In this illuminating BONUSÂ Studio Spotlight episode, Kathryn Raats of West Coast Music School reveals her secrets to generating $50k in just 5 days, sharing invaluable insights on lead conversion, automation, and studio growth.
Join us in celebrating her whilst gaining some powerful inspiration from this special interview episode.
And if you’re ready for your own studio transformation to begin, it starts by booking a call here: studioevolution.com/begin
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Chantelle Bruinsma (00:01)
Hey team, how are you? Chantelle here. We have got a very special bonus episode of your studio podcast for you today. And that is an interview. Few weeks back, we did the Enrol-A-Thon which is our once a year gala event for studio owners. And one of the participants followed the specific little things we share to do each day. And they added $50 ,000 revenue to their studio in just five days.
Nothing to sneeze at. in fact, she was overwhelmed with kind of inquiries and having to kind of connect with them. So in this interview, you’re going to hear Kathryn Raats from Western Australia talk through how she kind of re -engaged people who’d inquired at her studio from even four or five years ago and what worked for her in terms of getting them enrolled and into the business. And she also shares some incredible statistics on what growth she’s seeing in her studio right now, even to the degree of earning the most unbelievable
pre -tax profit stats that I’ve heard of any studio owner achieving. So she’s doing incredible things in her business and it is an inspiring story of just what’s possible to change in your studio in just a few years. Kathryn’s one of our graduates of Studio Evolution. So she’s been through our two year program and now seeing what she’s achieving in her business is just the greatest thing to watch. So please tune in, enjoy this episode. And if you want to kind of find out more about joining Studio Evolution,
All you got to do is go to studioevolution .com forward slash begin, and you too can start experiencing these life changing results in your studio. Enjoy, get yourself a cup of tea. This is a great chat and I’ll see you next time.
Chantelle Bruinsma (01:44)
Hello. Hi everyone. Welcome to this beautiful little chat with one of truly legitimately one of the most precious studio owners we’ve worked with over the years. Someone we just adore and are so proud of. this is a studio spotlight with Kathryn Raats from Western Australia. And we’re just going to have a little bit of a chat today because Kathryn, had a bit of a, a dynamo Enrol-A-Thon.
few weeks back and we just love seeing your results. So we’d kind of be able to just check in and see what’s been happening for you and like what’s been working right now. How are you, lovely?
Kathryn Raats (02:40)
I’m really good, how are you?
Yeah, right back at you.
Chantelle Bruinsma (02:45)
I’m so good. It’s really nice to see your face. Yeah, it’s good. So, and Enrol-A-Thon was big. That was fun. You wow.
Kathryn Raats (02:52)
Yeah, it was the kick up the pants that I needed. So we, I’ve been focusing this year a lot on lead generation, but not so much on lead conversions. So it was really good to kind of sit down and implement those strategies and actually start converting the leads into paying customers.
Chantelle Bruinsma (03:00)
Yeah.
Right. So that’s interesting. So, cause they are different kinds of processes and different kinds of approaches to you. So you’ve been focusing on like kind of getting more kind of awareness, getting more people in, but then maybe they weren’t kind of. So what did you find worked really well in that conversion process? Like what did you find if enroll on helped with.
Kathryn Raats (03:21)
Mmm.
Obviously the nine word emails obviously like our, it’s like a banger, it’s always a banger. But this time instead of just doing the email, we started texting people and that had a much higher conversion rate than the emails. You know, I do kind of think people, their inboxes are getting inundated at the moment and you know, things are getting missed. And I mean, I was re -engaging leads from like four, five years ago and enrolling them. So.
If I could give everyone one piece of advice, it’s capture your leads info, all of it, and have a really good system for making sure that you’ve got that on hand at all times.
Chantelle Bruinsma (04:23)
I mean, that’s a really good point. when you’re kind of, if someone’s like going to your website and then sending it in, so you’re getting their email kind of, and phone number in that field, you’re getting.
Kathryn Raats (04:24)
Hmm.
