{"id":1666,"date":"2014-03-05T11:55:38","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T12:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fullrenovations.com\/?p=1666"},"modified":"2025-04-08T15:36:44","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T15:36:44","slug":"everythings-okay-until-it-isnt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fullrenovations.com\/index.php\/2014\/03\/05\/everythings-okay-until-it-isnt-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything\u2019s Okay! Until it Isn\u2019t."},"content":{"rendered":"

Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Just don\u2019t let it ruin your business.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

By Paul Henderson.<\/span><\/p>\n

A hush came over the audience seated in the quaint 600-seat theater near Union\u00a0Square in San Francisco. The lights dimmed and the house music faded. Behind the curtain in the wings, Tiffany Henderson, her highly skilled faculty and members of Arizona-based dance company, Con Danza anxiously listened for their cue to begin the performance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tiffany Henderson, the founder of Bay Area Dance Company as well as the owner of \u00a0<\/a>Twinkle Star Dance\"\u2122\"<\/a> and eight Tiffany\u2019s Dance Academy<\/a> locations had prepared for months to make this performance to benefit The Lone Survivor Foundation a reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

I, with my trusty Nikon D4 on a tripod, stood in the audience behind the back row (as usual) and prepared to shoot the action photos of the event. The curtain opened, the audience erupted in applause, lights go, sound go. The dancers, including Tiffany, spilled beautifully onto the stage from the wings. 30 seconds later. POP! Tiffany, puzzled, looked around her at the floor, thinking that something had either fallen off of her costume or from overhead. She didn\u2019t see anything, but soon realized as she tried to jump that her right leg was no longer functioning properly. The \u201cpop\u201d was her plantaris muscle (calf) tearing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere wasn\u2019t a lot of pain when it happened,\u201d she said afterwards, but \u201cI couldn\u2019t do anything. My leg just flopped there\u201d as she hopped desperately toward the wings. Cesar, who was also in the piece, made his way to Tiffany who lay crumpled and crying on the floor in the wings. The music played on. The dancers on stage continued. He carried her backstage and hastily set her in a chair and continued his performance.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the piece was over, I ran from my camera to the backstage area and tried to find Tiffany, who is also my wife of 15 years. I had already surmised, based on what I saw through the viewfinder of my camera that she had torn something in her leg. When I saw Cesar massaging her calf, I knew she was done for the night…and maybe for a while. The performance and all the work to make this night a possibility was over for her (as a performer) in the first thirty seconds of the first piece.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t over. A mixture of 100 professional dancers, Tiffany\u2019s Dance Academy faculty and even a few of the school\u2019s performing company dancers still had 20 numbers to perform. Backstage was chaos. Administrators, lighting techs, sound techs, stagehands, dressing room attendants and dancers crammed themselves into the tiny area where Tiffany sat in a chair; her leg propped up on a stool.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"Dance<\/p>\n

Tiffany sadly limps off stage to the shock of the other dancers and audience at Dance for a Difference 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tiffany watched her show from the wings with an aching lower leg. Amazingly, she wasn\u2019t overwhelmed at the thought of how to now run her eight Tiffany\u2019s Dance Academy locations while on crutches, even though she still had 15 numbers to choreograph for her competitive dancers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ask yourself this. What would you do if you suddenly couldn\u2019t walk and couldn\u2019t teach your classes?<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why the inability for Tiffany to walk for a month has not affected the \u201cbusiness\u201d of Tiffany\u2019s Dance Academy and how, if you own a studio, you can prepare yourself for the inevitable \u201csurprises\u201d that occur.<\/span><\/p>\n

