Ballet to Business

In this episode, Kristie Zurmehly describes how she taught herself the ins and outs of brand + web design to help boost small businesses all around the country. What I love about this episode is how Kristie shares how her side hustle as a designer has actually positively influenced her life as a professional dancer with Ballet Met today! SHOWNOTES Instagram: @kristielatham @jordannicoleh   This episode is supported by: Jai Dee Dancewear A sustainable leotard company celebrating the beauty, value, and wisdom of women who dance. Shop with the code FALLACCESS to receive $50 off your purchase from now until Dec. 2nd Come Back Stronger Course An online course & community designed to help injured dancers navigate the emotions & mental hurdles of recovering from an injury. 

How Vanessa Woods used her background as a professional ballet dancer with St. Louis Ballet to create, Vitality Ballet, an artistic exercise program designed to share the benefits of ballet with the senior population.  SHOWNOTES this episode is supported by: Jai Dee Dancewear : a sustainable leotard company celebrating the beauty, value, and wisdom of women who dance. Enter the code FALLACCESS at checkout to receive $50 off your purchase from now until Dec. 2nd  *founded by Katherine Hartsell featured on episode 009 Come Back Stronger Course : an online course & community designed to help guide injured dancers through recovery so they can truly "come back stronger" mentally, emotionally, & physically. *created by Kirsten Kemp featured on episode 015   Come Back Stronger Course 

It’s hard to believe, but 9 years ago, in October of 2010, Instagram emerged onto the scene. Serendipitously, at the same time that Instagram was undergoing its development process, our guest on todays show, Oliver Endahl, was also developing ideas of his own surrounding ballet and photography.  In early 2010, when Oliver was completing his final year as an upper level student at the San Francisco Ballet School, he had this idea to bring his brother’s cannon camera into the studios, taking pictures of him and his friends jumping around. Unbeknownst to him, when he posted them in a gallery on Facebook, they started traveling around the internet and gaining a lot of recognition!  Then October 2010 Instagram comes onto the scene. However, Since Facebook was working well for Oliver, he was a bit skeptical at first to jump on the platform initially. But after his younger sister, Alanna, encouraged him to not just upload photos taken on his iPhone 1, but upload his actual photos taken on his DSLR camera, his accou

Happy 3 Months of the Ballet to Business Podcast! We are taking a pause from the regular interview format this week and answering some of your questions!    QUESTIONS: 3:10 - How do you handle when body image issues come up? How do you work through it? 10:20 - Do you have any advice for young dancer who doesn’t know if they want to become a professional yet? 13:50 - During your training, how did you deal with teachers you didn't particularly like? 17:40 - What was your social role, so to speak, in your company? How did you find yourself interacting socially with your peers and what were you known for? 21:30 - What do you think we should do to combat the negative energies in the ballet world to help people flourish?  25:50 - What’s it like for you teaching adult ballet? 31:55 - How did you cope with your injury and not being able to dance?   Instagram: @jordannicoleh Jai-Dee Dancewear use FALLACCESS at checkout to receive $50 off your purchase until December 2nd.  Art Emotion Summer Intensive for Adults Come B

From an outsiders perspective, you can't help but admire a dancer's grace and effortlessness. However, if only people knew what was actually going on in that dancer's mind... "That was horrible. I'm an awful turner. I'm never going to be good at that step."  Many dancer's struggle with a negative mindset, and yet we fail to understand how these thoughts really cost us and actually limit our dancing. But combating these negative thoughts is exactly where Kirsten Kemp thrives.  Hear the story of how navigating her knee injury while dancing at Oklahoma City Ballet was absolutely necessary in giving her the wisdom and heart behind her coaching business for dancers today. SHOWNOTES Follow @TwinTalksBallet on Youtube and Instagram private coaching services kirstenkemp.com Come Back Stronger Course

As a 23 year old woman living in New York City and freshly departed from ballet, Allison Parc began going out on dates. But on these dates, she found herself being extremely nervous because she didn’t know how or what to drink. Thus, she began educating herself, going to tastings and art galleries around the city, learning more about wine, beer, and spirits. And through her learning, Allison became intrigued by terroir, a term used to describe a sense of place in the small and taste of a liquid.  Which made Allison curious, Did terroir exist in whisky? And as she continued following her curiosity, she realized she couldn’t find anyone who was making the kind of whisky she envisioned could be made in her head... One that would embody French terroir, made in the heart of Cognac, France.  So, she continued investigating by traveling to France and meeting farmers and distillers, asking if there was anyone who would make this whisky for her… and their responses were flat out no’s.  But amidst all the no’s, it only

