This is the entrepreneurs versus coronavirus podcast with your host Ryan Kononoff. In this next interview I had the opportunity to speak with Jason Wah founder and director of the Surface Lab What I want you to pay attention to is the importance that Jason places on listening to what his customers are asking him for. Despite the challenging economic time. Jason kept true to his roots a pivoting his business like he did when the initially founded by meeting the needs of his customers today so that he'd be around to serve them tomorrow. He goes on to share about some of the specific challenges related to delivering circus training online and how instead of trying to replicate value they opted to supplement and treat this as a group. Opportunity to do something new. Let's dive in. Jason welcome to the entrepreneurs versus corona virus podcast Tell me a little bit about circus lab for those that haven't heard of you. What do you do who are your typical customers and and what's the makeup of your of your business? Yeah, absolutely. So we started several years ago and the game plan was to start a circus cool couple of us can get a place to train and we figured well, hey, you know, what if we forget this nice big beautiful building the train at we probably should teach as well because although performing as fun and training is great, it doesn't necessarily pay the bills. So we start up with no business model. I believe the idea was to start in April and by June we were fully operational The expectation was definitely that we're gonna have a lot of recreational students students that just wanted to come in and try circus for an hour to a week and then maybe hopefully get some of the the more dedicated students that were really hoping to make circus a career. And we were definitely wrong because it turned out to be completely opposite. We ended up with a vast majority of the students wanting to train more full-time more dedicated. We definitely do have recreational students that are just rocking that one to two hours a week. But I would say that we're split pretty 50/50 now where we've got a large group of adults that are training full-time and we've got those happy weekend warriors that are just coming in and jumping on the trampolinear climbing soaks for an hour or two. So talk to me a little bit about how do you get into circus school like what's your background that led you to decide that this was a career path or a business opportunity that you wanted to pursue? Yeah, absolutely. So I started off with gymnastics and gymnastics is great. It's the foundation of a lot of things that eventually worked into. Dance studios whereas teaching acrobatics Same sort of thing but instead of it being gymnast I was working with dancers and as we did that we started to see that it's a lot more artistic. There's a lot more art that's involved where gymnastics is very technical. To do that for several years, and I had parents just constantly nagging me to open up my own studio. I'd never really wanted to make that my full-time gig though because I'm not a dancer and I've never been a dancer. I just liked the act about it parts of it, but as I trained a little bit more I started to realize that throwing people around. Was. Was a heck of a lot more fun than that conventional gem and the lifting weights So that's exactly what I did I started training that and now the rest of kind of history. Right on. And as far as the revenue model for the business, do you sell subscriptions or memberships? Is it one-time purchases? Do you run workshops? What does that look like? The the biggest thing that we have is our sessions. That's going to be your your winter session your spring session summer session, and then fall. The recreational students will sign up for that session. So they'll be training upwards to three months. The real meeting potatoes though are. Students that are trainful time and they're going to be committing not just for the year but for multiple years the expectation is that they're going to be coming back year after year and most of those students that do public trigger and and go full-time for training. Yeah 15 to 20 hours a week for the duration of their dance career, which is usually 11 years old upwards to 18 years old. And then of course our adults who are doing our artist, preparatory program. It's a postgraduate program and this is for the adults out there that legitimately want to make a circus career and they're training 2025 hours a week. Well, and Is that an accredited program are you partnered with any organizations to help facilitate that. Yeah, we we can't let too much outright now but right now we are talking with one of the major universities in British Columbia. There's there's nothing on paper yet, but there is definitely a lot of chitchat going around back and forth, obviously this is a little bit on pause right now because of sure lovely virus but we've been chatting right upwards to a couple weeks ago and they still want to continue this conversation. The follow goes well fingers crossed we will be with a major. Scene BC and will be an accredited program Wow that's remarkable So with your revenue what portion of your revenue is repeat visit business versus someone coming out and saying I want to try this once and it ends up just being a one-time purchase for them. When we when we take a look at our recreational base, which makes up as far as seats in the house here, they make up a couple hundred of our students every session will have about 200 registered students upwards to 220 you're going to find about 75 80% of them will not repeat the next session and that's because they might be exploring things they might go back. Down to gymnastics you're gonna find that if they get into soccer volleyball that will end up taking priority. So there's definitely a constant fluctuation of new students coming in the door