I thought it was time for a proper introduction around here, so here it is—a little about me, Stacey. 

I grew up in Wauchope in New South Wales, here in Australia. I have three gorgeous kids Lucinda, Patrick, and Henry and a very supportive and very understanding husband, Heath. I have run my business, Port Macquarie Performing Arts, for the last 10 years because it takes on my passion for dance. Dance has always been part of my life. I was taken to a dance class by my next door neighbor when I was seven years old, which in dance terms is quite late, but from that very first lesson, it’s been such a big part of my life. 

I didn’t always run my own business though; I was a school teacher—I’m secondary education trained. I did a Bachelor of Education and a Bachelor of Creative Industries at the Queensland University of Technology. 

In the same period that I met my husband, I was working for the Royal New Zealand Ballet. It was incredibly rewarding, running a national education program for dance and doing that with the great tool that I had in being the Royal New Zealand Ballet. I was able to share my passion for dance and my love of dance with people who had never experienced dance before in their lives. 

But I had a calling to come home to Port Macquarie, where my husband is from. I grew up 20 minutes from here. And when I got here, I explored my other passion, which was for commercial radio. I was the breakfast announcer here on our local radio station.

But I found that just being away from dance for only 12 months, that I really missed it. And it was part of my life that, whilst I was happy in the beginning to have a break, I really, really wanted to get back into it! So with that, Port Macquarie Performing Arts was born. 

I decided it was just going to be a little boutique dance studio. I put an ad in the paper. (This was long before social media.) I thought, well, if we have two or three kids that turn up, we can do it in my garage, two afternoons a week. And that’s how I sold it to my husband! I said, “It’ll just be Tuesdays and Thursdays, just a couple of kids.” And what happened was we had 70 kids turn up on the first day. So before we knew it, we were off and running.

I decided it was just going to be a little boutique dance studio; two days a week with a couple of kids in the garage. That’s how I sold it to my husband…. But we had 70 kids turn up on the first day and 300 students by the end of that year.

With that, came the intense need for a team when I couldn’t do it all on my own, especially because I was still working at the radio. So, I was doing breakfast radio from 5:00 in the morning until 11:00 AM. I’d go home and have a sleep and then get up and go to the studio and do all the administration that went along with running the business.

Then, I would teach until 9pm and come home and then do the whole thing again. It was a really challenging, but really electrifying time because I really enjoyed that independence and that growth and innovation that came with running my own business.

So Port Macquarie Performing Arts, I see as my first baby. It was really a baptism by fire. We had a hundred kids enrolled by the end of the first week and we grew to 300 students that year!

And that was a goal that I had for five years’ time. So, I immediately had to reframe my thinking and start thinking about how I could take the students that I had on a journey that was thinking bigger. How can I give them experiences that are different to what they would be used to? How can I spark their enthusiasm and passion for dance, just like my teacher, Miss Francesca, had sparked it in me?

The lessons that I’ve learned along the way in running my own business have been really, really interesting. And I can say that now, thinking back on it because there have been some really difficult times. But, they’re all lessons that I can see now that I needed to learn in order to run my business more efficiently and more effectively.

I hope to share those learnings with you. I hope to share, without ambiguity, those challenges.

So that if something like that comes up in your world when you decide to put your idea into play or when you decide to really start to grow your business, then hopefully I’ve learned the lesson first for you and I can pass on that knowledge to you.

I really look forward to sharing more lessons, learnings, and thoughts with you in the future!