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What dance business practices are quite poor

When it comes to dance competitions, those willing to spend bucketloads of $ are favored over those with more dance potential and of more modest means

No competitor takes the outcome of pay to win competitions seriously

When it comes to dance lessons, teachers can provide too little value relative to the cost of their service

What I think isn't worth spending any money on:

• Paying for pro-am
• Paying for pricey private lessons to learn a routine that can be danced to a ~ 3 minute song for a competition, performance, or wedding. What makes this unworthwhile:
• Doesn't teach useful skills that will make them a better dancer in the long run like leading and following
• If not danced well, it's not pleasant to watch. No one wants to see a showcase of how poor of a dancer someone is
• If danced well, there's often no prize pool for it or the prize pool is less than the amount spent on learning this routine
• If danced well, the award for dancing well (if there's even one) has no value outside of a dance context
• Paying for pricey private lessons to learn the most basic of things like the basic step. What makes this unworthwhile:
• Students should be able to learn this on their own with no difficulty

What I think is worth spending money on:

• Paying for help getting past challenges you face on your path to becoming a talented dancer. The condition here is that you needed help and are not merely paying for the convenience of learning from a relayer of information that happens to be in your area

Reasons businesses charge a small fortune for what I claim has little to no value or too much for what I claim has value:

• Greed => Leads to offers that benefit the offerer far more than it benefits the offeree. What the teacher benefits from:
• High cost of lessons. So high, in fact, that one teacher stated, “I couldn’t even afford the lessons that I was teaching.” [1]
• If student does well, this enhances the reputation of the teacher within the dance world [4]
• People paying for the service of the service-provider at an inflated cost => Leads to the service-provider thinking that what's charged is reasonable. Reasons this happens:
  • Some people are gullible and fall for the claims business people make to get their money
  • Some people aren't the ones footing the bill for it so the cost of it doesn't deter them
  • Some people can have more disposable income than sense
  • Some people can be irresponsible with their $
  • Some people "delude themselves into thinking that their relationship with a teacher has no commercial basis" [3]
  • Some people need someone to hold their hand so to speak, which is understandable if they're a beginner, find the subject challenging, or lack the discipline needed to study on their own
  • Some people can overestimate how much the service-provider will benefit them if a lot is paid to them without realizing that the arrangement benefits the other much more than them
  • Some people try to "increase their status by dancing with a costly top professional" [2]
  • Some people have errenous beliefs such as,
  • "The person that charges the most for their service must be better than more affordable alternatives or they wouldn't be charging so much"
  • "Even though the person wasn't so helpful in the first few sessions, future sessions will be better. They'll actually help me over time"
• Want more time to themselves => Leads to the service-provider pricing their service higher so that fewer people can afford to take up their time

Studio directors hiring teachers that've little to no dance experience

It's not worth learning from a teacher that's less knowledgeable than the students taking that teachers class or merely "one step ahead" of the students of that class

Studio directors not investing into their business but expecting customers to

Might be a controversial take but I can't take a business seriously if the person running it doesn't

Signs that a business is cutting corners:

• Doesn't follow the laws (e.g. surrounding intellectual property)
• Doesn't have good facilities
• Doesn't have a business name
• Doesn't have a ABN
• Doesn't have insurance
• Doesn't have a bank account for the business
• Doesn't have an online presence (social media pages, a website)
• Doesn't hire good staff
• Doesn't invest into training their staff
• Doesn't pay their staff well
• Doesn't pay a professional web developer to help make their website, perhaps this is excusable if their website needs are super simple. Odds are that the:
• Website won't be bespoke. It'll be using a template and not customizable
• Website won't scale well for different screen sizes
• Website will be made with bloated code so it won't perform as well
• Website will be insecure
• Website will have worse SEO
• Website can't be migrated off of the platform of the website builder

Studio directors not paying the person teaching the class

It's exploitative

Studio directors locking students in with non-refundable packages (e.g. 40 lessons for 3,000 AUD) and/or locking contracts (e.g. 52 AUD/per week for 3 months)

It's consumer unfriendly. Prefer the model of having weekly memberships with no lock-in as most students will continue doing lessons so long as the value is there, meaning there's a more predictable revenue stream for the business so lower prices can be charged but then if the student isn't satisfied, they're at most out of a week's worth of lessons

Studio directors not letting classes be rescheduled well in advance

It's unreasonable

Studio directors not making their prices public

It's dishonest and manipulative as once a potential customer enters the business, high-pressure sales tactics are used on them in an attempt to close a sale

Studio directors deciding to make all of the teachers working at the studio the same price when some are a lot less experienced, qualified, etc. than other teachers at and not at the studio

It's unreasonable

Teachers misrepresenting or overselling themselves

It's dishonest