exactly what you're saying.
Amanda Barr 28:54
And I think you've got to, you know, kind of just talking on race. I think you've got to back yourself, right? You know, we've seen that with so many of our amazing studio growth club members, some of them have taken big risks. They've invested a lot of money into their self development, you know, both through programs, through, you know, premises, all those things, but they back themselves. And I am also a big believer that to be a good business person, you need a little bit of risk, because it pushes you to do better. Otherwise you kind of like, sit back and you don't try as hard. Whereas if you're like, oh shit, I've got to make this money, I've got to make this work, makes you work hard. So I guess that's my biggest tip is, you know, sometimes a bit of risk is good push yourself to
Rebecca Liu Brennan 29:35
the next level. One
Unknown Speaker 29:36
more thing absolutely,
Nathan Barr 29:37
just, yeah, calculated risk is what that's like. I think that's been the biggest thing in our business growth and both our like, I guess, because that's so closely tied to the growth of our personal wealth as well, is that we've taken calculated risks along the way and through good management, or the good luck, those calculated risks have always paid off for us. So that's. It's helped us. There's a couple of times that we've talked about on another podcast that things got got a bit sketchy for a while as we were taking those calculated risks paid off and making sure that's one thing that I see studio owners do sometimes, is not match their goals with that level of risk they're willing to take. There's no right answer for that, but just being mindful, like, if you're telling us you want to reach for the stars and go for those big, lofty goals and make those big moves, but you're not willing to take on any risk, then that's maybe just something you need to to look at and get those things back in a month. What was
Unknown Speaker 30:37
your last thought? BEC,
Rebecca Liu Brennan 30:38
you want to lead us with? Well, team, because as you get bigger, you're going to bring staff members on, and then the biggest mistake we see studio owners make is they don't train their team, and they think that because they've employed that person, that they are going to do the right things in their job, which is never, ever the case. They don't interview well enough, then they don't keep an eye on them. And I can say this, I've done it myself multiple times. They don't keep an eye on them, they don't bring everyone together as a team. And so that is where we see things go really, really pear shaped. And you've gotta value that team. You've gotta value the fact that if you're stepping out of jobs, you have to train people continuously and invest time into managing 100% and realize that when it was you doing all the things, that was fine because you're managing yourself, but as soon as you start bringing those extra people in, you now have to manage them. Yes,
Nathan Barr 31:33
and it's a great time to start setting those expectations. Once you move into like once you've just started making more than 250k you've got a small team, and you're starting to build that out. It's a perfect time to be setting those expectations and getting your systems around, your staff in place, having those training days like and then as you grow, it sort of naturally fills in with that. And
Rebecca Liu Brennan 31:53
it is time like it really is. And you know, even even me now, when I'm really lacking in time to train my team at the times I need to be. You see things start to falter all the time. Yeah, it's just, it's such a that is so that glue is what is needed in and around it. It's so important. Absolutely,
Unknown Speaker 32:14
it's all about that, right? Yep,
Nathan Barr 32:16
amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining us on this second part of our series talking about all the different stages of studio growth. Absolutely love chatting through all these things with you guys. And we can't wait next episode, we'll be talking around scaling from past that 500k mark, which we know is like a really big one, like we talked about today. This 250 to 500 is a real sweet spot, and then what scaling past 500k into that next bracket looks like? We can't wait to show about that with you. See you then.
Amanda Barr 32:51
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