Mm -hmm. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So we’ve got two different ways of capturing leads. So the first is the inquiry, which is obviously a much easier conversion because they’re hot and they’re keen and they want to go. But the other thing that we do is an info pack, which is where a lot of our leads come from as well. And originally we were just asking for an email address for that.
the conversion rate was really low on those. But then when we added the option to add a phone number, you don’t have to put a phone number in to download an info pack. People just put their phone numbers in. So now we’re converting those leads at a much higher capacity. And the info pack was crucial because I think towards the end of last year, like November, December, lead gen was dire. I think we had like 12 inquiries come through and this last month we had about 146.
Yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (05:30)
Wow, and so what do you has been the shift? What do you think it is?
Kathryn Raats (05:32)
I think it’s the info pack, it’s the copy, it’s the way that you’re engaging your clients, it’s the way that you’re setting everything out and then it’s the nurture sequence afterwards.
Chantelle Bruinsma (05:46)
Yeah. So not just, you can sort of mean by that is like once they’ve actually inquired having a series of kind of pre scheduled emails that go out that they’re going to receive. So you don’t have to do the followup. You’ve kind of, but you’ve been really strategic in the different. connecting and starting to tell them,
Kathryn Raats (05:50)
Mm
Yep, correct. Yep. Yep. Yeah, it’s really juicy. I love it.
Chantelle Bruinsma (06:07)
And so are you using to send the texts out? Did you kind of use their software like S got SFS software? Yeah, that’s not.
Kathryn Raats (06:10)
We’ve got a CRM, we just use a label CRM called Go High Level. It’s amazing, I’m not pitching it or anything, but it’s great. And the thing that I like about it is that you can text directly through the CRM, but you can also automate your texts to be part of your nurture sequence. So like now when we’re doing a check -in email as a part of our follow -up.
I don’t send it as an email anymore. I send it as a text to kind of get that engagement in. Yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (06:42)
And then does that kind of store their response in the CRM so you can actually see the thread. Love that. So we’ll be doing like a broadcast. you get, in terms of like sending that kind of text out, you wasn’t, you were doing, was just like, select it all. So it was probably like a 10 minute, probably less, right? Even.
Kathryn Raats (06:55)
minute process. Yeah, yeah, not even. Yeah, yeah, it’s like two seconds. Yeah.
Mmm.
Chantelle Bruinsma (07:06)
Brilliant. And so with the nine word email, so they’re kind of like, I used to classes for you actually got that automated into a follow up sequence now. So that happens for everyone who inquires, they’re going to get it at week three or four or something like that.
Kathryn Raats (07:18)
Yep. Yep. And then when they go into like, if they don’t convert from like that new lead into a current student, then their tag changes to something like cold lead and they go into a different nurture sequence. And then that nine word text comes through in different variations about every three to six months.
Mmm, yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (07:39)
in different variations. I like that.
Are you doing that kind of seasonally kind of like aligning it with the years and doing broadcasts or you’ve kind of just made it evergreen so that you could just kind of pretty much, yeah, smart.
Kathryn Raats (07:48)
Evergreen. Yeah, I’m a big fan of Evergreen. I don’t have the capacity to keep up with the challenging seasons. yeah, so just everything’s automated as simple as possible and then just yeah, different language variations.
Mmm.
Chantelle Bruinsma (08:08)
And look, I know once you sent these texts out, then life got a bit busy. Then kind of life got a bit like, I’ve got lots of things to connect with and how did that process, what did you learn and observe then?
Kathryn Raats (08:15)
Yes.
panic was my first emotion because it was just like this influx of leads and I was like, and now I actually have to follow these people up and like actively do things with them. And I realised that we had a massive manpower issue if we’re going to be dealing with like that kind of level of lead engagement.
Chantelle Bruinsma (08:25)
So.
Kathryn Raats (08:44)
So at the moment I’ve got the wonderful Kiara who, you know, she’s my two IC, my right hand woman. Like we’ve been in it together from the very start and she’s always been the one who’s been managing our leads. But it was too much for one person. So now we’re kind of doing it side by side and I’m just seeing how that goes and what the workload is like before we bring in another lead nurturer to support her.
