Happy Anniversary To Ballet Help Desk!

One day, about 18 months ago, Jenny and I were out hiking. We got to talking about how many people were calling us to ask for advice on sending their students to San Francisco Ballet School. Since our kids had been there for four years, apparently we were considered some sort of resident experts on the place. 

One other thing that she and I talked about was how similar the questions were. They all revolved around whether or not it was a good decision to send their child to the school. And, we realized we were answering parents in the same way – with a set of questions to ask in order to gauge whether or not SFBS was a good fit. 

We looked at each other and Jenny said to me, “You know, we should write all of this down.” That was the genesis for Ballet Help Desk. We thought we would write a few blog posts and then turn our attention to running parent education seminars for parents of younger dancers. We weren’t sure if these seminars would be conducted online or in person. We just knew we had some things to say!

As luck would have it, we had some contacts at the Youth America Grand Prix (thanks Larissa and April!). They agreed to let us run a seminar at their San Francisco regional competition in early 2023. This was before we had either a website or a clue what direction we wanted to go. 

But, we did know how to raise kids who were ballet dancers and we were certain of the mistakes we made along the way.

Over the course of the weekend, we ran two seminars. Surprisingly, people were interested in what we had to say and some even emailed us later that evening to thank us for running the program. What became clear was that there is a huge vacuum of information when it comes to ballet training.

One of the first people we spoke with was a woman named Heather. Heather has a daughter who is just getting started in ballet and she told us that she never had anyone to whom she could ask questions about how to handle her daughter’s training. She told us how helpful we had been and how she looked forward to staying in touch. Heather was literally our first supporter and we love her for it!

Today is the one year anniversary of the launch of Ballet Help Desk and we NEVER expected to be where we are.

Jenny and I chatted a few days ago and we decided to recap the things we’ve learned over the last year and also list those things we never saw coming. And, we have learned plenty!

Lesson 1: We Will Never Be Viral Video Sensations!

In the early days of Ballet Help Desk I had this brilliant idea that Jenny and I were going to do weekly Q&A sessions and put them up on YouTube. It would be great! We’d write the script, read it off a teleprompter (yes, I paid for us to have a teleprompter), and our videos would go viral! Have you ever watched one of them? If so, congratulations, you’re one of twelve people who did. 

Lesson 2: Seminars Don’t Scale If Expenses Aren’t Covered! 

We also thought we would travel the country running seminars at ballet competitions. We didn’t even care if we got paid as long as the event owners would cover our travel and lodging costs. And, we just knew every competition would LOVE to have us. What we didn’t factor in is that most ballet competitions are held together by a small staff, an even smaller budget and an army of volunteers that work behind the scenes to make these events happen. Bringing us in, much less paying for our expenses, was about 39th on their priority list and understandably so. 

Lesson 3: People In The Ballet World Want to Help

As a veteran of several start-ups in Silicon Valley, the mantra has always been to throw as much stuff at the wall and see what sticks. So, we started throwing. One idea that stuck was the notion of long form interviews with luminaries in the ballet training world. But those weren’t really a good fit with how our blog was evolving.

Jenny had this bright idea to do these interviews as a podcast. I thought it was insane but told her I was happy to do it as long as I never, ever had to touch an editing tool. So, Jenny taught herself to edit audio. 

We started by simply turning our YouTube videos into podcasts. Yes, they were just as bad as when they were in video form but at least you didn’t have to look at two awkward ladies sitting in front of a webcam! As we got more comfortable with podcasting, we decided to create a real content plan and focus on subjects that we thought were important to families of dancers. 

This is where something totally unexpected happened. I was in charge of reaching out to folks in the ballet training world to invite them to come on our show. We created this huge list of potential guests and I sent out the first wave of email solicitations. The goal was to get one response. Within two days, how many people do you think replied and said they would love to do an interview? Zero? Maybe one? No, it was every single person! Several guests even told us, “No one has ever asked us to do something like this, and we love it!” 

Well, we kept asking and guests kept saying yes! So much so that we will be launching our 52nd episode tomorrow and we have had our episodes played over 80,000 times. Never in a million years would I have predicted that our podcast would get any traction, much less the kind of support it has gotten from all of you!

Lesson 4: The Level Of Participation Is Amazing!

After we got the podcast going, we sat back and said to ourselves, “What are the other pieces of information we would have loved to have had when our kids were younger.” Almost at the same time, we both said, “Anything to help with summer intensives.” What we did know is that there was no one source where you could get honest, objective information on summer intensives from students who had attended in the past. So, we sketched out a survey form and sent it to some of our friends. And, to all of our friends whom we spammed asking you to fill out reviews, we will be forever grateful. Once we had enough to seem legitimate, we launched it to the general public. 

And, wow did you all show up and show out on this! In less than a year, we have over 900 reviews that cover 170 programs worldwide. It is thanks to all of you that our summer reviews are so robust and comprehensive. For that, we are incredibly appreciative.

Lesson 5: The Hard Questions Need To Be Asked

We never expected to  tackle the hard questions, both with our blog content as well as with our podcast guests. Every time I wrote a blog post that I thought might be controversial, I held my nose, squeezed my eyes shut tight and hit publish. But, we thought it was important to address some of the not so great issues that continue to exist in ballet training. 

Moreover, as our podcast has evolved, we have begun to ask our guests harder questions. For example, “Is your ballet competition rigged? Why does your trainee program have 60 people? What is the ideal body type for ballet and why does that aesthetic exist?” 

Many of our podcast guests were more than happy to respond to those questions and the reception from our audience has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, our most popular podcast episode continues to be our interview with Fran Veyette where we tackled body types and ballet head on. 

And, our two most widely read blog posts also dealt with hot button topics. The first post talked about why boys in ballet don’t have it as easy as everyone thinks they do. More recently, our post about the culture of fear in ballet schools broke all traffic records of anything we’ve ever published.

We know we have a ways to go with regard to digging deeper on the hard stuff, but we also know it’s important, based on feedback from all of you, that we keep asking the more difficult questions of our podcast guests.

Lesson 6: Schools Are Paying Attention

We couldn’t believe it when a school administrator came on our podcast and started referring to our summer intensive reviews for their programs. In fact, they would sometimes reference comments that had been made in individual reviews. Then, we were astounded when that same guest asked if they could send out the link for the summer reviews form to all of their former students. This did not just happen once. It continues to happen all the time!

More recently, one school approached us to collaborate on collecting both summer intensive and year-round reviews for their program. The staff was interested in constant improvement and they knew this was a good way for them to collect feedback and react by making changes to their school. 

This is all because of all of you. Without those 900+ reviews for summer programs and nearly 150 for year-round, schools wouldn’t see where they excel and where they may have areas for improvement. As a collective group, we’re making a dent in the information vacuum that is ballet training. Let’s keep it up!

Lesson 7: It Truly Does Take A Village

Finally, we learned what an incredibly supportive community we are part of. In particular, we want to send a huge note of thanks to the moderators of all of the Facebook groups that Jenny and I are a part of. The moderators and members of these groups have provided unwavering support, honest feedback (even when we miss the mark), patience, and most of all, participation. Without all of you, Ballet Help Desk would never have morphed into what it is today. We could not be more grateful to all of you in helping us make it through the first year and we look forward to writing many more of these letters in the coming years!

Much Love, 

Brett & Jenny