As a dance studio owner, you can expect your days to be varied and full, from gliding across the floor with students to sitting behind the computer balancing the books. Here’s a glimpse into the things you might find yourself doing on any given day.
Promoting the studio, upcoming classes, and events
Expect to spend time promoting your studio and engaging with people online as well in the community. You might find yourself setting up automated marketing emails about new classes, designing flyers to pass out in the community, sending out mailers, or working with a designer to keep your website fresh. You may spend a portion of your day running social media campaigns to attract new students, or tracking how well current campaigns are doing and making tweaks. You may also dedicate time to building relationships with other local businesses, helping promote one another’s services among your customers.
Coordinating classes, teacher assignments, and event schedules
You need to decide which classes to offer each season, how many sessions of each class you’ll have, and the best times to offer them. That means keeping track of which classes fill up, which are waning in popularity, and which new dance styles students are eager to try.
Your day may involve optimizing an ideal class timetable for the upcoming season, figuring out special offerings (like winter break workshops or summer camps), and planning for special events like competitions and recitals. On top of that, you’ll need to coordinate staff and teacher assignments based on that timetable.
Registering students and accepting payments
You may spend your day taking in-person, phone, and online registrations; collecting waivers; compiling waiting lists; addressing cancellations and issuing refunds; billing students and accepting payments.
Fortunately, software like The Studio Director makes much of this automatic. The Studio Director allows you to accept a variety of payment methods (credit cards, bank payments, cash, and more) from dancers who want to register and pay from their laptop, phone, or tablet, 24/7. You can even set up one-time or automatic, recurring payment plans for students. You don’t need to spend time chasing down late payments, because The Studio Director automatically sends out payment reminders when needed.
Planning and teaching classes
You expected this part to come first, right? Many dance studio owners go into the business because they have a passion for dance, and for sharing that passion with others. Of course, the administrative and promotional side of the business often takes up a big chunk of time.
However, there’s still plenty of time for the “fun stuff,” and as a studio owner, you’ll be developing lesson plans, teaching dance classes, and enjoying the time you spend with a variety of students at all levels. You’ll spend time encouraging them, answering questions from parents, recommending future classes and skills development, sending student progress reports, and building and maintaining great relationships with your dancers.
Organizing events and competition logistics
As a small dance studio owner, you’ll be the go-to person for coordinating events like recitals, leading students to competitions, handling waivers, coordinating transportation where needed, managing costume assignments and payments, and so on.
Coordinating, training, and meeting with people
Much of your day will be spent maintaining regular contact with students, parents, staff, and partners. There’s no way to get away from emails, but automated tools like those in The Studio Director can help you send out important info via text or email, including class confirmation letters, billing notifications, teacher schedules, and student progress reports. If you take on additional staff and teachers, then you should also expect to spend some of your time hiring and recruiting qualified people, as well as training and managing them.
General operations
Part of owning a dance studio is making sure that everything stays organized and clean, that equipment is in good working order, and that you aren’t about to run out of supplies. Is your air conditioner broken? Does a section of flooring need to be replaced? That’s also your job—expect to spend some time coordinating with repair people and contractors who can step in and help keep your studio in top condition as needed.
Keeping the business financially healthy
Finally, you’ll dedicate time to making sure your business is healthy. This means staying on top of your cash flow and revenue, as well as hunting down past due payments. The Studio Director can help automate this process, too, and can even connect with your accounting software for accurate revenue syncing.
Besides tracking the money coming in, you’ll also have to track what goes out and when. That means paying for various business expenses, from payroll to rent due, as well as everything from contractors to utilities. And don’t forget your business taxes!
Putting it all together
As you can see, when you own and run a dance studio, no two days are quite the same! If you love the variety and excitement in this kind of challenge, then you may have found your next career as a dance studio owner. Make sure you have all your ducks in a row: a business plan, tax and accounting help, and dance studio software to help you run it all.
