How to Start a Country Swing Dance Club

Be an Entrepreneur in College, Here’s How you can start your very own Country Swing Dancing Club

If you are looking to start a business venture while in college and you really like country swing dancing, then start a Dance Club that teaches Country Swing Dancing.  Country swing Dancing attracts the youngest crowds and some of the coolest crowds out there and there is a lot to learn about starting a Business by starting a dance club.  Here are some of things you will learn about by starting a Dance Club:

1. How to Advertise

2. How to run Business Meetings

3. How to Gather and Utilize Data

4. How to Teach

5. How to Administrate

6. How to Use Roberts Rules of Order

7. How to Draft Incorporating Documents for Clubs

8. How to Motivate People

9. How to Handle Money

10. How to Setup and Create Special Events

11. How to work with Other Clubs/Organizations

12. How to get Financial Support Grants

13. How to Charge for Services

14. And Much, Much More!

What I hope to do with this article is use it as a business plan and program for people to use so they can promote country swing dancing.  Here are some steps on how to setup your very own Country Swing Dance Club with all the tools needed so you don’t have to work as hard to set it up:

First Step:

The First Steps can vary depending on what you can do at the moment, but we will just list them, and you can decide how you want to approach each one at the moment. 

So getting back to the first step would be to talk to your “Students Association” or “Student Administration” whatever they call it in your school and ask what you need to start a club at the school.

Generally they will give you a pile of papers with some instructions and forms for you to fill out.  You will need a few other people to help you run a club and fill out those forms, it usually requires 4 people in total: A president, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer.  So once you have those papers then you can create a “List of things to do” so you can get your club started.  We are going to give you a general idea of how that works but there could be some extra steps we miss in this article because every school has a different way and process of starting a dance club.  What we are doing is just making your process easier by listing all the main points that I went through to get my dance club started.

So basically your first step is to get the paperwork and start a list of things to do to get that paperwork done.

Second Step

Ask how you can Advertise your Club in the school find out what you can do and see if you can request to setup a table in the main hall.

Usually schools will allow clubs to setup tables in various places throughout the school where you can setup a banner or simple advertisements on Country Swing Dancing and at that table you can use it as a way to interact with people and connect with them and let them know that you plan to hold meetings to start up a club.  You will need people to come to your business meeting to start up the club because there are elections for it, and you will need people to vote.  I think the minimum is just 4 people who will fill all 4 positions.  Try to advertise pizza for these events to get people to come, it really helps!

Third Step:

Create Advertising for your Club.

There are lots of ways to create advertisements for your club.  I will list some here that I used to gather about 50 people to our first lesson in the school:

1. YouTube Videos on Laptops

Now what I did was use my laptop to display YouTube videos in the main hall of the school.  I created a playlist of some of the best country swing dancing videos online and let them play on repeat over and over and have the music play in the background.  I made sure it was popular music like Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan, or Jason Aldean.  When people heard the music as they walked by, they would look and see the videos and come and talk.

Another really cool idea I got as well was to borrow a laptop and TV unit that was on wheels because the TV was 30 inches big I figured it would do a better job at reaching more people and the volume could be a little louder with a TV compared to a laptop that I borrowed from the Library in the school.  Many of the College and University libraries allow you to borrow video cameras, tv’s, and laptops, etc. for students so this would be a really good way to utilize those resources to promote your club.

2. Simple Poster Advertisements

Create a simple poster that will fit on 8 ½ by 11 paper.  Then ask the School to get permission to hang up your advertisements on their event boards all throughout the school.  The College I attended had about 7500 students and had about 20 billboards on main campus alone.  It took about 2 hours sometimes to hang them up because you had to walk for miles to find them then you would also need to find a spot to hang the posters up and also would need some thumb tacks to hold them up.  I also used these same posters on my table setup in the main hall.

3. Banner

Depending on where you get your banner done, I’ve got one done that was about 8 feet long by about 3 feet tall that cost $60 done by a high school printing department.  Look around and ask the college and see what their costs are and if you can afford it, I know they range from $60 or so all the way up to $250.  Hang it on your table in the front and leave it there for the day or week whatever you can get from the school.

Note: This Flyer was poorly done, read more about what to fix. It’s size is about 8″ X 6″.

5. Simple Flyers

Do up some simple flyers to advertise and hand out in the main hall.  I would make these small about 3 inches by about 6 inches and have on it information about your business meeting and lessons.  If you are starting up a business meeting, I wouldn’t worry about advertising it as strongly and would just trying to have very few people come.  But if you are looking to get people to your lessons I’ve been able to hand out 1000 inside of a about 3 or 4 hours standing in the hall way talking like a newspaper boy telling them about lessons coming up and handing out the flyers with information about when, where, how much, and what it’s about on it.

