Episode Summary

In this episode of the Make Space for More podcast, host Melissa Swink interviews Jay Morth, a professional ballroom dancer and dance studio owner. Jay shares his unique journey into the world of dance, starting from his childhood experiences with his father to his professional career and eventual transition into business ownership. 

Tune into their conversation to hear about mentorship, entrepreneurship challenges, the importance of community, and learning how to balance personal life and business. Melissa and Jay talked about the importance of continuous learning and the value of finding the right support system, too!

Key Highlights:

• Transforming personal challenges into professional passion can lead to unexpected entrepreneurial opportunities.
• Strategic mentorship and industry connections prove valuable in bridging the gap between artistic talent and business acumen.
• Creating a supportive community environment is essential for sustainable business growth and personal fulfillment.
• Implementing effective delegation strategies, including outsourcing key tasks, enables focused business leadership.
• Maintaining a harmonious work-life integration is crucial for long-term entrepreneurial success.
• Investing in continuous professional development keeps both business innovation and personal passion alive.

About Our Guest: 

Jay owns and instructs at Ballroom by Jay, which is a Ballroom Dance Studio in Green Bay WI. He has competed professionally in American Smooth in the Midwest where he and his partner were finalists. Jay offers a complimentary 1st dance lesson. Visit his website at www.ballroombyjay.com

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hi everyone. Welcome to the Make Space for More podcast where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink. And for today's episode, I have a very special treat for all of you. We have a special guest joining me today, Jay Morth. Jay owns and instructs at Ballroom by Jay, which is a ballroom dance studio in Green Bay, Wisconsin, right here, local to me.

He has competed professionally in American Smooth in the Midwest where he and his partner were finalists. Jay, welcome to the show. We're just going to dive right in because many of our clients and guests that we've had on the show have tended to be people in the professional services industry where maybe it's financial or it's coaching or consulting. And so we have, to my knowledge, not had anyone on the show as of yet with a professional dance background. So I'm super excited to hear

a little bit more about like how you even got into this because it's certainly unique.

Yes, thank you very much for having me on the show. I'm excited to be able to tell my story with this. Yeah, so dancing for me started many a year ago. So I would say probably around between the ages of four and six, it was a time where my parents had just gotten divorced. So my dad ended up using dancing as like a therapeutic way to get through that.

Awesome.

traumatic situation. So he would bring my siblings and myself to a location for ballroom dancing. Like sometimes it would be his group classes that he would go to. At that point in time, like I really had no interest in wanting to dance. I mean, I was too young and it just didn't really seem my thing, but dad still brought us along with and as I like to joke around, say suffering through his fun.

slowly in time, like we got to meet his friends through it. And then they would invite us to go and dance with them. And I realized like how fun it really was to get the body moving, have the endorphins and just like enjoy the social networking of getting to meet new people. Granted at that time, everybody was probably 30 to 40 years older than I was, but that's okay. So there was a period of time where I

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

didn't really do a lot of dancing. That was, I mean, I didn't go through it like at four to five and six, like I was introduced to it. I took about a 14 year break as I like to joke around. And then like dad would bring us out there to the crystal ballroom, which is located in St. John's, Wisconsin and got to meet friends out there. and I got country line dancing or got into country line dancing with my father during high school.

Okay.

And that's really, really kind of started my...

journey with dancing, I guess you could say. so every single Tuesday night, it would be me and dad going dancing with everybody at the local VFW, learning all different dances, having fun there. eventually I ended up, well, I did go into college and it was my sophomore year where I got reintroduced to ballroom dancing. Cause like, I heard the music playing in the gym and I'm like, I recognize this music. Let's go.

Okay.

check it out and see what's going on. And I saw people dancing and I'm like, I recognize that dance, but I couldn't quite tell you what it was. So they open arms, they like, Hey, why don't you come on in and join us? And I'm like, why not? It looks like fun. So I, that's where my ballroom dancing started. And that was at the UW Fox Valley extension off of it was Midway road in Monashia. So now I think.

Sure.

Okay?

think they partnered up with UW Oshkosh now, if I'm not mistaken. So I did that for one year until I transferred out to University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. Started with their ballroom dance club and after a semester, one of the board members, they invited me to say, hey, you'd be really good being an intern at the local dance studio, because he was an intern there.

That's how I kind of really got, I don't want to say sucked into it, like, um, drawn into it. Like, it was like, why not? always heard internships were a good thing to have in college. I'm like, why not take and go for it? Cause it was, sounded like a good opportunity to do it. So I did that for about three and a half years. And at that time, um,

We'll say drawn into it.

