LaVoz Podcast

In this podcast episode, the host interviews a small business entrepreneur, Jaylene Nicole, who owns a dance studio. They discuss the challenges and changes brought about by COVID-19 and how Jaylene and her team adapted to the situation. They emphasize the importance of aligning goals with employees, defining tactics for teaching and marketing, connecting the team with the organization's bigger picture, and creating an ongoing communication plan. Jaylene's staff, mostly millennials and Gen Z, were able to adapt easily due to their familiarity with technology. Regular performance reviews were conducted to keep everyone up to date. Welcome to our podcast, Season 1, recording on June 23, 2024. In this podcast, we will emphasize the power of using your voice to create a vibrant and positive work culture amid continuous change. Today, we will interview a small business entrepreneur that has overcome challenges and adversity in the prior and post-COVID era. Jaylene Nicole will discuss alternatives and the importance of hearing the voice, la voz, of our diverse teams. Discussing diversity, creativity, challenges, and continuous change is an inspirational way to help other small businesses and owners understand the power they possess as well as the influence they have over their teams. If the teams feel valued, heard, and acknowledged, their performance will be reflective of teamwork and as a unison approach towards success. We will address concepts used in this specific organization that consist of areas that are in constant development. We will start with number one, aligning goals. Number two, defining tactics. Three, connecting your team with the bigger picture for the organization. Four, discuss performance. Five, create or develop an ongoing communication plan. Six, schedule regular performance reviews. And finally, analyze the performance process. There is compelling research on a positive work environment. It is also a reflection of profitability in the workplace. This will also include what it means to set expectations and allow an open communication being the key to the success of the performance plan. The Gallup research notes the key to feeling more energized at work is consistency. Consistency will create fairness in the workplace. The research states they will also develop others with the level of structure and fairness they are putting in place for themselves. Additionally, we have to agree that change is a constant. But the reality of consistency will be assisted by starting with something as simple as a to-do list. We must also keep in mind that we must be fair with all the team members. Some might call it consistency, yet others might call it structured environment. Nonetheless, we must allow room for adjustment. Jaylene Nicole, welcome to our program. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. So much to talk about, Jaylene. In today's podcast, we'll discuss all the options that you put together and all the different methods of helping your actual business grow. I know you own a dance studio, and it's been a very successful ballroom dance studio. Yeah, we've had the dance studio for a few years now, and everything shifted whenever it came to COVID. And seeing the way that all small businesses have evolved since then has been incredible to see the way that things have just changed. Everyone's had to adjust. Working with our employees has changed as well, and it's just something that I feel like is very important to go ahead and talk about. Definitely. I think that you've pivoted, right? I remember when COVID was around and I met you, and you just totally changed the platform of a dance studio because you started going live and doing live sessions, as opposed to just at your studio where people had to go to your studio. Now you were doing stuff on YouTube. It just kind of opened up the world for us. It really did, and I think COVID really changed the way that everybody perceives the way that businesses can be ran. Not only me, I was working alongside my employees and kind of asked them their point of view and how they would think. If they were a dance student, how would they want to continue dancing through COVID? And so really talking to them about different strategies to take when it came to the business was really important. With COVID, yeah, we started doing live. We started doing YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, all the social media things, and just being able to align all of that together was pretty neat to see the way that things have changed. Even outside of the dance studio, all businesses going remote and kind of seeing the way that things have changed and working from home, I think it's really important to talk to the employees and see their needs and being able to align the goals of the employee, the goals of the organization, all together really to benefit even in such a tragic time or something as intense as COVID was. Aligning your goals, I think that was the key factor as we spoke prior to this recording. You aligned your goals with your actual staff members. Am I correct? That's how you approached it? You kind of met with them via Zoom back in the day and more so than now? Yeah, when Zoom was a thing, I didn't even know what Zoom was until COVID happened. Then that's when we met on there. Like you said, aligning the goals with the employees, and that was a huge help because I wanted to see their point of view. If they were the consumer, if they were the