a note from the interviewer, Prisha:
i absolutely LOVED this conversation with Kerrie. honestly, it felt like every single sentence she said resonated with me and my own experience building DanceVibes. whether you’re looking to take that leap of faith and start something of your own or just want to keep improving your studio, i genuinely think there’s SO much you can learn from this conversation. definitely one to listen to. :)
TL;DR
•Studio ownership is a business role, not simply more time spent teaching and choreographing.
•Kerrie’s turning point came when she realized she was the bottleneck in her own studio.
•Assistant teachers need support beyond watching classes; structured training can help studios develop future staff from within.
•Her START framework brings together systems, team, attraction, retention, and trust.
•She sees accreditation, continued learning, and administrative support as ways to strengthen dance businesses without losing their creativity.
Kerrie now runs Dance Training Organisation, which she describes as an Australian registered training organisation: a government-accredited facility focused on the dance industry, particularly dance education.
Its work spans assistant dance teaching, dance teaching, and studio ownership.
Becoming government accredited was a major undertaking, she says. It involved a great deal of work. Even so, she describes loving this stage of her career and feeling in the right place to help younger people progress without repeating her mistakes.
That sense of continuity runs through the conversation. She is still teaching—just different students, with different responsibilities ahead of them.
Her enthusiasm also extends to the next generation asking these questions. Speaking with a 17-year-old interviewer, she is openly delighted to see someone so young interested in the future of the dance industry.
A Good Dancer Is Not Automatically a Good Teacher
For Kerrie, assistant teaching opens another possible future for a student.
Some young people do not want to become professional dancers. Some may never take that route. Yet they can be excellent teachers. Strong dancers can also become strong teachers—but dancing ability alone does not establish teaching ability.
“Just because they dance well doesn't mean they teach well, and vice versa.”
That is why she believes studios should take assistant teacher development seriously.
In her own studio, Kerrie typically had 10 to 20 assistant teachers each year. She held a meeting at the start of the year and gave them material on anatomy and teaching philosophy, adjusted for students from around age ten upward.
The intention was to follow up and train them throughout the year.
The reality was harder.
When you are responsible for a class full of children, guiding the assistant can become another task competing for your attention. Near performance time, that pressure intensifies. Kerrie found that the formal training she intended to provide often fell away.
The problem was not that she did not care. There simply was not enough time.
Why Observation Needs Support
Watching an experienced teacher is valuable, Kerrie says, but not every student learns effectively through observation alone.
Her assistant teaching model adds learning outside the classroom through a portal covering theory and teaching strategies. Students then bring that learning back into their practical teaching experience.
The aim is to support both people: the assistant who needs guidance and the class teacher who cannot provide every part of that guidance while teaching.
Without direction, an assistant may struggle to be useful. With support, that same student could become an excellent future teacher.
Grow the People Who Already Know Your Studio
Kerrie’s excitement rises when she talks about developing staff from within.
These students already know the studio’s values, mindset, and community. They want to be there. Helping them become teachers offers an alternative to always searching outside for new staff.
It is not a promise that every student will become an employee. It is a reason to notice teaching potential and give it somewhere to grow.
Her view of student relationships is long-term, too. She describes an Australian studio experience in which some students stay into their thirties or forties, rather than moving through a fixed graduation point. She contrasts that with what she has observed in some American studios, while acknowledging she may not have the whole picture. The interviewer adds that experiences in the United States vary.
Kerrie’s own preference is uncomplicated:
“I think everyone should dance forever.”
START: A Framework for Looking Beyond the Next Fire
In her Studio Business Academy, Kerrie uses START as an overarching framework: systems, team, attraction, retention, and trust.
It is not just about software. A system could cover administration, teacher training, or something as ordinary as turning on the studio lights.
The point is to make the work clear enough that the owner does not have to personally carry every task.
Systems
What needs a repeatable process?
Kerrie’s examples range from administrative work to classroom support to everyday studio operations. Systems are not reserved for impressive, complicated tasks. The small things count.
Team
Does everyone know their role?
She wants teams to be on the same page, with clear responsibilities and a clear understanding of how they support the studio owner. If nobody knows who should do something, the owner can end up doing it all.
Attraction
Are you bringing in the right families for your studio?
Kerrie does not believe every dancer is right for every studio. Attraction should connect to the studio’s values, mission, and intended direction—not simply increasing numbers.
Retention
Are you paying attention to who stays?
