Dance Principals United: Dance Studio Growth & Marketing Podcast · Amanda Barr & Rebecca Liu-Brennan: Dance Studio Coaches & Growth Experts

From School Halls to 480+ Student Growth: Maree's Dance Studio Glow-Up

·31 min·2 clips

Marie turns up to 50 students and finds the school hall has no floor.

1. Dance Principals United: Dance Studio Growth & Marketing Podcast features Marie from Dancing with Marie discussing studio growth, leadership, and staff systems. 2. Amanda Barr and Rebecca Lou Brennan host Marie, who matters here because she runs a dance studio that grew from school halls to a purpose-built space. 3. The episode asks how Marie went from a disorganised side-business to a studio owner with 480 students and a stronger leadership model. 4. Marie says she started 23 years ago, began with about 120 students, and was running three school halls before COVID. 5. She describes the pre-2020 business as a "shit show" where she was not making money, was not paying herself, and relied on her husband’s wage. 6. School halls gave her relief from school-holiday rent and COVID lease pressure, but they also restricted acro, timetable options, and equipment movement. 7. Marie says she had to drive acro mats in and out every week and could only offer acro on one day because of the hall setup. 8. A 2022 hall renovation crisis became the turning point when about 50 children were due to start classes and the hall had no floor. 9. She says the principal forgot to tell her about the renovation, sent her to the coles area, and left her charging families in a heat-filled concrete space. 10. After crying to Louie, she decided it was time to find her own studio space, which she had already wanted for a long time. 11. Marie says she is also a qualified school teacher with a degree on scholarship, but dance gave her a different kind of reward. 12. She says COVID pushed her to take the business seriously because she wanted holidays, a nice car, and "the nice things in life". 13. Amanda first found her through a Facebook ad for a three-day training course on enrolling students, before the coaching relationship expanded. 14. Marie says she joined staff training, then later transitioned from Amanda’s earlier support into Studio Growth Club. 15. She says her current numbers are 480 students, about 1,500 class placements, and a class average of 2.9 students. 16. Marie says her own studio has been open for three years and allowed her to run holiday hangouts and week-long musical camps to keep growing. 17. The tone is casual, personal, and practical, with swearing, joking about vodka sodas, and plenty of back-and-forth between the hosts. 18. The format is an interview with frequent interruptions, shared examples, and detailed operational talk about staff training, concert days, and culture. 19. Studio owners scaling from school halls to leased space. 20. Listeners wanting performance-art specifics may skip the business-heavy sections.

As heard by us

Growth gets real when a studio moves into its own space and systems have to catch up.

Marie's move into her own studio gives the piece its strongest arc, especially as it moves from signing the lease to the practical pressure of rent, school holidays, holiday hangouts, and week-long musical camps.

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Why you'd press play

If you're still running out of school halls, this is your sign to think bigger.

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