If my family WINS, does the studio have to LOSE?
Every year at this time I talk to studio owners who experience what I have come to call the “Win-Lose” cycle of studio ownership. It goes something like this:
As a studio owner, you work really hard to get costumes ordered before Christmas break, produce a great round of holiday shows, make sure all of your staff are shown appreciation before they leave and clean up all messages before signing off for some much needed time with your own family over the holidays. You put an autoresponder on your email and leave for a couple of weeks of to reconnect with your loved ones who were beginning to wonder if you still lived at the same address.
Feeling rejuvenated by the time away you return to the office with a sense of optimism only to find yourself feeling “punished” for the time you spent away with family because the amount of catch up work facing you after the holidays is simply OVERWHELMING. If it’s not email and voice mail, it’s schedule changes, sub requests, costume exchanges, equipment breaks, year end tax paperwork and resetting choreography for competition. And, resetting choreography for competition. (I think I said that already, but it happens so often it’s worth saying twice:). And, this list does not even include the normal workload you carry to keep things going.
It’s easy to become discouraged after a holiday break and ask the question, “If my family WINS, does the have to studio LOSE?”
Please hear me loud and clear on this one. That answer is “No! The studio does NOT have to lose if you take time for family. It just has to WAIT.”
In fact, a dance studio is one of the ONLY businesses where you can close for two weeks and come back to the same business that you left. Think about it. If you closed the doors on a restaurant for two weeks all of the food would go bad. If you owned a flower shop and left for two weeks, the stock would die. If you owned a retail shop, and had no sales for two weeks you couldn’t meet payroll. But, if you leave your studio for a couple of weeks over the holidays, you will most likely come back to the same faculty, same enrollment, and same facility that you left fourteen days prior. The to-do list may be a bit longer when you get back, but the actual business itself is most likely just patiently waiting for you to return.
Although there are many challenges to balancing a dance studio and a family (think late nights, weekends, travel for competitions and dinner time email interruptions), owning a dance studio is set up to honor family life in other ways. For starters, the dance calendar follows the school calendar–closed for major holidays and slow in the summer to give families and teachers time for rest and relaxation. You may work evenings, but that makes you free during the day to chaperone field trips, volunteer at your child’s school, have lunch with your significant other or pursue your own hobbies and interests if you like. You may have to be gone for a number of weekends for events, community performances, recitals and competitions, but you get to control the hours you work during the week.
So, as you face the transition from your break back to the break-neck speed of being back at the studio, I encourage you to set aside the to-do list and make a “to-love list”.
Remember, your studio doesn’t lose when you take time off.
It just has to wait.