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what are studio owners doing wrong
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I stopped teaching at the studio I went to because the owner was totally losing her passion for pole and was no longer investing in her business. People who were paying good money to attend were getting ripped off and it was aggravating. I think it is different for every studio but I wish people would just focus on what got them there in the beginning, the love and passion for the sport!
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I think I was really spoiled at my first studio because they REALLY did everything right. Classes were organized, challenging, yet really engaging and fun. I grew as a student and loved every minute. But they made it look effortless on the business side. (Behind the curtain, I'm sure it's uncountable hours of planning and prep).
When I moved to NJ, I got to see a lot of what studios do wrong. Teachers not spotting students for first time invert (true story), no websites and hours of google searching to find a studio on word-of-mouth (little scary), and owners who were either too burned out to teach or made pole into vertical gymnastics bar with no dance whatsoever.
Happily I'm at a good studio now that I think has the potential to be great as they grow. I think there are so many keys to doing it right, but the main one (in every business) is PROFESSIONALISM! People respond to it and will keep coming back for more.
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Yip I agree with many.
IMO, these are the factors that they need to pay attention to:
1. Professionalism
2. Classes should be held striclty according to PDC levels or beginner, intermediate, advanced. Beginners and walk-ins should not be mixed with intermediates/advanced
3. Safe pole practices should be taught. First Aid should be available. Equipment should be in safe condition.
4. Owners/instructors should be qualified in Pole and further educate themselves. They should also be qualified in First Aid.
5. Their should be a clear plan for every class and every level. Routines should be worked into class for every month or 3 months that incorporates the class curriculum.
6. Exams and showcases should be worked in every quarter or twice a year.
7. A good foundation must be laid i.t.o proper Warm-up and Cool down/Stretching
8. Strength training, conditioning, floor work, dancing and pole tricks should all be incorporated in a monthly agenda.
9. Results will motivate people and as for beginners, routines will keep them engaged.
10. Not too many students per class. Instructor must be able to give attention to every student and not just some (the preferred ones)
11. Never share your personal business dilemmas with your students.
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I’m with Write2Pole here… I’ve lost passion for my studio but not pole in general. Planning on buying my own soon so I can go at y own pace and learn myself
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I also agree with a lot of what nataschja said,especially class size. Too many students make it very difficult to get instruction, but it also makes it hard to stay on the pole… Too warm means slippage!! :p
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As far as class size, would you say if a studio has 8 poles having a max of 12 in a beginner class would be too many? I have found mixed results with this at the studio where I teach. sharing poles in intermediate and advanced is obviously not such a good idea, but with beginners I have found that they tend to take breaks and need a breather so sharing isnt so bad. Also, a lot of ladies bring in their friends so they share together. On the other hand I have had ladies come in and see all those other ladies and I think they feel intimidated.
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I’ve been poling for about five months. Here are a few things that will keep me coming back to the studio:
Be professional.
Teach safely–good warm up, stretching and strength techniques.
Teach me at least one new thing each class even if it’s something very small–this is what keeps me coming back.
Ask me my goals with poling, and ask again later because it may change as I progress.
If I have a pole at home, perhaps find out what I’ve been doing at home. I realize my instructor has a teaching plan that progresses in a certain order for a reason, but I have much more time to pole at home and have progressed quite a bit more than she might imagine.
I want to be taught to my skill level, meaning I neither want to hold back others in the class nor do I want to be held back based on my own particular abilities.
I see some studios that have particular schedules such as once a week on the same day of the week for a six-week period. This is too restrictive for my personal schedule and I prefer to be able to come to any pole class on the studio schedule and pick up where I left off.
