5. Hillary Parnell on Leadership and Expansion in the Creative Arts
EPISODE 5
Let's talk about the art of transition – moving from doing to overseeing. It's a challenge many entrepreneurs, including Julie's guest Hillary Parnell, have had to face.
Today on Figure Eight, Julie and Hillary discuss how she leveraged her dance studio space for multiple ventures, recognized the pivotal signs that it was time to upscale her business, and built the right mindset and team for success.
Catch the Conversation
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Hillary Parnell has been the owner of the Academy for the Performing Arts and Preschool for the Arts in Apex, NC for the past two decades and more recently founded two other dance adjacent companies (Dance Photo Pro and Dancers In Balance).
She has taught over 10,000 children, grown her revenue to well over 2M, and coached hundreds of small business owners. Her passion is to help the next generation of entrepreneurs create thriving businesses through leadership, mentorship and making not nearly as many mistakes as she has.
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Julie Ellis (00:00:04) - Welcome to Figure Eight, where we feature inspiring stories of women entrepreneurs who have grown their businesses to seven and eight figures revenue. If you're in the mix of growing a bigger business, these stories are for you. Join us as we explore where the tough spots are, how to overcome them, and how to prepare yourself for the next portion of the climb. I'm your host, Julie Ellis. I'm an author, entrepreneur, and a growth in leadership coach who co-founded, grew, and exited an eight figure business. This led me to exploring why some women achieve great things, and that led to my book, Big Gorgeous Goals. Let's explore the systems, processes and people that help us grow our businesses to new heights. If you're interested in growing your business, this podcast will help. Now let's get going. Hello and welcome to another episode of figure eight. I am your host, Julie Ellis, and today I have with me Hillary Parnell. Hillary is the owner of the Academy for the Performing Arts and Preschool for the Arts in Apex, North Carolina, and she has founded two other dance adjacent companies.
Julie Ellis (00:01:24) - She's taught over 10,000 children, grown her revenue to well over $2 million, and she has also coached hundreds of small business owners. She believes that she wants to make the most of the leadership mentorship that are available to her, and to help others not make nearly as many mistakes as she has. So welcome, Hillary.
Hillary Parnell (00:01:47) - Thank you so much. It's so exciting to be here.
Julie Ellis (00:01:51) - Thanks. I'm so glad to have you today. Why don't we start off with you telling me a little bit about the Academy for the Performing Arts and the preschool?
Hillary Parnell (00:02:00) - Yeah. So, um, I started the business when I was at the ripe age of 21. Uh, right. Basically right out of college, I tried to have a real job for about eight months and realized very quickly that was not for me. Um, and my I come from a fairly entrepreneurial background. My dad, my uncle, my, you know, we have a lot of people in our family that were willing to support me doing whatever I wanted to do.
Hillary Parnell (00:02:25) - Uh, and oddly enough, it was down to a cleaning company or a dance studio. That's the question was not whether. Yeah, it wasn't what, it wasn't whether I would do it. It was what I was going to do. Um, and I had grown up dancing. I am not a professional dancer. Never was, um, didn't even dance in college. And but I had grown up my whole life. It was. It felt like family. It felt like the right move. So we started when I was 21. I was a very arrogant, 20 something in those early years, and tried just to do it all myself and to figure it all out as I went and thought I knew better than all the people that I should have been listening to. And despite that, I managed to to crawl out of debt and get to a point about ten years later where we were surviving, um, and, and it was just a really long road. And now here we are, 22 years later, uh, and very profitable and, and doing great things for my staff and my people and our families.
Hillary Parnell (00:03:29) - And my mission now is to help others get there a lot faster. Um, learn from the mistakes I made and and listen to the wiser people that went before you and and really try to get them to this point. Because this point is amazing. I love this point. I wanted to be here ten years ago and I just didn't know how. So my goal now is to help others do that.
Julie Ellis (00:03:51) - That's a really great part, I think, is that give back piece, because especially when we're doing it by ourselves, it feels pretty lonely and hard.
Hillary Parnell (00:04:00) - Yes, for sure. It is very lonely. And and I think the, the problem is we don't even know where sometimes to go for, for the help. Um, and and getting that message out there is really important. Yeah.
Julie Ellis (00:04:15) - Yeah. So your business is close to my heart. I don't know if you know my university degree's in dance. And so I spent my life also in the dance studio when I was growing up. And so I think it's a fascinating business because a lot of people cannot figure out how to scale a business the way you have in your industry.
Hillary Parnell (00:04:38) - Yeah. For sure. Yeah. The the average dance studio in the world actually, because I work with Global Studios, is about 150 students with about a revenue of around 200 to 250,000 a year. Gross.
Julie Ellis (00:04:51) - Right, right. That's before you pay rent. Teachers yourself, all the things.
