Introduction: Building Trust

Creating a positive learning environment starts with the first messages you convey to the world through your marketing materials. These early impressions will carry through to live interactions. What you convey through your bio, class descriptions, photos and teaching venue should be accurate and in alignment with each other and with reality. This is the first point of contact where you begin to build trust with your prospective students. Trust is the foundation of healthy relationships and a positive learning environment.

It is during these first passive interactions students begin envisioning your learning environment and making judgements about you. It is important to align the messages conveyed in your virtual learning environment (your website) with the experiences of your real-world environment (your studio) as best as you can.

In other words, and I cannot emphasize this enough, all of the areas of your business must connect, align and make sense as a whole. If there is disconnect within the fabric and foundation of your business, it invites conflict and chaos, the opposite of a positive learning environment. That’s not say you will never again encounter problems. When all the pieces of your business fit together, they reinforce one another and become stronger, making it more difficult for conflict and chaos to enter and thrive.

When I first started my current business, all kinds of people gave me advice on how to market, advertise and what opportunities to pursue. There is a lot of business advice out there in books and online. It’s like parenting. Everyone has an opinion about how to run a business, even if they have never had one. It was time-consuming and confusing to navigate all the information and figure out what I needed to do to make my vision come to life. It was good education to read and research. And while much of the advice I received from friends did not align with my vision, or my goals, my teaching philosophy, and my personal style, it did get me thinking, and unwillingly thrown on the journey to learn and explore how to manifest in real life the teaching environment and thriving business that I had created in my head.

It took a few years of experience, coaching and courses like the one you are taking now, and lots of trial and error, to align all the parts of my business. When I gradually did, everything fell into place. Now I have more time, energy and creativity to devote to outside projects (like this one) and my own dance development. I learned a lot from listening to and observing my students about what I wanted the heart and strength of my studio and curriculum to be, and how I would communicate that to the world through my marketing, business practices and teachings.

Let’s examine each aspect of the business and how you can align them.

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