Show Notes
👉🏼 Thought about selling your studio more than once? Book a Strategy Call with my team and we'll find what's actually keeping you stuck.
👉🏼 Or start with the tools we use to run our team without us:
Team Handbook Builder GPT and our Vision Book Template.
Most studio owners who tell me they want to sell don't actually want out of the business. They want out of the job they've built for themselves inside it.
Maree has run her dance studio in Sydney for 24 years. It's doing seven figures, she has staff who've been with her for 20 years, and around 10,000 kids have come through her doors. And every 12 months, like clockwork, she'd hit the wall and start thinking about selling.
Just 6 months ago she was working minimum 50-hour weeks on three hours sleep a night, but now? It runs without her.
Here's the bit that got me. Her team could already run the place without her. The day she realised it, she was standing in her own studio on a Saturday sharpening pencils, because there was nothing left for her to do.
The problem was never the team, the leads or the strategy. It was who she thought she had to be.
Today Sophie and I sit down with Maree to unpack the identity shift that ended her burnout, and the leadership shift that finally let her team step up.
You'll learn:
- Why a holiday never fixes burnout, and what actually does
- The one question Maree now asks her managers that stops her rescuing them (without letting standards slip)
- Why your team is not your family, and what the best teams in the world run on instead
- What happened when she stopped posting for her competitors (they ended up sharing her content)
- Why telling a parent "we're not the right studio for you" made her team respect her more.
Chapters:
00:00:00 Seven figures in, and bored out of her mind
00:01:00 Why she wanted to sell every 12 months
00:02:51 50-hour weeks on three hours sleep
00:04:09 A team that had been there 20 years, and she wouldn't let them work
00:08:39 She didn't hate the studio. She hated the role.
00:13:05 What business is she actually in?
00:18:42 Ten years of marketing to her competitors
00:20:12 The post her competitors reposted 257 times
00:27:16 Telling a parent "we're not the right studio for you"
00:35:14 What she believed about her team when she was burning out
00:41:01 Your team is not your family
00:48:16 The one question that stops you rescuing your team
00:57:55 What she'd build if the studio ran without her for 30 days
01:00:32 We call her studio manager live on air
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Team Handbook Builder GPT
- Vision Book Template
If you liked this episode, go and listen to From Burnt Out to Booked Out: How Indi Took Back Control of Her Studio. It's another Academy owner who was running herself into the ground and took the business back.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Watch on YouTube.
Six months after Maree hit rock bottom, her studio manager of nine years told us live on the podcast that the team now WANTS feedback and HAS the tools to lead. That's the shift. Book a Strategy Call with my team and let's build yours.
You can follow along Maree’s journey here - Follow Maree on Instagram
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More from Geronimo Unfiltered
👉🏼 Everyone's telling you the market's flat, and your numbers are starting to agree with them. If your studio isn't growing anywhere near 20 percent (our Academy average) and you can't work out why, my team will help you find what's holding you back: Book a Strategy Call.
👉🏼Can't explain why someone should pick your studio over the one next door? Start with Britt's five-question brand framework: Grab Britt's Framework
👉🏼Build your own Vision book with the exact tool we use. Grab it here: Vision Book Template
There are 5 parts to a conversation that turn a trial into a member. Grab your 5 Part Conversation Framework here: The Convertible Conversation
If you're already busting your ass on retention and you're still getting blindsided every time someone cancels, grab the churn checklist workbook we mention in this episode and work through it against your own member base. And if you'd rather just get on the phone and figure out your churn with us directly, book a discovery call, no fluff.