How long was it? think that was about 2009. Cause I ended up, I got into college 2007. So it was 2009. They started the local Dancing with Our Stars fundraising event for the American Red Cross. So the first year I got to be more volunteer with it. And then the second year I got to be a participant with it as one of the local dancers to dance with our celebrities of the community kind of thing.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

So wonderful opportunity to get involved with that through that dance studio. Did that for all 10 years that it was fundraising for the Red Cross. mean, now they're doing it. It's for there's eight participants and each person gets to choose their charity of choice to fundraise for. So I like how that's evolved with it. But going back into, I still think college years, I'm like, that was a few years ago.

Yes.

Um, so I interned there for about three and a half years. The intern who got me started, he branched off to start his own ballroom dance studio. So I moved over to work with him. So there was a point in time, like, cause it was an unpaid internship. And I started realizing like I could actually make money doing this kind of stuff. So that's why I shifted over to work with him.

For all of us, right?

Mm-hmm.

I did that for a few years and eventually like, there's a lot of, how would I say? was like, I ended up working a lot with different studios because I never really just had one job at the time. So like when I was working interning for the One Dance Studio, I was working at Menards part-time. And then eventually I stopped working at Menards, worked with a different dance studio in the Appleton area.

as well as working for the studio in Green Bay. So I was having two different studio jobs. And then I ended up, the initial plan was to stop teaching at the studio in Appleton and work more full-time in Green Bay. But it was at that time, right, I pivoted and I found my first professional dance partner and they taught in Wausau, Wisconsin. So I...

I mean, I learned a lot of valuable things in the Appleton studio, like learning how to be a better teacher to it. and as, as I pivoted and still worked in green Bay three days out of the week, went out into the Wausau, worked there four days out of the week and really just got more involved with learning how to become a better dancer through the professional dancing. So really diving into those skillsets. And then I got to start learning more of the business side as well.

out there. like, so instead of, how do I say, so with the studio in Green Bay, like, there was a time where I was, I was in my transitional period, I guess you could call it. And I ended up leaving their studio. And I decided to start the business then, because I still wanted to teach.

Okay.

In green Bay, I still wanted to keep my client base there. so I really have still working in Wausau four days a week. And I had like, it was a week to two weeks where I'm like, okay, I don't want to rent space from the people I'm working with anymore here in green Bay. So like, I'm going to come up with a business. How does this even work? So I started out, I, came up with a name. I ended up going back to the studio space. was interning at.

back in college as my first, as a subleaser from them. And then I'm like, okay, well, now that I have a business, I have no idea what taxes are going to look like. So I should find somebody who can do my taxes for me because I don't know how to do that. And fortunately, yeah. So fortunately, one of the clients that I have worked with, she's a CPA. So I'm like,

Okay.

Your first hire, very smart. Yes.

I'll reach out to her and see if she'll take me as a client. And she did, and she helped me at least with the taxes and all that. And whenever I had questions in regards to like, okay, how can I learn the tax system more efficiently? Like how can I make tax deductions or business expenses and that kind of stuff? So she was a nice guiding hand for me there. I've also had clients that have owned businesses as well.

They gave me tips and tricks throughout the years as well. Um, so like my first five years was a young guy who had pretty much low, no business experience, I would say, and just had a lot of fun dancing and was just willing to give that information to anybody that walked in through my door. Um, is really how I started. I, I would definitely say like I was flying by the seat of my pants.

for a lot of things. really didn't have the structure, a planned out idea like this is what my business is going to look like, this is how I want it structured, these are who I want. Like I had none of that information. Just learning as I went. So about five years into it, well because I went from subleasing from my intern director or the intern from college

She ended up closing her business and then another dance school came in. So I went to subleasing from them in the same space for about a year. That ended up not working out well because there was like, I had certain amount of times that I could be there and there were times like the time management skills didn't line up because they were occupying space and I was supposed to be in there. So then I came down and like.

Sure, yeah, the logistics got a little messy, it sounds like.

It got a little messy, which is all right. Like at that point in time, I'm like, it was frustrating to see, but now I look back at it. I'm like, it was really a blessing in disguise to build the business that I want it to look like. So I went from a subleaser to being a subleaser again, into now a tenant. which was really kind of fun and exciting. It felt like it was a huge step and I'm like, can't believe I'm actually doing this. I felt like.

Yes.