Hillary Parnell (00:04:57) - And most studio owners, most business owners in this and other passion based small businesses don't even, you know, do it for as a hobby, as a, as a glorified hobby, not even paying themselves or paying themselves a livable wage. So that has been a challenge for sure.
Julie Ellis (00:05:12) - Yeah. And why do you think you were able to sort of break beyond that? What was it about you that allowed you to build the business you have today?
Hillary Parnell (00:05:22) - Um, you know, at the beginning, I was that person I martyred for a long time. Um, my dad, to be honest, was was probably my driving force behind in year three. He said, you have to buy a house, and we will pay you enough to buy the house.
Hillary Parnell (00:05:41) - And and, you know, in year five, you have to get a new car. You. And it can't just be a clunker. And I thought I fought that hard. I didn't want to buy a nice car because I felt that people would resent me for it, or they would think they were paying too much or that that I, I should be doing more if I had a nice car. And the story is that I go back and think about are fascinating to me, because I lived that life that I talked to so many small business owners about. Um, and it is it is very much half of what I found business owners to be like. The other half are like, I'm going to make money if I want to be profitable from day one, I'm going to take 100% of what I can. And that's why I do this. But when you're talking about passion based industries, and especially not to be completely sexist, but a lot of women based industries, you run into that problem.
Hillary Parnell (00:06:31) - And so having my dad in my ear early on got me to a point where I knew I needed to at least make some money to to know my value, and then finding the right people, finding masterminds, finding other groups of individuals who unapologetically made money and and listening to speakers and reading books, and understanding that the only way to actually fulfill the passion and to provide the vision for my customers is through profitability. And once I made that mental mind shift years ago, it it just took off from there. Now, my mission is to provide a space for my staff that they can make money and and once I once I put that on them and realize that what I'm doing is to build a place where they have career paths and again, not something you see in the dance industry. Um, it it makes making money a good thing, not something that we should be afraid of.
Julie Ellis (00:07:29) - Yeah, so much of what people do in the dance industry is piecing together bits to make themselves a living.
Hillary Parnell (00:07:36) - Yeah, yeah.
Hillary Parnell (00:07:37) - Whatever's left over at the end of the month, I'll take, um, you know, not not feeling comfortable marking up things that come through your, your business, um, you know, believing that, you know, your self-worth and what you're providing isn't valuable. And in the end of the day, it is more valuable than than so much that our parents pay for. We're providing life skills. We're providing a home. We're providing, um, you know, a safe place for kids. And. We're where their mentors were. I'm sure you have people that you remember from growing up that that you'll never forget that taught you how to be you. That's worth so much more, you know?
Julie Ellis (00:08:13) - Yeah, yeah. And I think, I mean, for me, as a kid, the dance studio was more home than probably almost anywhere else in my life. Right.
Hillary Parnell (00:08:21) - Exactly.
Julie Ellis (00:08:21) - The friends I had there, the teachers, the community that we had that was so open and accepting and it was sort of, um, like, uh, if you worked hard, you moved up and you advanced.
Julie Ellis (00:08:34) - And so there was a great work ethic. I think that comes out of having dance training as a kid and having that kind of community.
Hillary Parnell (00:08:42) - Absolutely, yeah. Work ethic, perseverance, dedication, discipline. I mean, the list goes on. Self-confidence, being able to be on stage, you know, and in front of people is is a huge life skill that that you get from dance. So, um, we just need to know our value.
Julie Ellis (00:08:57) - Yeah. And I think it teaches you about sort of the value of failure as well, because nobody can do anything the first time around. Right. So, so you're, you know, you're working to perfect, you know, a trick or a move or a class or you know, something. And and it's a progressive journey. So, you know, I think you learn a lot about what it takes to actually be successful.
Hillary Parnell (00:09:22) - Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Yeah.
Julie Ellis (00:09:25) - Yeah. So I'm interested in, you know, how you what what were the resistance points that you met as you grew the business.
Hillary Parnell (00:09:35) - Yes. They're still coming. They're they're they I don't think they ever end. Um, you know, most of of the resistance was that initial phase, which I'm sure every small business owner goes through of removing yourself from the day to day. You know, you you start obviously working on, on the business instead of in the business. But there is a hefty transition period when once you make that decision to actually being able to accomplish it. And I would say that took a good 3 to 5 years of dedicated initiative of how can this be the last time I do this and how can I pass it to somebody else? Um, and I say that a lot in, in my kind of deliberate training of staff and bringing people into the fold. So that took it a long time. I also, right around that time had four kids in five years. So I was pregnant. I was trying to, you know, hold it all together. I had my kids and in the office and pack and place, you know, just just adding another layer to the complexity of being a small business owner, especially, again, a woman.
