Transform My Dance Studio – The Podcast For Dance Studio Owners

A brand new episode of the Transform My Dance Studio Podcast has just hit the airwaves, and I hope you're ready because this week our guest hosts are taking you and your studio from zero to 60 miles per hour in no time!

It's Part 4 of our 6-part special, CEO Coffee Chat with Heather & Patti, and this week is all about staying in your lane while standing out from the crowd. If you've ever suffered from 'fear of missing out' (FOMO), or been consumed by copycats, then Heather and Patti's tips are going to change your mindset and your trajectory for this season - for the better. Our coffee-fuelled business besties share their experiences when it comes to:

• Losing sleep over copycats in the dance industry, and practical tools to help you remain in your lane and thriving in the face of competition."When you dial into that, you have a lot less problems. You don't lose sleep over the little things. You have the right staff because they believe what you believe. You have the right clients, you have the right parents, and your dancers work the way you want them to work, because it all comes down to values"

• Embracing a mindset of abundance, and how a 'community over competition' focus will help you enrol and retain more loyal dancers. "There is room for as many studios that we can fit in our town, because we're really all truly bringing the gifts of dance to children. Why can't we just celebrate one another and work together? As soon as we let go of the pettiness and the silliness, we all succeed"

• How to discover your 'secret sauce' to ensure you will stand out from the crowd (even when there is a studio on every corner): "It's what makes you stand out from the crowd. It's why your dancers won't leave you to go to another studio - because they don't have your secret sauce. We're all teaching dance, but the way that you do it and the things that you do for your clientele are so different based on what is important to YOU and your studio."

Heather and Patti also share how they have both found ways to re-discover and ignite their love and passion for running their businesses, even through their toughest challenges.

This week, Heather and Patti will be talking about applying their positive and fun mindset to different areas of your dance studio while maintaining and strengthening your brand. In this episode, our coffee-loving business besties are talking about branding and marketing strategies that have changed the game for their studios. Our dynamic duo are giving you some specific examples and also some action items in each of these areas to help inspire you to apply these ideas in YOUR studio for 2022!

In this week's episode of our CEO Coffee Chat series, guest hosts Heather and Patti are sharing their best-kept secrets for running extraordinary events your customers, faculty and dancers will adore. Running successful studio events doesn't need to be a headache for the studio owner, and today you'll discover how to generate additional revenue, enhance customer experience, and have FUN at the same time! In our new 6-part series, "CEO Coffee Chat", you're invited to join this dynamic duo over a cup of coffee each week, and share an inside-look into the fun, fabulous - and often frustrating - world of studio ownership. Heather and Patti will be sharing the innovative strategies that they have implemented over the years to be among our industry's leading dance studios! Get ready to shed a few tears (and a whole lot of laughs) as these business-besties lay it all out on the coffee table.

Guest hosts and Studio CEO besties, Heather Buelow and Patti Johnston have joined the Transform My Dance Studio podcast team, and over the next 6 weeks they are here to change the way you look at leadership and life in your studio.

Introducing: CEO Coffee Chat with Heather and Patti! In this week's unmissable premiere, this innovative pair of Dance Studio CEOs are sharing their proven, actionable tips on how you too can build an amazing and stand-out team and how it will benefit your studio, including:

• Defining your core values, and why this is such an important step that many studio owners overlook. "Core values give me direction in every business decision that I make, and they also give my staff direction in every decision I want them to make...setting those core values makes your staff feel more connected with the studio and have more of a purpose."
• Perfecting your pre-season faculty training & preparation. "The kickoff staff meeting is so important to get everyone on the same page before the season begins. It's how I make sure that my standard is met in every class that's offered."
• How to measure, review and improve your staff's performance. "I know that by giving my staff ownership, they'll just surprise me again and again." PLUS Heather and Patti share their top tips for setting key performance indicators (KPIs), and teacher assessment processes that keep their faculty accountable and thriving in their roles.

Listen to episode #1 of CEO Coffee Chat, powered by the Transform My Dance Studio Podcast right here!

In today's episode, special guest Angela Mannella-Hoffman (CEO of Moore Than Dance, Minnesota USA) joins me for a not-to-be-missed interview where we dive into the 5 things that have helped to establish her studio as the 'go-to' venue for all under 6's in her area.

