I am 23 years old and I am looking to open my own dance studio. I have 15 years dance experience and came to the realization that having my own studio is simply the next chapter in my life. I am an active learner and understand the very basics of opening a studio. I have scoped out some available space but the financial side of the business (probably the most important!) is what I would like some help on. Any books that you recommend, please send them my way! Any helpful inside tips would be excellent. I appreciate your assistance.

Finances are not the hardest. Read: "How to handle difficult parents" by Suzanne Capek Tingley.

It's great that you have 15 years of dance experience. But how about teaching experience? To start as a beginning SO is hard, but when you are also a beginner in teaching..... You'll be dead and buried within 6 months.

If you've followed this board for any length of time you'll know this is my soap box... write a business plan! A good one. They take a long time to finish - at least 3 months. Then find business people to proof it for you. If you're near any large city in the US you can go to SCORE - they are affiliated with the small business administration, made up of retired business pro's who will educate you for FREE! In my opinion, sitting down and writing a good plan is the only way to really educate yourself about the industry and it forces you to really understand the business you want to open - there is no substitute for that.

For your plan, you must know the facts about your area, you need the demographics and you need to know how many other dance studios there are and how they are doing. Census.gov will give you your area demographics and zapdata.com will give you industry reports on dance studio sales near you. These are crucial pieces of information since you have to know if you can even be profitable before going any further.

Read Guerrilla Financing by Jay Conrad Levinson - very useful book on raising start-up funds. Buy it used on Amazon for less than $8

Be prepared to do a lot of research before you open otherwise you wont know what you need to stay profitable.

I also agree with lidwina - dancing and teaching are very different things - if you have no teaching experience you need to get some before opening a studio. There are also tons of certification programs from major dance organizations and because you are young any of those would be a benefit to you. A 'stamp of approval' from a large dance organization will go a long way towards convincing parents you are qualified enough for them to spend money on your teaching.

Business classes are also a great help. Any local college or even the small business administration near you will have classes - take them, because in the end an studio is a business and it doesn't matter how good a dancer or teacher you are if you cant pay the bills.

good luck!

Have you tryed volenteering in your area at high school or ymca to meet potential students? Any students you can find before you open your doors give you an idea where to advertise to. If you can find a free space to teach in for a while to get started like a lions club or gym, you will have some customers to open with.

Please please PLEASE remember that owning a studio is owning a BUSINESS!!! This isn't you doing your hobby and you just happen to get money for it. This is running a full fledged business. What makes that even harder is that all of your customers will use your business to fulfill their hobbies. Not many people take their hobbies TOO seriously, it's something fun that you get to do when you have extra time and money. Therefore they tend not to take the business extremely seriously, like they would the electric company.

If you have no idea how to run a business, or handle business things (ie anything that is not teaching dance and even that has its own business issues), then you need to go take business classes and accounting classes, marketing, web design, etc.

I think every one of us probably didn't realize when we started our schools just how involved you are in every aspect of every single thing. I had the opportunity to manage a couple of studios before opening mine, but I was never 100% fully involved. Since I've opened my own school, I've learned how to get a business license, get an EIN, etc. Things I never had to do before because I wasn't the owner.

Also, although I went into this with my eyes wide open, I didn't realize I'd have to be good at so many many different things. The latest thing? Learning to write HTML code for my newsletter. My husband who does that kind of thing and my website has a full time job during the day and doesn't really want to come home and sit in front of the computer even more at night. So if I wanted to get this newsletter done, I had to google away and ended up successfully writing the code for it all. First time I've ever done that.

You also have to constantly work on improving your business. This is something I work on every day because I'm new and need to get my name out there as much as possible.

Please remember, opening a studio is opening a business. If you want to teach, go work for someone else.