The pole dance industry is professionalizing fast and furiously. New studios pop up around the country almost weekly and as the pole dance industry has grown, so has the number of ways that pole dance instructors get paid. Supply is growing, quality of instruction runs the gamut, and skill sets that are integral to one studio simply aren’t as important at others. Some studios don’t pay their instructors at all, some pay a per diem, most pay a flat rate but those flat rates run along a wide spectrum.
There is, it seems to me, a lack of transparency about payment structures in the pole dance world. In every other industry I’ve worked in — tech, law, food services, personal training, etc., there is easily accessible pay rate information that springboards people’s ability to negotiate their pay rate and set expectations about how much they should be paid. My experience in the pole world both as a studio owner and as an instructor is that studio owners set a rate and instructors generally take it or leave it. Having industry standards and transparent information could help change that.
This post is not intended to set a gold standard for how instructors should be paid but is simply a description of how I pay instructors because I get a lot of questions about it. The way that I pay people — base rates plus supplemental rates — is certainly not innovative but it is easy to manage when running payroll, and has the important additional benefits of being transparent, fair, and straightforward to my instructor team.
At San Francisco Pole & Dance, we offer four different base pay rates for drop-in/regular class instructors dependent on their level of skill. Those base rates are:
- $40/class for brand new instructors who have never taught before and whom I mentor.
- $45/class for instructors who have been teaching for one year or less at a studio other than San Francisco Pole & Dance and whom I mentor.
- $50/class for instructors who have been teaching for 1+ year at San Francisco Pole & Dance or 2+ years at another studio with a culture that I admire or who I believe have trained their instructors well. The majority of my instructor team at San Francisco Pole & Dance have 2+ years of pole and aerial teaching experience, and most are hired at the $50/class rate.
- $60/class for seasoned instructors with 3+ years of teaching under their belts and who have been teaching for me long enough to show that can consistently sell out the majority of their classes. These folks generally use their personal or aerial specific social media accounts to promote their classes, which translates to more people taking classes and I think it’s important to reward that both at the base pay / high performance level and at the supplemental pay rate level.
We supplement base pay rates according to the following structure:
- For pole dance and flexibility classes with more than 9 attendees, the instructor earns an additional $10/class. For sold out classes, the instructor earns an additional $20/class.
- For aerial silks, lyra, gymnastics, and handstand classes, instructors earn the $10 per class bonus when the classes have 6+ attendees. My experience in San Francisco is that aerial instructors are harder to find and so I pay the bonus out at a lower number of students.
- $20 bonus for each Yelp/Google/Facebook review a student leaves that mentions an instructor’s name. Yelp does not allow businesses to give incentives to students for leaving reviews, so instead I offer the $20 bonus to instructors. This incentivizes them to remind their students to leave us a 5 star review at the end of class.
- $10 bonus for non-public reviews that mention an instructor’s name. Non-public reviews don’t provide free advertising for the studio the way Yelp/Google/Facebook reviews do, but they indicate that an instructor went above and beyond.
I’ve met many studio owners who pay their instructors one base rate per class and the rate stays the same regardless of experience. I used to do this (for the first three months we were in business) but I don’t believe it is fair to pay new instructors and seasoned instructors the same rate and it can kill morale for the more advanced instructors.
I’ve found that offering supplemental income based on attendance is one way to motivate instructors to take actions that have been proven to increase attendance, i.e., posting teaser snippets of class combos or choreography to social media, and following up with students personally to remind them about upcoming classes or workshops.
Private Lessons
I also like to incentive instructors to set their own rates for private lessons. One way I do this is by providing instructors with the option to book the studio and host their own lessons.
For private lessons, instructors have two options. One is for the client to book lessons through the studio where we handle all scheduling and then pay the instructor a $50/private lesson rate with their normal bi-weekly paycheck.
Instructors also have the option to book the studio during non-class hours or the private pole room at a $20/private lesson rate and then negotiate payment for the private lesson with students directly. I prefer instructors take advantage of the latter option mainly because I simply don’t like doing the scheduling work and prefer that instructors charge the private lesson rate that they want to get paid instead of having me assign one umbrella rate to all instructors. This makes running payroll easier for me since it incentivizes most of my instructors to opt for the $20 room rental rate.
Bachelorette Parties
For bachelorette parties, I pay instructors a $60/party rate and generally have my less seasoned / most energetic instructors teach these parties. I set the pay rate for the parties higher than for classes simply because parties are 1.5 hours (15 minutes longer than classes) and are generally during weekend days when many instructors are traveling.
Instructor Perks.
- All San Francisco Pole & Dance instructors can come in and train at the studio at any time for free. Instructors who are solely substitutes may come in and train for free any week that they are subbing at least one class.
- Instructors who teach 1–2 classes per week receive 50% off classes and instructors who teach 3+ classes receive unlimited memberships. I prefer to have less instructors teaching more classes so this perk is set up to reward those who teach more.
- All instructors are classified as employees (as they should be) and are covered under the studio’s general liability insurance policy.
And that’s basically it. Overall, the pay rates at San Francisco Pole & Dance are only slightly above average compared to other successful studios in our area. I keep a close eye on how much other Bay Area studios are paying (and I get that information mainly from my instructors who teach at multiple studios) so that we stay slightly above the norms of our demographic area which is good for employee morale and for recruiting the best instruction possible while also leaving room to mentor up and coming instructors.
I certainly don’t believe that the way I pay people is complete. If you’re a studio owner, let’s talk. How do you pay your instructors so that they are incentivized to help build your studio’s overall business? If you’re an instructor, do you wish you were paid differently? If so, how? Hopefully, we can start a discussion that adds transparency to the benefit of more instructors and studio owners as we all figure out how to build our studios as equitably as possible.
