Start With A Win - Create Winning Systems in Your Business with Misty Lown

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

Misty Lown is the founder, president, and energized force behind More Than Just Great Dancing, a licensed dance studio affiliation program that has a positive impact on over 100,000 dance students around the globe each week. She is a sought-after speaker and business leader. She has been recognized as “Teacher of the Year” by Eclipse, “Outstanding Businesswoman of the Year” by the YWCA, as well as many others. She is also the author of One Small Yes an Amazon #1 Bestseller.Misty shares her story of how her dream of teaching dance began with one small studio and grew to what it is today with 296 studios around the world. She was a talented dancer in high school and was accepted into a prestigious dance program. But, in her heart, she knew the classroom was going to be her stage. Even when people questioned why she would give up performing for teaching, she felt called to it and knew it was the path for her. Misty shares with Adam about some of the pivots she made in her business to take it to the next level. She knew it had to be about more than just dance. She wanted to teach dance as a vehicle for life lessons and to have an impact on her community. Internally, she started to referring to the program as “more than just great dancing.” And that name just stuck. And as she looked to grow, she considered many options like multiple studios or franchising. But she landed on licensing which would enable her to equip existing studios and teachers with personalized tools and resources and coaches.Misty and Adam dive into creating systems and how they empower leaders to win in business. Misty shares that the idea that we need to build everything for ourselves seems to be uniquely American. And rather than trying to do everything and create everything for themselves, businesses need to be more willing to take advantage of the wonderful resources that have already been created. Through MTJGD, Misty uses her ability to create business systems and to train people into that system and helps studios around the world. Stop searching, start executing. There’s some level of discomfort in some area. Until someone gets to that level, Misty also shares about the importance of getting small wins. Business owners and leaders tend to struggle in certain areas that prevent them from growing their business. Misty’s goal is to show them how to get a win in that area and getting them some breathing room to start working on the next things in their business. Then, it becomes a domino effect as they choose the next thing to work on to get another small win. We’re in a time of intellectual obesity where we’re consuming so much content online but not exercising what we’re learning. So Misty’s last piece of advice to business owners and leaders is to find one or two voices that you trust and go deep with those.Episode Links:https://mistylown.comhttps://morethanjustgreatdancing.comhttps://www.instagram.com/mistylown/https://www.linkedin.com/in/mistylown/Order your copy of Start With A Win: Tools and Lessons to Create Personal and Business Success:https://www.startwithawin.com/bookConnect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://www.instagram.com/adamcontosceo/

Welcome to Start With A Win, where we give you the tools and lessons you need to create business and personal success. Are you ready? Let's do this. Coming to you from Brand Viva Media Studios here in Denver, Colorado. It's Adam Kantos with Start With A Win in studio with producer Mark. How are you doing, buddy? I'm doing so good. Right on. We got your friend here with us today.

Yes. This is one of my best friends in the world, Misty Lone. She's on the show. Why don't you introduce Misty for us? Misty has a beautiful list of amazing things that she has done. And so we will not go untold. Those things will not go untold. All right. Misty Lone is the founder, president, and energized face behind more than just great dancing. A licensed dance studio affiliation program that has a positive impact on over 100,000 dance students around the globe each week, which I love.

She is sought after speaker, a business leader. She has been recognized as Teacher of the Year by Eclipse, Outstanding Businesswoman of the Year by the YWCA, as well as many others. Misty, welcome to Start With a Win. Oh, I'm so happy to be here. I wanted to gather my kids to hear you say all those nice things about me. Right now we're at the end of the season for the school year, and I think all they hear from mom is, I'm the one, did you do your homework? Get your backpack. Did you grab your lunch? Let's go. Listen, outside of picking up your laundry and these other great things, you should listen to me. That's right. I'm going to, I'm going to make sure next time I see them,

I'm going to tell them all these things. Please do. Absolutely. We'll do that. So everybody knows Misty and I have been part of some business masterminds together, some incredible business thought sitting together late, late, late into the night in a restaurant with all of our compadres sitting there holding up iPhone, the light on your iPhone so we could all see because they would shut down the restaurant, turn off the lights, so that we could take notes in our little business masterminds. It was, I mean, we've done so much big thought and little thought together. It's an honor and a pleasure to have you on, my friend.

