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Spotlight Feature - 8Counts · Making The Impact - A Dance Competition Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_04: Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the table at a dance competition?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly what are the judges looking for anyway?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_04: This is Making the Impact, a dance competition podcast.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_04: Each week we'll cover a different topic related to the world of competitive dance, from the perspective of the judges behind the table.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_04: Today on Making the Impact, we're bringing back our spotlight episodes to feature businesses and individuals that deserve a moment in the spot.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_04: The 8 Counts app is designed for dancers, parents, and dance teachers to bridge the gap between classes in the studio and practice at home.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_04: Co-founder Josh Ellis joins us today, alongside dance educator and researcher Neil Lynch to discuss the ways the 8 Counts app can enhance the experience of practicing at home for dancers.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_05: Hey y'all, it's Courtney Ortiz.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome to this week's episode of Making the Impact.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_05: I'm your host, and I'm here with my fabulous co-host, Leslie Maylor.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_04: Well, hello, how are you?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_04: I'm doing good.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_05: How are you doing?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_04: I'm all right, I'm all right.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_04: It's fall.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_04: There's pumpkins around.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_05: It's fall.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I I think I said it earlier on the podcast this season, but like pumpkin cream cheese is back at my favorite bagel spot.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_05: And I got it this weekend for the very first time.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_05: And I am so happy about it.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_05: And pumpkin spice lattes and pumpkin everything.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_05: I'm never mad at it.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_04: I like here's here's a little a bit about me.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_04: I like a visual of a pumpkin.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_04: I have pumpkin earrings.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_04: I have like pumpkin decor.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_04: I don't like pumpkin flavors.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_05: Anything?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_04: No, I don't like pumpkin pies.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_04: No pumpkin pie.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_04: I don't like pumpkin spice lattes.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_04: I don't like pumpkin cream cheese.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: When you said that, I almost gagged.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_05: I love it.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_05: It is so good.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know what it is.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_05: It's like, it's like cinnamon and like pumpkin.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's it's not bland.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_05: It's like it's sugary and it's you know, bad for you.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_05: Pumpkin cream cheese.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_05: But I love a bagel.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_05: And if I can make it fall.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_04: Wait, what kind of bagel do you have with pumpkin cream cheese?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_04: Like a plain bagel?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_05: Um, yeah, plain, multi-grain, wholly, boring.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_05: Boring.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I was about to say you can't have pumpkin cream cheese than everything bagel, which is my bagel of choice.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_04: Everything.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_05: I and I don't really love an everything bagel.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_05: It's just a lot of things.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_05: So many things.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_05: So many flavors.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_05: I don't like the little poppy seeds that get stuck in your teeth.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_04: I guess that's fair.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_04: To each his own.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_04: Pumpkin for you, no pumpkin for me.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_05: I'll eat it.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_05: Us bagel people over here, you know we're New Yorkers when we're talking when we're talking about bagels.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_05: Well, we're not talking about bagels today.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_05: Speaking of talking.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_04: No, we have a spotlight today.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_04: We are not talking.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_04: We have a spotlight.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_05: A spotlight is uh a newer uh feature that we've been doing for like, you know, sporadically here and there on the podcast through the years.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_05: But um, we bring them back when we want to highlight some really great businesses, services, uh, organizations, people in the industry that we support and really respect what they're bringing to our dance world.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_05: And we have a new app that is hitting the dance scene today on the podcast.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_04: I can't wait to learn more about it.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_04: Me too.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_04: This is gonna be a great episode.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_04: We are joined by the co-founder and uh a special guest that we're excited to announce today.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_04: But before we jump into that, we have a sponsor to tell you about.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: Great coaching happens in the studio.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: But once dancers leave class, what happens next can be hard to see.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: Did they remember what to practice?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: Did they practice at all?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: Eight Counts helps studios extend their teaching between classes with homework mode.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: In just a few taps, a teacher can create an assignment for a class, team, or individual dancer.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: Assign a skill, conditioning exercise, choreography, or your own custom practice.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: Choose to its four, set the goal, and send it.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_03: Dancers open eight counts and know exactly what they're working on.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: Practice stays engaging with progress, achievements, and practice group that makes the work between classes visible.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: Teachers can quickly see who practice, what's been completed, and where support may be needed.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: And studio leaders get the bigger picture.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: Visibility across dancers, classes, and teams without creating more admin for their teachers.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: Parents stay connected too, with a clearer view of what their dancer has been asked to work on and the progress they're making.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: So when dancers come back to class, teachers can spend less time wondering what happened between lessons and more time helping them move forward.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: Great teaching doesn't stop when class ends.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: Bring eight counts to your studio.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_05: Dance World, we are here today on Making the Impact, and we are spotlighting a brand new business software app that is in the dance world that just recently launched.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_05: And I think it's going to be a really fun, interesting discussion to bring technology into the dance space, but not only in the dance space in general, but into your homes with your kids to hold them accountable to practice their dance routines and practice their training at home through this very unique new app that I got to learn about this summer at the Dance One Summit.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_05: I met the co-founder there at their booth and we started talking a little bit about what this app is all about and why he wanted to create it and bring it to the dance space, not only for his young dancer who is breaking into the dance scene, but to so many more dancers around the world that could utilize this app in a very beneficial way.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_05: So I think this will be a really interesting, unique topic to hear from some other dance educators as well who are joining us on this chat.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm very excited to introduce the co-founder and chief technology officer of Eight Counts App, Josh Ellis to the podcast.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome, Josh.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_05: Hi.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Courtney.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having us on.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_05: Of course.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm excited to announce another special guest who is joining us today.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_05: She is a dancer, choreographer, educator, and advocate.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_05: I'm very happy to welcome Neo Lynch joining us here on the podcast.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome, Neo.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_05: So excited to be here.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_05: So, Josh, I know you wanted to bring Neo on for this chat.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_05: So can you tell the world a little bit more about why you wanted Neo here on this discussion today to just kind of kick that off?