Toronto Dance Salsa Triples Client Base Thanks to WellnessLiving

At Toronto Dance Salsa, it’s their mission for you to #belong no matter who you are and to feel comfortable the moment you walk through their doors.

That’s exactly how CEO and Co-Founder, Len Fridman, and the rest of the WellnessLiving Team felt when they visited Toronto Dance Salsa in his hometown of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, as part of the CEO Tour.

The director of operations at Toronto Dance Salsa, Aleksander Saiyan, has created an environment where every student belongs ever since he started at the school as a student and later became an administrator. When he needed an all-in-one solution to help manage and grow his dance studio, Aleksander wanted to find one where he felt like he belonged as well, and that’s when he found WellnessLiving.

“Not only does the platform help me do my job better, but we’ve nearly tripled our student base, from 244 to over 600,” says Aleksander. “This is all thanks to WellnessLiving.”

Read on to learn about Aleksander’s story and how WellnessLiving’s built-in marketing emails, flexible booking, FitVID on Demand, Forms, and more, help grow his business.

Toronto Dance Salsa at a Glance

📍Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

📍Business Name: Toronto Dance Salsa

📍Business Owner: Aleksander (Aleks) Saiyan, Director of Operations, Salsa and Bachata Instructor

📍Website: https://torontodancesalsa.ca/

📍Business Size: Large

📍Joined WellnessLiving Date: Nov. 2, 2020

📍Switched From: Own software provider. Has also used Mindbody.

📍Active Subscriptions: Professional Plan

Meet Aleksander Saiyan, Director of Operations and Salsa & Bachata Instructor

Growing up Aleksander always felt like an outsider, while fighting feelings of not being good enough. Then in 2009, he chose to tackle his biggest fear—dancing.

Aleksander was overweight and low on confidence, so he joined Toronto Dance Salsa as a beginner with Salsa Level 1. While he was one of the most uncoordinated students in the class, Aleksander fell in love with the people, music, and himself.

Toronto Dance Salsa was really where everything changed for Aleksander. He considered himself the worst student, but he never gave up, worked hard, and repeated the classes multiple times until he got it right. Eventually he became a salsa and bachata instructor and later was asked to lead the school as the director of operations in 2014.

“I struggled my whole life to belong,” says Aleksander. “As a place where I didn’t feel judged and found a sense of community, I got good at something at Toronto Dance Salsa and my confidence grew. It’s now my mission to help others fall in love with themselves and find a place where they can #belong just like I did. When people come to us and want to learn to dance, that’s not the thing they really want. What they want is connection, confidence, and an escape.”

Originally founded in 2005, the dance school focuses on two forms of Latin dances—salsa and bachata—that allow students to learn and perform them at any Latin nightclub. Toronto Dance Salsa is so much more than a dance school, it’s an experience.

When you walk into Toronto Dance Salsa for the first time, Aleksander literally says, “Welcome home, we missed you. Our business model is ‘everybody can dance’ because everyone can dance.”

Why did you choose WellnessLiving?

In 2019, Aleksander started with Mindbody and spent dozens of hours giving them a chance. Then out of frustration, Toronto Dance Salsa decided to build their own software to run their business. While things seemed to be going smoothly, the pandemic added another fork in the road.

“The problem was that our system needed a lot of logistical check-ins and upkeep, and that’s not my superpower,” says Aleksander. “I then searched for a system that checked all the boxes. Quickly it became evident that WellnessLiving was the right solution—they’re user-friendly, easy to use, reliable, and affordable.”

That’s when Aleksander’s journey with WellnessLiving began. He once again found a place he belonged with an all-in-one solution to help manage and grow his dance studio.

“From onboarding and training to the launch date and follow-up session, I felt supported every step of the way,” says Aleksander. “WellnessLiving asked for feedback, which was really important for me because that’s how I run my business.”

How has WellnessLiving helped grow your dance school?

“WellnessLiving is like the Apple of business management software providers,” says Aleksander. “So much of the backend is simplified and everything you need is right there, which means you don’t need to be tech savvy to operate it.”

Toronto Dance Salsa is now Canada’s largest salsa dance school. In fact, Aleksander is proud to say that 80% of dancers in Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area have danced at Toronto Dance Salsa at some point. Why has there been so much success?

“As a dance school, where people go from level 1 to level 2 to level 3 to level 4 to level 5, the business’s success relies on retention with each student moving up a level after they finish the previous level,” says Aleksander.

“Now with WellnessLiving, when students miss class, they receive an automated follow-up email to encourage them to attend more classes. Our retention skyrocketed, increasing 14–22%. Overall, we’ve nearly tripled our student base, from 244 to over 600. This is all thanks to WellnessLiving.”

What else does Toronto Salsa Dance love about WellnessLiving?

Whether it’s flexible booking or dynamic reporting features, WellnessLiving has all the right moves while providing everything Toronto Dance Salsa needs to manage and grow their business. Next up, we break down some of Alexsander’s favorite features.

24/7 Customer Support

Aleksander says the best part is that he didn’t have to hire his own programmers, there’s a support team there for him whenever he needs them.

“All I need to do is email or call them, and if they don’t fix it in the moment, they will within a day of two,” says Aleksander. “I basically found a 300+ employee crew that does the work that I’m not good at, so that I can save time and run my business.”

“You don’t get that kind of support from a massive company. You get it from a company that cares about every single business owner, and that’s WellnessLiving! I love the open communication, where they constantly ask, ‘What do you need? What can we do better?’ People make me feel important and that’s important.”

