You can check it out here. Stay tuned for new articles and ideas coming soon!

How did you get started in your current career?

I feel fortunate because my career sucked me in without much thought. Six months after I started dancing I was asked by our local teacher to start assisting her and it took off from there. Once the ball was rolling it was easy to maintain momentum. From the age of 16 to 18, after teaching and performing as a professional dancer, I quit. I returned to my original ambition to go to college get a degree in business. I wanted to head down a path where I thought I could find financial security. In the beginning I didn’t believe dancing would make that possible. However, after one year of college, dancing kept drawing me back in. I had too many opportunities and couldn’t ignore it. I was lucky, the doors opened  easily, however I had to work  hard to succeed once I took the plunge.  I spent most of my energy defining what made me unique and honed ability as a dancer and especially as a teacher.

What advice do you have for someone who wants to turn a hobby or a passion into a living? What is a smart first step?

Turning a hobby into a career can be tricky, but if you are successful at your hobby you have a much higher chance of making a living with it. If you are lucky, the opportunity will probably call upon you and you will see the doors open. This will get you started, but only hard work, training and refinement of your artistic and business skills will lead to success.  If doors of opportunity aren’t opening for you, it is still possible to make it happen, it just takes more work and dedication in the beginning.

There are a few paths to follow when turning a passion or hobby into a career.  Teach it, perform it, or create some product out of it and sell it.  There are also other ways to stay directly connected to the hobby without being a master at it. You can create an event or facility to host either the production or instruction of the craft, art, or hobby. If you have the business skills, it is easy to take your awareness of the niche market and figure out a way to monetize it and bring value to the community. (This is the secret, you must find a way to add value to your niche community/market. If you create something of real value, people will support you and your projects. )

The first step is to define what it is you are going to offer and whether or not you have a potential market. Will people actually pay for it? Can you do a show, sell a product or teach others how to do it?  The second step is try it. You have to test this before you fully commit. Don’t jump assuming that everything will just work out. After a real trail, you will know exactly how to transition from your current situation and whether it will be possible. Balance working your current job, and work your hobby on the side to see if you actually like it when it becomes business.  From there it is pretty easy to know when and if you can go full time and make a living.

What mistakes do you see people making when they try to become self-employed?

1) Taking the plunge to soon. Being over confident and going for it without a trail or a true calling.
2) Not being professional. Hobbies are where most people do it for fun. So when the calling comes, they don’t get professional. This often creates burnt bridges, and bad relationships can easily harm your career.
3) Don’t Be Lazy! Especially for people who are naturally more talented. Always remember there are probably hundreds of other people who will work harder and eventually surpass you if you don’t progress. Even if competition didn’t exist, avoid mediocre success and be exceptional. Never stop developing your craft and your business will never die.
4) Failing to find support. You career literally begins once you engage early adopters or fans. People who really believe in your product and abilities. These people will sell you better then you ever will alone. Engage a few and the rest will follow. If you fail to find this early support, then it will be a very rough ride.

How has the web helped your career?

The web has helped immensely with publicity. Video and word of mouth spreads almost instantaneously on the web. The web is an amazing marketing resource and one that happens naturally if you attract the interest of heavy web users and fans. Having a personal website is also another way to allow people to get to know you and your product without having to be there in person all the time.

The web is also a great source of inspiration. You can easily find people around the world in seconds who can inspire you in your craft. This is something that was previously extremely hard to come by for people unable to travel and meet other talented people who study their craft. The key is to be inspired but not to copy.

Here we will talk about how ballroom instruction attempts to kill swing. Separate the leads and follows, show them the exact footwork, carve the puzzle pieces and then put them together? How is this lead and follow? How is this even social dancing?

Coming Soon…

Coming Soon…

Coming Soon…

Coming Soon…

As you may know, I like ‘golden rules’ and today I am going to share with you my golden rule for body tension.

BODY TENSION: Use it, or loose it!

Sounds simple, but what exactly does this mean. Well, for example, if you were to hold something heavy in your arms, you would feel a lot of tension build in you body to hold the object. Try picking up your friend or a chair and holding it for a few seconds. When you set it down, you should feel all the tension leave your body and hopefully would return to your previous state of being chilled out. This flow is very natural, especially if you give the body a second to adjust to its new situation. The fact is your body reacts to the things you are doing, picking up a chair, just standing there, running, walking, etc. These reactions are most natural when it is trying to achieve some sort of goal and all the necessary adjustments will take place without much thought.

As a spectator you would probably not question why a person holding a chair looks more tense then the person not holding a chair and visa versa. Just like we never don’t look at the front page of the sports section of a news paper and comment that the players look awkward in the photo showing raw action. You probably wouldn’t even think about tension at all as an observer, because everyone is at their own optimal point of relaxation for what is is they are doing, especially if they are pros at doing what they are doing.

On the other hand, if you were observing two people standing there, one tense as if they were holding a chair but not, and the other just standing there naturally, you would probably wonder what was wrong with the dude who was carrying excess and unused tension in their body. So this is where we can apply the rule, the guy with excess tension has two things he could do in order to fix his little problem. 1) Pick up a chair to justify having all the tension, or 2) let go of the unused tension and just chill out. Sounds simple, but while dancing why do we have so much trouble doing this?

Releasing excess tension is the number one physical difference between professionals and amateurs doing the same action. Try to visualize 5 people all repeating the same action you can understand what I am talking about.

For example, lets take 5 rhythm guitar players with different levels of experience; 30 years, 5 years, 1 year, 1 month, 1 week. We line them up and have them play the same tempo and chord. As you move down the line of experience, the main physical difference that you would see is the level of unnecessary tension in their body and arm to play the chord at the given tempo. It is this excess tension that will dramatically affect the way the guitar sounds, how long and consistently the player can sustain the rhythm for, and how cool he looks while doing it. Does this make sense?

Line up a pro lindy couple and 10 student trying to copy their swing out. Assume everyone knows the same footwork, directions and mental information necessary to do the swing out. The physical factor that will separate them all is the ET problem. We would see the same problem as with the guitarists, the pro couple with no unnecessary tension in their body would be dancing the best and probably look the most natural while the students would contain different levels of excess tension causing them to appear unnatural and be unable to execute the movement as well. When I am teaching, excess tension is the main problem I see. When I see ET, I don’t need to be dancing with the person to know that it probably doesn’t feel right either. Feel and style are so directly connected that is is honestly hard to have one for real, without the other.

Why does ET mess up body movement? What is physically going on that causes the movement quality to go down?

Simply it works like this. The body is made of muscles. You move when you contract the muscles and release the tension to allow for the body to change shape. The process repeats making movement the constant building and releasing of muscle tension. When you hold tension in you body, or “don’t release”, you can no longer do two things. 1) Change shape for movement and 2) Re-contract to create the power for the next movement. It just prevents the whole workflow. If you want a full breath of fresh air, you need to empty your lungs first to completely fill them. If you want full movement, you need to release after contraction. If you want effortless power, you need a full contraction. Does this make sense?

What causes excess tension and how to get rid of it is a whole other article, but the problem still remains, that ET messes up your swing. So if you can find ways to release excess tension at all times, you will dance better. It is a good goal to have while dancing, cause when you move in that direction, things get better, feel better and look better. It is amazing on how many other things people will focus on in order to get better when they are so unrelated to the big problem. Focus on releasing tension and keeping on target, it is a simple focus, but one that will produce good results when well executed.

Coming Soon…