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, thank you again for having us on.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I had the fortunate opportunity to meet Neo through friends.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: And um, we're based here just outside of Washington, D.C.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um we had the opportunity not only to meet, but to go to lunch.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And through that opportunity, through the experience, it was learning about what she believes in, what she teaches, her process, uh, where she abdicates.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: It it was it was such an amazing uh story that uh we started talking a bit about eight counts.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going, this is these, these are all good people.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody on this podcast, Neo, the topics that we're covering, and the fact that there was just so much love for not just dance, but also for children and specifically the education of children.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where we became kind of overnight instant fans and friends.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And um honestly, that's one of the chief reasons why I wanted to make sure that she had the uh a voice in today's discussion.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_04: Love it.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_04: Well, we love Neo's voice on social media.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_04: She is um she is out there advocating for causes that she believes in and that frankly we believe in.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_04: So we are really grateful that you brought her on.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's always nice like connecting with with your online advocacy friends and because I I do believe um Josh, I've I first met your wife online.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and comments and discussions on in advocacy for youth dance.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, interestingly enough, it's it's not that everybody has to agree all the time.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's more important that we maintain this healthy civil discourse so that one can understand other people's opinion.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something that I really appreciate, you know, in not only speaking with Neo, but, you know, going through the social media, hers specifically, listening to the topics, reviewing the topics.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was really more about help me understand where you're coming from before, you know, making a a a worldwide opinion statement on something.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I really appreciate that perspective from Neo and and others.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_05: Go, Neo, you're killing it.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_05: You're doing such good work for our dance world.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_05: I take that.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I would love before we dive into our chat and to learn more about ECAT, I would love for Neo to kick it off and just share a little bit more about you.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_05: Tell us where you're based outside of, it sounds like outside of the DC area, but where you grew up, where you're based, your any career credits you want to share, you can make it short and sweet.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and then I'm gonna pass the mic over to Josh to do the same thing so we can learn a little bit more about your backgrounds.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, awesome.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: So um I like sharing, I think I have a all of my lived experiences contribute to like my lens and the way that I advocate and operate and essentially kind of run my mouth now and speak up.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I grew up a competition kid in um the DC area, the DMB is what we call it.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go, DMV.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: I was a back row Betty.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm not like my legs don't go.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have legs and feet for days.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you know how we don't get the attention and um we're taught very differently.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: Our expectations are are very are different.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was able to, because of my love of dance, um, I pursued dance as a career, um, and was a successful commercial dancer.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: I danced for Beyonce and Sierra and Swift Beats and Gucci Main and Yin Gang twins, like peoples, the the peoples, the peoples in Atlanta.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and had a successful career, loved it, and then went back into teaching in the competitive world.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: And um my my undergraduate degrees in criminal justice.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: But then in my at 40, I decided to go back to school to get my master's.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it was the first time that I ever thought and had been told that I never told the first time that that I got a real dance education, not just the competition world that we grow up in, right?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: In the commercial world that that we work in.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I just fell in love and was like, why, why didn't we learn this earlier?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: If we're getting, you know, private educations, when you grow up in private studios, you're paying for a dance education.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's your private school, essentially, for dance.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: Why are we waiting until college to learn these things?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Why aren't our teachers teaching us earlier?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Why aren't they using these methods?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like, why aren't we considering pedagogy?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: Why aren't we looking at all of these elements that go into developing who we are as dancers, how we move as artists, how we think?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like we should be critical thinkers, not just critical movers.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: Anyways, I say I have to say.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so I fell in love with dance and speaking up, and I want to share everything that I know and learn to help make it easier for others to create their paths, and now I'm getting my doctorate in in dance.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: Love it.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: So there's there's a everywhere in dance.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: There's just so many opportunities in dance.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just moving your body.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_04: Totally.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_05: Love to hear that.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_05: Well, thank you so much for sharing and thank you for being here on this chat with us today every week.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, Josh, you're up.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_05: I want to hear a little bit more about your background in dance and um why you decided to create eight counts.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_05: And maybe tell us a little bit more about what actually eight counts is.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: This is definitely a place where we need to create a safe space for me because my because my background in dance is pretty minimal.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: I may have dabbled as a small child making uh a fool of myself and in high school dances, um, may have even participated in a boy band cover group uh in my college years.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: But truthfully speaking, I'm a three-year, almost four-year in dance dad.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a five-year-old son who's doing some macro, and then a seven-year-old daughter who just finished her first year of competitive dance.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's that's predominantly the lens that I'm coming at this from, is a parent who doesn't who knows a few things, but doesn't know what what I don't know in many other categories.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I do bring about 25 years of um technology experience to the table.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have an intimate understanding of, you know, when people talk about privacy, uh, children, imagery, the use of AI, screen time.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um I spent seven years at Google, I spent another 12 years at Dell Technologies, and I worked for the Office of the Research at the Ohio State University.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I can tell you that these are these are very serious topics, right?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's easy to kind of be flippant about some of the these things, like, oh, it's just the way kids are growing up these days.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: But um we really wanted to, if we were going to bring technology into dance, we needed to do it in a very elegant way that tried to solve multiple problems and prevent multiple problems, to be frank, without stepping over the line of the artistry and the mastery of dance professionals themselves.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's some places where I think technology can be a great assistive tool.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's places where the dance coach needs to be always the one in charge, full stop.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're trying to straddle that line with eight counts.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's my perspective is you know, um, I'm learning as we go.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: When we started eight counts, we decided, um, both my wife and I, my wife, the founder and CEO of Eight Counts, we decided it would be much more important to build a founding team of advisors that had industry professional experience in their own right, whether it's adjudicators, dance coaches, instructors, um, studio owners, and frankly, just multiple parent perspectives on this, because um it's uh can be a tricky topic in in many corners.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: So um that's that's a little bit about me and my background.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and frankly, eight counts was originally conceived to try to make the monotonous repetitiveness of practice at home fun.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like maybe we could trick the kids into playing a game that sort of looks like Duolingo for dance.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's what we'll do.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: We'll build that.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And what happened was we did.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: We built that as a prototype.