The challenge: Keeping a fully-remote team together

Rhasaan Sherrill knew how to dance, and she had the credentials to prove it. But as she landed Beat Box Dance Academy’s first client in 2018, the budding business called for an entirely new skillset—she had to manage and support another dance instructor while remaining fully remote.

Finding an instructor was the easy part. Her own dance experience provided her with a network of friends and peers in the community. She found clients through that same web of friends and supporters—her hair stylist helped her land the Academy’s first client, an arts-focused elementary school in Los Angeles.

At that time, Rhasaan was still finishing up her degree and balancing a day job as well. Every step forward brought new variables to consider and tasks to juggle and keep track of, all complicated by a unique quirk of her business: There was no head office to work from, no regular studio to host classes, and no single city where her instructors were located.

“This is a mobile business; we don’t have an actual building or studio that we meet in and conduct classes. So, my instructors are spread out,” says Rhasaan. “With it being mobile, it requires a lot of communication.”

Most of Beat Box Dance Academy’s dance courses run for anywhere between 6 and 12 weeks, and are either parent-paid after-school programs hosted in a school or a community center, or a district-paid program included in a school’s curriculum and held during class hours. And all of their instructors are part-time employees with other paid responsibilities to work around when it comes to building a schedule.

Fitting the unique scheduling needs of each instructor meant that Rhasaan often found herself doing one-off solutions that could eat up hours of her day almost immediately. As business picked up, her workflow became flooded with one-off apps and processes as more instructors and clients came into her life.

“I would have to print out schedules and email them to my dance instructors,” Rhasaan says. “There were times when I was still mailing out checks. The company I was using made it so expensive to pay direct deposit, so it made sense at the time. One time, there was an issue with my employee’s address, and their check didn’t arrive. I had to re-cut the check and physically drive it over to them. I felt bad, because I know what it’s like [when you don’t get paid on time]. So I did what I had to do.”

Eventually, she realized how much time and stress she was spending each week navigating her collection of conflicting tools and platforms. She needed tools that did what she needed consistently across all the aspects of Beat Box Dance Academy, while helping her reduce the time and energy she spent on every part of the process.

When she moved out of LA and back to the Bay Area around 2020, she would be even further from the action and in need of tools she could trust, with her business officially operating in both regions. Then, she found Homebase.

“There’s an easier way to do things. There are systems in place so you can focus on the things that truly inspire you. Because consistency wins the race.”

— Rhasaan Sherrill, Founder of Beat Box Dance Academy

The solution: Creating consistency while long-distance

Rhasaan’s tools didn’t work well with each other, and she found herself frequently having to fill the gaps between each of them. She knew her fundamentals were strong, but she frequently had to craft custom band-aid solutions for an employee or client because her software didn’t cover their specific needs.

Homebase solved all of those needs at once, allowing her to handle all the tasks she was previously tackling through Homeroom, Jackrabbit, Excel, ADP, and more in one place. But more crucially, it remembered information from one area (like scheduling) and applied it to another relevant area (like payroll) without requiring her to spend hours each week doing repetitive data entry.

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Even though Rhasaan has anywhere between 5 and 10 instructors working across multiple locations in California, she keeps them on track by creating a single schedule in Homebase. Now, it takes her minutes instead of hours. Her instructors can input their availability and time off, making it easy for Rhassan to schedule around their needs.

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Plus, the built-in team messaging app means that her team can trade shifts with one another directly, rather than going through her. No more group texts or PDFs via email; just clear communication that her instructors use to fit their lessons into their busy schedules.

Payroll has moved beyond the days of hand-delivered checks, too. Rhasaan sets her payroll to populate automatically using the team’s schedule. All she has to do is review and submit it—a process that takes 10 minutes—and get on with the rest of her day.

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By leaving one-off solutions in the past and adopting Homebase for Beat Box Dance Academy, Rhasaan has more time to communicate and collaborate with her team, supporting her instructors as they put their own spin on each new lesson with the knowledge that she is always available if they need a quick check-in.

“Whatever it is that you have a passion for? Just stick with it. You’re not gonna know everything, and that’s the beauty of it. It will unveil as you keep putting one step in front of the other.”

— Rhasaan Sherrill, Founder of Beat Box Dance Academy

The impact: Less time on busywork, more time for teamwork

The transition from dancer to centralized manager of a half dozen other dance instructors comes with some mixed feelings for Rhasaan. She loves dance, but this newer role represents an open-ended challenge that’s bigger than her.

“I find more fulfillment in this phase of my career by developing and building up the next generation of artists,” Rhasaan says. “Teaching artists, setting a vision, and equipping them professionally to grow. By taking the time out of being so enmeshed in the classes, I can build the company, scale it up, and give back to the instructors so they can be the hands and feet of the company going forward.”

There is no part of managing Beat Box Dance Academy that Homebase hasn’t helped Rhasaan save time and refocus on that goal of building up and giving back. Hours spent wrangling budget tables have turned into a handful of minutes approving automatically-collected numbers and making sure they’re accurate. Those hours go right back into working with her instructors and finding new ones.

“I’m always recruiting,” says Rhasaan. “Because it’s part-time work. So I’m constantly having to keep my eye out for new talent, and have some subs on the roster, too.”

Team communication isn’t just about onboarding new employees and making sure everyone is up to speed with their shift schedules and lesson plans, although that’s a big part of Rhasaan’s daily workflow. If someone can’t make their lesson, it’s on her to find a replacement—or to step up to teach their lesson herself.

Without a central hub or common area for her team to co-mingle and touch base, Rhasaan works hard to recreate the vibe and support structure of an in-person dance studio. All of the time saved from busywork and repetitive tasks gets reinvested here, as Rhasaan builds the environment she often felt was lacking in her previous dance instructor roles.

“I like to lead in a servant leadership type of role, so it’s important that my staff know that they’re empowered to do their jobs,” says Rhasaan. “I’m here as a guide. I’m here to support them. I set the curriculum, but I want everyone to bend it to their own personality.”

Rhasaan can see the difference in the time she has available to invest in mentorship, team-building, and culture shaping today even compared to just two years prior. And she knows how important it can be for her team to feel validated and seen in a fully-mobile business like hers.

“I think that style of collaboration just brings about a certain amount of morale,” says Rhasaan. “Since we’re mobile, it’s important that we create some type of community, even within ourselves. So after every session, we’re talking about the highs and the lows of each school—because they vary. When you’re working with kids, you never know what you’re going to get. And we learn different things from each other, sharing strategies and tools to better serve our students.”

“Just stick with it.”

With a steady foundation she can predict and rely on, Rhasaan has breathing room to make changes for herself and for Beat Box Dance Academy. She has now moved back to LA from the Bay Area, eager to expand her network of instructors and students as successfully as she has up north.

Each day, she sees proof positive that hip-hop can be taught in a way that speaks to the history of the art form while remaining fun and accessible to a new generation.

Homebase has allowed her to streamline the tangle of loosely-related apps and programs she had previously been using, combining her tools into one universal place where they all talk to each other and save her countless hours of stress and time spent doing the same thing in slightly different ways.

“[I’ve learned] there’s an easier way to do things,” says Rhasaan. “There are systems in place so you can focus on the things that truly inspire you. Because consistency wins the race.”

With Homebase providing a steady rhythm for her team’s payroll, communication, and scheduling, Rhasaan Sherrill has the time and consistency to serve as the unifying core for her team while planning to grow and strengthen Beat Box Dance Academy in 2026 and beyond.