We recently connected with Humza Khan and have shared our conversation below.

Humza, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

The story behind our mission is to create a space for dancers where they can find people like themselves and have the space to try new things without feeling the pressure of competition. As a professional dancer I’ve grown up in the industry of dance for a long time, I’ve been to a lot of dance studios and the truth about the dance world is it’s very competitive. It’s hard to find a class you can feel free to let go in, and try completely new things without feeling like your being watched or compared to. For this it was my main mission was to curate an environment where dancers find people that have a common internet such as K-pop, and are able to explore their passion for dance through this safe environment. And for those who are looking to just get into dance, or learn how to dance we provide the space required for first time dancers to feel comfortable enough to explore. On the flip side we’ve also balanced out how to appeal to those who are more advanced in their dance experience as well, we offer elite programs where we have progressional working dancers train aspiring professional dancers on how to become successful in the industry. While also having a perfect balance of a safe environment and being able to benefit off of the existence of a healthy competitive environment. We wanted to create a spectrum where you don’t need to be striving to be a professional to enjoy your average dance class, but also if you are aspiring to pursue a career in dance we offer opportunities and the training to make that possible!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

We are a K-pop and Hip Hop dance studio. We offer styles outside of those two as well, but those are our main focus, we teach K-pop fans their favorite dances and how to execute the movements correctly. We also teach the foundations needed for our first time dancers, to be able to enjoy dance classes to the fullest extent through our beginner hip hop classes. For those who benefit more from a 1 on 1 stand point we offer private lessons as well. However, our biggest focus with the studio is creating a healthy learning environment. The main reason we focus on this is because I’ve seen dancers tend to grow the most, when they feel comfortable enough to try things that may or may not look good. When dancers decide to take risks and be vulnerable, they discover new ways to move their bodies and allow themselves to express through movement. However, in most dance studios it’s very rare to find an environment where people don’t feel pressured by the competitive environment. Even myself as a professional dancer when I take classes very rarely do I feel open to exploring new ways to move my body, simply because I know that the ways I’ve been moving it look good, and I wouldn’t want to risk trying something new and it possibly looking bad. However, at Za Dance it’s a completely different environment, we’ve had customers tell us as soon as they came in they were greeted by our front desk and shown around, they were able to bond with the teachers and other dancers through similar interests such as K-pop or dancing. And this helped to create a different dance culture within our studio that I look foreword to growing and building a community out of!

Any advice for managing a team?

I have so much advice to managing and building a strong team. However, I will do my best to sum it up to one big point. Which is to take full accountability for everything. As the business owner anything that happens, whether it be positive or negative, you should take full accountability for. For example, I have an amazing team and I trust them fully, however let’s say in a hypothetical, one of my team members were to steal money. After we asses and determine the disciplinary actions to follow, I would take absolute and full responsibility for hiring someone that would do such a thing. Now moving foreword I would need to reevaluate, my hiring process will be more thorough, and I will take the prophylactic measures needed to ensure this doesn’t happen again. On the same note, the fact that this hasn’t happened to us so far, I take full accountability for as well, because along with the systems we have in place, I know that the people I’ve hired have a strong moral compass and integrity. Although somebody stealing isn’t directly your fault as the owner, these things happen, I would still take full accountability and even go as far to say that it’s my fault that this happened. And that I need to be more perspicacious to the people I’m hiring and the team I build around me.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Interestingly enough, we used to spend a large amount on marketing and social media to gain clientele. But now we spend zero, and we’ve learned a large portion of our most loyal customers come from word of mouth. In fact, one of our now front desk staff, originally found out about us because they were sitting at a star bucks, and a couple of our dancers were sitting at a table rewatching their dance videos from the night before. Our now front desk staff, saw this video from a distance and went up to them and asked where that studio was, and they gave her information on it. And long story short after only being here for a couple of months she now works within our internship program, and takes classes every week! So, just making sure your focusing on building a strong positive culture within your business, will help to keep a stronger retention rate with customers and will generate more loyal customers in the long run.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.zadancestudio.com
• Instagram: Zadancestudio
• Facebook: Zadancestudio
• Youtube: Zadancestudio