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And when we started taking it to, we went to a couple of different expos.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we were at the Toronto Dance Teacher Expo, we were at Dance What Summit, recently UDMA in Chicago, and we had more senior, more elite dancers and coaches and studio owners come up and go, Well, if you've gamified that stuff and made the monotonous stuff fun, you should have a homework mode so coaches could assign, instead of just elementary skills, choreography and then sort of you know create practice proof around that.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and instead of just having subjective ratings for things, if you can do homework in an app, now you're making data-driven decisions.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's something that um we we kind of married those two worlds together for for new dancers, for young dancers that are just getting in, we're simply trying to democratize access to early level of dance education, as our dance um app is free for just individuals to download the basic starter stuff.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but on the other side, where eight counts actually makes revenue, we partner with those studios to do basically turn on homework mode, where parents can now see the homework that's being assigned by the coaches, know what's happening, and then if and only when a parent wants to get feedback from one of their studio coaches, can initiate a send a video back to that coach, and the coach can go, Oh, okay, I see how you did this so-and-so.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what you should do in the future.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Record that audio, it goes back to the kiddo and the parent, and that relationship, that triad stays intact, but just stronger.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I could go on and on about different features and functionalities of eight counts, but frankly, what we saw as parents were the coaches going, well, why is the kid not practicing?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like, Well, we're not allowed in the studio, we don't know what you're saying.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And my kid's only seven years old, so come on.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: And we want her to practice, and she wants to practice, but she'd forget.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And even in the situations where she did remember, um, I didn't want to be that dance dad going, Oh, let me tell you how to do this.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, right.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because I have I don't I don't have the formal training and and mastery and education around that.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: So um we found this as a way to create uh the appropriate level of transparency between the studio owners, the coaches, and what's going on in the home with the parents and and students and and vice versa.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that's how it came to be.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_05: And it's brand new.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, brand brand new.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: As of um the end of September, we applied for um our application into Apple's App Store.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're doing the same thing as a fast follow-up with Android and Play Store, but we're anticipating release basically mid-October for that.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the reasons uh is simply that we're taking when you start thinking saying things like child children, it's games, there's imagery and video involved, there's pose detection involved, which is sort of the the overlaying processing of the video imagery on device.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: When you start talking about COPO compliance in PIPNA in Canada, in GDPR for EU, we start tripping a whole bunch of extra reviews.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we're just doing our due diligence because we're not an organization that wants to skip any of that.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, just the opposite.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: We want to lead the charge in saying we know the reason why this hasn't been done before, and it's because it's difficult.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we're we're tackling those challenges head on, and then hopefully the parents will see, wow, we really appreciate the safety that's been put into this.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: My child's imagery isn't leaving the device unless it's to a known individual on the other side, to a known studio with a known relationship.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And in that specific case, and only in that specific case, not even the dancer can initiate that.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Only the parent can.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Which is super important for safety.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_05: Safety first, y'all.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_05: Safety first.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_05: These days.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_05: It's big conversations, I think, with technology and children involved in the technology and then dance and all of the things.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's a big conversation.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_04: Moving so quickly too.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_04: And that's sort of like the like you said, you I appreciate your due diligence and like taking the time to like get through each step of the process because if you skip one, the next is just a domino effect of what's gonna come from that, I feel like.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_04: So um, I want to jump into first of all, it sounds so cool.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_04: I want to do homework now.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_04: Um Right.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_05: Dance homework.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, homework.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you said something, Josh, that like stood out to me.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_04: And I feel like Neo and possibly both myself and Courtney can speak to this a little bit, but the democratization of being able to practice at home.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_04: And do you have space?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_04: Do you do you have a parent who's gonna hover over you and say, do this, do that, do this?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_04: Have you found in your experience, Neo, like the kids who go practice at home versus the kids who don't?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_04: And like, have you discovered any whys behind that?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_04: And like, what are your ways?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_04: What have your ways been in the past, I guess, to encourage that practice at home that this may actually solve?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: Ooh, I I think having a source of accountability um and something that you can measure the uh the input and and the output right.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like you can track that I went home and I practiced these steps.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: Here's you can see what I did in relationship to what you told me to do and um how you told me to do it, versus um here's the parent sending the teacher a random video in the middle of the night of the kid practicing.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like Right.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: And we all know those parents.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_04: Those parents are like, actually, can you so can you look at little Susie's tondus?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_04: Can you send little Susie some info about these tondos?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Me and my watch.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: We need rest, leave us alone.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I like this this element to where we can get paid for this time because that's our job.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: And what I think a lot of parents.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Parents.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm a dance mom also, so I get it.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm have I done it?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm I might have messaged the teacher to be like, he he was practicing at home, but I don't send video.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: But like that's that's our job.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: Time is money.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, we as teachers put your children first, like vast majority of the time.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: So when we're outside of our workspace, let us have a life and be with our family and appreciate our time the way that you want to with your kids and your time.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, I think that this is an incredible tool to use.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: And this would vary, especially with the younger ones, because you you know, you gotta get them young.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta get them hooked when they're young and fall in love with pants and the expressiveness and like, look what I can do, you know?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, like um, and so yeah, this is this would be a great tool for people to bring back to their next private or bring back to their next class and say, Oh, all right, to do their homework, or look, I did my homework, great, now we can build from there.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, as opposed to just and then it and then it puts the responsibility on the kid and the teacher, not the parent.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because we all know the kids that go home and practice and the parents are just, no, that's not how you're supposed to do it.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's not what your teacher said.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then it just messes up the the that family dynamic and we don't need that.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I mean, I think that like in these scenarios, and especially like using this new technology, um, the parent can give the kid the device and say, Hey, it's time to practice.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_05: You know, you have you have access to this device for X amount of time, and I expect your homework, your dance homework, to be completed by that time.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_05: So the parent is because it I think that one of the things that I always wonder um is not every kid has access to a device.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_05: So a parent does have to hand that over to the kid to initiate the homework.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_05: So the parent is slightly responsible.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_05: But let's be real, when we're talking about some of those, those juniors, the seniors that are in high school, like we all know they have their phones, they have access to their device.