and then for those that remain they seem to remain for multiple sessions again, that's the red traditional side the more professional driven side, you're gonna see that they're in here for four five six years or sometimes even longer. So, let's talk about chrono virus. What were your immediate thoughts when chronovirus and covet nineteen started to hit the media and Really what became all you saw in the news Well I definitely was the the guy who said I'll come on the flu's worse than this. I'm not sure why we're making such big deal about it. Well, that wasn't that wasn't right and I got the background in trading stocks and one of the things that I was taught and I always taught others was that it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong, it's a matter of what the the rest of the group thinks. So, it doesn't matter the rest of the group thinks that this is a large and serious thing and therefore it is for my opinion kind of doesn't matter anymore where we're Asked and. It's gonna be like this so definitely wasn't expecting that and definitely doing what we can to keep rocking what we can so before this all hit what was your biggest challenges the business at that time at that time it's been of a two-sided equation one we're always just trying to keep as many students in the drawers we can the the second one is always looking for an adapting with our instructors, our instructors are very specialized this isn't the type of career where you can go through a stack of resumes and pick your top candidate you're going to find that. Everyone who is an instructor is still performing whether it's be strictest way or any of the other large circus companies, so they're either on contracts or going to be on contracts where we need full-time instructors so it's a bit of a game there a lot of turnaround and a lot of just being willing to accept that we might only have an instructor for a couple of months or maybe a year a bit of a transient workforce, it sounds like yeah, it's not it's not ideal and yeah. Vancouver isn't large for culture sadly, so you're going to find that if any of the artists are residing and Anywhere for any amount of time it's typically not Vancouver, so when did you begin to see a financial impact as a result of coronavirus and how did you pivot or were you able to adjust the work that you do to best adapt or to innovate we definitely a couple weeks ago but two three weeks ago, I couldn't say that the time it could have been any worse because we were just getting ready for our spring session so we had two weeks of spring camp plan and we usually expect that revenue to help us get through the slower season, obviously that had to. Have to go on hold so we've lost some revenue there we lost some corporate events because large gatherings were canceled and yes, we kind of just sat quietly just to see what we can expect and then obviously as things started to really ramp down to gatherings no more than 50 downwards to 25 down five we made the decision to go as virtual as possible so that's really what we're doing now this is our first week of virtual training and the goal is that that's gonna be enough to keep us afloat so let's talk a little bit about the virtual training what does that actually look like? As far as delivery goes yes so I'm pretty stoked that we got some passionate instructors that are willing to volunteer their time because in order to deal with the brick and mortar type structure our building our lease our rent our insurance, we still do need to make up a very large amount of money where on the virtual side if we were strictly virtual we would have that overhead but knowing that we do we've got a lot of stuff from Pilates to yoga to conditioning and stretching as well as some other stuff that's juggling partner acroing and whatnot is great. And it's definitely enough to keep people busy and and moving but it isn't fully in 100% what we are which is circus notrobatics where it's supposed to be larger than life we're supposed to be cloudy and silks that are 30 feet high and bouncing off the trampolines and whatnot, so we're doing what we can and we're we're definitely giving a great value right now, but we know that everybody else is really just going to be using this as a as a means to keep themselves busy until we can open up again, so is that a subscription there or how are you generating revenue right now, we took a look obviously to see what I'm Under. Competitors are doing in the field because obviously now we're not just computing with local businesses or computing with the global scale just because this is virtual and the one thing that we notice was a lot of different people were offering a la carte services, so if you wanted to do yoga you'd go to this person if you wanted to go to do handstands you'd go to that person we really just made a one-stop shop so you can pay a one-time fee per month and you have access to all of the material and with that subscription model then are you have you actually been able to attract any new? Customers through that or is it just been your existing customers that are using that as an opportunity to stay connected and and to continue to support the business I'd say that 95% of what we have right now is our existing database a lot of our students that are are willing to continue to pay their tuition and use this as they as a holder but I definitely were starting to do a lot more marketing while we're advertising outside of learning network because we are going to be expecting an open for a larger student base from students that have not worked with us previously, okay, so let's Talk about the time horizon Jason if this crisis persists beyond six months what do you see as your biggest challenge and obviously there's lots of time frames that have been thrown out there from more aggressive to to more conservative what do you see as