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Pole is a tough business. Unlike other fitness programs ours is not just a general work out, do what you can program it’s skill based. Each skill will require certain techniques along with strength and flexibility, that means its individual, what you may love to do may be impossible for another due to body type, fitness/flexibility level and let’s not forget fear factor. I’ve had girls with little pole experience (time) and be amazing, working on super mans and Aisha’s because they have a pole at home, YouTube, Veena lessons and in one case had been a gymnastics coach and aerialist for several years. So as a professional I have to decide does this amazing superhuman go to basic classes where she will be bored even though she needs to learn the simple stuff or do I teach her at her skill level and help her accomplish all those crazy inverted combos she’s already working on? She’s also the most advanced student I see and no one is near her trick level…how do,I challenge her and my less experienced students who have more actual time on the pole? It isn’t fair to make her do privates, its not fair to make her take a super basic newbie class, its not fair to,pair her with others who are the most advanced but still below her skill set. It’s an issue. Now, with this story being shared ill say this girl is lovely, I adore her and she has been very supportive of others, she’s humble, she’s very sweet and amazing and the others love to watch her. For this to be the case I had to work really hard around everyone’s feelings to create a super loving environment, which we have. But it’s work and communication, being honest with all of my students about themselves, myself and others.
So,to the op…I think the biggest issue with many companies pole or not, is customer service and honesty. When you begin to think you are the best product for a student instead of adapting your product to the client, issues arise. When an issue arises in a classroom it’s felt by everyone.
I’ve worked for myself and 2 studios. On the business side of things one studio was really cut and dried, I like the owner a lot and I admire her. She had set rules, standards and guidelines for classes, checking in and basically everything. She managed without micromanaging. It was a great studio but a studio that a student would have a difficult time getting really advanced at, like competition advanced. Which is fine for many students but for some they want the tricks and combos. What is good about her system is that its known that she caters to everyday women, its really upfront that this is an empowerment studio. It’s a great product, great service for a great price….but it’s not for everyone.
The other studio I worked at wasn’t as much of a well oiled machine, it was newer. The owner had like 6 jobs which made it hard to connect sometimes and be up to date with what was going on plus it was hard for students to get in touch with her because she was working so much and so hard. The product there was much more trick based which presents a problem to the average person as pole is difficult. It was a multilevel class plan which meant seasoned students might be in a class with first timers making instruction difficult for me as a teacher. I’m not capable of managing that drastic of skill sets, I need everyone to be at least seasone beginners climbing, adept at basic spins and transitions to do multilevel. I helped build this studios program so I can tell you first hand how many times we changed things based on new scenarios that came up. It was a learning experience to see what kind of clients came in, what they wanted, what happened in classes, what rules needed to be made, etc. this studio did a lot of things wrong and had to learn to do them right. I think that’s normal with a new business. They have adapted well and since I left are doing great. I have friends that work there, including the owner, whos been just awesome to me, and it’s turned into a well oiled machine after some internal struggles (me) and many reinventions.
I think most people will do a lot wrong in their first years, because there isn’t a simple equation to pole businesses. It’s a lot of things. It’s reinvention constantly without losing your brand. It’s managing the needs of specific people in a group atmosphere. It’s providing a great atmosphere. No matter how great your pole product is, it’s not for everyone, you’re not for everyone. We’re women and thus tend to people please and take things personally, it’s hard to stay out of drama and not share your hurt feelings when someone goes off somewhere else or opens their own business. Because pole is so vastly different to so many people its a hard business to run. I’d love to have my own space, I’m also afraid of it. Right now I make little money but I can teach small groups and one to one and really cater, I know I won’t be able to as much once I’m back in a studio.
Sorry that’s a book,those are my thoughts, I think it’s tricky. And everyone will have a different perspective on what makes a great studio. I think you just have to build your version of pole, believe in it and hope others drink the koolaid, lol.
One more thought, managing a pole studio is a b!$?! Because you have so many different personalities and vulnerabilities and egos. I know for me as an instructor I am impossible to manage. I do what I like, I teach the way I believe in, I do not like to share how I teach or choreography with other instructors who are not paying for my time, especially when they are less experienced and not certified, not at my level and I can’t learn from them. I don’t want to come up with good ideas for someone else’s business, I am not a team player. I’m insecure, like to compensated for everything I do and am just not a fun business associate because of my issues. I’ve only found one person who could work with me and get me drinking her koolaid, I don’t know how she did it. I liked being on her team and I loved my coworkers to tears. I think it’s because we all loved each other so much and respected each other and worked with each other that it felt like a family. And in the end when I left it was pretty much because I was still on Charley island and feeling commitment phobic. I’m on,y throwing myself under the bus to show that its not just the customer side of things but internal things too and I recognize I can be a nightmare, although I do show up on time and have great retention, lol. In all cases of me leaving studios I’m still friends with the owners and teachers and respect them a lot. I do see how having someone like me is both a benefit and deficit though and can affect a business. You can’t have someone with their own brand that conflicts with yours.