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_05: Are you scrolling on TikTok or could you be doing your dance homework?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_05: And pre-app, pre-anything, as a teacher, we know who did their homework or not.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_05: We know when when y'all get to class and you don't remember the choreography that we we created last week.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_05: I sent you a video, you didn't watch it, you still didn't practice it, and you still don't remember it when I get into the space.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_05: It's like, what else can we do at this point?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_05: And like you said, Neo, it's the accountability now that can be connected.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_05: Because I'm assuming, Josh, and correct me if I'm wrong, but in the homework mode of your technology and app, there's probably a way to see who has completed their homework on the back end, who has actually opened their homework and submitted the video.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_05: So I think it holds the dancers accountable a bit where they don't want to get to class and be like, I'm the only one that didn't do my homework.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_05: You know what I mean?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I want to comment on a few a bunch of things here because there's just like on topics that we like, this is the whole reason we we created this ecosystem.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um one, helping kids understand and and the parents to some extent, the pedagogy behind real dance education.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's just I don't I don't think it's talked about enough.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you're gonna be get serious about this.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um secondly, one of our original taglines was turn screen time into dance time.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: For for the for the reason uh behind, you know, just doom scrolling and maybe not at these ages, between five and eleven years old.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, my kids have definitely got hooked on some YouTube kids if I'm have been in need of a babysitting device.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: So like we're we're all a little bit guilty, guilty of it.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm no exception.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um but having that walled garden experience of safe content, that if you give the device to a child and they're in the app, there's nothing to worry about.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why we're doubling down so so hard on, you know, it's gotta be a parent that downloads the app and gets checked with a zero dollar credit card authorization to make sure we can prove it was an adult that said to set it up, and all these other little checks between flipping between the dancer profile and a parent profile, there's a face ID that's required to make those flips.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the kid can't just go in and start messing around with settings and things.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um but to the practice-proof topic and homework, a hundred percent, right?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the great thing.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: We think we've done this in an extremely creative manner because the feedback that we got from coaches was frankly a little bit of an eye roll.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, I'm gonna have to review videos of all these kids' homework.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, actually, what's gonna happen is the camera is going to come on while they're doing their homework so that we can intelligently understand that there was a human in the frame doing some work.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're counting the time that the camera was turned on and the attempts for a given homework.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: But all we're doing is sending the telemetry of that action back to the coach so they can see that something's been done.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: So they actually don't need to review those videos.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: And again, if there was a video to review, only when a parent is like, I've got additional questions about this piece of homework or about this move.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: So what we wanted to do was make it super easy for a coach to go, I can assign homework very quickly, I can review at a single glance what percentage of my class that's walking in in five minutes has done their homework.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so what we found was when we're assigning homework in our home studio, it was leading to about 50% less of just coaches repeating themselves.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, here's what we did last class, or here's what you were supposed to have practiced, so let's let's catch it up, which meant the kids were happier, they were learning quicker.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: The parents see that efficiency and the progression of the material that they're just going to cover just happen in a more fluid manner.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a really great um sort of marriage of the technology and expectations.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Two other things, one being um we got some tough love.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: This is why we involve folks like yourselves.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: They basically said the coaches were like, Josh, bro, love you.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Love this idea.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the problem.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: I actually have to teach real humans in a real physical classroom, and I don't have time to do all this extra administrivia after class to assign homework.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: So if I can't do this homework assignment in less than 30 seconds, I don't think I'm gonna be able to weave that in.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: So we got it down to twenty so we got it down to 27 seconds.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_06: Wow.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: So in 27 seconds, you can dial up the at the coach side, you can pull it up, basically pick the skills that are preloaded or upload their own stuff just from their own photo photo reel, uh, name it, touch the individuals or touch the class it belongs to, give it a title, and if they want to, do a little bit of an audio overlay on here's what we talked about, make sure you pay attention to these things, and assign.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we got that down to 27 seconds.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we we try to make the user experience for the coaches extremely simple because we knew they have they have a life and they got to continue teaching the next class.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and you have to have their buy-in too.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_04: Like it just does not work without those people being willing to do that.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_04: So 100%.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: And but I mean, we wish we could take credit for all this, but the truth is all the best ideas came from actual practitioners.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's just how it happened.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: We just the more great uh ideas or the the more folks we got involved, the better the ideas, uh, the more streamlined things became.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's I think we're we're off to something pretty exciting here.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll see it.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: We'll we'll we'll continue to see how uh the feedback rolls in.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, what I I just want to comment on how much I appreciate the feedback that you sought out from the practitioners because I feel like there could be people in your position who might not have done that because I have the technology and I have the background at Google, and we could certainly figure this out ourselves.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_04: And that happens a lot in the dance industry.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_04: And so I just really thank you for taking the time to find the professionals in this side of things to to inspire, you know, the people that you're making.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for participating, Neo and others.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's really, it's it's really a it's been a community effort.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think parents that we shared this early on with our founding studios really saw that this was not just an app.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: This was an opportunity to get dance education into hands that may not have had an opportunity.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and really just increase that top of funnel for new dancers to come into this space, which is, I think, the the whole the whole outcome we're trying to shoot for here.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I interject with um an observation from what Courtney was pointing out.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, with this being in the parent's hand, and they can hand it over to the kids, um, but they also still need to be present.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: It takes the responsibility off of the parent then for dictating what needs to be learned or practiced.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so then the parent can just be a supportive parent, but they can still have that time to like, I'll hold I'll hold my phone for you, like go ahead.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you did you do it?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'll press the button or or whatever they need to do, or they could just be there and enjoy and then just the relationship that that can build for the parents, and it takes away the stress um that so many of us see with dance moms and and the kids and dance dads also, because you guys play a role.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I love I love that aspect because dance is about community and it's about communication anyway.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: So to be able to really um just build positive relationships with your family and something that you love to do, that's amazing.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_05: I want to just mention something that came to mind when I was teaching recently, uh professional dancers actually, but I was mentioning to them, uh I usually create an across the floor and then I ask if I can film them.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_05: And I always offer to send it to them and I tell them, you know, you can use that if you want to post it, whatever.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_05: But if you want to just watch yourself back and see what you look like in the classroom and see what you can fix and analyze your dancing or whatever, even professionals do that.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_05: Even professionals should be doing that, right?