6. Post Cards

If you have the money and really want a high-quality post card then I recommend purchasing from something like Vistaprint, where you can get some high-quality postcards for like $150 for 1000.  I could get about 50 people to come to lessons with about 2 to 3 thousand flyers/cards handed out in the school, do this within 3-7 days of the event.

7. School TV Screens

Another note is that sometimes the school has some TV screens advertising things in the school, and you can also talk to school about trying to advertise events on there as well.

8. Contact Lists

One of the key elements is a contact list.  If you can get a contact list of some kind either by phone texting or email, then develop one and use it to send out mass messages about your events.

9. Social Media

Create a Facebook group and or Instagram page for getting people to follow your group and keep up to date with events.

10. Business Cards

Do up some Business Cards and get them done up by Vista Print.  This is another great idea if you are looking to connect with people.

Tips on Designing:

When you are designing your logos and doing up posters try to use a white background.  White is the most prominent standout colour.  Another note is make sure you have the 3 main things on it which is “What you are doing”, “Where it is happening”, and “What time it is.”  When using a font I found that you don’t want to use anything fancy because it’s hard to read.  I would recommend something simpler to read than what looks cool.  I used to think cool was better but found nobody could read it and I have some really poor flyers I’m going to share from my beginnings of learning this stuff because I couldn’t find my updated ones cause my main computer hard drive crashed and I lost it.  So stick to something like “Arial” font.  I would also say another thing to note is how big the font is.  Ask yourself can people read it from far away? If they can’t read it when walking by your poster then you need to make the font bigger!

Advertising is in my opinion one of the biggest and most important parts of getting people to come to your lessons and attend meetings etc.  The biggest challenge is tying it into your work schedule and so what I recommend is if you are reading this now and it’s summer time and school is out, then do up all your advertising ideas that you can before you start the school year.  That way when it comes time to hand it out you don’t have to spend hours creating it all, when you have an already busy school schedule.  Advertising needs to be pushed really hard twice in the school year.  I would say you have the first month of both first and second semester to really push out all advertising of your club.

The reason you want to advertise right away in the first month is because most students decide on the things they plan to do throughout the semester in the first few weeks.  If you wait until midterms to start, then you will find it much harder because students are buried in books and it’s just a lot more work.  I have seen student associations force students to wait until after October, a couple weeks before midterms to start their clubs which is a terrible idea.  I actually started my club in October, and it got off the ground, but I had bigger struggle than if I started it in August where no students are in class yet.  The best time to start a club is just before students start school because you can get all the logistics out of the way before your co-workers get tied up with homework.  And so if you are looking to start a club start it now by doing up pictures with logos or whatever in your computer that fit different size pieces of paper.  You can also do up private Facebook groups that you can change over to public later.  So do up as much as you can and get it out of the way now to save some time, trust me you will thank me for it!

Fourth Step

Create a Constitution for your club

The Constitution document can vary from club to club and is decided by its members on how they wish to lay out some instructions for members on their roles and responsibilities.  This part was the most time-consuming part of creating a club.  Some students’ associations will provide you with a nice laid out Constitution that you can use, and others have some good things in them and then other things that are missing, and then you have places where they have no instructions for you.  Well I was told to come up with my own constitution and so I drew up one and I’m going to share it on here.  It is not copyright material and you can share it with anyone.   It took my 30 hours and I’m sure if you want to change some things because you feel they don’t make sense then go ahead and add your own rules etc.  Have fun with it.  If you didn’t have one, I’m sure this will save you hours of time to figure out.

The Constitution that we have provided is just a sample and I think needs some simple little fixes to it.  I couldn’t find our updated one because it’s buried in my broken hard drive.

Fifth Step

Developing your Financial Plan for your club

The simple part of this is that you just need to use Microsoft Excel if you want to make it really simple to do your book keeping.  If you have QuickBooks and learn how to use it, you can keep track of all your data and statistics in their and it can give you information you might like to have about how students pay for lessons.  Also you can ask to see if they have a template of how clubs can fill out a balance sheet for your club.

Here are some notes about students and their finances and how you should market your club if you are looking to build it up.  Students generally have more money at the beginning of each semester because that’s how student loans pay out to students is at the beginning of the year.  Students generally spend most of their money in the first 2 months of the semester and struggle in the last month to make their finances meet.  So if you are charging for lessons which I strongly recommend, then you want to keep note that during the time of final exams that things will be slower.  Don’t worry because you can rebound in January you just have to remember to do some flyers up and advertising in your first weeks of that following semester.  I was able to start up January 11^th with a good size group on my first year and it continued into February very well.

Charging your students:

Now I did two different methods of charging because I was in an experimental stage and here’s what I found.  If you are looking to collect money for your club and want to get some comfortable revenue to make sure you cover all expenses and want to host dance events and have some instructors come in then I would say that you should charge a price per lesson.  What I recommend is $5 per lesson.  What we found is that if you charge a price for a whole semester then you have higher prices and it scares students away.  They also don’t know whether they want a membership so just charging a single lesson price is better.

