Many (many) studio owners are deeply committed to their chosen career path and will often end up running a dance studio for decades. There are plenty of studio owners who go straight from the studios they grew up in, to running a dance studio themselves. There’s just something about studio life isn’t there?
Magic and rose-tinted glasses aside, you can have too much of a good thing and that can cause you to end up in a serious rut running a dance studio.
Here are a few ways you can prevent the doldrums from setting in and stopping yourself from falling into a studio owner rut.
Focus on your main goal
Have a think about what your number one goal is for your studio. Do you want to be the studio that wins all the state competitions and has flashy matching bomber jackets? Do you want to be the go-to studio for your local area? Perhaps you’d like your studio to be known for being inclusive? Whatever your big picture goal is, keep it at the front of your mind when you’re feeling gloomy and remember why you’re doing this in the first place.
Track your time
Running a dance studio is a task that can’t ever be finished. Every time you wrap up a term, there’s another term about to start. Whenever a student graduates, there are 20 new little ones stepping up to take their place. There are always a million things to do and dance studio owners are notorious for spreading themselves too thin. Just for one week, track your time. There are countless apps available for doing this so choose one and get started. At the end of the week, you will have a clear picture of where you’re wasting time and where you’d like to redirect that time. Time management is one of the cornerstones of running a dance studio so that needs to be one of the first things you sort out.
Set the bar super low
Obviously, you’d love to set sky-high goals and totally dominate them but let’s be realistic, especially if you’re in a rut. If you have a goal to enrol 100 new students by the end of the year, let’s break it down. That’s 25 new students per term, which means about 2 or 3 per week. Instead of focussing on that huge number (100) focus on 3. How can you get 3 new students enrolled this week? Maybe send a free lesson coupon where your students can bring a friend for free? Next week, come with something different. Baby steps are essential when running a dance studio. You can’t dance The Nutcracker without learning the 5 feet positions first. Start at the beginning.
Be your own biggest fan
You will never be successful at running a dance studio if you keep telling yourself you can’t do it. Focus on positive affirmations and lift yourself up. I am capable, I am smart, I can do this. Change the way you speak about yourself to change your whole perspective.
Get someone to hold you accountable
It could be a friend or family member. Or a pod member from Studio Evolution. Make a recurring meeting with your accountability partner to set and review your goals each week. It only has to be 20 mins and you just have to say what you WANT to get done the next week and what you DID get done the previous week. It’s a fantastic way to make sure you aren’t wasting time in your studio.
Being in a rut is nothing to worry about, it happens to the best of us. The most important thing is to not stay in that rut for too long. Make changes and get yourself out of there.
Happy rut exiting!
All my best
Chantelle