I would say like, pulled out my big boy pants, if you will, kind of thing. Um, and just nervous for it. But I'm like, just going forward basically. So I'm like, I'm going to do it, go for it. What's the worst that's going to happen? Um, from there, like my landlord himself was awesome to work with and I'm still in the same building now, but I've ended up changing spaces or a different suite now.

Yes.

So it's because before it was like a 25 by 30 foot floor and I wanted more space because I didn't, still learning how I could teach like a long stream of patterns in such a small space. I didn't know how to do that well. So I'm like, I just need more square footage. Fortunately, a space opened up here and in the building and I moved upstairs and I've been in it ever since. And that's been

Mm-hmm.

maybe about three or four years now. So I haven't really moved since 2021.

Okay.

Okay, right after COVID or I should say we were still in the thick of COVID at that point, but after the initial blast of COVID where everything shut down, a space opened up that you needed.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's been quite an adventure and here I am practically 11 years later still doing what I love to do and it's.

Yeah.

kind of surreal. does. It does.

Yeah, the time goes by fast, doesn't it? It doesn't, it doesn't. Sometimes you think that, but to the early days of your company and you're like, wow, things have really evolved since then, but it also feels like yesterday at the same time.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, there's so much in your story that you shared that I want to unpack because it sounds like really ballroom dancing started with your dad.

It did, yeah.

Yeah. How long had he, I'm just curious. How long was he dancing? Or how, do you know how long? Yeah.

well, he's still crimeity. Goodness me. I would say he's been dancing now for, I forget his timeline. I would say for sure over 20 years, I'd probably be leaning more to the 25 year mark. but yeah, it's with him getting involved with that and bringing us kids to his group classes or out social dancing. It's

Interesting.

I'm not sure I would have ended up where I am now.

Right. Yeah. And it's interesting how, you know, he wanted you and your siblings to get involved in dance during kind of a traumatic time in your life. And I agree that the movement in the music, I think that he was on the right track there.

Yeah, because if there was a point.

Sounds like he had good instincts and good intentions with that.

would agree with that. Yeah. Because there was a point in time where he was teaching me whenever he would learn something from group class, he would bring it back. He's like, here, let me show you how to do this. And I remember dancing with him in the kitchen and just learning some more technical things. And I thought it was kind of fun. But like, I've still had an interest to be like, okay, I'm gonna go play with my friends now outside kind of thing. So there's a point in time where there's like,

Yeah.

Yes.

he would teach me and now I'm at the point where he's actually coming to me for dance lessons now. So the teacher has now become the student. Yeah. So every now and again, I'm like, I get to pick on my father, be like, no, I don't think he did that right dad. So we're going to, we're going to try it again. So that was kind of fun journey to do that. So now I get to teach him on his own time as well as

interesting. It's so interesting how things come full circle.

my gosh.

Cause my mom just started taking lessons with me as well. Cause she's always wanted to dance. So I get to both my parents, which is really nice to, just create more quality time with them. So that's, cause that was one thing I ended up missing out a lot on through while I was competing professionally or even just in transition from studio to studio and working all the time is like, I never really had family time except for like.

Yes.

the major holidays. So now I get to least have that again in my life and it feels really good to have them as a priority because before they weren't.

Sure. Yeah. mean, not, I would imagine just not even intentionally, you know, it just that life got busy. You know, you were, you know, growing your dance studio, you were competing, you were doing all sorts of different things. And so yeah, your time becomes limited. Yeah, absolutely.

Correct.

Yeah, but I know they've always been a great support too. So even if I wasn't there or anything like that, they're like, yep, we get it. Go do your dancing thing and we'll talk with you the next time we see you kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, it sounds like they were very supportive. That's fantastic. So you also mentioned when you started your business, like so many of us do, most of us don't know what we're doing. I'll be honest, like when I started my business in 2012, I think my initial goal was to be able to get enough work in to be able to pay my bills after I left my corporate job. And you're figuring it out as you go, all the time.

How are people gonna pay me? And what schedule do I wanna offer? What services do I wanna offer? So there's a lot of figuring out and then there's the back end of the business of running things like you had mentioned, hiring a tax accountant so that you knew that you were managing your money appropriately and paying, and able to pay your taxes and all of that. How else did you kind of figure out the business side of things? I'm just curious if you...

If you got involved in any groups or if you have had any other mentors along the way or maybe you've been reading books or doing courses online, there's so many ways to gain information nowadays, but I'm just curious kind of how you learned more about the business side of things when you first started.