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_05: Even though we're talking about competitive dancers right now.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_05: But like I was telling them that there is no excuse for you to not be the best darn dancer in the in the world because you have access to a camera on your on a device with you towards you and watch back at so many time moments in time.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_05: You didn't have to rent it, you didn't have to go somewhere for it.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_05: Like you have to do this.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_05: I told him I was like, the only time I would ever see a video of myself was recital.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_05: And the only time I would see a video of myself was if my mom bought the solo competition footage if it was a good performance day.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_05: Like we have so much access at our fingertips now to be able to self-evaluate and correct ourselves in our dancing.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_05: And now this app, while I was sitting here thinking, is offering that opportunity at an earlier age for dancers to have have that technology in a safe space with their instructor and not just mommy filming a video of them and then a dancer watching it, you can get that feedback.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's it's really, really cool.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_05: And even um, you know, thinking about what happens in in the studio, like if I say, okay, you gotta, you gotta reverse the left side as your homework, then I could post the right side in the app and then see if they actually had the uploaded the left side as their homework.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_05: Like that to me is kind of brilliant.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_05: And um, I think we're really capturing like how fully functional the our our camera access can be to make our dancing stronger.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_05: And how lucky are these kids?
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: And that it's and that it's like level based and your instructors are giving it to you and there's safety involved, and it's not just kids going on Instagram and being like, I want to try that trick.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: And the kids do a cartwheel.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and a knee drop.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, what are you doing?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like, stop.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: Just because you see these kids online, just because we have access now to what everybody's doing, it doesn't mean that we're ready to try these things.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_05: Now everybody that's posting online is legitimate, y'all.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, just because they posted and they have a trillion million followers and they have a method.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_05: Don't get me started.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_05: There's would you get me started?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_05: A lot of things we see online.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_05: You're talking to my I know.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_05: That's what I like about this.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_05: You scammer.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: But it's it's interesting.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting that early on, we got this question.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, so so the the the the one world that's in accounts today is is acrobased.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: And they were like, well, I'm not sure because there's some stuff that gets advanced and it can get dangerous.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, no kidding.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: Parents, developers, found, co-founders, we saw that too.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a level where we absolutely stop because we know uh if you try to do an aerial, you're gonna need a you're gonna need somebody to spot you when you're doing that.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna need some method teaching.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like there is a place where we need to naturally coach and point you towards your studio, towards uh a coach for safety.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_04: A physical safe kind of you know, I was I was gonna ask that too.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_04: Like, are you where where does the where does the sort of level stop of like, okay, you would really need to be in a giant room to do this or a sprung floor or whatever?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_04: Like, do you have sort of a a cap on some of the skills that you are putting on here?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a hundred percent.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: And really, again, the the idea behind the game side of it is to get kids excited and also to kind of build that muscle memory of like, oh, I'm learning something, but the camera comes on and it watches me.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I can get a dose of reality around how am I doing?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: Which not to say that feedback is somewhat delivered in a very fluffy manner these days, but we want we want a dose of reality.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, are you doing the move or not?
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: And this is this is that constructive way to provide that feedback.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if they have questions and they still can't figure it out, it's a great reason to take that question to the coach and to their studio, right?
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so the idea here is, you know, based on the technology that we're using within the application, um, anything that's highly codified is a great fit for building a world in eight counts.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we started with acro, where a fast follow is most likely going to be ballet to a certain point.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: And what we've also been working on with some partners is some exposure and education to some styles that perhaps they would have never learned about any other way.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll just go ahead and call one group out because we are working that with them pretty heavily.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a group called Beat Your Feet, and it's um based off of GoGo, and it's the official dance style of Washington, DC.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: And we've been working with the founders, Portia, uh, Queen P and uh John Crazy Legs from their organization.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: And when they came to us, they said, we want to see this culturally, culturally relevant dance be taught and expand.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: We have created videos, we've got children's content, which is fantastic, but we are missing a delivery mechanism.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked at my wife and I went, huh, that's funny.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: We have delivery mechanism and we're looking for content.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_04: Amazing.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was just, it couldn't have been better timing.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so we've partnered with them to essentially build a BFE world where because they have a, you know, they have less fundament foundational skills and m and steps.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Got about five core foundational steps.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: What we decided to do was do some dance moves.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then as you move up, there's a little bit of culturally relevant education that's at the appropriate level for children.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then you do some more dance.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's another stop along the world where you get something else to learn about.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's going to be pretty sp like we've already we've already mocked it up and I've seen it.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's absolutely fantastic because it's only stuff that you would know if you were from DC or if you visited the you know, the DMV area, if you already knew about go-go music, where it came from, the founders.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's just a fantastic way to deliver that type of content.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, whereas most dancers would have been like, well, my studio offers jazz and tap and ballet and some acro, but like nobody's getting beach feet.
• 39:38
  unknown: Right.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: But unless you're in or of the area.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, unless you're in the area or you have access to something like Eight Counts, where we're trying to do some of this more bespoke education, because we also realized, again, this is coming from a new dance parent perspective.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: If you go to a studio, if you have that, first of all, if you can have that luxury to go to a studio, because so many dancers that participate don't have that access.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because we all know, you know, the industry is sort of pricing out families every day.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's just the sport is getting so expensive.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what we noticed was there's sort of just the syllabus that everybody runs.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: Here are the basic styles, etc.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, early dancers, like we have a five-year-old son, and he's like seeing girls in tutus going, yeah, I don't want to do that.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: But he sees a group doing K-pop or hip hop, and he's like, Well, what's that?
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: What's this all about?