customer, how would they want and see beneficial, the way to do the dance classes and to not stop. Not only that, I also reached out to the students and the parents and all of the members of the studio and just really got a look into what they were thinking. Seeing all those goals, I think us as business owners can easily think about our personal goals for the studio or business and only track towards that. But I feel like it is very important to be able to align as well with the goal of the consumer because that's really what is going to help push us forward. Absolutely, and I think that comes to play to the point of defining tactics. You had to define where we were headed in such a trying time, such as COVID. Then post-COVID, I believe, it's just kind of helped everyone get on the same page or align and defining your tactics. When you say defining tactics, as we discussed earlier, are you talking about just actual social media tactics or were you talking about how you were teaching? Tell me a little bit about defining tactics. I think it's a little bit of everything that you mentioned, as well as a few other factors. I think defining the tactics of the business was, yes, the social media marketing. Social media really took over more than ever when it came to COVID, as well as the way that we were teaching, the way that we were doing Zoom, the way that we were doing YouTube, things like that, pre-recording lessons. Other tactics, as well as just community outreach. How are we going to keep the people engaged whenever it came to keeping on the dance classes, even with something like COVID? Then also post-COVID, when everything we've cleared up and we started dancing again in person and everything like that, it was just seeing the way that things have evolved and changed. Before in ballroom lessons, if you don't know, you have a bunch of partners, partnerships that come in and dance together. A lot of times, you'll switch and you'll rotate the partners. That's what's good about social dancing. For a few years, even after COVID, we just stopped switching around and stopped rotating because we didn't want to expose people to that many. Ballroom is a contact sport. Being able to define the tactic and change that of staying with your partner, something as simple as that, or something to the magnitude of making sure that we promote on social media to an extra extent that we weren't doing before. Beautiful. That takes us to the point of connecting your team with the bigger picture for the organization. It sounds to me like everyone on your team, your staff, we're all truly committed to the bigger picture, understanding that the organization itself is going to go through some major changes. That's key. I think that's so in any business. We all have to connect the team. I have a philosophy that you're only as good as your team is, which is kind of interesting. How would you discuss the performance? How did your staff actually acclimate to the change? How versatile were they? Did they come back to wanting maybe more of that or missing the traditional way of teaching ballroom and the way you ran your studio back then versus now? I think what's interesting is my staff is filled with a lot of Gen Z and millennials. Using technology and social media actually was even more enticing to continue on with the business as opposed to the old school, I guess is the way that you can call it, ballroom studio where you just come and do your lesson and leave. Now you're able to come in, do your lesson, have a pre-recording of it, continue going over it. What's amazing is my team has been able to actually work with and contact people from all over the world, all over the country in teaching. I had a few students who actually contacted us from Puerto Rico when COVID was happening. I've kept contact with them and I've kept doing the lessons with them via Zoom. I've never met them in person, but some people really just enjoy that aspect of dancing that we can actually do online. My team was great in coming in. Obviously, we all missed being back in the studio. We all missed teaching our lessons in person and just human interaction, but very easy to acclimate into what happened. Easy enough because we were all in the age where technology is the norm, but it was tough still on the morale of dancing because dancing is such a connection. Sport is not just about dancing. It's about the energy that you're giving and that's such a large aspect of it. Perfect. That's wonderful. I know that in our notes, we talked about creating or developing an ongoing communication plan. It seems to me that that's exactly what you've created through this. To your point, I think it's very important that in the different businesses, we realize that the millennials, the Gen Z consumer and or business owner definitely can acclimate a lot faster to this social media. That's really, really key. Do you schedule regular performance reviews with your staff to keep them up to date? Perhaps they enjoy this old or the new way of teaching so much more. Do you review that with them periodically? That's my understanding that you have a tight knit on how you review it so often. Tell us about how you handle the review process. Yeah, for sure. We definitely do, at minimum, quarterly reviews. Every three months, we come together and evaluate the past three months of the studio, how their classes have been going, how the lessons have been going, how the influx or lack thereof of students. We go over every