I am so happy to be here and to support this new adventure that you're on. It's going to go to great places. Awesome. So what Misty just mentioned is Mark and I are putting together something really cool called The Leadership Factory. You can go to adamcontos.com, click on the button Leadership Factory, fill out your name, and we'll keep you in the loop on everything going on with that. We've got some really cool courses and things like that coming out to build leadership in 2022. But I want to talk about Misty's leadership because you have built an incredible company from just little bitty La Crosse, Wisconsin, all around the world, seven different countries. You're impacting over 100,000 people a week. I mean, this is incredible. Why don't you tell us what More Than Just Great Dancing is?

It's an amazing journey in and of its own self. We started with a Misty's Dance Unlimited brick and mortar business, like many of your listeners may have. And then we decided, how can we help other people? You see, I was writing for magazines, speaking at conferences like you do. And I saw the line out the door when I would finish speaking. People who wanted to be able to make a living and have a life and have a positive impact on kids in the community. They saw us doing that in a unique way.

So we would answer the calls and the emails. People visit our studio. And I said, the best way though for me to affect change and provide this is to put it into a format, put it into a licensed product. And that was actually developed at one of the first masterminds that you and I were at together where I looked around and I

sought that advice and we took the late night notes. I said, I think I can do this. So today we have licensed affiliated studios, 296 of them. They're in 38 states, seven countries serving 100,000 kids a week. And we are helping other studio owners to do what we've done here in La Crosse, Wisconsin, which is figure out how in this youth serving business that we can make a living, we can have a life and we can have an awesome impact on kids in the community. That's amazing. And this is, you've kind of stair-stepped your way to this. Everybody, so everyone knows you just didn't walk in and go, ta-da, I have 100,000 customers all over the world. It's taken several years for you to get there. So let's rewind back to Miss Delone saying, I think I want to teach people how to dance and

have some dance studio. Was this before Mitch or after Mitch? So Mitch, my high school sweetheart, we've been married now, oh my gosh, 22 years. And he's seen the whole journey. So I was a dancer in high school, thought I wanted to be a dancer after high school. I got the big ticket to be accepted to the, it's called the Elvin Ailey American Dance Center training program. It's a year long program. And I think everybody here locally, including him thought, wow, like that's it. That's the ticket. But in my heart, I just had a God nudge that said, the classroom is going to be your stage. And I remember telling my family and friend and favorite teachers that I was not going to go to New York, that I was going to stay in Western Wisconsin and build a dance studio and being largely misunderstood. People, and they meant it in a good way, Adam, but just saying, are you sure?

Did you really think about this? Do you realize what you're giving up? Why would you give up performing to go into teaching right now that most people do that in the later part of their career? But I just felt called to it. I was thinking of the kids that I was already teaching and the impact that we were having on their lives, myself and my fellow teachers. And I knew that was the path for me. So you started building these dance studios from there. You were teaching dance, building your own dance studios. I mean, take me through some of these pivots that you've gone through in your business to continue to level up. I mean, so wanted to teach dance, gave up that opportunity. What's the next pivot and the next pivot beyond

that? How did that look? Well, the next pivot after that was figuring out how am I going to be, if I'm going to teach, I'm like you, Adam, I want to be top of the class. I want to have the best information, the best association. So I said, well, I need a graduate degree in education then because my undergrad was in Spanish. And that wasn't probably the best baseline for going into the business world or going into a professional teaching role. It's been helpful in other ways, but not in particularly in that way. So I went to grad school while I was starting my business to get a graduate degree in education and in professional development. I wrote a curriculum that I published through my experience. It was like my thesis type project at the end of that graduate work.

And then I started saying, okay, if we're going to do this, how can we make it about more than just dance? Because I had this heart that I wanted to use dance as a vehicle for life lessons. Dance is a vehicle for that which will last forever. Your daughter dances, you know that the actual physicality of dance is for a very small period of time. But that perseverance, determination, that grit, that resilience, that life skill teamwork that comes out of that lasts for a lifetime. So we started referring to our own programs as, hey, this is more than just great dancing. Yes, we do great dance. If you're going to hang a shingle as a dance teacher, you should probably do a good job at teaching dance. So we're going to do a great job at dance, but we're going to do more than just great dancing. We're going to give in the

community. We're going to raise these great kids through the arts. And so that was another pivot, like really defining the messaging. So getting into education, really defining the messaging. And then I started teaching, doing that stage work and the magazine work and having other studio owners say, we want to do this. And, you know, Adam, I thought maybe I would go the corporate route and have a lot of dance studios. And that wasn't a good fit for my family. We had five kids under the age of eight at one point. And that's not a great fit because dance is all nights and weekends.

