Believe in Your Voice

Dance studio owners struggle with the idea of holding firm to their vision when it feels other people are judging them. They often don’t believe in their voice and stand tall and proud in their decisions for their studio. We have to really believe so strongly in our own vision, our voice, and what we bring to this world that we don't falter when we have people who question it and try to cross our boundaries.

Have you ever felt like you had to veer from your mission or your vision to either please your clients or that you needed to do something different because that's what everybody else in your community was doing? Maybe you felt like you needed a competitive team because all the other studios were doing it and you had one or two students who left to go to another studio. 

If you go ahead and change these types of things, the changes are made from scarcity and out of lack. They are not from a place of abundance and growth. When we make those decisions and we veer from our mission, we're actually making things worse for ourselves in that moment, because we're not in alignment with who we want to be. 

When we stand and we believe in our own voice, we believe in our values and our vision of what we want to stand for, what type of community we're building, and what type of experience we want for our clients and for us. If we can stand firm in these values and our mission, we will keep the right people. The ones who don't align with us will leave - and that’s supposed to happen! We don't want to keep people in our circle who don't want to be there and who don't love what we're doing. 

This goes for our personal lives too, by the way. Does your family support you and your business or put it down however they can? Do they say like: oh, you get to go play with kids all day, isn't that great? If the people in your circle aren't in alignment with you and aren’t rising and lifting you up, they need to be kicked out of the circle because they're only bringing you down. right? My client, Michele, shared that she had the family’s trust in her judgment on how she ran her business for so many years. The reason is that Michelle was firm in her beliefs and firm in her vision. She created a culture that supported her in her studio. 

Believing in your voice means knowing who you are, who you want to be, and the impact you want to make for yourself, your family, and your community.

Homework: Write down your top five values as a business and as a person. 

Once you are clear with those values and who you are and how you want to show up, it becomes clear and easy to convey that message to your community to help you attract the right people. It also makes decision-making super easy because when you have a problem or a situation that comes to you and you're thinking about how should I address this, the first question you ask yourself is does it align with my values? If the answer is no, it doesn't align with your values, then you know what to do. And on the flip side, if it does align with your values, then you know, you're making the right or the best decision possible, 

Chinese Proverb: The tongue can paint what the eyes can't see. 

Words matter and so that's why it's so important for us to be so strong in our values, conveying those with our staff, everybody living and breathing our culture so that everyone is singing the same song and speaking basically the same words and we're painting a picture. 

It all starts with knowing who you are and how you're showing up and believing in your voice.