Lessons learned when trusted colleagues become rivals

By Eliza Randolph

What’s worse than losing a student to a rival studio? How about when a student or teacher from your studio not only leaves but starts a studio of her own? Already a challenging business, studio ownership can turn into an emotional rollercoaster when clashes arise between you and your employees, students, or students’ parents, and a split is the result. Three studio owners who survived such challenges talk about lessons learned and how they coped when trusted teachers or longtime students (sometimes both) suddenly transformed into rivals.

Lesson 1: Build trust through communication
“I didn’t see it coming,” Emily Thompson says of the decision by two teachers at her Ohio studio to leave and start their own school. “About three weeks after the recital I got a letter of resignation from them. And two weeks after that I found out they were opening their own dance studio.”

Thompson says she was friendly with both teachers, but the year before they left was a busy one and she hadn’t been able to chat with them much, except in passing at the studio. By recital time, she noticed that these two teachers were irritated by what seemed to Thompson to be minor problems, such as an incorrect costume order or the placement of a particular work in the recital program. Still, she says, she was stunned when they resigned and she learned of their plans to open another studio nearby: “I knew I didn’t feel as close with them at that time, but I wasn’t expecting that at all.”

The following year of dealing with her new competition was “a strain,” she says. “I haven’t spoken to them about it. But this summer the library program in our community set up a situation where all three of the dance studios in town were in the same place, performing for several libraries around the county. And it was awkward. I looked around the room and I saw that most of the girls there had taken dance at one time or another at my studio, and it was awkward.”

Thompson now sees measures that might ward off a repetition of her trauma. She has always had new teachers sign no-compete contracts, for example, but she hasn’t always renewed them each year.

That’s going to change, she says. “I would definitely keep up the no-compete contracts from year to year, and try to have more conversations with the faculty,” she says. “The year before everybody left, I didn’t have any faculty meetings. I did have them the year previous, and they always felt really negative, like [the teachers] were angry about things I was bringing up. Maybe they weren’t—maybe I was just too afraid of everything I was doing. I felt like they were annoyed or thought I was controlling them too much. And I didn’t like feeling that way, so I backed off.”

But Thompson acknowledges the importance of clear communication—regarding compensation, for example—and general expectations of employees and owner. “Stand up for yourself” as an owner, she says. “And at the same time I want the faculty members to feel like they can be creative and that they’re recognized as good teachers. It’s finding that balance between trust and not letting people walk all over you.”

The challenges of the last couple of years have shaken Thompson. “I’ve been considering doing something different, but I’m not ready to give up on dance,” she says. “With support from some friends and my husband, I just keep going on.”

Lesson Two: Separate business from personal
Chris Grau, who runs a studio in Pennsylvania, had her heart broken by two students she had taught for years, who left and opened their own studio within 10 minutes of hers. “I had had them since they were babies,” she says. “It was really devastating. It’s one thing to have a teacher who’s taught for you awhile take kids [away to a new studio]; I know that happens a lot. But I think it’s a different feeling to have kids [do it], whom you’ve put your entire life into during all these years.”

“The most difficult thing is [that] I’ve been in that business for over 28 years . . . but they didn’t want one bit of help from me. I would have helped them whole-heartedly. I love those kids and I wanted the best for them.” —Anonymous former school owner

Grau had been gradually teaching these two to teach. “As they got older, first they started helping me with classes, which happens in a lot of studios.” Then she began giving them classes to teach, and, as time went on, more responsibility. But, she says, “they did want me to give them more responsibility than I did.” She says she told them, “ ‘Not yet, because I have a lot of really good teachers here that I pay a lot of money to.’ So they were getting annoyed about that.”

Apparently that annoyance built up until the two novice teachers felt they had to go off on their own. Unfortunately, Grau says, they took many of her upper-level students with them. She was hit hard by this betrayal, in her business and in her heart. “I cannot let myself get attached to anybody like that again,” she says. “I have to be careful. I’ve got to separate the business from the kids. And it’s not that I don’t care about them—that’s hard for me. I don’t know if I can do it, but it’s something I have to work on.”

In the aftermath, Grau has regrouped and refocused her energy. She asked advice of friends and other studio owners. “And,” she says, “the gist of what everybody said was, ‘You need to build up your preschool program and little kids’ programs, your recreational programs, and not worry about your competition kids; they don’t really bring you that much money.’ ”

She’s on the road to recovery from the split, she says, but she’s not there yet. “I can’t say that I’m devastated, money-wise, but I’m not doing great,” says Grau. “I’m holding my own. I am working very hard to do a lot of things in the community—parades and county fairs. Wherever I can get my name out to anything in the community, that’s what I’m trying to do. And I’m trying really hard not to put my entire self into my competition team anymore. I need to put as much energy into the rest of my school.”

Lesson Three: Take the high road (or, give in gracefully)
A third studio owner, when confronted by a teacher and student who wanted to buy the studio from her or else start their own, gave in. “Because I had been in business for 28 years,” she says, “I was kind of ready to hand over the reins to somebody else.” She did feel, though, that the two had forced her hand. “A letter accompanied the meeting we had that said [owning the studio] had been my time for a long time, and now it was their time to strike out on their own and have their own studio,” says this former owner, who wishes to remain anonymous. “Or I could sell it to them. So they had definitely gone behind my back for at least a couple of months, planning what they were going to do.”

Nonetheless, she sold the business, and she even returned the next year to teach for the new owners. “My daughter still dances there,” she says. The decision to sell was made “probably more for [my daughter] than anybody else, because she was so close with her class that she’d danced with since she was tiny. And that was a huge deciding factor. And a huge deciding factor for the studio, because the whole studio is incredibly close, especially the competition group. And to think of them having to choose—I just couldn’t do that to them. They were too important to me. And the friendships that I’d forged. It would have torn that whole community apart.”

But it wasn’t easy to shift gears. “The most difficult thing is,” she says, “I’ve been in that business for over 28 years with an incredibly successful studio with over 400 students, but they didn’t want one bit of help from me. I would have helped them whole-heartedly. I love those kids and I wanted the best for them.” Instead, she has had to watch the new owners learn as they go, hoping that once they’ve established themselves they’ll feel free to draw on her experience.

The transition has been bittersweet, but she doesn’t regret her choice. “I’m loving retirement too. I can be with my kids and be able to do stuff.” But when running a studio is such a huge part of your life, making that transition can be tough. “It was a hard year,” she says. “Very hard. But I think knowing the circumstances and the outcome of what has happened, and how close the children in the studio are and how happy my daughter is, I wouldn’t have made another choice.”