Chantelle Bruinsma (09:13)
Yeah. So, so she’s kind of in an admin role. So she kind of oversees like she’s like your manager type thing, but then part of her role is doing inquiry management. This is actually demonstrating, that could be a whole other separate role.
Kathryn Raats (09:15)
Yes.
Yeah, correct. So she’s actually our adventure architect. So her whole role is to support the clients and to craft their music journey from enrolment through to withdrawal, essentially. So that’s why it kind of makes sense for her to be that first point of contact. yeah, 146 leads for one person is absolutely insane. Yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (09:50)
bonkers and Nicky are, and you were kind of in the trenches, you know, kind of typing away. What did you find like, you know, when you’ve got this kind of like micro kind of process of what, what was the kind of thing that you, was it something you said or coming you invited or kind of what did you find? Was there a trend in kind of in that optimising that conversion?
Kathryn Raats (09:59)
Mmm.
I think the follow up was really important. So that whole kind of connect first is like vital. And just by changing our language ever so slightly, and then obviously having templates set up and things like that. So when we were responding to messages, we could just do it as a template as opposed to having to write everything out. And it’s all obviously in the CRM. So it’s a snippet and we can literally just click the template and it sends off and
you know, just having all those little shortcuts, but I’ve had to build those out over the last month because they weren’t all in there before. during, during the actual Enrol-A-Thon, labor was super heavy and now following up after the Enrol-A-Thon, our actual like human contact time is significantly less. Like we really, our goal is to get them on the phone. If we can get them on the phone, we can convert them super easy. So,
changing those little things I think has been essential.
Chantelle Bruinsma (11:18)
Do know what I think is fascinating as well? Like you’ve had this massive surge of leads at what would many people would consider the low point of the enrolment calendar in terms of the Australian year, right? So for the Northern hemisphere people who are watching, this is the equivalent of having a mass intake of 147 new inquiries in like February. It’s kind of like not a time you traditionally enrol a lot of people. For August here in Australia was not a peak time.
Kathryn Raats (11:19)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (11:44)
And it just kind of goes to show like, you know, the stories we tell ourselves are like, well it is what it is, right? Like, I’m kind of going to wait till, you know, we start the new year. Like, no, no, they were there waiting to be scooped up, right?
Kathryn Raats (11:53)
100%. Something else that we’ve done, which has been quite interesting is we’ve moved away from the school term calendar. So we now run on an annual calendar and just break up for two weeks over Christmas. So we don’t have that kind of term -based mindset anymore. And I think that that’s been really important to stopping us from going, we’ll wait till next year. I know that next year we’re going to have a massive influx of new students, but we’ve still got up until the week before Christmas.
solidly, no school holidays between now and then. So it’s been a mindset adjustment for us as well.
Chantelle Bruinsma (12:29)
Mmm.
That’s really interesting, hun. that’s been so classes run throughout the year, right through and for your teachers.
Kathryn Raats (12:37)
Right through, yep, yep, yep. It has variations each month. So the last week of the month is usually a quiet week for us. So it’s when we do all of our group sessions or a concert or things like that. So there is kind of downtime for our mentors. We’re always encouraging them to take time off and leave and those types of things as well. But it’s been essential in ensuring that there’s revenue all year round because not having revenue for 12 weeks is insane.
And we also found that trying to do the school camps was, it was just like another business for me and it was exhausting. So I just was like, do you know what? I surveyed the clients and I was like, who wants lessons to keep going during the school holidays? 90 % came back saying we want lessons to keep going during the school holidays. And so I made the change. And it’s also been essential in increasing our average student value, like our AASB. So I think when we did
positive prosperity, which was what? 2021. My AASV was like about 600 and now we’re at about 2 ,200.
Chantelle Bruinsma (13:51)
It’s wild. just to kind of explain that, and Holly, was up a minute. So your AASV everyone is something that we work really closely with raising with our clients. So it stands for average annual student value. So amount of money one student brings in across a 12 month period into the business. And so what Kathryn’s saying is like when she first joined Evolution, she was making on average about 600 bucks from a student over 12 months.
