How To Make Your Dance Studio Profitable

Owning a dance studio can be very profitable, if you know what you’re doing. Here are 5 vital tips for making your dance studio a success:

1. Understand the Final Product of Your Dance Studio

What is a final product? A final product is the finished item that a business creates. It’s the thing that is considered the end result of the processes that occur in a business. So, for a dance studio, an example of a final product could be “an 18-23 year old dancer that is prepared for a career in musical theater.”

In order to understand your end product, you need to understand yourself as a dancer, artist and business owner. What do you hope to create? A strong adult dancer? A tight knit community? Classically trained professional dancers that are company-ready? When a student comes through your doors, what education do they go through? What have they accomplished when they pop out the other end? What will have been their experience? Knowing the answer to this question will be the key to understanding everything about your studio, from the kind of student you want to attract to the kind of business model you should have. It is vital that you understand what your final product will be as a dance studio owner.

2. Make Learning About Business a Habit

Some of the skills you will need to successfully run a dance studio are the same as what’s needed to become a good dancer: perseverance, discipline, etc. But just as you need to take years of classes to learn the technique of dance, you will need to educate yourself about how to run a business successfully. Find someone who you admire that has built a successful dance studio. What does that person do on a daily basis? These are the successful actions that you need to do also. Make sure they have the same kind of studio that you want, because there are some differences between types of dance studios that will make an impact on how things should be done.

Other ways to make a habit of learning more about your business are to find podcasts online, read business books, and watch YouTube videos. It’s important to apply what you are learning to your dance studio, so it’s better to learn slowly, implementing what you learn as you go.

3. Ensure Your Business Model is Realistic:

A dance studio is a type of business called a “service business”. That means it exchanges a service (teaching dance) for money. In order to know whether or not your studio will survive, you must understand the business model you are going to use.

What is a business model? A business model is your studio’s plan of what services will be offered to students and how it will earn income for those services. The services (classes, performances, events) you will offer are valuable, and it is those services that will create profit for the dance studio.

The business model for the studio has to be viable (able to make money and grow). This means that your business model must show how the studio will make enough money not only to survive, but to make a profit (money over and above just surviving).

Your model must show what kind of classes you are going to offer (group, private), what levels you are going to offer and whether or not they are for adults or kids. If you have classes for both adults and children, what kind of programs will be available for them? What financial structure will you use (a paid in full program or drop in classes, etc.)?

The model must show that the studio can turn a profit. The number of students you think you can attract and how long it will take to get that number of students must be realistic. How much you will charge for classes, performances, etc. must be shown. Also, your anticipated expenses must be shown as well. You must know, before you open a studio, whether or not your model is going to work.

4. Understand and Accept the “Sh*t Sandwich”

It is often helpful in starting any work endeavor that you think of what you don’t want even more than what you do want.

In every industry, every business type, there are parts that aren’t fun and liabilities that cannot be escaped. It’s important that in starting a dance studio that you know or can estimate closely what those will be. Perhaps, if you are going to be working with children, you understand that for every student you will actually have two clients, the child and the parent. The parent doesn’t take the classes and doesn’t get the benefit of experiencing the class. Therefore, it can be harder for parents to understand the reasons for certain things, which in turn requires more explaining and educating than if you were to teach primarily adults. This is an example of the “shit sandwich” for owning a dance studio that teaches kids.

Another example would be in the dance industry as a whole, dance studios will always be subject to attrition (loss of students over time), causing them to have to constantly promote in order to have full classes.

An important part of having a successful studio is knowing and accepting your particular shit sandwich.

5. Don’t Try to Serve Everyone

This is one of the most important lessons every successful dance studio owner will learn: If you try to serve everyone you will end up serving no one.

Returning to point #1, if you know the final product of your dance studio well, then you understand who you should be serving. You should be serving your specific customer, and no one else. If your end product is a strong adult dancer, you shouldn’t try to teach kids. If you want to create professional ballet dancers, you shouldn’t accept students who are only interested in recreational dance.

Trying to serve too many different types of clients will guarantee that none of them will be fully served. If you fail to define exactly who it is you will be teaching, it will be near impossible to reach a level of excellence in any category. Yes, it will mean you turn students away. In this context that is a good thing. If you truly know what your “final product” is, you will understand that when you say, “I’m sorry, we don’t offer that here. May I suggest another studio that might match your needs more closely?” that you are actually doing yourself a favor, as the client base you attract will be the ones that align with your goals and purposes.