She uses a possible annual loss of 10–20% of students to illustrate the challenge: a studio would need to replace those students before it could grow beyond its previous numbers. It is her example, not a universal retention benchmark.
Her wider point is that bringing people in and keeping people connected deserve attention together.
Trust
Do you trust yourself enough to try?
Kerrie encourages owners not to second-guess every judgment. Something may not work. That does not mean the owner has failed at being a businessperson.
For her, education helps build the confidence to act, learn, and try again.
Delegation Is How You Stop Being the Bottleneck
Kerrie keeps returning to delegation because she has lived the alternative.
An owner cannot grow indefinitely while holding every decision and task. But letting go requires more than asking someone to help. The team needs to understand what the owner is trying to achieve and what each person is responsible for.
It also asks something of the owner: loosening control.
Kerrie sees many owners spending their days putting out fires, dealing with emails, and doing small jobs. Those tasks crowd out the higher-level work of leading the business.
Her argument is not that everyday work is beneath an owner. It is that doing all of it can prevent them from doing the work only they can do.
She also strongly advocates using a CRM and staying aware of available tools. She mentions Jackrabbit and DSP as examples in the conversation, without offering a comparison or claiming one is best.
The larger habit matters more to her: keep learning, stay open, and try things that might work for your studio. If something does not fit, try something else.
Accreditation Is About More Than the Certificate
Kerrie knows she keeps returning to education. She even jokes about “banging on” about it.
But her case for accredited teacher training goes beyond having a qualification to display.
She describes dance as a generally underregulated industry in much of the world, where someone may be able to open a studio without a qualification. That is her assessment in the interview, not a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction account of legal requirements.
From there, she asks a parent’s question: what gives you confidence in the person teaching your child?
In Kerrie’s view, accreditation can offer several things:
•Parent confidence: a visible indication that the teacher has undertaken training.
•A reason to consider the studio: something that may help it stand out among local choices.
•Teacher confidence: knowledge that supports someone in doing the job.
•Attention to child safety: she points to child safety requirements within accredited training as part of its value.
Her comparison is swimming. As a parent, she would expect a swimming teacher to have qualifications. She wants dance education to receive similarly serious consideration.
She also describes dance as a major after-school activity locally, placing it behind swimming and soccer for primary-school girls in her account. For her, that reinforces the need to treat dance professionally.
Getting onto a Parent’s Shortlist
Kerrie remembers learning in scout halls and school halls, with far fewer studios around. Now, she says, there are large facilities and many more choices—perhaps ten studios in her own area.
A qualification does not make every studio right for every family. She is clear about that.
But she believes it can help a parent decide that a studio belongs on the list worth investigating.
Kerrie’s Claude Workflow: A Brief Before the Desk
Asked about her dream software, Kerrie returns to something she already uses.
She has a paid Claude account and is, by her own enthusiastic description, in love with it.
In the workflow she describes, Claude prepares a morning brief before she sits down at her desk. It reviews information from her:
•Emails and calendar
•Facebook and Instagram
•Banking system
•MYOB accounting system
•Techmatics CRM
Instead of opening every channel and facing all of it at once, she starts with a summary.
This is Kerrie’s account of her own setup and the approach she shares with studio owners—not a claim that every account or software combination supports the same workflow.
Her practical distinction on email is especially useful: she gets Claude to draft only. She describes using summaries to identify important messages, then going to the original email when needed.
What excites her is the possibility of connecting existing systems and reducing the feeling that an owner must inspect everything separately before the day can begin.
Learning Does Not Have to Mean Buying a Big Program
Kerrie likes having a coach or regularly following someone who discusses new tools. If someone can afford a paid program, she would consider that worthwhile.
But she does not say it is the only way.
There is information people can find for themselves, she says. The important thing is staying open enough to look, rather than deciding that more growth or more time off is impossible.
Her optimism about a studio owner’s potential is strong. It is an invitation to work toward the business and life they want—not evidence of a guaranteed financial outcome.
FAQs
Should every dance teacher become a studio owner?
No, in Kerrie’s view. She has worked with excellent teachers who had no interest in running a business. She sees teaching for someone else as a worthwhile long-term career, not simply a step toward ownership.
Why do assistant teachers need training outside class?
Kerrie found that busy teachers often could not provide the ongoing guidance they intended to give. She also notes that some students need more than observation. Her approach combines classroom experience with theory and teaching strategies learned through a portal.