And that kind of adds up to get your total revenue, right? So what we worked on was like, how can we increase the average value that a student brings into the business? So she raised it from a student bringing 600 bucks on average to now on average, every kid brings in at least two grand, which is just, just like life changing, life changing, life changing for the business. So good.
Kathryn Raats (14:35)
Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Yes.
Chantelle Bruinsma (14:41)
And that happened within a couple of years, right? I think I saw that that was very quick that that transition happened. So you tripled the value of every student within two years. Very cool. How about this one check in? Is everything okay on the kind of tech end hun?
Kathryn Raats (14:44)
Yes.
Chantelle Bruinsma (15:00)
Okay. Lovely. So our producers kind of just like popping in, just kind of moderating what’s happening on, on Facebook for us. Okay. Well, while we’re on this topic, can I just, everyone who’s watching, can I just do a little bit of a snapshot of where Kathryn was before and then kind of what’s shifted in fact, maybe it might be kind of interesting before we do that, Kathryn, what was like life like in your studio before you stepped into evolution?
Kathryn Raats (15:06)
Mmm.
It was exhausting. I didn’t view myself as a business owner. I viewed myself as a creative person that just accidentally was running a business. And I didn’t have the skillset. And I knew I didn’t have the skillset. And so everything was daunting. Everything was overwhelming.
It just felt so out of reach. Like there was nothing manageable, nothing bite -sized. I didn’t know where to turn. I felt like we kept constantly hitting the ceiling. Yeah, was just, it was exhausting.
Yeah, not a vibe.
Chantelle Bruinsma (16:06)
Horrible. And how long have you in that vibe for? What did you say? Five years?
Kathryn Raats (16:11)
when it was probably like five years, right? Like five or six years. Cause yeah. Yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (16:20)
You’d been wrong before you joined. Yeah. So she’s in the vibe of chronic overwhelm, just like struggling and trying to get ahead. So she joined the program. Maybe to kind of paint a picture. when she, when Kathryn joined evolution, she had 54 % student retention. And by the time she’d kind of finished the six pillars, it was that that was at 92%. I mean, that’s
Even that alone, like it’s exhausting when you’ve got that half every student that every two students that comes in the business ones out within a year like that’s
Kathryn Raats (16:48)
Yeah, yeah, we spent most of our time just trying to fill the holes in the bucket, you know.
Mm -mm.
Chantelle Bruinsma (16:57)
You can’t grow. You can’t grow that way. So even fixing that alone would have done dramatic things for the business. So within your, the end of the first 12 months, you doubled your students. had a hundred percent growth of the studio. What do you think kind of was the main secret to that? What shifted with that first year?
Kathryn Raats (16:59)
Huge,
I think it’s a two tier approach. Like you have to address your retention and you have to address your lead attraction. So, you know, just getting really clear on our marketing message and who we were and the copy and language that we were using, but then also plugging those holes so that we weren’t just pouring all these beautiful new leads into a broken bucket.
Chantelle Bruinsma (17:39)
This is it. This is, think, probably one of the biggest and like actually finding out what your retention stats are. Most of your owners think, it’s okay. And we’ve got lots of, when you actually sit down, it can be quite scary. And it can be honestly the, the hidden thing that is sabotaging the majority of studios. Like you don’t have good retention, you’re not going to grow the business and you can work as hard on marketing as you like. You can all of your effort into marketing, your retention is not good. You’re still kind of screwed. There was a time when you enrolled 19 new students in four weeks. That would have been.
Kathryn Raats (17:50)
Mm
Yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (18:08)
a season, like, unbelievably, you were kind of achieving, you know, profits is back in the day of, you know, $20 ,000 profit. Plus you also gave yourself a huge pay rise by like $35 ,000 to up over $100 ,000 salary, you dropped your workload from I’m not sure what it was, but down to only 16 hours a week. And you can
Kathryn Raats (18:24)
It was like, I was working like 12 hour days.
I was, yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (18:33)
Right, and were you teaching a lot as well?
