Small businesses across the U.S. are keeping careful tabs on their states’ reopening schedules and making changes to their business models accordingly. As pandemic-related guidelines and timelines evolve, it’s important that you have a multilayered plan for the gradual reopening of your studio—one that prioritizes your dancers’ and staff’s health, reassures families that it’s safe […]
Talk about being close: Dana and Hugo Adames have been together 18 years and have two kids who love to dance—and the couple owns The Talent Factory Performing Arts Centre, with two locations, 550 students and a third site in the works. Dana, artistic director, and Hugo, general manager, have a method for how they […]
On Wednesday, March 11—two weeks ahead of a statewide stay-at-home mandate—Colorado Conservatory of Dance executive director Richard Cowden and artistic director Julia Wilkinson Manley made the difficult decision to take all of CCD’s classes online. As you’d expect, it wasn’t easy. “This chapter in our future book will be called ‘The 96 Hours From Hell,’” […]
As COVID-19 forced state after state into some form of lockdown this spring, most studio owners realized right away that they needed to evolve quickly—or else watch their enrollment plummet. Online classes became the key to business continuity, but with so little time to adapt material to remote learning and train faculty members on new […]
For Shanna Kirkpatrick, owner of Chara Christian Dance Academy, the key to retaining 96.5 percent of her 1,000-student enrollment through COVID-19 has been communication: regular e-mail updates, mass studio text messages, personal phone calls and—perhaps most significantly—following up with Zoom no-shows. Kirkpatrick didn’t actually need to create any new protocol for this level of communication. […]
Silicon Valley Ballet announced in February 2016 that the company would close and file for bankruptcy. The closure included the school—and $250,000 in tuition money for the current school year and summer program was lost in the bankruptcy. But the collapse could not take down Dalia Rawson, the school director. A survivor who had weathered […]
Planning a recital pre-COVID-19 was enough to make even the most well-organized dance studio owner feel stressed. Add a global pandemic into the mix, and you’ve got a recipe for a nervous breakdown—not to mention a serious revenue shortfall. Good thing studio owners have resilience and creativity to spare: These three owners reimagined and restructured […]
Rachel Arnold is a studio owner who knows how to transform lemons into lemonade. Rather than viewing stay-at-home orders as something to just power through at her Greenville, TX–based school, Dance Prodigy Studio, she’s turned online education into a chance to offer students and staff alike enrichment activities and community-building content. “I wanted great ideas […]
Q: How do I stand out on social media if all the other dance studios seem to say the same things I do? A: Social media works best when you stay true to your unique studio culture. Be relatable, engaging and responsive. Here are some tips we have found useful. Use the kind of tone, […]
Between forced business closures and general fear of contracting the virus, some consumers have begun to ask for refunds of services that cannot be rendered or goods that cannot be delivered. In some cases, some of your customers may be submitting chargebacks on payments already made as a way to obtain their money back without […]