When Rachel Cossar entered into working in major gift fundraising at Harvard University right after her career with Boston Ballet, she quickly realized not everyone in the corporate world had this awareness of their posture and body language that was so second nature to her as a ballet dancer.  Thus, the spark for Choreography for Business was born. Rachel employs her expertise in nonverbal communication skills that she had honed as a professional gymnast and dancer to serve those in the professional world. Choreography for Business helps working professionals by teaching them performance techniques, physical awareness, and communication frameworks to help them further embody confidence within themselves and further exude that confidence in the workplace.   SHOWNOTES   Connect with me on Instagram!  @jordannicoleh

When our guest on today's episode of Ballet to Business, Jordan Fry, revealed that one luxury wedding cake she had been working on took her 70 hours to complete in a week, my jaw was on the ground.  Now the time it takes to create a stunning work of edible art also caught Jordan a bit off guard at the beginning. Once she became known as the ‘baker’ at Ballet West, where she currently dances, requests for wedding cakes started rolling in. And as Jordan continued to get more and more requests, her husband, Adrian, couldn't help but notice she was pouring countless hours into baking and encouraged her to start adequately charging for her time. It was in that moment that they both decided Jordan needed to turn her hobby into a business. Thus Ballerina Baker was born!   SHOWNOTES   @jordannicoleh 

Dancing 'En Pointe' requires years of training in precision and excellence, strength paired with refinement, and superior technique matched with artistry. And according to our guest on today episode, Alexandra Newman, the balance of all these qualities is mirrored in wine making. The same effort it takes to perfect a tendu, is the same kind of effort it takes to produce the perfect bottle of wine. And just like there is joy in escaping to the theater to experience the ballet, Alex’s primary mission with her business, En Pointe Wines, is to bring that same joy to the dinner table, by helping her customers learn and enjoy the bottle of wine selected for them, while encouraging them to set the table, have a delicious meal, and share in the experience with all the best company one can bring together. Hear how this Bay Area native went from dancing with San Francisco Ballet to spending a year abroad in France to study at Le Cordon Bleu, to ultimately landing back in the Bay Area to launch her own unique wine club

Co-Working Spaces as we know them today, originated in non other than San Francisco in 2005. With that being said, it's no surprise that the energy was buzzing around the city for this new way of entrepreneurs to work independently but not be isolated at home while doing so. However, it wasn't until Grace Kraaijvanger was fulfilling a marketing job alone from home, that she realized she was missing that creative community she experienced as a dancer. So, she went out to find one. It wasn't until she went looking into other co-working spaces in the Bay Area, that she noticed a gap in the market. Most co working spaces at the time were tailored toward people who liked foosball and beer on tap, which just didn’t feel like her. Instead, she longed for a beautiful, airy, expansive space with inspiring people to work alongside, a feeling much like taking class at the iconic Alonzo King Lines Ballet Dance Center in San Francisco.  So in 2014, after much searching, Grace began experimenting with developing The Hivery

Inspiration is one of those mysteries that can’t be planned or controlled or forced, it can only be experienced. And often inspiration comes in the unlikeliest of times and through the unlikeliest of conduits.  When our guest, Katherine Hartsell, stepped away from dancing professionally with Boston Ballet, she decided to give herself some breathing room away from the ballet. Not long after, her daughter Kritsana, came into her life.  Unbeknownst to Kath, her daughter Kritsana was just the blessing and motivator to a vast amount of inspiring moments that would lie ahead for Kath. In the simple act of re-entering the theater by taking her daughter to see the ballet, Katherine’s whole heart re-emerged for the art form, not only through seeing ballet through the fresh, child like excitement of her daughter, but through recognizing the magnificent female artists on and off stage who have been a part of her community all along. And with that, the ‘smoothie’ of sorts as Katherine wonderfully refers to it later on in

As graceful and effortless as ballet may appear, there’s no denying that this art form takes a serious toll on the body. There have been many times, probably more than I’m proud of admitting, where I grabbed the bottle of advil that was being passed around the dressing room and said if only people knew, this performance tonight, was brought to them by advil. Far too often, we become accustomed to treating medicine like candy and fail to realize the implications of how over consumption can actually do more harm than good. Which is exactly what happened to our guest, David Kim. When he started having stomach pain into his career as a professional dancer, he went to see a doctor who told him his pain was due to ulcers, open sores that develop on the inside lining of your stomach. This wake up call led David down a path of learning more about how natural medicine could begin to heal his body. But the real plot twist lies when property that Davids family had invested in years ago, starts to become increasingly val