Staff Management

Aleksander says it’s very important for his instructors to have a personal connection with their students, and it’s easy to do that with WellnessLiving’s staff management tools.

“WellnessLiving has made it easy to add staff members to the system and grant them access to certain information, which has helped me build up micro-leaders in my school that care about their students,” says Aleksander. “Within the client profile, instructors can pull up attendance records, as well as emails and phone numbers of their students. I encourage staff to call and check in on their students.”

Client Profiles

Aleksander loves that students can create a client profile—a hub that collects and tracks personal info, attendance, communication history, credit card info, client goals and progress, and more.

“I love how I can go into the client profile, view all the info I need, make quick edits, and send off a message to a student, all within their profile. It’s been a Godsend for us,” says Aleksander.

Forms

Whether you need to create an intake form or a strategy for collecting feedback, WellnessLiving’s Forms, a fully integrated, drag-and-drop form builder, makes it easy for Aleksander to collect and store their client information.

“We used to ask students for feedback in person and ask them to give us a rating,” says Aleksander. “Now, we just send them an email and ask them to fill out a feedback form to learn about their experience in class and how we can improve.”

Easy Registration & Dynamic Booking

Aleksander loves how easy it is for students to register, book, and sign up for class. Then the class shows up automatically in their Google calendar.

Through direct booking URLs and direct buy URLs, Aleksander can email or send a SMS message to make it easier for his clients who are hesitant to book a salsa class.

“Often you give people too many options and they start overthinking whether they want to take class, but now there’s a direct path that leads them to the specific class where they can just click, check out, and pay right away,” says Aleksander.

Automated Reminders & SMS

WellnessLiving’s automated marketing suite allows Toronto Dance Salsa to email or text to remind students 24 hours before their class, especially before a long weekend or at the end of the semester.

“It’s all about touching base with students and following up, while thanking them for their support,” says Aleksander. “Also, since not everybody checks their email, we can send them to SMS message if we need to reach them urgently. It’s literally made all the difference in the world.”

FitVID on Demand

With the help of FitVID on Demand, Aleksander plans to create online dance videos and dance courses, while storing them for students to purchase and view within WellnessLiving.

“Let’s say they sign up for Salsa Level 1 and they want extra practice, they can purchase the instructional videos so they can dance at home. Plus, it’s another source of revenue for us,” says Aleksander. “With YouTube, I need to share a link and they need to log in to their profile, but with WellnessLiving, they can watch the videos anytime on their mobile device or streamed on their TV. It’s that simple!”

Digital Gift Cards

Gift cards are an easy way to give the gift to dance to anyone. Aleksander simply sets gift cards with a prepaid dollar amount and clients can purchase them for their family and friends.

“Before WellnessLiving, we sold gift certificates, and I had to call them and type in their info and send them the gift card. It was this complicated thing before they could actually sign up for class. Now, a code gets generated through WellnessLiving, and boom, that’s it, they sign up and they’re ready to go.”

Discount Codes

Toronto Dance Salsa also utilizes discount codes in a creative way at the school, controlling when and how they are used.

“For instance, say someone is sick or there’s been a death in the family, and they can’t continue to take class,” says Aleksander. “So, I create a discount code so they can come back and use it for a free class in the future. And, the code is specific to their profile, which means nobody else can use it. The fact that we can control our discount codes has been very important for me and gives me a lot of peace of mind.”

Advanced Reporting

With WellnessLiving’s advanced reporting system, Aleksander has a bird’s eye view of his business and lets him predict how many students will continue to the next semester and adjust the class schedule accordingly. What specific reports can’t Aleksander live without?

• Projected Revenue Report: Whenever Aleksander wants revenue projections for the day, week, or month, he simply pulls up this report.
• All Sales Report: This easy-to-read report features a detailed list of transactions, taxes, total payments, failed payments, and more.
• Event Analysis Report: Since Toronto Dance Salsa is a dance school, classes run for a specific timeframe like nine weeks, so they get tracked as an event in the system. This report allows Aleksander to track classes and attendance numbers over the course of each semester.
• Expiring Credit Card Report: To avoid any delay in payments, this report lists every client credit card that’s about to expire.

Franchise Cloud

Thanks to WellnessLiving, Aleksander has big plans for Toronto Dance Salsa in the future.

“Once we reach certain financial milestones, I’m going to open another location, then another,” says Aleksander. “Before I die, my vision is 100 locations, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and even one in Japan. That’s my dream. With WellnessLiving, it’s as simple as adding a new location whenever we do choose to scale the business.”

Community Forum

WellnessLiving’s Community Forum offers a platform that allows business owners the opportunity to request new features, ask questions, and report issues.

“I love the fact that I can communicate with the programmers and be like, hey, I need some help here or hey, it would be awesome to have this feature,” says Aleksander.

Are you ready to elevate your business with WellnessLiving?

When Aleksander found Toronto Dance Salsa, he found a home where he belonged. He had that same feeling when he discovered WellnessLiving, and now he recommends the all-in-one software to everyone.

“Most small business owners don’t have a team and WellnessLiving is your team. Whether you’re a yoga studio, a dance school, or another type of small business, WellnessLiving works behind the scenes to streamline your booking, payments, marketing, and more, so you can show up to class, be the best version of yourself, and focus on building an incredible community.”

Want to learn how WellnessLiving can elevate your dance school? Book a free, no-commitment demo for more!