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: Put me in this, Dad.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: And he's bouncing around, like trying to imitate some of the stuff that's going on.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to wrangle him in.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, that's the excitement and the spark that we are aiming to trigger.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: And um we're we're not just we're not just proud of it, we're excited about it because we see the excitement from other groups that have invested, have invested so much time, like the Beat Your Feet Academy, who, you know, they have a global presence.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they have certifications around the world, which is fantastic for them, but it's predominantly in the adult space.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: So here we go, putting these two worlds together, and I think it's creating a lot of love.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, and I love the the with bringing beach of the beach your feet academy into the eight-count world.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm super excited because of course I'm from the DC area and Queen Peace, my homegirl, I love her to death, and they've been working at this for years and watching, like when we leave our area, people don't know go-go music and they certainly don't know how to beat your beat.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: But then, as we've seen across the history of of dance, how people will appropriate.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: They will, they will see something and think, oh, that's different, or I'm interested in that.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna take a class or I'm gonna learn from one person, and now I'm gonna go and teach it, even though I know nothing about the history, about its cultural relevance, about how to actually embody the movement, how to actually teach it.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what any of this means, not just in my body, but but to an audience.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then that dilutes the importance of and the meaning behind movement.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: And we've seen this happen.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we can look at jazz and see how studio jazz now is not where jazz originated from, because we've we can go in another podcast.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: But so so with this, and especially bringing beat your feet into eight count, because they have people teaching in Japan and Germany, like all over the world, they have their certification process.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so it's nice to have them directly involved because you're getting it, you're getting the authenticity directly from the people and the culture and the ambassadors and the founders.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just amazing.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: And to do this, oh, one question I was gonna ask you, Josh, because you were talking about not everybody has access to studios.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so I wanted to know if with eight counts right now where it's at, or will it eventually be accessible to dancers who don't go to a studio because we know that accessibility is a deterrent, you know, like not everybody can afford a private dance education in a studio.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: But a lot of people would love to use this app as like their starting ground for getting you know proper training.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, it was the original model for eight counts to kind of say, hey, dance coaches, the the walls of your studio are no longer the boundary.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: And what we wanted to do was bring uh the actual coaches on board as employees to eight counts.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's some legal challenges with that.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that would have meant like background checking a ton of people.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that we cat you know tackle that today is hopefully the studios are reviewing employees that work in those studios.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Studios Um But as a fast follow, we've had multiple, multiple coaches go, hey.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: I do run a small class, et cetera, or I work for a rec program, or I do this for a city parks group, whatever the case may be.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Can I become a coach on the platform and then use all of the features, including the ones where parents can send videos to their coach?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer is going to be yes.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's not going to be available at launch just because of safety things we're not willing to sort of go fast and loose on.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that is the honest answer.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was actually part of the original model, which was how do we allow more entrepreneurial dance educators access to more students from around the world, right?
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and and I wanna and I wanna double click on one other thing that you had mentioned earlier, Neo, because you mentioned getting compensated for their time.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something that we I didn't cover earlier.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: But it was also puzzling to us as founders not only that care about the industry progressing, but also from a technology perspective in an industry that moves ultra fast, tech, right?
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: How come we've solved gig work for taxi drivers, aka Uber, but we haven't solved it for people with 10, 15, 20, 30 years of absolute mastery in their craft around dance?
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: What is going on?
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so the joke, not joke, was we went to our our kids' teachers and we were like, hey, when you get like instant messages, like uh iMessages and pings over band and team snap and WhatsApp and all the other gajillion things of the videos of those kids and you respond, how how much do you get paid for that?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, we knew what the answer is.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's zero.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like, wouldn't it be awesome though, is if the parents were directly paying you to give that feedback.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, if the feedback is only 30 seconds because it's just a simple single skill, okay, there's there's a compensation ban for that.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: But if it's a three to five minute choreo because what you're doing is essentially overlaying an adjudication to do competition prep, that's a whole different ballgame.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you should be able to set your rate as a as an instructor.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: That money should go essentially 80% plus or minus, a few points.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: 80% of that should go to you, and some of it should go to the platform for for enabling it.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: But what we heard was no, that's usually the opposite.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, coaches are lucky if they see 20 or 30 percent.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we didn't understand why that was the case.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that is another problem that we're trying to solve with eight counts.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the plumbing on the app is done for that, but it's not going to be in the initial launch, um, just so that we can do some testing uh and build the base first.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a huge part of how do we more appropriately compensate educators who are interfacing with some of the youngest minds, especially when you're talking about like new to dance, we're talking five, six, seven, eight-year-olds and and beyond.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: But why are we not compensating them properly?
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it it's just something that we we just were like, well, we we gotta fix this too.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, this is a fun job.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_05: This is just a thing we do for fun.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_05: That's why we're so passionate about it.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_05: We should be so honored that we get to do what we love for a living.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_05: We get paid with love.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: For some reason that didn't compute in our heads, and we're of course not.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_05: Because, you know, I feel like it's unless you grow up in this world, it that would never compete in the world.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_05: Sounds insane.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_05: It's yeah, but here's the truth.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: Passion and you're increasing your rate for what?
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: But the truth is what we s what we were noticing was the genuine love that I mean, I'm not gonna say every single coach, because I'm sure there's a couple of bad apples there is in every industry.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: But most coaches who have been a relationship with their dancer, and frankly, oftentimes the parents too, they're responding because they love their craft.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're responding because they've spent the majority of their life laser focused on dance, and they love it because they see what it unlocks for children around expression and growth and mindful development of their brain, which frankly, we need more movement in childhood development today versus apps.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: And believe me, this is coming from a tech guy.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we need more of this.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: So this is just a great opportunity for everybody to kind of join hands and and move move the industry forward here.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_04: I'm curious how how does, and this is like very techie, so I don't even know if I'm asking the right question, but how does AI play into what this app does?
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_04: How does it work?
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_04: Is it that?
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_04: I don't have any part of it.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_05: Is it not?
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_05: Because I that's a I'm glad you asked that.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_05: I was I was leaning towards that, but I didn't know if we wanted to go there, Josh.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_05: But you know, it's AI is a big conversation right now.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_05: And it actually was brought up as a convert a question on our last Q ⁇ A that I just did, which was live and you know, I'm put on the spot with how to answer.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_05: I think it was something like, How do you feel about people dancing to music that's created by AI or dances that are created by AI?