Hillary Parnell (00:10:43) - Um, and, and so that was the first big move. Once we, once we, I was able to make that mindset shift and really start pulling myself out of teaching. I was teaching six days a week, you know, and so basically running two full time jobs, trying to run the business during the day, somehow feed children in the mix of it and teach all night. Um, and so pulling myself out of the day to day with step one, uh, that transition happened. And then there was probably another 5 or 6 years of kind of just leaning into getting systems in place and making sure that that not only was I not doing them, but I wasn't initiating them. I wasn't making sure they were happening. Somebody else was taking ownership of these processes and systems, um, and empowering my team to really step up and, and not expect me to be the one taking the phone calls from the parents or putting out all the fires, or again, initiating things that that was the a big transition is like the calendar should not be my mine to run. You know your job, now do it.
Julie Ellis (00:11:49) - And what was it like? What was it like letting go, though, of, you know, teaching? I mean, people often start businesses. Yours was a little different maybe in the origin, but people start often because they like teaching and they don't want to leave the studio or they don't want to give up. You know, whatever reason it is, they started their business. They don't want to give it up.
Hillary Parnell (00:12:07) - Sure.
Julie Ellis (00:12:07) - Um, was it hard for you?
Hillary Parnell (00:12:09) - It was, um, somewhat probably less so than others I've worked with. Um, I, I do love to teach. I've come to realize I'm a teacher at heart in my soul, which is why I continue to do what I do. Um, but where most people have the issue is less about the passion I have found, and it's more about the ego. And and believing that someone else can actually do this as well, if not better than me. Whatever it is. Graphic design.
Hillary Parnell (00:12:41) - You know, running a program, being the manager, it doesn't matter what your industry is. Um, most entrepreneurs have a big ego, and we believe that we do it better than anybody else. Um, and I actually do this exercise when I'm doing what I'm speaking and working with a large group. I'll ask one of the the members in the audience, you know, what's something that you feel like you and only you can do in your business? And for whatever reason, in our industry, a lot of it comes down to like scheduling. Like only I can build the fall schedule or the recital lineup or whatever it is, it doesn't even matter. Um, and it's because of all the nuances that you've learned over time and the experiences that you've gained that help you know how to do that intuitively in your brain. And then I'll say, okay, who else in this room of 200, 300 people thinks they're the only one who can create the schedule in their business? And 300 hands go up.
Hillary Parnell (00:13:34) - It's like, well, if all 300 of you are good at this, does it not stand a reason that somebody else in your business, it can also be good at this. And then it's like, oh. Maybe I don't have to be the one making the fall schedule, and that would free up two weeks of my life, you know? So really just helping people understand that. And I, um, I did not have as big of an ego because I knew I wasn't the best at it. I'm great with little kids. I am a good teacher. I'm good at classroom management, but I'm not the best dancer. I'm not creating the best advanced contemporary pieces. So finding people who could do it better than me wasn't that hard. Um, and I was able to fire myself pretty quickly from that, so. Got out of that.
Julie Ellis (00:14:19) - And thankfully yes.
Hillary Parnell (00:14:20) - Yes, yes, it was great to be able to not work 14 hour days anymore.
Julie Ellis (00:14:25) - Absolutely. Because that's not a sustainable pace for you and for small children. Like that is definitely a recipe for burnout.
Hillary Parnell (00:14:33) - Um, for sure.
Julie Ellis (00:14:35) - Yeah, yeah. And so what is it like now?
Hillary Parnell (00:14:39) - So now, um, my my current schedule to start is I work every day. I do come to work. I love my studio. I love the energy here more so than my house. My house. I would get so distracted. I'm not good there. So I have an office. It's small. Um, and I come here every day from about 745 after I dropped my kids off at school until three, and I work on all kinds of things. Um, I meet with my upper level staff members once, so some of them once a week, some of them once a month, depending on what their role is. Um, I do a lot of coaching calls. I coach for the Dance Studio Owners Association, which is a global network of studios. So I do that as like a on a contract basis. Um, and I work on my other ventures, my other online businesses, things like that.
Hillary Parnell (00:15:26) - And then at 3:00 I pick my kids up from school, and I'm a mom now until I drive them to all of their places for many hours in the car. And then I, I'm in bed by nine. It's it's a beautiful life. I love it so much.
Julie Ellis (00:15:41) - So that's awesome. Um, and I think what's also interesting is the sort of dance adjacent companies that you've founded, as you've looked at revenue and ways to expand revenue within what you're doing.
Hillary Parnell (00:15:55) - Yes, yes.
Julie Ellis (00:15:56) - What can you tell me about those?
Hillary Parnell (00:15:58) - Well, part of it, you know, it's twofold. Part of it comes from the fact, like I said, that there is somewhat of a limit to the revenue a dance studio can make. Um, where it's a low ticket sale. It luckily, it's, it's, uh, recurring revenue, uh, the way it is, you know, the way it's modeled. But but our business, our building is only so big there is a cap there. Um, so one of the the ways I attack that was starting more businesses and, uh, we'll get into what those are in a second.
