The Barstool Fund - The Dance Studio Of Fresno
Up next: The Dance Studio of Fresno (Fresno, CA)
The Dance Studio of Fresno was created to transform dancers into artists at the core of their being. To achieve that, they have trained dancers since 1982 with the finest dance technique in Central California.
Reader Email
Liz, Dave, and Barstool. My name is Nate Dalena and I am the son of the owner of The Dance Studio of Fresno. Long time stoolie and I've been helping my mom run her business since the pandemic started in March. I convinced her to submit for this as we're at the point now where we really need the help. Here's the story of what my mom has been able to build over the last 39 years
In 1982, my mom, Sue Sampson-Dalena, was 20 years old and dropped out of college to open her own dance studio. To build the business, my mom would teach anywhere she could, whether that was high school dance programs, cheerleading, pageants, christmas shows, her friends and family, and anywhere else that would take her in order to build up a small clientele. She opened The Dance Studio of Fresno in May of 1982 with one room and 20 students.
As the years progressed and word of mouth got out, my mom was able to expand from one room in a strip mall to 4. She did this by teaching incredible classes and hiring great teachers. She would also bring in talented teachers from across the United States to come teach her dancers. These teachers were well known in popular areas like LA and New York but the dance industry in Fresno had never been able to get access to them. Oftentimes my mom would lose money when bringing in these teachers but she always believed that it is incredibly important to give dancers a wide variety of teachers in order to learn in different ways. After about 20 years in business, she moved out of the strip mall, purchased her own land, and built her own 7 room building.
As the studio grew her staff grew as well. Her first hires were former students who had come back to Fresno after dancing for different companies, colleges, and squads. As of today, she has roughly 30 teachers and 5 front office staff. My mom was actually able to hire her own dance teacher from when she grew up. Teacher Jeanie still teaches the 2 to 4 year olds today. Two of those former students, turned teachers, now have opened their own studios and my mom helped them through the whole process. Instead of worrying about creating more competition for herself in her area, she felt that it meant more to help her students realize their dream.
Over the past 39 years the studio has produced countless NFL and NBA cheerleaders, professional dancers, and Broadway performers and has also sent many dancers to college on full ride scholarships for dance. Most importantly, the studio continuously produces incredible human beings that understand hard work and dedication.
Selfishly, the studio also introduced me to my wife. We got married this year on September 26th.
On March 1st my mom had over 800 students registered in the studio. On March 20th, we had to shut the studio down. Instead of laying off all of her employees, she took the studio completely virtual and had all of her teachers record their classes. She would then email pre-recorded classes to each student and have the teachers give written feedback.
After about 2 months of that, she switched over to Zoom classes, which was a success for a short period of time, but by the end of the summer she was down to 300 students enrolled. Not a single employee has been laid off this entire time. She has paid her employees regularly since March 20th.
Nothing can beat a live class where you're learning something you're passionate about with a group of friends who understand you. To foster this experience, my mom used her connections from the Miss California pageant and had the production company who built the show come out to her studio and build stages in her parking lot. You cannot teach ballet or tap class on asphalt, so the only choice was to build stages that would work for her dancers. My mom has never done anything small, so she went all out to create a stage that her students would be excited about. I've attached a video and pictures to this email to give you an idea of the scale of these stages. She invested in them thinking that we would only need them for one or two months.
The stages were built the first week of August and immediately after they were built, The Creek Fire broke out in the mountains above Fresno near Huntington lake. The smoke was so bad that the county cancelled all outdoor events. To add onto that, the first night after the stages were built, a group of people broke into the parking lot and attempted to steal some of the stage equipment. Thankfully, they couldn't get the equipment over the back wall so it was resting on top of the wall when the studio opened up the next day. We're now paying for overnight security and haven't had any troubles since then.
By the time they were able to use the stages in Mid-September, she was down to 250 students. My mom paid for the stages for roughly 6 weeks even though she couldn't use them. Tough break but she kept going.
September came along and she was able to resume classes. To this day, the kids are still dancing on these stages. To add onto the stress, both my mom and dad got Covid at the beginning of December from visited my Grandmother at her nursing home. Thankfully, they're both tough and have gotten through it without any harm. Grandma is okay too.
My parents have also sold their dream home and moved into a different home to help ease the cost of running the business as well as refinance the building to help as well.
California is not allowing anything indoors. The only way my mom is keeping the studio afloat is with these stages. This has worked so far, but the issue with Fresno is that it gets cold and it rains in January, February, and March and we do not know how many students will stick around if we're still outside.
I am asking the Barstool Fund for help with employee wages, monthly payment for the stages/security, and the building mortgage.
If you have any questions or need any clarification, feel free to reach out. My cell is below as well.
Whether she receives help or not, thank you for this opportunity and thank you for helping other small businesses across the country.