three months what we can do better, what we've done well in each quarter. Even then, we'll go over it sometimes even every six weeks. We have a lot of programs that are six weeks long. We have a lot of students that come in just for specific needs, and that might not be as long as three months. So whenever there's like the start and an end to a specific program, we meet and see what we did well, what we can improve upon, and what we might be able to adjust and change for the next time just to make it even bigger and better. That's wonderful because that's exactly what number seven, our last point is. It's about analyzing the performance process, right? So that's part of like figuring out what you could do better, where you would improve, or where things are just flowing. I think that's important, right, that we can continue that performance process. It's so key. I think one thing we've touched on here is communication. You've achieved your communication skills with your staff, your students that are, in essence, your clients. It's been instrumental. The research, you stated that creating a positive work environment, I think because you're the owner of a dance studio, right? When you dance, you create endorphins. So there's already a good positive work environment. But I think part of it is a reflection of the profit. It also has a reflection of the profitability in your workplace. As we were making notes, you indicated that your profitability margin has also gone up because people are so happy that now they have options. They don't have to be at the studio. They can do this via your teaching platforms. So it's also increased the profitability of your workplace, and the environment seems to be charged with positivity. Do you do that through positive reinforcement and other techniques? Yes. Positive reinforcement is a huge aspect as to why we keep, you know, I like to say that we have good vibes only in the studio. And just keeping the positivity high, the morale up. We have a sign that says, can't is a bad word. You can't say that word. And just being able to kind of boost the way that the students think of themselves, the way that the teachers are able to portray good energy to their students as well. That's why my staff, I really push positivity and keeping an uplifting environment. And like you said, they have the option now to not have to come into the studio. And they have the option to dance with people that they never thought they would dance with before. So being able to have those connections now that weren't available five, six years ago is also something that I think people are still getting used to, even though it's been a few years. It's definitely an adjustment period, but everybody's taken to it and kind of taken in and ran with it. And that's what's so amazing to see. So one of the key factors we've discussed throughout our pre-interview for this podcast is consistency. A lot of people call it consistency. Some people like the word structured. I personally don't like the word structured, but I do like the word consistency. It creates fairness in the workplace. What's your take on consistency? Do you feel that that has been one of your, as we called it, your secret sauce for the success? You shared with me earlier today that you actually tripled the income of the studio post-COVID because everyone loved the fact that you were consistent during that time frame and it kind of carried over. And it was kind of the secret sauce. You kind of realized that was what you needed to get over the hump and stay there. Yeah, because consistency really is key. When people say that, it's no joke. People get onto a good roll, and when people are warmed up, it's similar to when you're working out. If you warm up and you get ready, the second that you start moving, you just want to keep going. When you stop and you get cold, that's when it's hard to pick back up. So consistency is huge, not only for, obviously, it's very profitable, which is amazing, and that's a plus on the side. But really, consistency is great even just for the mind because it keeps you going and it keeps you moving. And you never want to stop working. I don't think that anybody should ever stop learning. And consistency and to continue to push yourself and to do things that you never thought you would do before is something that is really great just for the mental, for the psyche, and physically, spiritually, all different types of ways. So consistency, not only for the business, was it profitable, but I also think it's profitable for the everyday person's well-being. It's funny because you mentioned that you like consistency in the mind, body, and soul, and that kind of stuck with me a little bit because I realized that there's nothing further from the truth. Consistency definitely seems to be a great ingredient for success. Jalene, Nicole, I want to thank you for the opportunity to interview you. I have learned so much about a young entrepreneur like yourself. You're very inspirational, and I want to thank you, and I look forward to meeting you. Thank you for the invite to go over to your studio and actually see it displayed right before my eyes. And I'm just grateful to meet entrepreneurs like you, small businesses that are thriving, and I look forward to our next meeting. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you for joining us today in this podcast. We will continue our study of consistency and developing successful businesses in our next podcast.