Hillary Parnell (00:16:28) - But the other reason, um, is that I was bored. I'm, I'm, I'm an entrepreneur. You know, my I'm, like, almost all other small business owners, fairly squirrel brained. And I'm on the go 24/7. So as I continue to pull out of the business, my kids started getting older. I'm not changing diapers anymore. I'm my kids are all in school and I'm not doing anything at the studio during the day. Um, and that, I mean, not entirely true, but I had some time, so, um, to fill my creative bucket and to keep going and to also fulfill the revenue piece. Um, we started two different. It was three at one point. I dropped one of them. It wasn't getting the traction I wanted. Um, but two other online dance adjacent businesses, very different. They're just all over the place because that's how my brain works. Um, one is a it's called Dancers and Balance, and this stems from a program that I built within the studio that I wanted to share with other studios in the world.
Hillary Parnell (00:17:31) - Um, and it's basically a journaling and growth mindset. Workshop type, uh, program that I, we implement in our studio with all of our dancers every week. So the the kids who are less serious just had there's a word and their little cards and we talk about different life skills and things like that. Um, my more competitive kids who are here almost every day of the week, have a weekly journaling session where we cover everything from, you know, self-esteem, like I said, growth mindset, um, emotional, you know, mental health things, uh, relationship building, leadership skills. We practice talking on a microphone, like, literally it's just covering all those other things, um, that kids need. And so I package that, wrote a book, put a program together, and we sell that to other dance studios around the world. And then the other one is a, um, an online course that teaches dance studios how to bring the class photography that they have to outsource every year in-house and manage and keep all of that revenue themselves.
Hillary Parnell (00:18:32) - So, um, you'd be surprised there was a huge market for this. Most dance studios have horrible experiences with their photographers and no, no slides of photographers. I just think they don't know what to do with us. Um, it's.
Julie Ellis (00:18:46) - A very specialized area of photography.
Hillary Parnell (00:18:48) - And it's it's different from regular school photography. It's even different from soccer photography, you know? So I started doing it after my own frustration 12 or 13 years ago. And when I would tell people that we just did it ourselves. If you like how you you need to tell us how to do this. And so I started helping a few friends and it grew from there. And now we're, um, looking at scaling that pretty big going into this year and actually also branching out to the photographers to with a different course to teach them how to help dance studios. So kind of growing that one as well.
Julie Ellis (00:19:21) - Yeah, that's really exciting. I think it's really interesting too, because like you said, the building has only so many hours.
Julie Ellis (00:19:29) - It can be used in the after school period as well as, you know, the number of heads you can put into classes and those kinds of things. So that revenue diversification is important.
Hillary Parnell (00:19:40) - Exactly. Yeah. And even within the studio, I mean, that's where the photography started. You know, that's another huge revenue stream that happens 2 or 3 times a year. Now that we can add to the the bottom line. Um, speaking of hours, our daytime hours, we filled with an academic preschool, um, to, to capitalize on what we already have. And so even at that, even at all of the different creative ways that I will do everything I can to bring money into this building, there's still a limit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Julie Ellis (00:20:08) - For sure. Um, and when did the preschool start? How long did it take before you decided that that would be a great alternate use?
Hillary Parnell (00:20:16) - Um, selfishly, it started when I needed a preschool for my kids.
Julie Ellis (00:20:22) - Uh, the best way businesses are started.
Julie Ellis (00:20:24) - Yep.
Hillary Parnell (00:20:24) - Yep. What do you need, exactly? And I know that as well. It's it's like what? What would make my life easier and and when they were my first two are very close together. They're only 15 months apart. And they were, you know, when they were infants. We after trying my the packing plan in my office for a while and that not being very successful, we converted a room here like a closet basically into what we call tot lot. And all the teachers paid in to a shared nanny and we had like a daycare actually at first, and then they got old enough to go to a preschool and we didn't. I had two other teachers that had kids around the same age, and we didn't really have anything local that we loved as far as options and, um, price point. So we said, let's start our own. And it it just grew from there. And now my youngest is eight. He's been out of the preschool for years. And every year they're like, are you going to keep doing this? Like, yes, yes I am.
Hillary Parnell (00:21:17) - It's quite profitable. We will keep doing this. It makes.
Julie Ellis (00:21:19) - Business sense. I will keep doing it. Yeah.
Hillary Parnell (00:21:22) - So there have been a few. There have been quite a few things over the years that that selfishly, I started, we started a theater program because one of my kids wanted to do drama classes. Like, sure, we could do that.
Julie Ellis (00:21:32) - Yep, yep. And it fits well with all the other training that you're delivering. Yeah.
Hillary Parnell (00:21:36) - Exactly. Yeah.
Julie Ellis (00:21:37) - So yeah. So tell me a little bit about, um, how you know when you need to level up. I mean, we talked about it being, you know, related to an unmanageable schedule. That's certainly one way, but but what are the other ways that you have sort of known that things needed to change?