Sure, I'm gonna say yes to all of the above. When I first started out with it though, it was more so from clients that came in and we really ended up building more of a friendship into it. So it wasn't just like student teacher basis, but they gave me a little bit more mentorship, some more.

how does insight be the word I'm looking for. So they gave me, helped me along the way with that. they're like, so like, Jay, know that like, if you do this, this, this, you can write that off for your taxes. And I'm like, no, I didn't know I could write that off for my taxes. Or like even when I was in the need of finding a rental space, like one of my students stepped up. I consider her to be like one of my dance moms. Like, I feel like I've got a couple of them.

And so she's, she took time out of her day to walk around the city of Green Bay or help me look online to find spaces. And we would just go and take a look at them to see if anything really seemed appealing to be like, this is where I could make the new headquarters kind of be. So it's, I had a lot of mentors along the way. so it could be clients, like when I worked out in Wausau, the

Sure.

the owner of the studio, as well as the manager. Like I've, I learned a lot of what to do versus what not to do through their experiences and all that kind of stuff. And as well as experiences of my own, like I've, I've learned the hard way on a lot of things myself. but as, so I would say probably the first five, maybe the first five to eight years.

is where I relied more on other people's experience or knowledge base as a mentorship bit. It's only until recently where I'm starting to work now with, I now have a business coach. I have, so they're helping me navigate things through it. Like, I've had a lot of help and support from my girlfriend. She's helped.

guide me because she's also a business owner. So she's like, yeah, you know, maybe you should try this or think of it this way. Cause she's gone through the stuff that I'm currently going through. So she's helping me fast track a lot of stuff here. So that's been a huge blessing. And I think again, I probably wouldn't be where I'm at today, without that assistance. it's.

Sure.

Sure.

Yes.

Yeah, so she got me connected with her business coaches and I think they're absolutely phenomenal people and I would recommend them to anybody. And now I've like even, like, Hey Jay, what about your social media? I'm like, I'm terrible at keeping up with my social media stuff. If I was lucky, I might got like one or two posts a quarter of a year. So I've at least, I now have the wonderful team with the VA and all that.

Awesome.

that stuff. So this is like the next stage of my developing the business and learning that it's okay to delegate to other people or to hire other people to help me out with the business. Whereas before I was like, can I afford it? I don't think I can. Like I need money to do this, this, this. And I'm realizing that that's more of a scarcity mindset. And by

Yeah.

allowing other people to, or hiring other people, allowing them to come in and help me pick up the slack. Like it's only, what's the word it, bounded my business further into a positive outcome with it. And I think it's just amazing in how it's just that change of that thought process. One can just like,

You can see where it all goes from there and you don't have to always live in a scarcity mindset of like, can't do this or this is too uncomfortable. And it's learning that being uncomfortable, it's okay to be comfortable there. So yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yes. Absolutely. It sounds like you had the right people coming to your path at the right time as you were starting out and continuing to grow and establish the business. But you're right. Then at some point, then you get to that point of building the business using systems, using tools, hiring team.

hiring a business coach or some other type of mentorship. So that really is next level as you continue to, as your business continues to grow and evolve.

Damn.

I like how you mentioned also like the business coach, social media. I always share on the podcast that that was actually one of the first things that I outsourced as well. Even when I was working as a VA completely on my own and just working with my clients because you're right, we're so busy doing the day to day working with our clients, running our businesses, doing the things that need to get done that the marketing work, especially social media can just be put on the back burner. And so I feel like

Okay.

Back in the day, I would spend maybe half hour, 45 minutes creating one post and I'd be proud of it and it would go up and then nothing would come out for like three or four weeks and then I'd have to do it again. So that was one of the first things that I outsourced as well. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's been a huge help because like the people who can do that stuff can do it so much quicker than I can. Cause I was in the same boat where it was like, okay, half an hour, 45 minutes. Well, let's see what I can find on Google images that would be somewhat close to this. And it's such a time saver. And that's, think that is one thing I'm going to be, yeah. So that's one thing I'm looking at doing is how can I.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

manage my time so this way I get more of it to do what I would like to do versus feel like I'm attached to the ball and chain of like, okay, I still need to be like, feeling like I'm dragging something around, like I'm not balancing everything equally, if that makes sense. So.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's something that continues to, it's not a set it and forget it. It's never completely done because I feel like we all go through it where we will start the business and we are wearing all of the hats, all of the things are on our plates. And then we get to a point where we start, we start to outsource and we start to seek that business coaching and that mentorship. Like I need outside perspective of how I can do things.

better than I'm currently doing right now. And then we just continue to build that muscle of, know, we're investing in systems, you know, we're investing in team and we're making life a little bit easier. But then I feel like we also get to that point where it's kind of like new level, new devil, where we need to reevaluate what's on our plate again and what are we spending our time on. And it's just, it's constantly evolving and changing.

