7 Steps to a Successful Dance/Theatre School Business

As a business mentor that helps dance/theatre school businesses and children activity providers to streamline, simplify and grow their businesses. I am often faced with:

“I am so busy, juggling everything  that I don’t have any time to work on my business. I would love to be less stressed and earn more money, but I don’t know where to start.”

Start here with some simple steps to helping you bring balance to your Dance/Theatre School business.

Step one – Plan! If you want a successful Dance/Theatre School business – PLAN! 

I’m a big planner, in fact for 3 sold out years my Performance Business Planner that is specifically designed for studio owners has been helping the performing arts industry plan their way to success.  I cannot stress the importance of planning, people often say ‘oh, you are super organised’ and maybe I am, but I would rather say, I am super planned! 

If you find yourself always firefighting, if you want to stop this merry-go round you need to get ahead of yourself. 

Planning is always going to be number one and you start by working your way backwards.  Let’s say your term is re-opening and you need 30 students. How are you going to do it? 

First make a list:

• Marketing
• Referral
• Sales Page
• Check links are working
• Check what the customer sees

Once you have your list, figure out how long all of this is going to take you.  Let’s say 2 months, then break down your jobs into half, then into weeks and if you want days. (I tend to do weeks)  

Then you are planned and ready, rather than saying the day before you open – I need 30 students sending you into panic mode, the aim is to get you out of this and it starts with planning. 

Step two – Consistency! You can’t build on wobbly foundations

Consistency basically falls into every aspect of your studio, starting with your product, which is the actual classes that you deliver. Whether it’s just you, or a team. There has to be a consistency within the quality of the work that’s being delivered. There has to be consistency in your customer service, communication, and in your marketing to make it work. Consistency goes through everything and it starts with systems.

Systems are basically about giving things an order.

Let’s say for example, your enrolment, when you start to have an order to your enrolment, and you do the same thing, every single time, that’s when you start to get consistency, that’s when your customers get the same communication and the same service from you. So those enquiring from Facebook get the same as those on email. When you start putting systems in place, you start getting consistent results, people start getting consistent service. 

Step 3 – Tracking! Are you measuring what is working in your Dance/Theatre School?

When you start to work consistently you can start tracking, it’s like having a measuring stick for your Dance/Theatre School business. 

• How do you know that your marketing is working? 
• Are you tracking where those people are coming from? 
• How do you know if the systems you have in place are working? 
• Are people opening those emails? 
• Are people responding to those emails? 
• If they’re not responding? Why are they not responding? 

Maybe you’ve missed out a call to action. So you go back and review those emails, you tweak a little bit. You monitor, you track and you go, oh, people are responding now. That was because I’d missed out my call to action. When you’re tracking you can really see what works and what tweaks you need to make. 

PS – You can’t track when you are firefighting! 

I will add here….if you are still in step 1 and step 2, adding tracking to your to do list will potentially overwhelm you.  Track when you’ve got systems, which is why planning and consistency comes before tracking.

Step 4 – The Product! Needs to be good

Delivering a good product or service or class is crucial. Invest in your CPD, update your skills, support your staff and their development. Ask the questions of yourself and your school to support your retention:

• How are you managing the consistency of the product? 
• How are you making sure that the children are achieving week on week? 
• Do the parents know what the children are achieving? 
• Do the parents understand the progress journey? 
• Are you adding in variety? 
• Are there options for them to progress if they need to progress? 
• Is it fresh, up to date? 

I am a massive fan of props in my own dance school, visual cues that can help the students. We all know everyone learns in different ways and it is about how we can engage those variations. I create props, flashcards and always think – how can I create a WOW moment. This is where the children leave thinking – WOW that was awesome!  What is going to create that reaction?  How can you amplify the WOW in your own activities?

Step 5 – Customer service! This is the game changer!  

The internet changed everything, people’s perceptions of service changed and instant answers are the norm. However in our service based industry, whilst we can have a degree of automated answers, nothing quite beats the personal touch. 

Little personal touches, which again, takes me back to the consistency of your customer service. Is everybody getting the same quality? Is everybody getting the same welcome or goodbye? If you have a set ‘hey, welcome’ every time they arrive and a high five when they leave, is your staff doing it as well? Where is that consistency of the service that they are getting? 

If you think about what makes you stand out from the next activity provider or studio owner it will be a combination of 2 things. You and your customer service. How you run your activities/school, your values and what you want for your students will always be different to the next person. Same as your communication, how you deliver the service will always vary too. If you uplevel the customer service you will stand out for all the right reasons. 

Step 6 – Have a mentor!

What happens when you have a mentor is that you move faster, you make less mistakes, because they’ve walked the path before you. Think about a jungle! If you’ve got somebody in front of you with an axe, chopping down everything and clearing a bit of a path so that you can see the potholes so that you don’t fall into them, then it makes your journey a lot easier. It means you can walk without get slapped in the face with the palm tree because the mentor would have cleared the way. 

I wish I had a mentor when I opened 23 years ago. It would have saved me so much heartache, stress and money. In the long run, I think my Dance/Theatre School business would be in a very different place.

Step 7 – Conviction! Having Courage

It’s about courage. It’s about understanding your values, and standing strong.  You know what you want from your school and why you started it.  There will be times where people will come along, or your mind monkeys will start speaking to you, saying –  Who are you to run that? That’s not gonna work? Oh, what if you do this, surely that will be better.

They will come.

I want you to have the courage of conviction to stand strong, and say, No, this is my school, this is what I want. This is what my values are, this is what it stands for.  

What happens with the 7 steps for my Dance/Theatre School Business? 

When the 7 steps all come together like a beautiful circle, they all feed each other and support each other. Things start to click into place and it becomes easier to run a studio. Step by step my lovely people, always one foot in front of the other. 

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