Hillary Parnell (00:21:57) - Sure. Um, for me, it I don't know if it's intuitive necessarily. I'm sure there's some intuition involved. Um, but I can feel things breaking. When, when when things are running smooth.
Hillary Parnell (00:22:13) - It's there's a lull. There's a peace. There's there's a calm about the day to day. Um, now, because I know that our systems are solid, I know that I have the right people in place. We can we can sit in some comfort zone for a while. When we were at the beginning and growing and building systems, everything felt broken all the time. But I knew then that was my fault. The systems weren't in place. We knew we needed to fix things as they existed, and now I know that we're good at that. So when something stops working, it's like, hmm, okay, are we maxing out that software? Is the system we have for. You know, recital check in. Not going to work anymore because we have too many kids. Is the are the phones not being answered because my people are good now? I've gotten good there because we need to hire someone else, you know, and as as more and more of those start to kind of join the conversation, then we say, okay, what's the real issue here? Let's work backwards.
Hillary Parnell (00:23:16) - What what is at the root of this problem? And at this point it's coming down to software and people. And the fact that sitting at at around. 2 million. We were still right in that sweet spot of what I would consider small business, where we're using, like, the free versions of things, and we're testing, you know, where we're able to to watch the videos on the software to understand how to use it at 3 million, at a thousand students, at extra businesses. We now need the custom training. We now need the corporate level of that software. We know and and in some cases we're not quite there yet. But like we have to we just have to do it. Yeah. And, uh, I mean, even things like benefits and health insurance, like we've never up until very recently never even had to consider that that wasn't. Me on the table for my industry, for our the way our people worked. But now I have more full time employees. I have I have tons of full time employees that don't that aren't married.
Hillary Parnell (00:24:21) - And again, my industry is unique. Most of my staff are women and they're married and they have health care. Um, but now that's on the table. That's something I have to provide and that's that's unique for my industry. So now learning and doing research and networking and figuring out how to make that work is my job full time now. You know, I'm not teaching dance classes. I'm learning about health benefits.
Julie Ellis (00:24:45) - Who would have thunk it?
Hillary Parnell (00:24:46) - You know. Yeah. Totally different.
Julie Ellis (00:24:49) - Yeah. Yes. Well, and you had mentioned to me when we chatted before about paying for software that you thought, like, you know, a year ago you would have said never going to do it, right.
Hillary Parnell (00:25:00) - Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Even even as recently as today, I find myself finally at a point where I'm understanding that I can't do this myself. And that's that's, I think, where growth will be my next phase, where we're going to start even financially looking at capital, investors, looking, stepping up, looking at franchising, looking at buying new property, those kind of things, um, for me are evident of a next growth phase.
Hillary Parnell (00:25:31) - And I could stop. We don't have to do that. I could live like this. No, you.
Julie Ellis (00:25:35) - Could sit with what you've got for sure, and you've got a great business.
Hillary Parnell (00:25:39) - Yeah. And I really I like where we are, but I know my youngest, like I said, is eight and and I count, I count the, the minutes we have on earth like. And I know by the time he is graduating high school, I'm going to be bored out of my mind if this is what I'm still doing. And so then it'll be too late. So, you know, how can I start leveraging my time that I have now to get to where I want to be so that, you know, I'm I've got my time filled then.
Julie Ellis (00:26:05) - Yeah. And I think that's interesting because you're showing that sort of duality of recognizing that for the business. You have you've got systems, stability, repetition, like all the things you need that have scaled it to where it is right now, but that you need something, but you're not going to come over here and play in the soup and, and mess with what you've kind of got going on, which is working well.
Hillary Parnell (00:26:35) - Exactly. Exactly. It could. It could definitely mess things up. Um, I love where we've built the business. Um, I love what I'm able to offer. Like I said, my team, my staff, and and they are my latest round of students. The way I look at it, like in two weeks where I'm hosting a goal setting and planning retreat for my staff, you know, getting to to live in that space where I am truly in the mentor role is so refreshing. And, um, let them do the management now because because I'll say managing is probably my least favorite part of entrepreneurship. So the sooner I can get out of managing, right, the better.
Julie Ellis (00:27:13) - Well, and I think in some ways that's pretty common. The managing piece is not what people sign up for when they imagine starting a business and having a dream.
Hillary Parnell (00:27:25) - Right. I've heard you say that before. You know that. Yeah, that that we we don't realize that it's going to get to that point where you're not going to get to do the thing you love forever.
Hillary Parnell (00:27:32) - You have to manage other people doing the thing you love, which is almost kind of painful to watch, especially when we pull that ego piece back into it and think, you could be doing it better. So learning how to train people to do it as good or better than you, and then stepping out of that role as quickly as possible, really is kind of, and.
Julie Ellis (00:27:50) - Learning how to find something else that will let you up. That you can go and follow the thread of without sort of tipping over what you've done already.