From dancing on pointe to inventing a pointe shoe insert worn by dancers around the globe. Meet Kelly Schmutte, Founder of PerfectFit Pointe Shoe Inserts! When Kelly first when on pointe as a young ballet dancer, she couldn’t help but think, “There’s got to be a better way to do this!”  “Dancers feet and toes are as different as their faces”. With this realization, Kelly noticed a problem. Most toe pads on the market were the same shape for all feet and are one uniform thickness, which does nothing to improve weight distribution or the fit of the shoe. In 2015, after years of planning and processing, Kelly made a solution. Her PerfectFit Pointe Shoe Inserts use a moldable impression material to adapt each dancers unique foot to fit the inside of their shoe like a glove.    LINKS: SHOWNOTES   INSTAGRAM: @perfectfitpointe @jordannicoleh

As a pre-professional, devoted ballet student, Kathleen McGuire Gaines left home at 14 years old to train in classical ballet. She moved further away from home at 17 to continue her training, only to undergo some of the hardest years of her life. A few years after that, she quit dancing. For years after Kathleen stopped, she believed she just wasn't strong enough to have continued in the field. However, now she sees that the real reason why she had stopped dancing was because she had been dealing with a major depression that could've been treated, if only she had the tools to acknowledge it. So, in 2018, Kathleen quit her job to focus solely on growing, Minding the Gap, a social good organization dedicated to seeing mental health treated with the same seriousness as physical health in dance culture. Her organization intends to give the support, tools, and awareness all dancers, dance teachers, and directors need to continue growing this art form positively.  SHOWNOTES Instagram: @jordannicoleh

Growing up in Millis, Massachusetts, Carly grew a determination to pursue ballet from an early age. Training at Boston Ballet and overcoming a brutal achilles injury while at CPYB, Carly continued to persevere. She went on to attain her dream job, dancing as a professional Ballet Dancer with City Ballet of San Diego. 3 years in to being with the company, she launched her own photography business, Carly Topazio Photography, as a way to build a portfolio to present to her directors. The company has incredible dancers and she had a vision of how she could help improve their online presence through photography. In 2018, Carly used her photography skills as another way to help promote her newest venture, founding her dancer bred company, The Rosin Box Project. Links: SHOWNOTES The Rosin Box Project Carly Topazio Photography Instagram: @jordannicoleh @ctopaziophotography

East Coast native, Jess Spinner, trained extensively in classical ballet from a young age up until she left home for college to attend Butler University. Upon graduation, Jess went off to dance with Louisville Ballet. Her years there were challenging, finding herself navigating struggles surrounding food and body image that most all dancers face in one way or another. Years later, the lessons learned from those challenges were the exact fuel she needed to create The Whole Dancer, which exists to encourage dancers in the areas of health, wellness, and having a balanced lifestyle. Shownotes for this episode at: jordannicoleh.com/blog/jess  thewholedancer.com Instagram:  @thewholedancer @jordannicoleh

As a professional ballet dancer with First State Ballet Theater, Molly Rooney, did not expect this opportunity to come knocking at her door. But when she was offered the opportunity to be the Director of the first ever National Ballet Competition, she went for it! SHOW NOTES @nationalballetcompetition Join the B2B Team with your e-mail & receive exclusive news, encouragement, and discounts offered by guests SIGN UP   Questions? I'd love to hear from you! jordan@ballerinainbusiness.com

Sisters Chelsea Early & Heather Walker trained extensively in classical ballet. After both sustaining injuries, they had to set their sites on a new dream. In 2015, they founded Luckyleo Dancewear & have become a beloved brand worn by dancers around the world!   SHOW NOTES (learn more about Luckyleo on the blog) Join the B2B Team through e-mail Visit Jordannicoleh.com/signup or e-mail jordan@ballerinainbusiness.com

Welcome to Ballet to Business! I'm Jordan Nicole & on this introduction episode I'll be sharing the inspiration behind the podcast, who Ballet to Business is for, and more of my story in training to become a professional ballet dancer. From meeting the most influential ballet teacher in an unlikely place, to moving to San Francisco at 16, getting hired as a corps de ballet member mid season, and how repetitive injuries taught me some of life's most valuable lessons, I'm sharing it all with you! Please subscribe if you enjoyed this episode And don't forget to join the B2B E-mail List to get insider info and special discounts offered by our guests.  Links: Show Notes {for a timeline of my ballet journey in pictures}  Instagram {all the behind the scenes, real life} E-mail jordan@ballerinainbusiness.com