We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lindsay Brown. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lindsay below.
Lindsay, appreciate you joining us today. Taking care of customers isn’t just good business – it is often one of the main reasons folks went into business in the first place. So, we’d love to get a conversation going around how to best help clients feel appreciated – maybe you can share something you’ve done or seen someone do that’s been really effective at helping a customer feel valued?
At Esteem, we consider our customers to be family. We want the students to come to dance, tumbling or fitness and feel welcomed and loved. And that goes for the parents as well. To create that sense of community, we strive to give our customers a personal experience with little acts of extra kindness to show we care. For example, we’ve handed out little gifts throughout the year to all of our students, to remind them we’re here for them, and that Esteem is about community over competition.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
As the Owner/Director of Esteem, Dance, Fitness & Tumbling, and a Dance Instructor and Fitness Coach, I wear many hats, which I LOVE. I started dancing at the age of 3 and haven’t stopped since. When I was in middle school, I announced to my parents that someday, I was going to own a Dance Studio. I danced on dance teams in both high school and college, as well as taught dance at the studio I grew up attending. Once I graduated college, I was ready to make that dream a reality. I knew I wanted to build a studio that was built on fun and character development. Where kids could come and become amazing dancers, but also, amazing people. In 2009 we opened our first location in Eden Prairie, and in 2018, our second in Plymouth. Once our dance program was established, we started a tumbling program as well. Soon after, we opened a gym, to offer fitness classes and training for both children and adults. The combination of offering these three areas of dance/tumbling/fitness, sets us apart from others, as we can help students in all three areas. After all these years, my favorite thing is still saying hi to each student who walks through the door and seeing their smiles and excitement as they head to class. Yes, that means I know 600 names and counting, and that’s exactly what I’ve always wanted!
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
While our customers are so important to us, our staff is everything! We like to constantly encourage, support and keep the lines of communication open with our employees. If there is something that they need, so they can do their best job, we listen and give them those tools. We also like to have FUN. That means team building activities, staff parties, or just gifting them a cup of coffee, to show them that we value them. We would be nothing without our high-energy, positive and dedicated team members.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
The most effective strategy for growing our clientele, is continuing to support our loyal customers and word of mouth. Because of our dedication to all students, they in turn our dedicated to our business, and let others know of our programs. While social media, public performances and supporting other local businesses, help to get our name out there to a broad audience, its really the personal reviews that our clients share with others that continues to help our clientele grow.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://esteemstudios.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danceesteem/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Danceesteem/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanceEsteem
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeudNbd1s3rRfRgGWOUoTzQ/featured
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/dance-esteem-plymouth-4