Hillary Parnell (00:28:02) - Yes, yes. Finding time to reflect and and all of that, which again felt so woowoo to me when I was younger and in the thick of things. It's like I do not have time to reflect or meditate or, you know, think about my year and make a word of intention and all of that. Like that is so against my common or like my core personality. But now I'm all about it. We're making words. We're we're doing exercises. We're we're into that professional development and and really understanding you taking the personality tests and the risk assessments and and understanding how we work, what motivates us.
Hillary Parnell (00:28:40) - Um, love languages. Anything I can get my hands on that helps me understand people and understand what motivates them and and keeps me on a path of enthusiasm and excitement for the next thing, and not getting kind of stuck in the the rut.
Julie Ellis (00:28:53) - Yeah. So what's 2024 about for you then?
Hillary Parnell (00:28:58) - So 2024 is about personal financial growth and freedom. Um. Up until now, it has been very much business focused. Uh, the. I'm very happy, like I said, kind of before I take that next jump in business growth. And if we were, like I said, to do the franchising and the growth and all that, that's a 2025 mission. Um will be acquiring the space next door to us in 2025 to grow our physical space. So the focus and energy will be there for sure. So 2024 is about personal wealth. Um, and we have meetings I took on a new financial planner, a new, um, tax attorney, and a new, um, estate planner. So our getting our lives organized, our wills, our trusts, um, our C Corp established tax, you know, just just getting everything organized, which has been long overdue.
Hillary Parnell (00:30:00) - Um, but also not really, because it's not we weren't sitting in wealth in my when I was in my 30s. So now now it's time to get organized.
Julie Ellis (00:30:09) - But it was time to level up.
Hillary Parnell (00:30:11) - Yep. Exactly. So that's that's the plan for 2024 is to just get really organized personally. Um, and then so I can, I can have the clear head to, to get back into the business in 2025 and see what that, that takes us. Um, like I said, the other business, the online Dance Photo Pro, is what that one's called. Um, that one we're also scaling this year, but that it's so, it's so, so much easier than the dance studio. Um, brick and mortar is a whole different beast. Um, there's just no no comparison. Even though. Yes, understanding funnels and webinars is complicated. It's nothing compared to managing 55 people working in a building. Nothing. So that will do.
Julie Ellis (00:30:59) - It's a lot of managing.
Hillary Parnell (00:31:01) - Yeah, a lot of managing, you know.
Hillary Parnell (00:31:04) - You know, meeting the guy, the locksmith to fix the door. There's just so many more things that you don't think about it. There are some days like this was not in my job description. How did we get here? You know. Um, and that's that's part of the fun for sure, too. But, um, one day, that's what it was the other day. I came in in the morning and our cleaning person had had the flu. And so, you know, we asked we distributed their work over a bunch of different people. But at some point in that process, the vacuum stopped working. But the message didn't get back to anybody because the cleaning person who was consistently there was not there. So at 730 in the morning, I was on my hands and knees picking dust bunnies and little hairballs off the floor in the lobby. I was like, how did we get here? How, how? I never would have thought that this is what I would be doing, you know, 22 years into business.
Hillary Parnell (00:31:55) - But it's not perfect. You know, best laid plans. And I feel very confident that we do a great job. But there is a unique piece of running a small business brick and mortar that you still are in, you know. Yep.
Julie Ellis (00:32:10) - Yep. And so yeah, it feels like this year you're in an exploration phase.
Hillary Parnell (00:32:15) - Mm. For sure. Research. Yeah. Yeah. Learning education. Um, filling in those gaps. I was fortunate enough. Like I said, my dad was in my ear growing up, but he was also such a good dad that he did too much for me. Um, I've learned a lot of lessons and parenting, and that my my boys now come to those. My two older boys will come to those financial planning meetings. Um, because I knew nothing. I knew nothing about insurance. I knew nothing about investing. I knew nothing about real estate. Um. It taxes? Nothing. My dad always just helped and did them for me. I'm the oldest girl, three daughters, and you know, he took care of us.
Hillary Parnell (00:32:54) - But it's just like, now I feel like I'm starting over at 45. I'm learning what I should have learned. 25. Um, so I'm. I have the time and the bandwidth now to do that. And so that's, that's the focus. And to pass that awareness and knowledge onto my kids is the goal.
Julie Ellis (00:33:10) - That's amazing. That is amazing. Good. And so this year, what is the next big thing that you feel like you're going to tackle for the business?
Hillary Parnell (00:33:25) - So, um, in the growth that we'll see in 2025, physically we will, you know, obviously incurring additional expenses, we'll have a build out cost. We'll have, um, increased rent, mortgage. We own the business in a different own the building and a different LLC. So rent slash mortgage, whatever you want to call it. Um. It will be diversifying again, finding programs, growing programs so that when we move, we can absorb that additional expense. So we're we're growing that theater program I mentioned so that we will have a little in-house black box theater in the new space.