In just 20 powerful minutes, Angela shares her magic preschool formula that every studio owner should hear, including:

• Finding and hiring the perfect preschool dance faculty who will ensure every student is begging to come back to the studio week after week. "You need to have a preschool teacher who absolutely adores this age. You don't ever want a preschool dance teacher who doesn't love what they're doing.
• Creating an environment and atmosphere that will keep your dancers engaged from the moment they walk through your studio doors. "As teachers, we're setting the stage as soon as the dancers are coming in, even before the class starts. We always start the very same in our classes, and we always end the very same so that even the youngest dancers know exactly what to expect."
• Bringing new enrollments into your preschool classes all-year round - without spending a fortune in advertising. "You have to be intentional. You have to really plan out the journey of a preschooler and look at your studio through a preschooler's eyes"

PLUS Angela shares the #1 strategy for studio growth that she thinks every dance studio owner needs to know - and it all begins with her preschool program!

The biggest problem entrepreneurs have is that they don't know what their biggest problem is. If you find yourself trapped between stagnating sales, staff turnover, and unhappy customers, what do you fix first? Every issue seems urgent -- but there's no way to address all of them at once. The result? A business that continues to go in endless circles putting out urgent fires and prioritizing the wrong things. Fortunately, Mike Michalowicz has a simple system to help you eradicate these frustrations and get your business moving forward, fast. Mike himself has lived through the struggles and countless distractions of entrepreneurship, and devoted years to finding a simple way to pinpoint exactly where to direct attention for rapid growth. He figured out that every business has a hierarchy of needs, and if you can understand where you are in that hierarchy, you can identify what needs immediate attention. Simply fix that one thing next, and your business will naturally and effortlessly level-up. Over the past decade, Mike has developed an ardent following for his funny, honest, and actionable insights told through the stories of real entrepreneurs. Now, Fix This Next offers a simple, unique, and wildly powerful business compass that has already helped hundreds of companies get to the next level, and will do the same for you. Immediately.

The biggest problem entrepreneurs have is that they don't know what their biggest problem is. If you find yourself trapped between stagnating sales, staff turnover, and unhappy customers, what do you fix first? Every issue seems urgent -- but there's no way to address all of them at once. The result? A business that continues to go in endless circles putting out urgent fires and prioritizing the wrong things. Fortunately, Mike Michalowicz has a simple system to help you eradicate these frustrations and get your business moving forward, fast. Mike himself has lived through the struggles and countless distractions of entrepreneurship, and devoted years to finding a simple way to pinpoint exactly where to direct attention for rapid growth. He figured out that every business has a hierarchy of needs, and if you can understand where you are in that hierarchy, you can identify what needs immediate attention. Simply fix that one thing next, and your business will naturally and effortlessly level-up. Over the past decade, Mike has developed an ardent following for his funny, honest, and actionable insights told through the stories of real entrepreneurs. Now, Fix This Next offers a simple, unique, and wildly powerful business compass that has already helped hundreds of companies get to the next level, and will do the same for you. Immediately.

So much has changed over the past 18 months, however we can still deliver on the promises we make to ourselves. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. It's time to call out the self-sabotage and shine a light on what's possible. Create the mindset for immunity in these challenging times.

So much has changed over the past 18 months, however we can still deliver on the promises we make to ourselves. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. It's time to call out the self-sabotage and shine a light on what's possible. Create the mindset for immunity in these challenging times.

In this week's exclusive behind-the-curtain and celebration of Dance Studio Life in 2021, the incredible Kayleigh Crocetto from Dance Central joins the Transform My Dance Studio Podcast to share:

• How she pulled off her most profitable Summer ever in 2021, and the critical numbers she believes every studio owner should be keeping eye on. "I was very pleasantly surprised when I recently went through all of our numbers. I found out that we had our best summer ever based on revenue, even though at the time I didn't feel like we were rising up to the expectations that I had set for myself."
• The huge mindset shift she noticed when taking time to reflect on her incredible progress over the last 5 years in business. "Track your revenue, track your student numbers and track your wins!"

• Her experiences in taking the leap to expand her 2-person team and getting the right people into the right roles. "I had been running myself ragged trying to do all of the things, and I have learned over time that when we try to do all of the things, we're not going to do any of them to the level of quality that we would want."

Kayleigh also opens up about the decisions she made that allowed her studio to grow and thrive in the midst of a personal health crisis that put her out of action completely when she least expected it.