The annual babyballet Franchise Conference 2016

At babyballet, we don’t to do things by halves.

Two years ago our ambitious and hard-working team brought dance legend Wayne Sleep to babyballet’s annual conference in Halifax.
Wayne, who lives in London and is one of the biggest names in the ballet world, not only passed on his ballet wisdom but danced with franchisees too, and the story hit the headlines.

This year we decided to look further afield for a star speaker, and came up with award winning Australian entrepreneur Clint Salter. Clint is a marketing genius who helps dance academy owners turn their passion into profit, through his mentoring programmes and workshops.

Clint, who has been involved with the dance profession for more than 21 years, was in the UK last year and met our founder Claire O’Connor at a dance event. Claire invited him to the conference this month. He travelled from his home in Sydney to Halifax for the two-day event and his talk was a huge hit with our franchisees.

“It was such an inspirational conference – the best to date according to staff at head office, and our franchisees. Clint really hit the mark and franchisees left feeling excited, motivated and determined to grow their businesses to the next level. As well as being educational and supportive the conference was also great fun,” says Claire.

The 42-year-old set up babyballet eleven years ago in Halifax and it is now the Uk’s leading pre-school dance concept with 70 franchisees across the country and over 11,000 youngsters attending hundreds of classes.

Clint, who runs the Dance Studio Owners Association, spent five years working as a celebrity agent managing some of Australia’s leading TV and media personalities. He is now in America for three months working at other dance related conferences.

The conference, held at The Shay Stadium, Halifax, included presentations and interactive workshops on subjects such as digital marketing, business development, networking and NSPCC child protection. Speakers included Kirsty McGregor, Thinksmart Software, Richard Hartley and Sharda Parthasarathi.

“Many of our franchisees brought their pink babyballet cars and it was wonderful to see them networking, sharing ideas and making new friends. I love catching up with them, they are always so enthusiastic and encouraging.”

Annette King, from Kirkintilloch in Glasgow, who joined babyballet as a franchisee only one week before the conference, was delighted she could attend. “The timing of the conference couldn’t have been better for me as a newly signed up franchisee. I thoroughly enjoyed everything from the fantastic inputs from Clint Salter to the infectious passion and enthusiasm of my newly found pink family which clearly never grows old thanks to Claire and her team at head office – If this is it at the starting line I cannot wait to see the rest of the course.”

Claire Westwood, runs her franchise in Bournemouth and Poole and she too had a wonderful time at the conference. “I absolutely loved this year’s conference! I have taken so away so many useful tips and suggestions on how to grow my business alongside a fantastic positive attitude about the year ahead. I particularly loved the key note speaker Clint Salter and can’t wait until next year already!”

Another highlight of the conference was the launch of a huge fundraiser to be held at all babyballet schools across the UK in October in aid of Tommy’s baby charity in association with Peppa Pig. babyballet stars will gain sponsorship from families and friends to dance in a specially themed Peppa Pig babyballet class.