Yeah.

Correct.

Yes, absolutely. I'm just curious, how much time, maybe not so much how much time, but how do you kind of figure out your schedule and priorities? Because of course, you are a dance instructor, so you are working directly with your clients one-on-one or in classes or certainly competitions. know, didn't you recently have a competition? Did I see that on Facebook?

Recently I was just out in Las Vegas for a dance camp. So that was more seminars, conventions where they had instructors or even like past champions in the industry as well as current champions or even finalists. like some of the top competitors and they're out there giving their information and how to basically just make dancing more efficient.

Got it.

Okay.

and still produce a high quality level of dancing. So it was really fun to get that information as well as see like what I'm teaching coincides with what it is that they're teaching. So I know I'm still on the same track as what's currently being taught out in the industry. so I was a full week long experience and there were 10 classes a day that I took personally.

Interesting.

so it was about 40 hours worth of time. And so they had classes, not only for instructors or professionals, but they had classes for newcomers, people at the bronze level, the silver level and gold level. they were, if I remember right, they said there was over 150 classes, group classes that were taught that week. And that didn't include like one-on-one coachings with those instructors. If one wanted a.

Okay.

private opportunity to work specific things on their dancing. So that was.

That sounds like a great week that you invested your time in. And I would imagine it was very energizing as well.

very like coming out of it, I felt more motivated, more inspired to be like, and just excited to get back into the studio and be like, all right, I know how am going to teach all this to the students? And so it's going to be a fun adventure that I'm looking forward to sharing with them. And so like, it's the first time that I went out there for it. Like I know last year I wanted to go, but I had a hard time pressing like, can I do that? Cause we had a family vacation the week before.

So I had a hard time deciding if I wanted to take two weeks off of work and I opted not to do that. So, but if I can, if I can go back, I would definitely do that again. And even if there's people who are interested in dancing or like students who are currently taking classes and all that stuff, I would recommend them to go take a look at it. was like, it was Las Vegas mastery dance camps.

And they made everything really easy for no matter what level of dancer you wanted to, or what level of dancing you have. obviously you're going to want to have some dance knowledge before going to it. I mean, you don't want to show up to be like, teach me how to dance from step one. So yeah.

Sure.

Hahaha!

That's actually a perfect segue, Jay. And this certainly applies to any industry, whatever industry that our listeners are in. There are groups, there are conferences, there are seminars that you can take to sharpen your skills. And I would even say like kind of reinvigorate and re-energize the work that you're doing in the world.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Jay, that's a perfect segue because you offer a complimentary first lesson for students who are interested in ballroom dancing. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Yeah. So just because, so I do offer the complimentary first lesson. So it's more an opportunity to like, for those who have been dancing for years, months, weeks, or any kind of dance knowledge beforehand, it gives me the opportunity to see where they're at in their dance journey, just to get a better understanding of that. And people that come to me usually, most of the time it's for recreation. Like there are people who do want to compete and yes, like

Sometimes competitive students have to be built like in the sense that they start as people who just want to learn to dance or fun, but then seeing their potential and what they could turn into is like giving them those opportunities to perform, whether it's at a local one day showcase or even on a national level where they could travel around the United States. So I deal a lot more with the recreation stuff. Otherwise even

people who have, as I would say, like I started out with two left feet. mean, when I was country line dancing, like I scared people because I was this wild and chaotic guy flailing my arms and legs all over on the floor and they're like, I scared people. like, if I can learn how to be more structured, I have zero knowledge, like anybody can do it. Yeah, so I have.

appreciate you sharing that because that certainly makes it less intimidating and it makes you more approachable. Like, hey, we all start from somewhere.

Yeah. And I remember, I don't remember how long ago it was. I bumped into one of the people I used to dance with and she was very honest with me. She's like, yeah, Jay, whenever you would ask me to dance, I would always want to say no, because I was scared of like what you were going to do or like what kind of a situation would you put me into? I'm like,

Well, I've gotten better about all that, like learning how to do like more floor crafts. So this way I'm not going to dance into somebody else or step on somebody's feet or any of that sort of stuff. So it was a blessing that she gave me one more opportunity to dance with her. was a national competition actually. And she's like, okay, I'll dance with you once more. And she's like, yeah, you've gotten so much better about it. I'm like, I know when I started, like I was very green, very raw.

interesting.