So there are a lot of issues internally and externally that can bring a place down. You need a great team, good service, good product and a lot of koolaid. Oh the people skills needed!
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Amen, Charley and ditto.
Pole is a VERY tough business, a very niche market…and not everyone that tries it will stick with it so there’s the constant attrition factor of students, especially with new instructors that are learning to teach. I was always and still am learning as a teacher, but with more experience my student retention rate was very high.
PS-I am ‘on my own’ now too, Charley, and I totally agree about the compensation and wanting to do things my own way. 🙂
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Well I’m very frustrated at the moment I have been a loyal customer at my pole studio now for a good while and I find it so annoying that we have no heat during the winter term 🙁 I refuse to go to the studio because it’s not healthy to train in a freezing environment. It’s the only one in my area and I have no choice. But one thing I’m happy to say is I’m so glad I found studio veena so I can train from home. As I would like to compete or even teach some day when I’m at a higher level of pole.
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I kinda like being on my own now. There was nothing wrong with any of the studios I’ve worked, I think I’m just really creative and really stubborn so working with others as just a team member is hard, I like to manage and be in charge and create and get tons of credit hahahaha!
I used to manage a music shop that sold guitars and stuff like that and I can say from that experience I learned that musicians often made the worst sales people and they were never, ever on time, they sold what they liked not what buyers needed necessarily and they’re so passionate, you’ll get a fender guy talking smack about every other guitar out there and the guy in front of them wants to buy a Gibson, lol! That passion makes them amazing artists but really poor sales people. I think the same rings true with pole. I’m very passionate about my methods which makes me a great teacher for some, I’ve had students say I’m the best they ever had, (and even more so think im off my freaking rocker) but in turn it makes me a crappy employee/contractor because I’m so pigheaded. I can be very judgmental when it comes to teaching, I gravitate towards certain kinds of instructors when I take classes and I like very specific things in teachers so even on that level I’m hard to please. So, I know that on inside of a studio I’m difficult so then I think that’s just me and the owner is having to work around just me and my stuff, I know the other instructors have their issues and quirks too so it’s kind of a management nightmare when you are building a great team, product aside. The more passionate an instructor is the more likely heads will butt and then you get 5 or 6 in a room and its explosive. The best teams seems to have specific players that are great in a particular area. One of the teams I was one had the floor/sexy girl, the dancer girl and me the trick girl. We all were good at stuff the others did incredibly well but it felt like special ops in a way, the floor girl would come to my class for tricks, I’d go to her class to polish my floor and get my sexy one and the dancer girl would help us with combos and transitions and we all just gelled because we had our thing. I’ve also seen teams of similar instructors work too, it doesn’t work for me though. By far some of the best instructors I’ve had were the ones that weren’t super artistic and crazy out there and could just teach a move, lol. Which is weird because I think I’d like crazy but I guess I want to be the insane one with ideas, I need a grounded person (unless is Choreo then the weirder the better.)
I will also say that by and large the things I’ve noticed and heard about that contribute to the demise of studios is not having the right instructors (applies to personality and skill) and generally no management and an absent owner. In many cases owners have other jobs to support the studio in the early days, and you need to because its not cheap. It’s not their fault even but it sure makes everything harder, it’s really expensive to pay someone to man phones and emails, that’s a desk job that requires minimum wage and insurance, so I get why so many people try to own a studio, work a job and have a family…I have so much respect for the hard working owners out there because help is expensive and your time is limited. Everyone is doing the best they can.
If you can run a successful studio with happy instructors that like each other and happy clients, you can literally do anything, and I know women who do. It’s amazing when it happens.
My final thought too is lack of education. Studios need to be constantly educating themselves somehow. I like teacher training right now vs cert as I did a cert and don’t really feel like renewing because its an expense that doesnt really net me new knowledge, when I’ve proven I know all the info at that level and can competently teach it. I think many pole studios live on having a great dancer/trickster/performer on staff and promote that but don’t spend enough time studying the physical aspects, the teaching, the grips, the techniques, etc. just because you taught yourself doesn’t mean you can teach it to someone else, that’s where it comes back to management and regular staff practices are very handy plus regular staff training. I don’t think you have to have a celebrity come necessarily but keeping up on pole and its growth will help provide a better product.