Faculty <\/b>\u2013 For over 14 years Tiffany has focused on building a team of dance educators who are passionate about their art and their work. This has not been easy and it\u2019s only been the last four years or so that the team has melded into a real faculty. The faculty absorbed Tiffany\u2019s classes. What makes them a team? Most of them are full time. They have health and dental insurance through the company. They don\u2019t need to work another job to pay their bills. They have a 401k-retirement plan. They respect Tiffany and her goals and they work hard to make it happen. They love their dancers. It\u2019s important to note that Tiffany has a vision of the correct way to run her studio and teach dance. She hires people who agree with her vision so she doesn\u2019t have to battle someone else\u2019s vision. She always tells dance studio owners and instructors the following. \u201cFigure out who you are, what and how you want to teach and don\u2019t waiver from that course. Don\u2019t let parents of dancers and less experienced faculty tell you how to run your studio.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Diversity of revenue <\/b>\u2013 Most studio owners find it uncomfortable, even uncouth to talk about revenue sources and profit. Without a diverse and predictable revenue stream, disasters like a torn plantaris muscle will spiral into business failure. Remember, Tiffany had to give away 15 classes in January<\/b>. Not to mention that the choreography was not completed for each of them. This means that not only will Tiffany not be teaching those classes for a few months; she will need to pay somebody to teach them and also pay them for choreography. Had she not built up a reserve of cash, this would have been impossible.<\/span>
\n So, how did she do it? What are her other sources of revenue besides tuition?<\/span><\/p>\n

They are the following and they make up over 38% of her studio\u2019s total revenue.<\/span>
\n \u2022 Recital costume profits<\/span>
\n \u2022 Dress Code dancewear, shoe and accessory profits<\/a>*<\/span>
\n \u2022 Recital DVD sales<\/span>
\n \u2022 Recital and Event Action Photo sales<\/span>
\n \u2022 Recital concession sales<\/span>
\n \u2022 Logowear<\/span>
\n \u2022 Solos, Duos, Trios \u2013 one could argue that this is tuition, but if it\u2019s done correctly it can dramatically increase revenue and instructor loyalty and happiness<\/span>
\n \u2022 Tiered ticket pricing at recitals \u2013 $12, $19 and $25 reserved seating. (The $25 seats always sell out first.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Tiffany\u2019s expertise is in the classroom teaching dancers (and her teachers). Everything that is not \u201cclassroom\u201d related distracts her from her core area of expertise. She has made it a point to outsource as much of the non-teaching tasks as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

*Tiffany doesn\u2019t know how (nor does she have the desire) to operate a retail boutique. She does; however, need the revenue from her customer’s costume and dancewear purchases to help smooth out her cash flow. She outsourced recital costuming and dress codes sales to Storefront Fundraising by CostumeManager.com<\/span><\/a>. The system has given her, on average, $100 net profit per dancer per season, while eliminating most of the work associated with these tasks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since she is not an expert at selling tickets to events, she outsourced ticketing to an online service (Etix) that sells reserved or general seating tickets to patrons online.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other areas to consider outsourcing:<\/span>
\n \u2022 bookkeeping<\/span>
\n \u2022 human resources department<\/span>
\n \u2022 janitorial company<\/span>
\n \u2022 handyman on retainer to keep the studios in tip-top shape<\/span>
\n \u2022 music editing<\/span>
\n \u2022 videographer who shoots all of her events<\/span>
\n \u2022 Photography – action and class photos<\/span>
\n \u2022 marketing to handle graphic art, social media, Constant Contact emails, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

By offloading everything that is not her core area of expertise she freed herself\u00a0to focus on what she is really good at – teaching dance and teaching teachers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Update: it\u2019s been 6 weeks since the injury and Tiffany was finally able to put on a tennis shoe last week. Physical therapy is going well and she hopes to be fully recovered by September.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"Storefront<\/a><\/p>\n

Click on the image above for more information and to get started.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Photo (top):\u00a0\u00a9\u00a0Uros Zunic\u00a0| Dreamstime.com<\/span><\/p>\n

The post Everything\u2019s Okay! Until it Isn\u2019t.<\/a> appeared first on Dance Informa Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Just don\u2019t let it ruin your business. By Paul Henderson. A hush came over the audience seated in the quaint 600-seat theater near Union\u00a0Square in San Francisco. The lights dimmed and the house… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fullrenovations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fullrenovations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fullrenovations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fullrenovations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fullrenovations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1666"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.fullrenovations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1671,"href":"http:\/\/www.fullrenovations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666\/revisions\/1671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fullrenovations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fullrenovations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fullrenovations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fullrenovations.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}