#74: My Personal Story, with Stacy Tuschl

Stacy Tuschl is a speaker, business coach, and the owner of The Academy of Performing Arts in Wisconsin. She is the author of the book “Is Your Business Worth Saving?” where she reveals proven strategies for pulling entrepreneurs out of a rut and launching them toward business success.

Last Friday I talked about the importance of sharing your story and it occurred to me some of you might not know my story or my background. I interview guest experts every Monday and Wednesday and you get to hear their stories but I don’t really get the chance to share mine and today I want to share with you how I got started on this entrepreneurial journey.

Some highlights include:

I was definitely the bossy kid growing up. I always had to be in charge, it was my way or the highway. At minute 0:00, I talk about my early years.

When I joined a new high school, I needed to make friends. I decided to join the dance team, and I absolutely fell in love with it. After four years, I knew I didn’t want my dance career to be over, but I knew that I wasn’t going to be a professional dancer, so I decided to start a middle school dance team in my parents’ backyard. (minute 1:00)

Three years later I had 100 dancers coming to me every Sunday to be on the dance team. Sunday was my only free day to offer it because I was a full-time college student and had a job bartending in the evenings. I was really busy to say the least and the parents of the dancers knew this and came up to me at year three and said we think you should be charging us. I had no idea what to charge and I had a mom say how about $30/month. All of a sudden I was bringing in $3000/month. (minute 3:00)

I immediately found a space that was $1500/month and assumed that was more than enough to cover it, not realizing with a building there are bills, heat, water, phone, internet, property taxes and guess what, it adds up, and it added up to more than $3k and I knew I had to do something if I wanted to save this business. Immediately after I heard about a business conference for dance studio owners for $1000, and my mom and I attended it together. I learned incredible lessons there that changed my life. (minute 6:00)

One of the major life lessons I learned was to not put all my eggs in one basket. So, at minute 7:00, I talk all about how I’ve diversified my income while growing my dance business.

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