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Interesting topic! I would also like to add that while everything everyone brought up can most definitely contribute to a studios failure I would add that Groupon and Livingsocial and the likes do not help.
As a studio owner they are a plus for brining in new clients and “free” advertising BUT the trick after is retention. We have gained a nice core of students from the coupon experiment but it can be a very expensive, frustrating experiment. In LA there are so many studios and at any given moment you can pick up a Groupon for pole. As a consumer these sites are great – hell if I didn’t want to pay full price for a yoga class for the rest of my life I wouldn’t have to – and I can say I have been known to studio hop myself but it doesn’t help the studios any and while it’s cheaper for the students it makes it hard for them to grow at a studio.
Obviously the goal is to have the students love the studio and become regulars but it’s hard when next month there’s another coupon for 10 classes for $29.00.
Also as far as Multi level classes I think it is really possible to run them and have them be exciting for all students. The key is to make sure the environment at the studio is all inclusive – supportive and unified. classes can’t be huge and the teachers skill level is tantamount! Our Multi level classes have a nice warm up, free dance (depending on the students in class that day) pole moves/tricks & choreo work on a mini routine with the moves worked on in class. The students will work on a move progression for their skill level but everyone starts at basically the same place. So while the beginners pass might be a back hook, pole bend and floor work the more advanced student might be doing a back hook to chopper to something else. This way all the students get to dance together and it creates a strong bond for them all in class.
I think it’s also super important to offer other types of classes. Whether that’s stretching, cardo, workshops etc. Owning a studio is amazing but it is extremely hard work and not typically profitable 😄 as someone mentioned earlier – there’s no way I could do it without a full time job as well.
I would suggest speaking to your studio owners with any questions or concerns – the good ones will actually appreciate the feedback. I can honestly say one of the suggestions we got from one of our students was a HUGE help lol – I owe her big time! Feedback from students is so important so please reach out to your studios and let us know what we are doing wrong as well as right😄
We are just about to hit our 2 year mark in a couple of days – I hope we make it to 3!
-typed on my phone so please excuse any typos -
Veruca….oh my god I cannot believe it has almost been 2 years!
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Veruca- awesome point, those vouchers are great for new clients to,give it a try but it also results in students in not feeling they should ever pay full price because they can pick up cheap classes everywhere. I had a student buy a groupon to a studio and ask to be moved up to the level she’s at and even wanted me to ask the studio for her. I felt that was kind of wrong. While she hadn’t been to that studio before I worked there i know their product well and it’s an awesome place to take classes, I felt like at her experience level she shouldn’t be trying out a place just to get cheap classes. I refused to vouch for her. I felt really upset for the studio because I know this is my regular, she doesn’t plan to spend any real money with the studio…feels really wrong.
When I worked at 2 studios simultaneously I would often see the same student at both locations because of this too. They’d spend the real money on studio A and buy vouchers for studio B which is fine if you’re checking out a new place but not so much when you have no intention of paying regular prices.
I’ve had some great retention with groupons in my classes though when I used to,teach at studios, around 50 percent would stay on.
I agree multilevel,is a great way to teach but for me I like to keep total newbies in flow classes that use only basic moves and then move them into a multilevel trick focused class. It’s still tough some days for me, I have to be really careful to make sure everyone is feeling good especially with a couple of super human girls I have. I wouldn’t want my human girls to feel bad or vice versus. It’s definitely getting into a groove with everyone and making it about the love of pole and not out tricking, not letting people get overly competitive. I like smaller groups and pole sharing but I am not sure that’s marketable in my area since everyone seems to have moved to 1/pole. I like the buddy system though, my classes are much tighter because of it, they really enjoy each other more this way.
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Yup to the brand new newbie – when we have a new student sign in its time consuming but we call them to say hi and get their background so we can guide them into the appropriate class for them – then we let the instructors know ahead of time if there are new people in class and their skill level. Our classes are also coed which brings another dynamic to the situation which I will say at first I was not completely sold on lol but now I love it! We literally have had women, men, transgendered, grand moms and little people in classes! It is such a family environment – I’m proud of that
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