We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Emily Sanderson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Emily below.
Emily, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?
On opening day Full Circle already had 12 instructors. Today we have around 20+ (including substitutes). The instructors at Full Circle make it what it is, and I’ve learned so much in the process of starting this business about hiring, managing, and communicating with a large team (and I’m still learning!). I didn’t do any formal interviews before we opened. I had already been working and teaching in the NYC pole dance scene for 8 years at that point, so I reached out to instructors I already knew before opening. I also mentored a couple of newer instructors in the opening months.
As we’ve grown, I’ve now got systems for new instructors to apply, and our interview process centers around hosting a “mock class” to audition any candidates. The most important thing for me to see is how an instructor handles a classroom in real time. It’s not just about the content they’re able to teach – but even more importantly their rapport with students, their ability to create an immersive environment and toaddress people’s questions and needs. Full Circle’s success has really been thanks to an amazing team of teachers that not just knows how to teach pole dancing well, but also knows how to create a caring, supportive environment.
We’re on the cusp of expanding the business, so I have been thinking a lot lately about our hiring process: how to make it better, what is most important for me to know about an instructor before hiring, how to support them when they’re new to the team, and especially how to offer ongoing support for our staff. When I’ve got a great team, I think it is important to remind myself: if the business is doing well it is thanks to the team; if it’s not doing well, it is because of me. Whether it is an instructor getting a poor client review, or class numbers being low – it is always something that I am responsible for. Maybe an instructor needs more support with their lesson planning or classroom management, maybe I’ve chosen the wrong class or instructor for a particular time slot, perhaps a studio policy needs to be revisited, or I didn’t give enough attention to marketing a new offering. Whatever the issue is, and whatever the solution may be – I find cultivating this attitude is important. “If we’re succeeding, it’s the team – if we’re failing, it is me.” That COULD be seen as an overwhelming responsibility – but I see that as empowering. It means that in our success, I am never alone, and in our struggles, I can always find a solution.
Emily, 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’m a pole dancer and teacher who has been working in movement, dance, and fitness since I was a teenager (20 years now!). I’ve been teaching pole dance for 11 years and in 2021 opened a pole dance studio in the heart of Bed-Stuy called Full Circle Brooklyn. Full Circle is pole dance & movement space with the mission to share transformative art of pole dancing with everybody, and dedicated to the values of connection, compassion, and creativity.
After teaching in dozens of different dance and fitness studios, and several different pole studios over the last decade I reached a point where I was eager to create a space that really aligned with my values. I wanted to create a space that felt open, warm and welcoming, where instructors were treated well, students felt supported in finding their own creative expression, and where the class atmosphere was consistently top notch.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I’ve had to unlearn the myth of urgency many times over. A related lesson I’ve had to unlearn is the myth of self-sufficiency and that “you can do it all yourself”.
Opening and running a business has been by far the most challenging thing I have done. I’m glad I went into it blindly and just learned along the way, because if I knew how much anxiety I would have in the opening months (and year) I probably wouldn’t have taken the leap. I’ve struggled (like many of us have) – with the feeling of never doing enough, and the anxiety that certain tasks feel urgent (even when they’re not). I learned quickly after opening Full Circle that I would absolutely never be able to finish the entire to do list. Something – some project, some task, some dream, some email – would always be left half finished, unanswered, or untended to, no matter how hard I tried.
By treating everything as urgent – I wasn’t able to focus my attention on the things that were truly important. I wasn’t able to look at the big picture and create systems that would make my life easier either, because I was stuck on the hamster wheel of endless tasks. As I’ve learned to slow down and accept that some things will simply not happen, or not happen in the ways I hoped or expected, I’ve been able to turn attention to the things that are truly important to me and to the studio. I highly recommend the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman if any of this resonates.
We’ve been conditioned by capitalism, by our parents, by school, and other relentless pressures to see our worth as tied up with our productivity – so by consistently coming back to the mantra of “everything is not so urgent”. And when the “what ifs” of anxiety kick in, I have the mantra “what if nothing?”. (Another book recommendation: Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey)
An important addendum to the lesson of: “everything is not so urgent”, has been: “you can’t do it all by yourself”. Learning how to delegate and how to ask for help is another lesson I continue to learn over and over and over. I was so overwhelmed I almost sold my business after the first year, but I thankfully didn’t and learned that all I needed to do was hire a manager.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
Our top 3 sources of new clients are: Google, Referrals, and Instagram. Out of our currently active clientele 26% of them found us through a google search, 24% were referred by a friend, and 19% found us through Instagram.
It has been helpful for our business that Pole Dancing has become more popular in the mainstream in the last several years. From J. Lo’s 2020 halftime show, to the TV show P Valley, to the Netflix documentary “Strip Down, Rise Up”, pole dancing has been having a moment, and so there are plenty of potential clients who are finding us, rather than us having to find them.
Knowing where our students are finding us though is important. We make sure to keep our google listing up to date with photos and hours and we encourage clients to leave us reviews. We promote more referrals by giving our students rewards at the studio for referring their friends, and we post about our classes and instructors on Instagram.
Two other smaller but not insignificant places we’ve gotten clients are from Class Pass and people in the neighborhood who walk-by. Working with Class Pass has sometimes been frustrating, we’ve converted several Class Pass clients into monthly members, so we continue to keep a limited number of our classes available on the platform. Although we are a studio located at basement level, we’ve made sure to have good street level signage outside our entrance that includes a QR code, so anyone who strolls by can find out what we’re about.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.fullcirclebrooklyn.com
- Instagram: @fullcirclebrooklyn
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fullcirclebrooklyn
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/full-circle-brooklyn-brooklyn
- Other: my personal IG is @eeemly
Image Credits
Kathryn Whitehead, Jess Kirkham, Accro Brandon, Carley Brockwell