Hillary Parnell (00:33:59) - Um, and, and really just getting excited about decorating a new lobby because we'll be changing everything to the new space. So, um, a little bit of fun built in there, but then just kind of grinding out growth and more students and honing the marketing department, which you know, is, is again, a a piece that small business owners that start a passion business tend to forget that businesses are driven by sales and marketing. Um, and if I could go back and realize that that probably should have been the first person I hired 22 years ago would be in a very different place.
Julie Ellis (00:34:36) - Um, that's an interesting observation, too, right? Yeah. Back to those, uh, hard learnings that you now want to share with other people.
Hillary Parnell (00:34:46) - Yes, yes.
Julie Ellis (00:34:47) - Sales, marketing, sales, marketing.
Hillary Parnell (00:34:49) - It's it's the backbones of a business. But for some reason, 90% of the dance studios I talk to, you don't have someone doing that. They the people do. Just come. Some people come to us organically and and we think if we do a good enough job, that will be good enough.
Hillary Parnell (00:35:05) - And it's not, you know, um, and making that shift and having a dedicated department to that was, was one of the huge crossroads of growth for us. Is it was just a night and day, you know, right.
Julie Ellis (00:35:19) - In terms of, yeah, just having people coming through the door.
Hillary Parnell (00:35:22) - Right, right. And, and mostly in our, in small business industries, we're so focused on the people who leave because it's so personal. You know, you have dancers and one quits to play soccer like it's a it's a painful thing. It's a hurt. Um, it's a gut wrenching experience for some reason. And and again, over time, realizing that flip in mindset of like, we are still a commodity. We are something that some people will love. Some people will not find your ideal customer. Um, and even with your ideal customer, you're one of a million things kids can do after school. Like, you know, we can do the best job in the world, but there is still a hefty attrition rate with those kind of things, and it's not reasonable to expect every three year old to dance until there's 17 like so.
Hillary Parnell (00:36:09) - Once you can get rid of that mindset and realize that we are like everything else, we need to just get people in the door marketing, marketing, marketing, sales, sales, sales, and then. You know, keep filling the bucket. We'll be fine.
Julie Ellis (00:36:21) - Yeah. And, you know, you can do the job once they're in your doors, correct?
Hillary Parnell (00:36:25) - Yeah. Have confidence.
Julie Ellis (00:36:26) - And so if they choose to go out, it's not about you.
Hillary Parnell (00:36:28) - Right. To an extent. Yeah.
Julie Ellis (00:36:30) - Yeah. Yeah. To an extent. Sometimes it won't be the right fit but. Right.
Hillary Parnell (00:36:34) - Yeah. And and that that mindset shift is has been huge too. And then what's funny again with the with the management piece of it is once you make that mindset, you've got to sell that mindset to your whole team. Uh, and that's, that's the part that's a little bit exhausting. I think when it comes to management, it's not just the millennials who won't show up to work. Um, it's the it's everything else.
Hillary Parnell (00:36:56) - It's getting people to buy into your, your ideas and your inspirations and not overwhelming them and not passing down your overwhelm. And, um, um.
Julie Ellis (00:37:06) - Yeah, at some point you shift from where you're very small and you work your problems through with the team around you to where you have a conscious feeling of, I need to work this stuff out before I go to them.
Hillary Parnell (00:37:20) - Yes.
Julie Ellis (00:37:21) - There's some point where you, there's like a shift from that sort of like more small founding kind of team to where people are actually, you know, looking to you. As for expertise and like, you know, what you're doing. Yeah. And even though you may not, you may.
Hillary Parnell (00:37:35) - Not, but I do think even the ability to start having that shift is, comes with your own confidence. You know, um, you've got to do it for a few years. You have to make the mistakes yourself. You have to fail yourself up first to be able to say, no, I did that. I've been there.
Hillary Parnell (00:37:52) - This is what will happen. I am confident in this decision. Um, and I know starting mine so young was that was it took ten years just to get to a point where my staff were younger than me. For the most part, and that was a huge challenge at the beginning to have people working for me that had much more experience that that did know better, um, and to expect them to listen to me. So, um, now, now, now I'm like the old lady around here. Um. It's great.
Julie Ellis (00:38:25) - Uh, well, and I do think it's interesting because as much as you maybe let your dad do things you wish you had learned along the way, I think that you had somebody you trusted who did, gave you good advice and did the right things. Um, and that's also incredibly important, like just thinking about, you know, the structure you refer to around owning the building in a different company and, you know, some of the things that are important to get into place and that often seem we know they're important, but we don't want to have to deal with them.
Hillary Parnell (00:38:56) - Sure. Oh my gosh. Yes. All of that is is hard. And and I think the the reason can be, you know, twofold why people don't learn or do the right things. I mean, one, like you said, we just don't know any better. We don't know where to get that information. And I'm finding that still true to this day. You know, they say surround yourself with with people who are already at the level you want to be, but they're not knocking on your door, you.