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_05: So I think that AI is here with us now and we're all learning how to adapt in life with it, but you are coming to us from the tech side.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_05: So, you know, is it a part of this app or anything to for parents to know?
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think this is important to tackle head on and be super transparent about from the get-go.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um when we record when we record video attempts in the game mode, what we're actually using is some on-device, what's called ML pose detection.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: And what's happening is we're using computer vision to identify essentially, if you looked at your body like a skeletal structure, the ball, any any joints or balls, and then the sticks, meaning the bones, were what we're actually doing in the way we're able to say, did this dancer do the move based on our template that we created created?
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're s essentially applying pose detection.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: The great thing about that is um we're not looking at a dancer's body type, we're not looking at the clothing and the cost of their clothing, we're not looking at their skin color, we're looking at their skeletal structure.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a much healthier way to instruct, did you do this or did you not?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's taking as much bias out of that part of the equation as possible.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to repeat, that work that we're doing in the eight counts app happens on your own private device.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: That stuff never leaves your phone.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: And in the instance, again, just to be super clear, if a parent says, Hey, my kid did this move, and I want my coach to see it and leave comments on it, that pose detection stuff stays on the device.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing we send is the actual video.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's where machine learning actually plays a little bit of a role there, specifically.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um we use some uh large language model uh like magic to take pre-written feedback for different so we've div so when we play the game, a given skill is broken down into phases.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: And for each phase, we went to actual humans and said, Hey, if a dancer did these phases correctly, what are the things that you would say?
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if they did these phases incorrectly, what would you say?
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: And we hand-typed all of that out.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you saw the spreadsheet of all of that, you'd lose your mind.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was very, very intricate and complicated.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: But what we're actually doing is to deliver the feedback so it feels and sounds a little bit more like magic, we take those chunks of feedback and feed it to an LLM, and then it delivers something in more of a human narrative way.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: But we're not actually sending any private, like personally identifiable information, nothing about the dancer, nothing about their attempt personally, no video, no imagery.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we are using AI, but in a very sort of back office of the app manner that is ultra safe, where we're not using any of the dancer's real information.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's number one.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and where do I feel it plays a part?
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: We're starting at this sort of very low-touch AI space because we don't want to stick our head in the sand.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: That would be foolish, and say, like, oh, we're just never gonna have AI in it.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we're starting with some very basic things.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but a lot of what we're using, it's it's actually not new at all.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Pose detection is used to analyze golf swings, baseball swings, tennis, a myriad of other ball and stick type of sports.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: We're just applying it in a new way for the dance industry.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: So frankly, what I'm more interested to hear is Neo's opinion on where does she think AI and technology plays a role?
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because we've been trying to very hard to like draw a line in the sand where we feel we can tackle the repetition and make it fun and like turn the uh I don't want to do it into exciting and cool, um, but leave the nuance and the artistry and the craft to the coaches.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, I'd love to hear Neo, your your perspective on this a bit.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know if anybody saw my story recently.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: I love your story, so I probably saw it.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know why you're asking.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I'm asking you to go.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I tell me, I think, right, with AI, because now we're seeing the videos online of like these AI dancers.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not just, you know, dancing to AI music, AI generated music.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_02: Now people are making videos of fake dancers or taking choreography from um dancers.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: And oh my gosh, I just saw one where there was um a a hip-hop battle piece um of some black artist, and then there was a AI version of this like quirky looking white dancer, white presented male dancer, doing his exact same set.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: And the creator was able to somehow make like millions of dollars off of like a something dealing with Bitcoin, and that's but you took this this dancer's set and his creative intelligence and what he did with his body, and you just flipped it onto a different appearance and found a way to make money at it and didn't give any money to that guy.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: So crazy.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so for that, but then also I think that that the next that the wave that we're gonna see some people go in, there's gonna be dance competitions are gonna move into like AI so that yeah, so that we can have creatives who may not even know about dance or who can't physically show you what they want, or they don't want to work within the physical limitations of movement, and they're gonna create choreography using AI and then have who created the best visual presentation.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think, well, we can get into it even more at another time, but I think that competitions now are leaning towards um they're not dance competitions anymore, they're turning into choreography competitions or it's just construction, like stage construction.
• 56:15
  unknown: Right.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: Bring your own lighting, bring your theming, and all of that.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, not even that, but like um just choreography composition.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: There we go.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: Composition.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_02: The whole shitting.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so not just not just dance choreography anymore.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's just composition composition choreography.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: How are you gonna use create a visual performance on this stage in front of this people, you know, this audience or whatever.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's lovely.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_04: And I think everybody here can agree, like, that's cool.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_04: But am I supposed to judge that?
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I mean, all the three of us do that.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_04: Like, am I supposed to score you?
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_04: How am I supposed to score that against this person and then give them a platinum, but but how?
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you're I mean what I appreciate about the the way that it's going right now with eight counts is when you were mentioning the stick and ball, you know, anal an analysis.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_04: I say it all the time.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_04: Like, a plie is a plie is a plie.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_04: If you did not do a plie, you did not do a plie.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_04: And that will tell me, did you do a plie?
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_04: Did you do a pirouette on a full releve?
