Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Elizabeth Blakemore. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Elizabeth , appreciate you joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?
When I started Forefront Arts it was just me. I taught all of the theatre classes, directed all the shows, answered all the emails, did all the behind-the-scenes planning, etc. In the first few years I added some part-time contractors teaching some of the classes or helping with the technical theatre aspects for the shows but for the most part I was still overseeing everything. I have a very supportive spouse and at the time he worked an opposite schedule and we juggled our lives to both follow our callings. But as our family grew and the company grew I couldn’t achieve my vision for Forefront and also achieve my vision for my marriage and our family without making some changes. The most important decision I’ve made that has impacted Forefront’s growth was finding like-minded people to steer the ship with me. Adding other people to our team that love our students & their families, have a passion for arts education, and are willing to step into the organized chaos of running a mobile performing arts program has made all the difference in Forefront’s growth. It is a pleasure and an honor to work alongside my team members every day. I love seeing them take ownership of their individual departments (dance, voice, improv, in-school programming, etc) and bring new ideas & new energy to the table. We have an awesome staff meeting every week where we share any challenges we’re facing in our specific classes and others can chime in with viewpoints & support. Having multiple leaders on our team — each overseeing separate locations or programs — has made a better work/life balance for all of us, and helped us rebound from our covid losses pretty dramatically, I’ve learned a lot about what to look for in the hiring process, and definitely made some hiring mistakes over the years with some folks that were just not the right fit for our company & culture, but I have a rock star team now and we’re excited for the coming year as we add some more folks to our team and more families to our studio.
Elizabeth , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I own Forefront Arts, which is a mobile children’s theatre and performing arts studio. We are the premiere boutique performing arts studio and theatre program for ages 3-18 in the metro-Atlanta area with locations from Marietta to Gwinnett, Buckhead to Alpharetta, and everywhere in between. I founded Forefront Arts in 2010 and we now serve over 1000 students each year in our various programs. During the school year we offer performing arts classes (acting, musical theatre, dance, preschool drama, etc), performance troupes (Tap Troupe, Comedy Troupe, Show Choir, and more), a competition team, full-scale theatrical productions for performers ages 5-18 (our students are currently rehearsing “Mary Poppins” which will perform in April), private lessons in acting, voice, and dance, and in-school programs that bring drama productions, choirs, dance teams, and other arts opportunities into elementary and middle schools, as well as homeschool groups, all over Atlanta. In the summer we run week-long camps that all culminate in a show on Friday afternoon — some of our 2023 camp shows are inspired by Matilda, Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Harry Potter, and for teens we are producing a full-scale production of “Legally Blonde” in just 7 days! I am most proud of our amazing studio culture! We have a winning combo of incredibly kind & supportive parents, passionate students who genuinely treat each other as teammates instead of competition, and the most amazing teaching artists & admin staff who love these kids and help them grow in both their confidence and creativity every day. We offer excellent performing arts training while also providing a safe & supportive place for kids & families to find their place to belong and be loved.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
One of our company workplace values is “Resourcefulness”, but I like to use the word “scrappy” when explaining it to my team. In other words, we don’t give up and we figure it out. We keep going when others might throw in the towel, and we use our creative skills to find a solution when faced with a problem. Working in the arts is never easy, and as a mobile program a certain degree of flexibility is always required. This concept of resourcefulness was really tested when our entire business model was shut down on March 13, 2020. We had a performance scheduled for that night that was canceled at the last minute — the unused set stayed on the stage for weeks until we could get into the venue to take it down. We had 23 youth theatre productions in the rehearsal process that were all indefinitely postponed. The majority of production elements had already been purchased (hundreds of costumes, props, set pieces, cast tshirts, etc) and then the performances were all canceled. Overnight the company had an 85% drop in revenue. One afternoon I processed $100,000 in refunds for all of the canceled summer camp registrations that came pouring in. That day was really tough. Our team members were all wondering if they still had jobs. Our clients were emailing with concerns about their children’s mental health and asking us to please offer some sort of programming & connection for their kids. We had no control over when or if we could gather together because we don’t own the venues we use, and each venue had different policies and timelines for opening back up. And on the personal side I was suddenly trying to facilitate zoom-school for my 2nd grader and preschooler. It was a lot.
Some of the industries most affected by covid were Education, the Arts, and Events. Our company is a combo of all 3 of those industries which is part of why it was hit so hard. As a team we felt a huge responsibility to serve our clients and help the kids get through this really dark time. Mental health & connection was a big priority for us. Looking back, it would have been much easier to just pause for that whole year and shut the company down, at least temporarily. Many of our competitors did exactly that. Honestly, it never crossed my mind to stop fighting to keep Forefront going. And we’re here today, and several of those competitors are not, because we didn’t stop.
Before covid I would have never believed that you can teach theatre online, but we figured it out. In the first couple of weeks of the covid shutdowns we secretly ran a series of virtual drama camps and privately invited various students to be our guinea pigs, to see if there was a way to do what we do best but tweak it for an online format. We figured out how to modify a lot of our processes & programs to work on zoom, and we never looked back. We completed all of our spring classes via zoom, for any of our students who wanted to finish out the semester with us. Some families were sick of screens and we never heard from them again. But a lot of families told us how much they appreciated having this connection for their children and it met a need.
We offered a whole slew of free video workshops in various arts categories (how to make puppets, doing stage makeup at home, “5 dance steps every actor should know”, etc.) We did free bedtime story time live videos on our social media each week. We did an online musical with kids from across the country joining us every week for zoom rehearsals. For our postponed spring productions we continued rehearsals online through the summer and eventually offered for kids to come film their individual performances in costume and we edited those recordings together so that each family could have a video of the show they had worked on for so long. We lost so much money rehearsing, filming & editing shows without the accompanying ticket sales, but we felt it was the right thing to do.
Over the 2020-2021 school year we were able to offer a handful of very small in-person programs but most of our venues were still closed to us. We found an online education company called Outschool and offered our theatre classes on their website. For that year we taught thousands of kids all over the world in one-time workshops and weekly classes and ended up ranking among their top 200 instructors worldwide! I never would have imagined I could teach theatre to kids living in Australia, London, and Utah all in the same day!
As things opened back up in Atlanta we phased out our presence on Outschool but we still offer private lessons online. When we were able to fully offer our in-person programs again for the 2021-2022 school year our company just exploded. We continue to see rapid growth and this year we are back to our pre-covid numbers. Our company looks a lot different than it did before covid. Some of the programs that used to be our bread & butter aren’t very popular anymore, and other programs that used to struggle now easily sell out. It’s interesting to see how things have changed. But I know that my team and I can handle anything thrown at us in the future because we’ve proven that we can hustle and we can problem solve along the way.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
Over the past year I’ve really dived into professional development and learning how to think and act like a CEO. I listen to a number of entrepreneurial and marketing podcasts each week, but the biggest impact has been signing up for coaching programs. I did an online course and industry coach about 5 years ago but there wasn’t any interaction with other people as part of that program. This past year I’ve joined a different coaching program which includes a mastermind with other successful female entrepreneurs. It’s definitely an investment in my future to invest in a coach and mastermind but it is already having a big impact in my mindset and future goals. I consume pretty much everything created by Dave Ramsey, Stacy Tuschl, and Jenna Kutcher. And there is some Amy Porterfield, Nicole Walters, and “How I Built This with Guy Raz” in the mix too.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ForefrontArts.com
- Instagram: www.Instagram.com/ForefrontArts
- Facebook: www.Facebook.com/ForefrontArts