Yes Virginia, we're a real business

Now, most dance studio owners won't tell you any of this, but I think the first thing you should know about a dance studio is that it's a real business.  Dance studios have rent to pay, have utilities to keep up on, supplies to keep on hand (TP anyone?), vendors to research and do business with, new clients to meet with, established clients to keep happy ... all the while, trying to make a living and bring home money to pay for all the household bills you pay for too.  I've heard tons of stories about people who think because we mainly work with kids, that our studio isn't a real business or that we shouldn't be allowed to make money from them.  I remember hearing colleagues talk about their friends who ask if they are "still doing that dance thing".  [To which they promptly replied, "Yes, are you still doing that bank thing?" ;-)] And I have personally been bashed & laughed at for choosing this as my line of work.

It's not an easy job.  And especially as a small studio, there are SO many things we do ourselves to keep our expenses down.  We don't have a fancy website with someone that puts out a trendy new design every year.  I designed and manage our website myself (after teaching myself how to write HTML & make a website work.)  We don't have a team of advertising consultants that we turn to get the word out about the studio.  I design all of our print ads, flyers, newsletters, emails, facebook page posts, t-shirts, signs on the walls, etc and often will print them myself too (or wish we were capable of doing it ourselves!)  And the designs usually mean I have edited photographs or graphics to put in them.  I just finished almost a solid week of editing photographs for our website!
We plan for our recital every year, which I can most closely compare to planning a wedding every year.  You've heard of bridezilla?  That's nothing compared to us at recital time!  And then a few months later, we start all over with scheduling new fall classes, advertising, delivering flyers, ordering new dance apparel, measuring and fitting new dance shoes, taking registrations, placing new students in classes, making sure everyone receives the handbook we spent a week editing & praying that everyone reads or at least skims through!
We plan side performances ... parades, basketball games, nursing homes.  We field phone calls from new parents, field questions from current parents, and we haven't even talked about the actual teaching of technique yet!  Then comes choosing songs for the next recital, editing the songs for content & length so that dad doesn't have to sit thru a 5 minute song at recital.  After the song is edited, the choreography starts and then we start picking out costumes to go with the song, the recital theme, a color that that class has never had, making sure we don't have a blue costume for the song "Think Pink!" and making sure everyone in the class will look good in the costume.  We spend hours searching through costume catalogs, measuring the kids, placing the orders, calling to check on the orders, sorting the costumes when they come in and finally hanging each costume & getting it ready for parents to take home.  We write up a booklet guiding parents thru the rehearsal, pictures & recital.  And then the cycle repeats.
And along the way, everyone we come in contact with is trying to stay in business.  The landord, the utility companies, the vendors of our dancewear & costumes, our advertising sources, the venue for the recital (WHAT?  you mean they don't let you use the building for free???)  The videographer, the lighting guy, the flower vendor, the janitors at the venue ... but I think I've gone on long enough.

Now, I didn't write these words to put anyone reading this on a guilt trip and many/most people reading this do know how much work & money goes into this business, but these are just some of the things we have to do & people we pay to keep our business operational.  We are always riding a thin line between how much we spend on advertising vs. how many students we gain from it to pay the bills.  And as I said, we are a small studio, and don't have a problem with that.  In fact, I would rather have 30 students & be able to call them all by name than have 300 & not be able to say hi to most of them by name when we see them at Walmart.  :-)  My own personal view is that once you get much over 100 kids at a studio, you're not providing small, personable classes anymore.  It then becomes comparable to a factory ... fill the classes, take their money, teach routines by rote (meaning they start learning the recital routine on day one & never learn any real technique), march them onto stage and they're done.

I mean, I get it...kids want to dance where their friends do, but between the big studios with the big production followings and the ones that are undercutting the rest of the studios in the area by more than 20%....it becomes harder every year to keep doing it.  We worry about just getting enough students in the door to pay the bills & be able to continue putting on our small recital.  But we keep doing it because we love it.  Because we couldn't imagine not seeing those excited smiling faces coming in the front door every week.  Not seeing the look of triumph in learning a new skill.

I just wish those smiles paid some of our bills. ;-)