Now you have two choices about whether you wish to give out receipts.  We used receipts we bought from the stationary store like business depot or the dollar store might have some as well.

Another thing you want to have is a signup sheet.  We will have a list of all the materials you need at the bottom of the page as well.  The signup sheet is used to keep track of your students and gives you information about them just in case something happens.

Another thing you might like to inquire about is a cash box.  You may want to see if you can either borrow one from the School because some schools allow you to borrow them and then if not, you may want to get one, so you have a safe place to store your revenues.

Sixth Step

Conduct an Election Meeting and Other Future Business Meetings

At this step you now have to have enough people that have agreed to meet and be part of your club to fill all the roles needed for the club.  Here are some steps on what you need to do to get setup to conduct your business meeting:
1. Agenda

You need to do up a simple agenda like the one we’ve done up for you for your first election meeting.

2. You need to have a minute taker. You can write up your minutes on a computer with a form that’s attached here.

3. You need to also learn about how to conduct a meeting using Roberts Rules of Order. If you don’t know how to do this, then I recommend getting a teacher who knows about how to conduct meetings come to your meeting and if not, I wouldn’t worry if you didn’t follow them precisely.

4. Follow the items on the agenda and close the meeting once everything is finished.

For future business meetings this will be an idea of how your agenda will look.

Seventh Step

Hand in all paperwork to the Students Association and Plan to Setup Room Bookings

Once you’ve handed in your paperwork then you will have the ability to book rooms for teaching your lessons in.  Hopefully your school has some dance studios with hardwood floors that are smooth to teach on and you can book those rooms.  If not, most classrooms have enough space in them, but you will probably have to move the desks out of the way to teach.

Now if your School has a Room booking system then try to plan throughout the whole school year or if it’s only on a semester basis decide when you wish to plan your lessons.  I know that it can be tricky to get people to come to your meetings if there are other things going on but don’t think too hard about what day of the week will work best.  I would just plan on having them during the week and then start around 7pm and go until 9pm or whenever.

Eighth Step

Advertise your Club

Now that you’ve established your room bookings all you need to do is start advertising your club.  I would recommend you try to hand out flyers in the hallway and do about 1000 over a 3- or 4-hour period.  I would also try to do this on the day of the lessons as well since the best time to remind everyone is just hours before they attend the lessons if they planned on coming but forgot.  Try to do everything I’ve listed in the create advertising section and follow those steps and you should have no trouble getting people to come.

Ninth Step

Host your Dance Lessons

Now there is a lot I could say about hosting dance lessons and teaching them but I’m just going to say some of the important things that you need to do and keep in mind when looking at hosting them.

I would recommend if you can and you have a little bit of dancing knowledge and can do up to about the first 50 or so moves on my dance list page and also are aware of the different techniques listed on my techniques page that you should try to teach them yourself to save money.

If you have no money, then you are going to have to try and teach and I think if you study hard and get your information memorized and learned well that you will have no problem teaching it in your lesson.  Especially since we’ve laid out instructions for people who are new at Dancing on how to teach it with little to no experience.

Tenth Step

Plan to Host a School Dance

I would plan to host a Dance Event about 2 months from the time you start on a Friday or Saturday.  Work with other groups and have some fun games and competitions and collect some prizes from local restaurants like gift cards to give to them during your event.  I was able to collect up to 14 gift cards from local businesses just by going door to door asking them to donate for our student events to help students out who are trying to get through school and are struggling with finances.

Also look into hosting dance competitions because these competitions are what drive students to learn fast and practice more and not only that, but you get more attendance with competitions coming up.  We have added information on how to host and setup competitions on another one of our other pages as well.

One of the things that really helps to promote a Dance event is to have other clubs involved to help out.  I’ve ended up working with the Education Society and Music Society to help host dance events and the resources we contributed to the event was amazing and it ended up being the largest event in the school for the year.

Another thing to note is if you are looking to get a band for dancing but I worried about finances don’t worry about it.  Just do some simple DJing, it’s actually better than a band for dancing because most bands are not as aware about the dynamics of what goes on in the dancer’s mind as dance instructors are.  You also find out that Bands don’t really bring more people unless you can get one’s that you hear on the radio.  So save your money and rent some cheap equipment if needed.

So I hope all this information that I’ve shared helps inspire you to start your club and start your entrepreneurial journey.  It took a lot for me to start a club and I don’t wish for someone to go through the process of starting for scratch and not knowing a simple format to follow so they can get their clubs started.

My wish is that there will be Country Swing Dance Clubs all over the Country.  So if you need some help on starting your club don’t hesitate to call or write me by email on some help.

Take Care,

Corey

Here is a list of things provided:

Pictures, with Ideas and Logos

Documents

Note: Nothing is copyright and you can use the logo’s as long as you don’t include the term “Red Deer College” in it that’s a trademark name so if you see something with that term you will need to edit it out of any forms or pictures.