Yeah and so now how much are you working around about would you say?
Kathryn Raats (18:38)
At the moment, I only work like three or four days a week and probably from about 10 a to 3 p and then I teach one afternoon a week but that’s for me, it’s not because I have to, it’s because that’s why I did this in the first place.
Yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (18:58)
Yeah, it still keeps your heart happy. So you’re still doing it days a week for five hours a day. So still kind of like 15 to 20 hours a week. Wow. It’s just, do you kind of have you had that moment, Kathryn hon of when you actually feel like I’ve, I’ve kind of done it, I’ve kind of made it. Have you had that moment? Where were you when you had that?
Kathryn Raats (19:01)
Yeah, yeah.
It was last week, so it took me a while.
Chantelle Bruinsma (19:21)
I’m sick.
Kathryn Raats (19:23)
It took me a little while to get there. But I was saying to you earlier, Chantelle, that we’ve just brought on a CFO and he gave me my forecast for this next financial year and our pre -tax profit margin is going to be 36 % by the time we get to the end of this financial year. And I was like, okay, we’ve done it. So we’ve gone, I think in the year of COVID, we made like the most heinous loss.
Like, I think our wages were like 92%, no, 102 % of our revenue that year, which was not good. So now, yeah, being 36 % pre -tax profit by the end of this financial year. So that was the moment that I was like, thank God it’s all come together.
Chantelle Bruinsma (20:15)
So, so we’ve had a blackout at my place. I’ve actually come to my parents’ house and my dad is here. if he heard, so accountant Arthur, right. He heard that you would get 36%. So for everyone watching, so we are seeking, and I know that from my notes, like when you joined evolution, your pretext profit was like 2 .4 % and your goal was to get to 7 .5%. I was thinking about this morning. Like your goal was to get to 7 .5 % and now you’re tapping 35 % pretext profit. So that means.
Kathryn Raats (20:33)
Mm -hmm.
Chantelle Bruinsma (20:44)
in the kind of the 65 % that’s left out of the hundred, the whole pie, that’s your wages, that’s your rent, that’s your salaries, and you’re making
Kathryn Raats (20:48)
Yeah, including mine, including my wages as well. Yeah, so it’s true profit.
Chantelle Bruinsma (20:58)
I am, I don’t know if I’ve actually heard anyone have that stat. I think I haven’t heard of anyone having a studio having that high profit pre -tax profit percentage time. That is like absolutely stellar, stellar. Wow.
Kathryn Raats (20:59)
Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah, that was my moment. Yep.
Chantelle Bruinsma (21:18)
It just goes to show, it just goes to show what’s possible. And, you know, I want to really, affirm for you, what I loved working with you over those two years in studio evolution was you took everything we gave you and you ran with it. Like you, you’re so coachable and we kind of, remember, you know, you know, roadmap and kind of like working on, which is like retention roadmap and that project you just want, you’ve made some big changes in the business then.
Kathryn Raats (21:28)
Mm.
Yeah, yeah, that’s all still there.
Yeah, Like it’s, yeah, great.
Chantelle Bruinsma (21:50)
Wow, I’m so proud of you. How do you feel?
Kathryn Raats (21:57)
Yeah, yeah, it’s good. It feels like, it feels like relief. Yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (22:12)
It feels like relief. Yeah. That kind of, you know, so much for your owners live with that constant white knuckle, right?
Kathryn Raats (22:16)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (22:22)
Money’s in the bank, marketing is working, Legion is working, systems are there, team is beautifully connected. You said to me before this call that they’re the best team you’ve ever had in 10 years. It’s just, you made it. You made it.
Kathryn Raats (22:30)
Mm
Yeah, yeah. For now, things change, you know, and I’m the queen of it. know, Chantelle said to me a hundred times, was like, Kathryn, stop breaking your business and rebuilding it. I’m quite happy with where it’s at right now, but I’m chronic business breaker.
you
Chantelle Bruinsma (22:55)
No, know, you’re not a business breaker. You’re extremely effective because you see opportunity and you see the possibility and you like things to be operating at their best. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong. And your ability to refine has got you to the place where, know, when you finish the program, you were kind of at, you’d hit your goal of like the seven, five, five percent pretext profit and you’ve kept optimizing. You’re an optimizer. In order to be phenomenal, you got to crack a few eggs, Kathryn. You know what I mean?