I was just a happy, fun, excited guy to get out there and just move around. And I really didn't, I'm going say a little bit more careless, I suppose, with my dancing. Like I was just having fun on the floor and I really didn't kind of care what I was doing. And now it's like, there's a reason how we move on the floor or why we do an arm styling or something like that. So this way we can be safe about it. So this way we don't hurt ourselves, hurt the person we're dancing with.

Yes.

or even the person where people were dancing around, because I remember being that guy, like, I just learned this new arm styling, I'm practicing it, and I see, know, I do this forearm extension, and all of a sudden I hit somebody square in the back of the head. And I'm like, that's not okay for me to do that. So I apologized, and because I felt so bad, I put my, I stopped dancing, I gave myself a 20 minute timeout to sit on the chair and be like, okay, I need to like,

no.

re-center or refocus myself so this way I don't do that kind of stuff again. So like I've been the guy that go through a lot of different experiences and people have been very gracious towards me and I'm thankful for that. So,

Sure.

And I would say you're paying it forward also at this point. now you're, you're not only, you've not only improved drastically over the years, you're also helping others improve their craft as well.

Exactly. So yeah, so it's, it's kind of where I go with like the complimentary lessons. So that's why I can, yeah, just get them started, let them understand like where my structure is or how I structure lessons and where I develop the dancing and all that stuff too. Um, from there, I do have a complimentary discounted package. I call it my introductory package. So that's like, it's five lessons for $250 and those are private lessons.

Yes.

So this way it can always be a first. Yeah, so it's a first come first serve thing where people can either, if they look me up on Google, because I think most people find me actually on the internet. So they can go to my website, ballroombyj.com and there's a booking link there so they can see my schedule and what's available. They can email me at ballroombyj.gmail.com or they can even just get a hold of me via phone and

That's very reasonable.

I can always see what options are available and we can schedule through that.

That's fantastic. And of course that mainly applies to people in the Green Bay area and surrounding areas. I know when we were talking earlier, you have clients travel as far as Milwaukee to come and work with you. Jay, if there are people listening who are not local, it's just not feasible for them to come and visit you in Green Bay. Are there just a couple of tips that you can offer for?

you know, maybe what to look for in a good studio if they're interested in learning more or getting back into dance or even learning for the first time as an adult.

Well, first they should just come to Green Bay and work with me. No, obviously. no, things that I, option one, find me in Green Bay. Otherwise, like for me, I do feel like there is, like you want to, like as a client, I would want to feel like the person I'm learning from is somebody I can respect, that I can get along with.

Obviously, option one, yes.

They have a teaching style that makes me feel comfortable. cause there's all sorts of teachers that are out there. So everybody teaches a little differently, but for me, I like the, would say if you can find a studio that feels like home, that you're always welcome and it's always a good time. Like otherwise I would say like, you want to involve yourself with people that you feel aligned with. like if you go to a studio and you feel like.

You're not getting treated well or anything of that sort. Like go and find a different instructor to find that matches your personality type, somebody that you can get along with. It's, think that's just a huge component because as I like to, one of the things I like to say is like attracts like. So if you have a, mindset that you have, you want to find somebody with that similar mindset. Cause like

Yes.

Cause on the dance floor, it's not always about the technique or what patterns you know. It's more of like how you can express yourself as a dancer. I mean, yeah, the technique and the, that stuff helps with it. But like when you can really let loose and be yourself on the dance floor and not feel judged or anything of that sort, it's, it's a very liberating feeling. And I think everybody, when they're dancing should experience that no matter whom.

whom it's with.

I would even venture to say that that should apply to nearly everything in life.

I would agree with you, yes.

Yes, we want to work with and interact with people that we like and trust and there's a mutual level of respect.

That translates to business and family and all the things for sure. Yeah, Jay, thank you so much for sharing your story with me and our listeners. It was super interesting just to hear, number one, how you got into all this, but then also just how you built the business and kind of figured it out along the way. And there are so many gems that you had to offer to us today. So thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me on to share the story. It's definitely been a privilege to do that.

Yes, absolutely. Well, you'll have to get booked on more podcasts because you certainly have stories to tell.

Sign me up,

Okay. Yep. Yep. Next time you have a call with Marissa, you'll have to mention it. We want more podcast bookings. I like it. I like it. And to all of our listeners, thanks so much for tuning into this week's episode of Make Space for More. Of course, I will be back next week with more tips, tools, and strategies to grow your business beyond you. Have a wonderful day, everyone.

I will definitely do that.