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_04: Because like I can I can tell you if you did or didn't, but that is an unequivocal, that ball was not in the right spot.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_04: That stick was not in the right spot.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_04: Here's a stick version that did it right.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_04: Here's you.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_04: It's not right.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_04: Like there's a no gray area there.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and I love that it takes away every little bias that there is because then nobody can say, well, she doesn't like me.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_04: Or I did a pirouette, but she doesn't think I did because I can't, whatever the excuse is, because there's always an excuse.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that's gonna be a great um an equalizer and and maybe really good for some of those students who, for whatever reason, in the moment in the room, cannot take that correction.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_04: But in the privacy of their own home to to see that video come through and really be able to self-analyze and say, oh no, oh no, Miss Neo was right.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_04: I I didn't do that.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_04: That wasn't right.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_04: You know, sometimes it might just take that that privacy to be able to accept a correction and then move on.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_05: I I feel like um um I really l love the answer, Josh, that you gave regarding the AI usage for your app.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I think one of the bigger issues that a lot of obviously parents and even everyone is just the use of someone's image without consent in going into artificial intelligence and using it.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_05: Um I so I'm happy to hear that it's that you know, no one's face, no one's body, no one's anything is going out into the who knows where AI world because that's definitely I know I don't I don't love when my image gets spit through A AI for someone's flyer.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_05: Like I don't really want that.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_05: So um, and I also really respect that you spoke to real dance teachers to gather the data that you needed to be able to apply the corrections.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_05: It is important.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_05: And, you know, I've heard of crazy things happening with the parents just putting their kids' videos into AI and asking it to critique the video.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_05: And AI critiques their video, and it's not coming from a real human anymore.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_05: And it's crazy to know that that exists and to know that what your app is doing is not that.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so I I think I want to comment on a few things here because this is this these are again, these are founding principles that we really wanted to talk about and also build into the platform early on so that we could develop and enhance, but in the appropriate way.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: One, in an age where you know, kids are so hyper-competitive and adjudication is so important, it's it's very subjective.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: So they could have had the best performance of their life, but there is no governing body for dance like USA cheer or gymnastics or anything else.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: So because we don't have a governing body, and I know that's a whole hot topic for another day, um it's it's absolutely soul-crushing to watch a dancer that's spent a whole year on a routine not place because of whatever politics are happening.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the piece that we really like, even our daughter got excited about.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, she started seeing, essentially seeing her data in the profile page to look at her progress.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, Oh, I'm gonna show Miss Dine.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: This is our coach, one of her coaches, I'm gonna show Miss Dine my my progress.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not subjective.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_01: She put in the sweat equity, she did the moves, she spent the time in the app.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so we've got this concept of essentially co-branding awards between eight counts in your studio because they're they're they're data-driven awards.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, you completed 50 homeworks or a hundred homeworks.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: There is no like, I liked the way you did that piece of homework.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, like you accomplished it.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's we have data to prove it.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and so this is one of those, again, attacking a positive youth mental health development side of it's a data-informed decision.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: You put in the effort, and here's the reward for that.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's one thing.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing is, you know, um, when we were talking earlier about uh adjudication and how important that is these days, it's a little scary to think AI could be, you know, having a seat at the table.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: Having said that, it was fantastic to see my first, like um, after my daughter did her first competition, our whole team is sitting there in the studio watching the video and then obviously hearing all the judges' comments over top of it.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going, but we could do this.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_01: We could put that power of like audio adjudication right in their own coaches' hands.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: So they get not once or twice a year, but if they've got that back and forth between parents and trying to get real feedback and developmental feedback, it's like the kiddos love seeing themselves on the screen and hearing that critique because they see, oh, this is about me.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is important.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm important.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm important enough that somebody is taking their time to give me this sort of like this feedback.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's one of the reasons why we built that in there was I've never seen a quieter group of seven-year-old girls in my life.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: They were just like locked in.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what did that judge say?
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, sometimes it's relevant, sometimes it's not, sometimes it's about the team.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: Or even my daughter was like, they didn't say anything about that one cool move I did.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Oh.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's okay.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a there's a whole team up there, right?
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um so just a couple of other data points there.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, it it's just a huge opportunity to to kind of not necessarily steer things in the right direction.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: Who's to say what direction is the correct one?
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I think an evolving direction for a lot of these topics, that's what we're excited to to tackle.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I really loved this that you pointed out that at competitions the kids get disappointed if they don't place, but then with this app, they can they get the uh data-driven award.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like you've you did X amount of um uh practices and homeworks and like, you know, gold star review, banner, whatever um it is, but they get that acknowledgement for completing their tasks.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this is a I'm a competition girly all day, however, comma.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um it it is sad as a teacher and I'm sure also as a parent, is that the kid, the judges don't know where these kids started from.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so I tell my students all the time, like it's not about because you don't know who's gonna show up to competition.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_02: You don't know what judges are gonna be there, who you're going up against, but you need to do your best performance and grow each time because it's at the end of the day, these trophies and awards don't matter.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_02: We know that in the real world.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like they they don't matter, but your progress and your development, your work efforts, these are the things that matter.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_02: You getting feedback, you being able to take that feedback and to um to take the criticism or to uh to learn how to change and and make corrections and and autocorrect.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's important.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's what's gonna create um success in in any field that you decide to go into.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just stance.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm really glad that you point that out and that this can serve as a tool to like combat that competitive, the the the downsides of the competition world.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and just see where the the technology makes an appropriate grab.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's gonna be features, I'm sure, that gets great rave reviews, and I'm sure there's gonna be features down the road where parents go, like, yeah, we don't use that, or that's not like what was the intent behind this?
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_01: And feedback is a gift, and so that's why we're taking a stepwise approach to it.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, we'll see what comes.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_05: We hope you enjoyed our latest spotlight episode featuring 8COUT.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_05: Shout out to Josh and Neo for joining us on this awesome chat.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_05: Stay connected with them on Instagram.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_05: You can find Neo at NeoWind and 8Count at JoinAcCount.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_05: And to learn more about 8COUT app, visit their website to download now at joine8count.com or click the link in our show notes.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_04: Don't forget to follow Making the Impact anywhere you listen to podcasts.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_04: And new for season 8, we're on video.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_04: Check us out on YouTube by searching for Impact Dance Adjudicators.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_04: And if you want more exclusive episodes, support our podcast by joining our Platinum Premium membership for only$5 a month.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_04: Subscribers receive free Making the Impact stickers, shout-outs live on the air, ad free listening, and exclusive access to our QA episodes for members only.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_04: Join now at Impact DanceEdducators.com slash Platinum Premium or click the link in our show notes.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_04: Coming up in the next few weeks, look forward to an episode all about scary skills we see at dance competitions, a throwback episode, and an episode debating the merits of lip syncing in musical theater.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_05: We'll see you then.