Kathryn Raats (23:01)
Yeah, yeah, true.
Mm -hmm. Yes. Yeah.
Yep, absolutely.
I just do the whole carton at once.
Chantelle Bruinsma (23:24)
eggs.
Kathryn Raats (23:28)
Yeah, I know.
Chantelle Bruinsma (23:30)
But you know, I’m the same too, I’m the same person. This is both a… And our teams don’t love it. But we get there. We get there. We get there.
Kathryn Raats (23:35)
No. Yeah. I promised them that I would be calm this year and just let it settle and see what happens. Because last year was big for us. That changeover. Yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma (23:51)
Yeah, my gosh. Well, I am just so proud of you. For everyone who’s kind of watching, and this video, if you would like to just, again, just acknowledge in the, in the comments, what you see in this woman and what you, soak it up, hun, soak it up, like absorb it. What you see in Kathryn and what you admire in her and what you’ve really can.
Kathryn Raats (24:02)
Mm -mm.
Chantelle Bruinsma (24:15)
a test that she’s really absorbed within herself of who she’s become as a studio owner. It would be so lovely if you would just thank her for being so vulnerable, so real, so generous with her time and with her sharing. If you would just kind of share a bit of love back her way, that would mean a lot to me to thank her so much for this.
it’s a, it’s a real treat and friends that we’re about to start, the next kind of pillar of studio evolution. So there’s six pillars and we’re about, Kathryn, we’re about to step into elegant ease, which is the systems pillar. that one business model, huh?
Kathryn Raats (24:42)
Literally my favourite pillar that I did.
because it changed the way that I looked at my business. I remember when we did the model, like the business model, I was like, we’ve got a problem here. We have a problem here. But then also like I’m a systems nut, like I love having everything written down and being like, you know, so everyone’s just following the protocol for consistency, like just.
Chantelle Bruinsma (24:49)
Why? How come?
Kathryn Raats (25:13)
Love it. And also that’s where all the value of your business lies. You know, if you want to sell it one day, you have, you’ve got to have that sorted out.
Chantelle Bruinsma (25:22)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s the truth. That’s the truth. Yeah. The business model project, everyone is where we actually kind of, we take, we call the simple stick and we just like take all the complexity out of the business. We look at your programs, your offering, we look at your pricing and we just tidy it up and tidy it up is probably a nice way of saying it. Other people might call it a sledgehammer approach. We just, sometimes it’s got to be done because the complexity in the business is just sabotaging the growth is what we find. Right.
Kathryn Raats (25:38)
Mm
100%.
And people need to hear it as well because like, you don’t really open yourself up to the chance that the business can actually be thriving and successful because I think there is that narrative of like the struggling studio owner and we self -sabotage all the time.
Chantelle Bruinsma (25:51)
Yeah, yeah it’s the truth but you don’t know what you don’t know. And that’s the reality, right? That’s the reality.
So good. So we’re about to, to, step into that. So if you would like to kind of find out more about Studio Evolution, see if it’s a good fit for you and kind of again, see radical growth in your business and have your life changed as a result. All you gotta do is go to studioevolution .com forward slash begin and chat with one of our grads who’s been through the program. We can tell you all the details and, and take you through walking into this beautiful program and hopefully in a couple of years we’ll see.
See you on one of these screens.
Kathryn Raats
And thank you so much for everything. when you don’t know what you don’t know, like, you can’t fix any of it. And I still go back to my evolution drive. And yeah, so like just all those things have become so like embedded in our culture. Yeah.
Chantelle Bruinsma
It’s just the best, hon, it’s the best. Kathryn, you’re such a treat and we’re so proud of you. Congratulations and thank you very, very much for sharing with us today.
Kathryn Raats (26:23)
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