And I thought, well, maybe we would franchise. And that wasn't a great fit for the industry. We were so built on personal expression that to have to do everything exactly the same way probably wasn't a great fit for the industry. We were so built on personal expression that to have to do everything exactly the same way probably wasn't a great fit. So we landed on licensing saying, here's the best tools, the resources. And it's like a 24-hour gym. Everything you need to be healthy and fit is the studio owners in here, but you have to come in and do the work and we'll have coaches here to help you. That's the model that we landed on. And we started with one, a founding member in Florida. I sat in her living room.

It reminds me of the stories that I've heard you and Dave tell at the beginning of Remax, right? I mean, it's talking to one potential person at a time who's going to take a market and become the franchisee in that marketplace. That was me in the living room of Boca Dance Studio. Melanie and Jody and Zussane, I have an idea. Could you do this? And then another and another. And 10 years later, we have almost 300. This is incredible because when you take a step back, what entrepreneurs look for are those levers. Basically, those levers take you from this, okay, I'm successful in this little place.

Then I become successful in a little bit bigger place. Then I really start to find where my organization creates significance. So the philosophy of from success to significance. You found that significance in teaching life values and some of those really intrinsic needs that your students had to have in order to take them to the next level in life and built those into this. And then you found the next level of significance of going, wait a sec, how do I scale this truly if dance instructors can't find the time to put these curriculums together? Because everybody shouldn't be out researching all this on their own and going, I want to be like Misty's school, when they can go to you and get it perfected. Walk me through what's going on in your head with building that system. How do systems create freedom for our businesses? And a lot of people want to do it all themselves, but truly do they need to when the systems are available?

So I do think this idea that we need to build everything ourselves is uniquely American. So I have friends in other markets, let's just say Canada, UK, Australia, and they would never write their own curriculum because there's amazing curricular resources out there. They just look at us in the States and say, why would you spend your whole summer developing a TAP curriculum or a business development curriculum when there's resources out there? So it really is, I think, a uniquely American mindset that we do everything on our own for ourselves and by ourselves. And there's a certain ambition about that, but there's also a certain, if you want to

call it a liability of thinking that you could actually be great at everything because that's simply not the case. So I want to back up and answer this question a different way, Adam. So when I was really looking at what my journey had been, I realized that I had certain areas of absolute incompetence. You don't want me teaching the boys' hip-hop program. You don't even want me subbing that class, right? Then I had areas of competence where I was a competent choreographer. I had to work real hard at it, but I could put out decent choreography. I had areas of excellence. I was excellent as a teacher. I could probably get any child to feel

confident on a stage. But when I started working on my business, I found I had a unique ability. And then all of a sudden, my role to my business became very, very clear. I had a unique ability to develop business systems and to train people into the system and to develop a mission and a message and a voice around what we were doing. So when I'm working with business owners, we really start there and saying, let's just unpack this just a tiny bit. Where do we know for sure you're not going to spend any time? Because that's not your competency. Where are you at that level of unique ability? And that's what our system helps them to

find is where do they actually fit into their business? And how can we build structure and support around all of those other areas So somebody else in their organization can also either excel or find their unique ability. So this is not unique to the dance space, this philosophy, because you didn't really say dance in there any place other than the example. This is a business framework that you've been able to uncover through all of your trial and error and learnings and things like that. And that's one of the things that people are seeking the answers. They might not have the ability, the time, the opportunity to go out and find the education. So you've brought that to them in your space that you're like them and you've been in their shoes. How do you get an entrepreneur to stop seeking

and start doing when it comes to that? I mean, because that's really the, you know, we're all seekers and entrepreneurs are more seekers than doers, unfortunately. You have some- We don't say we're choreographers. We just want to constantly create something new. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's, and if you just get most of the way there, then nothing ever gets done. How did you get these people to say, stop wasting your time and start doing and switch that, that searching to the discipline of execution? Yeah, that's such a great question. I think if I back up just a little bit, I would say you have to find enough people at the beginning who are in some level of pain or discomfort where they're going

