When I opened my first studio almost 20 years ago I was convinced that the key to making my studio successful was to have a ton of students. That’s a mistake that I see lots of studios still making today.

I just got an email from a studio that has 700 students enrolled right now. That’s a big studio by any standard. The studio has two owners, and nobody’s making any money. One of the owners literally made $0 last month. 

How much work does it take to run a 700-student studio? Even with two owners, they’re overwhelmed. 

This isn’t an isolated case by any means. As a matter of fact, it’s probably more common than you can imagine.

The number of active students enrolled in your studio isn’t the number you need to be tracking. You need to be tracking your AVERAGE STUDENT VALUE.

This number is pretty easy to calculate. Here’s the formula:

(Down payment) + (Average Monthly Tuition X Average Number of Months Training)

“make sure you’re reviewing your “Average Student Value” a couple of times every year.”

Most studios charge a registration fee instead of asking for a down payment on the tuition. That’s a mistake that we’ll talk about at another time, but here’s an example with numbers from one of my programs:

($199) + ($169 X 10 months) = $1,889

In this program (my aerial silks program) the AVERAGE student makes a $199 down payment, pays $169 per month, and trains on average for 10 months (some train for much more, some train for less). That means that every new student adds, on average, $1,889 to my studio’s income over those 10 months.

So, if I want to add $100,000 to my studio income in the next 10 months I know that I need to add 52 new students. If that’s my goal, there is absolutely no reason to shoot for something like a 700-student studio.

Do you know these numbers for your own studio? How many students do you need to add to your studio to reach your financial goals? 

Want some help figuring this out? I’d love to help.

Click here to apply for a 30-minute strategy session with me where we can look at your own numbers and I’ll show you exactly what you have to do to reach your goals.

Whether or not you want to work together on this, make sure you’re reviewing your “Average Student Value” a couple of times every year. The longer your studio stays in business, and your programs change, the more variations you’ll see. It’s more important to keep a handle on this number than any of the other numbers you should be tracking.

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