Julie Ellis (00:39:23) - Know, and and so how do you find them?
Hillary Parnell (00:39:25) - Right. Finding them and asking the right questions. And then once you get in front of them, you know, making sure that they see you as a valuable counterpart to because. They're also trying to level up. Right. And so so I found that's been been difficult especially you know, I'm an introvert. I'm not I don't love networking. That's that's not my wheelhouse. So that's been for sure a difficult piece of this puzzle.
Hillary Parnell (00:39:48) - But then you know, back then just being overwhelmed with the day to day and the busyness, you do things as quick and as easy as you can because you just don't have the time to do the research and the education and to learn. Um, and so that's why it didn't even occur to me to fight back with my father for all those years, because, like, he was taking care of it and getting it done. Great. You know, enjoy. Um, even to the point where he was doing my bookkeeping for so long. And it wasn't until I finally realized that some things were questionable that I needed to to step in and learn that. And that took three years. Three years to learn how to do my bookkeeping. Um, that I couldn't have done in those first few years. Anyway, I was, I was it was just too much.
Julie Ellis (00:40:31) - So things we never thought we would have to learn in life.
Hillary Parnell (00:40:35) - Right. And things they don't teach you, even if you have a dance degree.
Hillary Parnell (00:40:37) - I'm sure you didn't learn bookkeeping in your dance degree, you know? Um, so I wish there was a way to help shift that conversation, uh, make people realize really what truly is important. But same thing. I was actually went to school. I have a biology and chemistry degree. I was going to be a dentist. Um, and I know for a fact that they don't teach you how to how to own a dental practice in dentistry school. You know, you learn how to be a dentist. And and I think that that shift for sure needs to happen. I know it I don't see it happening anytime soon.
Julie Ellis (00:41:12) - No, but it is interesting, I think, across businesses to find those universal pieces. Right. Like figuring out how to sell your product and market yourself is always going to be important, no matter what business that you're in. Figuring out how to scale, how to delegate systems, processes, it's all the same.
Hillary Parnell (00:41:30) - It is, it is it's fascinating how similar it is.
Hillary Parnell (00:41:34) - Um, no matter what what we're doing. My sister is in recruiting. She works for a huge recruiting firm. She places C-level, C-suite level employees, makes millions of dollars a year, and she has the same problems I have, you know, and we we joke about it. It's like, maybe I should have sold something more expensive.
Julie Ellis (00:41:57) - Now, I think it is fascinating, though, um, just to to see a window into what it's like with what you're doing. And in dance and dance education and preschool education, um, and, and thinking about what your big, gorgeous goals are for the future and where you're headed and, and and to talk today about how we can all try and do it a little bit more gracefully.
Hillary Parnell (00:42:21) - Um, yes, for sure. I think, um, part of that is, is that reflection piece taking stock, remembering where you were. Um, it's hard coaching with the studios that I work with because they're at every point in the past.
Hillary Parnell (00:42:37) - But as long as I stay grounded in in those mistakes that I made and remembering what it felt like to be there, it's it's so easy to help them because I, I genuinely feel the pain that they went through. Um, I think it's easy once you've found success and found your way out of that kind of darkness, to forget what you went through. Um, you're having a little, little amnesia about it, but I definitely try to stay grounded in the process.
Julie Ellis (00:43:07) - That's great. It's I think that's great advice is, is to have a great process around. Look back, look forward, look where you look down at your feet and look at where you're at right now. It is really easy to forget how far you've come.
Hillary Parnell (00:43:22) - Yeah. You know, we celebrate wins a lot. That's something I learned through. One of the masterminds that I'm a part of is, you know, we start every meeting with what went well. What? What's going well? What what are you grateful for? You know, remembering all the things that are good because we're about to get into all the problems, you know, we'll we'll hash out the issues all day long.
Hillary Parnell (00:43:40) - But let's not forget what's going really, really well and how we got here. So that's.
Julie Ellis (00:43:43) - Great. Good. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I've really enjoyed this conversation and I'm very excited to see what your explorations of 2024 lead to for you in the future.
Hillary Parnell (00:43:58) - Well, thank you so much. I'll. I'll be following your journey as well. I love it, and I love the conversations that you have. So I'm honored to have been here.
Julie Ellis (00:44:05) - Oh, thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please remember to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast. So you won't miss any episodes. Figure eight isn't just a podcast. It's a way of seeing the big, gorgeous goals of women entrepreneurs coming to life. If you're interested in learning more, you can find my book, Big Gorgeous Goals on Amazon anywhere you might live. For more about my growth and leadership training programs, visit www.julieellis.ca to see how we might work together. Read my blog or sign up to get your free diagnostic.
Julie Ellis (00:44:48) - Are you ready for growth? Once again. That's julieellis.ca. When we work together, we all win. See you again soon for another episode of Figure Eight.