to say, you know what? I am smart enough to know now that I don't know everything. Or I am deep enough into this to say, back, you know, it's not a choice. I have to figure this out. Or I'm toward the end of my career, and I'm not sure that I've actually built something of value to a potential future buyer. It's a value to me. It's a value to the kids. So I have to demonstrate that there's something here. So that would come in maybe for any one of those, but the common thread is there's some level of discomfort or pain or sick of being sick in some area, right? So if you can get somebody to that point, then they're going to be willing to listen. Here's a possible path or a solution. But until there's something that's so uncomfortable or they're so tired of or frustrated with

or they're sick of being sick in some area of their life. I will tell you, Adam, that it tends for us when we work with these small business owners. Honestly, they could be dentists or florists. It could be anything. We happen to work with primarily dance school owners and gymnastic schools and music schools and karate schools, mostly dance, but it could be anybody. They're coming in for one of two reasons. They're getting to the end of the month and they're having financial pain.

There's more month than money. So the first of the month looked okay. You get to the end of the month and every month they're living a version of financial groundhog's day, like the Bill Murray movie, right? The same thing, a little bit of different crisis, but it has a theme, right? So there's something that's not working financial-wise or there's something that's not working people-wise. It could be the people in their business. It could be their personal relationships at home.

Because at the end of the day, business is math and people. You have to get the math right for the business and you have to get the people right for the business. So they tend to come in with a predominant pain in one area, sometimes both, but it tends to be one or the other. And then we say, great, out of the 10 pillars of business we're going to work on, let's start over here. And if we can get you a win, which I love your start with a win, if we can show that

somebody just like them had a win in this area, and then we can get them a win, if we can show that somebody just like them had a win in this area, and then we can get them a win, all of a sudden it buys a little breathing room where we can actually leverage the fact that they're seeking to get them to do the next thing in their business. So it's almost like gamifying it, right? You said, we know they're seekers. We know they're creatives. So we say, let's get a win here. Let's get a breathing room so we can actually tap your superpower of being a creative and

being a seeker to look at all the next things we can solve in your business. And really, let's choreograph the next step. So then we choose the next thing that we're going to work on. Find somebody who also won there. Give the example. Give the framework. Get a small win there. Great.

Now we've got two wins going on that don't stop winning, by the way, right? If you fix your business model, that or your pricing or an issue in your supply chain, that keeps working for you while you go work on the next thing. So that really has been the step-by-step way that we approach convincing somebody to not only stop seeking endlessly and start doing, but then to apply that superpower of seeking to actually work for them and not against them. Amazing. I mean, there's so many different lessons in this. So for all of our listeners, I would hit rewind and start over again. Make sure you have that notepad handy. And you've just been through Misty's business masterclass here. So

just a whole bunch of incredible things. I want to talk about leadership real quick with you, though. What leadership lessons do you wish you had known before you are where you are today in order to propel you forward? Because 10, 15 whatever years ago, you were a different person in your leadership development. If you were to look back then and say, I want the Misty of then to have this leadership skill or this leadership point, what would that be? Oh my gosh. First of all, I have to say that one of the most painful things I hear sometimes as a leader is, wow, it, meaning

the business, has really changed or you've really changed. Sometimes people think that's a negative. I say, my gosh, I hope I've changed. I hope after doing this for 24 years that I've grown. Healthy things grow. Healthy things change. We start out as seeds and we become seed-bearing. We go from one to this beautiful outpouring. So I just want to frame up this leadership growth as a really positive thing. And if you do change and it's growing, that's a positive thing. Now, let me just share the specific answer to your question you were talking about. What do I wish that I had known? I wish that I had known, just like on the business

side, that I actually probably can't be great at all things. Meaning, on business side, of all these 10 things that go into our business, I'm not going to be great at them all. So, I need to find people to be great at this. In the leadership side, I'm not going to make all people happy. There's a version of that applied over to leadership. And I think when I came into business as a young entrepreneur in 21, right? I mean, let's be real. My prefrontal cortex didn't wire till 25 as nobody else's does either. So I was working, you know, with, with all everything wired up. I thought I could do all things in my business or that I should be able to, or that somehow I could be the top of all pieces of my business. And I thought as a leader that if I worked hard enough, I could

actually make everybody happy. Where I picked up those ideas, I don't know, but they were very immature. And I wish I could go back to 21-year-old Misty and say, listen, I'm going to give you two really great tips. You're not going to be able to be great at all things in your business. And you're not going to be able to make everybody happy. So let's get really comfortable with that right now because it would have saved me so much emotional lost momentum because the momentum that I could have been applying towards forward motion, helping people, building better programs, really was stuck spinning at different times for too long on beating myself up that I wasn't great at every piece of the business or beating myself up because

