Studio Business Accelerator

The first of a 3-episode series about our ten commandments of studio ownership and management. Today we tackle the first four. Starting with the big one, Thou Shalt Value Thy Students, we move on to honoring yourself and your art form, and then the dangers and temptations of automation.

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Who doesn't love hearing someone wants your business to fail?  Fortunately, Mago powers his engines with negative feedback.  We examine a few pieces of hate mail we've received over the last year to try to get a reading on what the industry mood is, why people don't like beginners, and where we've let anyone down. 

Today, we focus on a specific question - when is it best to make things more inconvenient for ourselves and our business?  Evan talks about the strange relationship between inconvenience and authenticity, then Mago lays out why early adopters aren't the best people to market to (even though they are easiest), and explains why reaching the majority of people is harder but more much more beneficial.

Our friend, special guest, former studio owner, and PhD candidate Richard Hayes joins us to walk us through some industry best practices for hiring staff.  Rick's field of study is business psychology, and he shares both what the research says about hiring and his personal experience inside a studio.  We talk about defining what a job requires, keeping the interview consistent, and how to avoid wet cheese hires.

After a while we all find a plateau for ourselves and it can be extremely hard to move above it.  Today, we take a leaf out of Daniel Kahneman's book and discuss the idea of regression to the mean. We talk about our experiences falling back to that plateau (our respective means) and what can be done to achieve escape velocity.  Hint - it starts with admitting to ourselves we're not reliable observers.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

Special guest Sheri Moise joins us to talk about her strategies and techniques for keeping from becoming burnt out on your business.  Sheri is our honorary Coach and Therapist in Residence; she hosts weekly calls with clients to help them be both happier and more productive.  On the podcast, she walks us through her approach and shares some anecdotes about deleting or delegating tasks, aligning the internal and external, and gaining 100 students in 100 days.

Evan and Mago start off describing the woes of the studio owner who has to do everything themselves.  Lacking trust in their subordinates, sending employees out to fetch bad coffee, and getting stuck with every task, it's hard out there for an owner without a team.

We discuss the reasons hiring good people is so hard, and what we can do to make it easier, before moving on to what life is like inside a well-oiled organization comprised of diverse opinions and backgrounds.

We're joined by special guest Nicole Madden, a dancer, studio director, and mother to talk about the good and bad of customer service.  We share some horror stories and discuss the easy ways to avoid all the pits we fell into.  Plus, a quick refresher on the first rule of sales: take the money.

The Money Problem is the tendency for your business to get more expensive as it grows.  "Once we hit x number, we'll be good," we think, but by the time we get to x, we've added more staff or a bigger space or even just way more paper towels. 

Owners stuck inside the Money Problem can't seem to ever pay themselves what they're worth, or take a vacation, or save for retirement. 

We talk about all this and then how to outrun the Money Problem.  The secret?  Start by talking about money, as crude as it is.

An introduction.  We explain who we are and what we're about - helping studio businesses succeed.  This podcast is an exploration of the ideas and techniques we use in our own businesses and when we're advising others through our consulting company. 

Mago explains his unlikely journey from near-chemist to studio owner.  Brazilian martial arts and dance factor in, but the real kicker was other people changing their career ambitions to stay in the community he and his wife had built. 

Evan is just such a person.  The arc of his life plan is long, but it bends towards the studio.  Despite his best efforts, he never achieved true escape velocity, and instead of working towards a wonk job he stayed near the studio to teach and learn from the community.