READY, SET, WINners MamaMag were thrilled to be the Diamond sponsor of this year’s AusMumpreneur Awards in NSW. There were so many fantastic entries from amazing mums across the state who are doing fabulous things in business. This year’s top gong, The NSW AusMumpreneur of the Year Award, went to not just one clever mum, but five! Belinda, Jade, Glenda, Priscilla and Natalie are the founders of READY SET DANCE and we caught up with them to hear their story…
Congratulations girls, tell us about how READY SET DANCE started. READY SET DANCE was created in 2014 by partnership of 5 of Sydney’s most successful dance studio owners (us!). The program was originally created as a solution for our studios. There was a huge gap in the market for preschool dance. Existing programs were generally outdated, girl focussed and reliant on the magic of the studio owner. We were inspired to create a fun and fresh genderneutral combo class utilising our vast combined experience as dance educators. Fast-forward 6 years and today our preschool dance program is licensed to 234 dance studios in Australia and NZ with 15,000 preschoolers participating weekly!
You’re obviously all mums! Tell us about each of your families… Between the five of us we have 8 kids of very different ages. Belinda has a 10 year old daughter, Priscilla has a 6 and 9 year old daughters and Jade has an 11 year old daughter. Natalie’s children are all grown up, with one doing the HSC and the other at Uni. In Glenda’s case her daughter has been living in America for the past eight years as the dance captain for Britney Spears.
What makes READY SET DANCE stand out from other programs? Our magic ingredient was investing in over 100 original pieces of music combining choreography and musical cues. This 36
investment in intellectual property has become a powerful tool for expansion into other areas like TV. Following the popularity of the program we entered into a joint venture with Nickelodeon to transform the program into a TV show which launched in January 2018 on Nick Jr, made much more possible by the fact we owned our own music. The READY SET DANCE TV show has now been rolled out in 125 countries around the world, dubbed in 20 different languages and has recently been picked up by Channel 10. This global TV success has opened the door to exciting opportunities to expand the program into International markets in 2020 and develop further segments of the ANZ business including merchandising and live shows.
What do you wish you knew before you started your business? At our first AusMumpreneur conference the incredible speakers from B Box emphasised the importance of protecting intellectual property. We were very focused on protecting our multiple trademarks from the beginning of our business. Our golden goose is our original music and brand. What we wish we were more informed about was the process and costs associated in protecting these marks globally. The TV show fast-tracked our brand awareness in multiple markets and we felt hurried to make a decision weighing up brand exposure and commercial risk. We were unaware that the trademarking costs would be ongoing in each market as the registration goes through each stage of filing. If we had a better estimate of these costs from the beginning our trademark decisions would have been different and more staggered as required.
What has been your greatest challenge in business, especially this year? The idea of teaching preschoolers online when the world shut down due to COVID was daunting for our licensees. We pivoted our program and created online training