I had, once again, not made everybody happy. Incredible. So I want to get onto one more question right after that, that kind of follows up on that leadership piece. And that is, what piece of advice would you give a business leader today that is, you know, people wake up in the morning and they look in the mirror after they've been, you know, in the grind and, you know, trying to work hard to grow their business. And maybe it's growing a little bit here and there. But what thing do you have to say to them to inspire them or get them to look over the next hill for that next piece of movement? Because you're always growing. You, yourself, Misty Lone, it's another new... I mean, you're getting your PhD right now, for crying out loud. And I mean, you're doing fantastic, by the way. And it's kind of cool to talk to you during this

process. But Misty never sits still for anybody who's wondering on this program. But what additional piece of advice do you have for a business leader that might be just kind of having a little bit of that fear, doubt, overwhelm of what's next? Because the world's changing right now. Society, economics, you know, whatever you want to call it. Give us a piece of advice from Misty. Can I give two? Sure. Of course. Of course. So the first is be careful that you actually want what you say you want, right? And I'll

unpack this for just a second. So you may say, oh, I want 10 locations. Do you really? Do you really? Or do you just want more revenue? Or do you just want what 10 locations could get you, which may be as a larger team or larger brand impact? So I think sometimes we look out to somebody in our field who's doing some version of better. I'm using my air quotes now, if you're listening on just the audio, of better than what we're doing. And we say, well, obviously, that is the better thing. So if I'm a one-location studio, maybe 10 locations is better.

I just really count the cost of whatever you think you want. Think a little longer, think a little wider and say, do I really want what I say I want? Or do I just want a piece of that? And is there a better, easier, more sane, or higher impact way to get that? So that is the first piece. Just really consider, do you want what we say you want? The second piece is find one or two voices in your life that you trust and go deep with that. You referenced before the entrepreneurial seeking that we have, and we have that on steroids in 2022. I mean, we are scrolling and clicking

and looking and downloading and free this and intro course that. And it's basically, I wrote about this in my book, but it's intellectual obesity. We are consuming and not exercising. We're taking in, taking in, taking in, taking in. We're getting like not even an inch deep in a mile wide. We're getting like a millimeter deep in 10 miles wide right now. So if somebody is listening here and they're saying, you know what, I need to work on leadership, then go deep with Leadership Factory. Like just sit in it and rinse and repeat it. And our mentor, Darren, would say, we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. Incredible. All right. So Misty, before we get to our final question

here, where can people find you online? I'd love to connect Misty Lown all over Facebook, Instagram, Gmail. You can find me at Misty Lown. There you go. Awesome. All right. And Misty, the final question I have for you, a question that I ask all the amazing guests on Start With A Win. Misty, how do you start your day with a win? Oh gosh, I love to get up early before the kids. So I have some time for myself. I know you and I love a good cup of bulletproof coffee, looking at what's happening for the day, quiet time. I like to look in God's word, journal what's happening. I feel if I can get any piece of deposit into what I hope my day looks like, how I hope to show up to the day before the day starts happening around me, I have a much better chance if I put my day looks like, how I hope to show up to the day before the day starts happening

around me. I have a much better chance if I put my own win in first. Awesome. Thank you so much for being on Start With A Win, Misty. You're a great friend. I love you and your family so much. You're just an incredible human being and an amazing entrepreneur. Thank you for being on Start With A Win. Right back at you. Thank you, Adam. Hey, and thank you for listening to Start With A Win. Make sure you head over to adamcontos.com for more great content. And if you haven't been there in a while, it's been redesigned. And you can sign up for the Leadership Factory. You kind of hear us talk about that.

What is that? Well, you'll find out more. There you go. But you got to sign up first. So until next time, remember, start with a win.