your greatest challenges this continues forward? I would say the biggest challenge moving forward is continuing to hold the brick and mortar structure in place so that we can about those doors when that happens so trying to navigate working with the government obviously where we're keeping our ear out every day to see how Things progress there but the virtual model isn't something that we'll be able to sustain as a primary source of income for very long it's definitely not the expectation so you mentioned a number of times the bricks and mortar side of things so have you approached your landlord has your landlord been helpful at all through this time, you know, I I wish I could say that our landlord has but I mean, He's got his bills just like the rest of us do yeah sure a lot of the expectations that were we're looking forward to whether it be mortgage deferrals and whatnot, they seem to be the only for residential properties hoping that's going to change hoping that will we'll see that move into commercial side as well, so what's your biggest challenge today is your adapting and and have just launched this new online platform the biggest challenge right now is obviously we're we're now no longer a new service in our small little community, we're one of many services that are in the the global. Side and I would say the biggest struggle yet is there's a lot of a lot of people that think they're being helpful right now and they're offering services for free and that's just gonna be hurting for those of us who are trying to continue to make a revenue stream because when you can pay to go with us or get something else for free elsewhere people will often just go for the the lower price tag and when it's free, how do you compete with that so what's next for circus lab? Well we're actually continue to rock as much as we can virtually and do our best to build up that subscription base but one of the things that is super important to us is our community and our family we've had students that have been with us for six to seven years and we're going to continue to keep in touch with those students if that means that we were offering more stretching sessions or more yoga sessions, then that's what we're going to do if they just want to place to get us all on the same zoom sessions, so they can all hang out with each other and and just goof around for a little bit then yeah, that's exactly what we're going to. Do as well so we're keeping our ears open and and just waiting to see what the community wants from us so that we can get out to them as an entrepreneur we're always looking for opportunities and everything how do you see this as as an opportunity, what do you see as your greatest opportunity right now as a business well the greatest opportunity is to figure out how this online thing works because that we can figure this out and we can figure out a great way for this to be something that will supplement their in-person training then it's something that will probably continue to give whether it's a means for tracking homework in between their sessions and it. It's an opportunity then also for those students that can't train with us because they are out of city or out of province or out of country a good way to stay connected with us as well. Jason, what would you say to those who are listening and maybe they're struggling in their business and they haven't found that way to pivot or to shift or to innovate within their space what resources or suggestions could you make I would say as I said earlier that I'm really kind of keep an eye on what my my core group of students have been wanting the ones that have been with us for 67 years it goes back to that 2080 rule. Just really pay attention to what that 20% needs from you and they're gonna continue to support you through this and obviously with that model in place you'll be able to attract new business because you're gonna see that you're providing something that's clearly beneficial law love it and I think I think you hit on a really key point there which is to listen to your customers, they're the ones that steer so many successful entrepreneurs as far as opportunity and business growth and you mentioned that at the beginning where you thought that the vast majority of your revenue was going to be here and it. Ended up actually being over there and I think that's a really important lesson to take away from this conversation is is the opportunity to listen to your existing customers and the things that they're asking you for and to continue to find ways to support them yeah. I think it's really important to be consistent with what you're doing, but if you're so consistent that you're not able to make changes that's potentially a problem so definitely if you're venturing off into new territory have your policies in pencil but definitely don't put your policies down in Penn because you definitely need to find out what those customers or. Those family members want from you so that you can make new and better policies based off of that. I love that Jason thanks for so much for being on the show what's the best way for people to reach out if they want to connect with you yeah well our website is definitely the the way to go so info at the circus lab dot ca for email www dot the circuslab dot ca for our website and then similarly for Instagram and Facebook sounds great thanks again, thanks for having me back. Thanks for listening to the entrepreneurs versus coronavirus podcast with your host Ryan Kononoff for complete show notes and additional information visit clearbridge.ca/podcast. Ryan is the founder of Clearbridge Business Solutions. To find out how investing in technology can help your business, especially during uncertain economic times visit lifewithclearbridge.ca connect with Ryan on LinkedIn or on Twitter at Ryan Kononoff, that's RYAN KONONOFF. Thanks for listening.