How This Entrepreneur Danced her way to $90k on YouTube…

How do you go from shutting down your business to generating nearly $100,000 teaching dance on YouTube in less than eight months? 

So I’m actually on my way home right now from dance class here in Vancouver. And if you know me or you follow me on Instagram, you know that I love to dance. I grew up dancing, but as an adult, I was terrified of going back into class, so I did a quick search on YouTube for fun dance tutorials so I could practice at home, by myself. And that’s when I came across Monika.

Monika has been teaching dance for over a decade.

But ironically it’s actually her fear of dancing that led her to YouTube.

“In high school I was very self-conscious. I would never, ever go out. Everybody around me was going out, having fun on the dance floor at different social events and I was just sitting at home. I was so afraid of being judged. I didn’t want people even looking at me.

I remember that there was this one night, I was already in college. I went to the club and I saw people just having fun on the dance floor and enjoying themselves and I was just jealous. I remember then I just promised myself that I will learn how to do that. I don’t want anything holding me back anymore. I didn’t want to be the best, but I just wanted to blend in with other people on the dance floor.

So I started learning. I started teaching myself. There was no YouTube, but I would just watch music videos on VHS, recording them, rewinding, learning the moves every single day. Fast forward a few years, I actually came in third place in National Freestyle Championships in my country, in Poland.”

Even as an award-winning dancer, Monika never forgot the feeling of being paralyzed by the fear of judgment, and she used her story and that experience to fuel her entire business.

“You are your niche. I know exactly how it feels to be that anxious, weird person who’s missing out on everything. Therefore, I want to help people like that. Because I did it, why can’t you? You can overcome that too.

But I realized that nobody else is teaching people how to dance to just top 40 songs, how to dance to music, that’s playing on the radio. Nobody was doing that. So that’s how I landed on it. This is my baby. I created it and I don’t want to ever teach anything else.”

So she opens up this beautiful studio space in New York. She’s teaching classes regularly, and she’s getting a ton of clients coming her way.

“I had a studio for a couple of years and it was really picking up momentum. But then COVID happened and everything changed.”

So let’s put this in perspective. Monika went from teaching dance in person for the majority of her life to not knowing how to keep her business going when the pandemic hit outside of bringing it online. Pretty scary, especially considering that the first time that Monika tried to launch an online program, it didn’t pan out the way that she wanted it to.

“That course made two sales in eight months, and I made 640 dollars because I thought I knew how to do it myself. And it was a pretty fancy course. I had a fancy website for it. I rented a nice studio. I paid for a camera crew. I had a dance partner that I paid for to demonstrate the movements with. So it was all this entire production and then it flopped.

And you told me that I need to know what the client wants first of all. The course is for them. It’s not what I want to teach really. It’s the transformation I can provide for the client. And I never really knew that before. I never paid attention to that. So I think that made a huge difference. It pretty much changed my life.”

What was the transformation? She’s teaching dance, not saving lives. So really is there a transformation here? Well dancing changed Monika’s life and you saw for me how much I needed to have the confidence to get back into classes as an adult. So that very same transformation for Monika and for myself was exactly what people were craving from her.

“From what my students tell me, because they learn how to dance they become confident, not only on the dance floor, but just in general. They improve their social life. They finally are not missing out on having fun with their friends or with their spouse. They finally can invite their wife, their husband onto the dance floor where before they were just avoiding it, sitting in the corner and just not having fun. So I feel like that level of confidence will help them achieve anything else that they want in their life.

I know you might be thinking there are barely any social gatherings right now. So who the heck needs to learn how to dance? People who want to learn from the comfort of their own home.

Everyone who joins the program, they now have time to work on their skills. They know that everything will come back. Everyone will crave that social life. So everybody will flock to the clubs. They want to be ready. So that definitely helps. In seven months, the course and only the YouTube sales generated over $60,000.”

And here’s the really cool part. So remember Monika had that program before that she had launched and it didn’t go so hot. And she had made this fancy website and she had spent so much time and effort and money trying to make it look perfect. Well and the Authority Accelerator, we teach our clients to take a very bare bones approach so that they can just get their program on the market and actually start helping people.

“I actually wanted to say that the program I created, I shot it myself at home, no website. I did not have a name for the program, nothing zero, and $600, $60,000.”

Now that Monika has proven the program actually works, she’s now turned her evergreen sales machine on and she’s gone from shutting down her studio in New York to bringing in clients all over the world, recently hitting $90,000 in revenue and growing a global audience all without spending any money on ads, purely from organic trial.

“Now I’m at 220,000 subscribers. It changed my life. It brings new leads for me every day. I have clients in Australia, in Europe, in the US, in Africa even, everywhere, all over the world. And without it, my business would not be able to exist. So I’m super happy.”

Shutting down a business is never easy, especially when you’ve put your heart and soul into it. But if you can figure out a way to pivot, it can be a huge blessing in disguise.

“Seven months ago, I had zero income a month, zero dollars. I was definitely burned out. There were some days that I would have lots of classes. I would teach like seven classes in a row. I kept getting injured. I couldn’t take time off because clients were waiting for me to come back and they were waiting for me so they can go and take class. So I was tied in to the studio. I didn’t have a clear goal. I didn’t know where this was heading.”

It’s really cool, because Monika said even when her business is able to open again and she could open her studio, she’s not going to. Because now she’s been able to create a bigger impact, reach more people, and her business doesn’t rely on her and her time.

“Amazing. I take time off often. My vacation usually is around four weeks to six weeks long, and I am super happy that I can do that because I can teach now since it’s all online from anywhere. I can get clients anywhere I am. So I’m not tied to one place. And that just creates so much freedom and I’m so much happier with that.

Again, I can do this on such a large scale now that I’m just starting out really, seven months, that’s nothing. I’m planning to help hundreds, thousands of people and now I can do that. So I don’t miss my studio.

It never ceases to amaze me that it’s the things we struggle with the most that generally turn into our secret sauce for creating what we want in our lives. From a scared and insecure teenager who was terrified of the dance floor to growing global dance community and business. That’s crazy.

I feel more empowered. I feel stronger that now I know that I have a purpose and I’m going to help lots and lots of people. So it really keeps me grounded, and it’s just that peace that I’ve never felt before, and it’s amazing

For me dance and business are not that different. You’re going to inevitably have missteps and make mistakes, but if you just keep moving forward, you’ll eventually find your own rhythm.”

If you need even more proof that you are your niche, I have a whole playlist of incredible inspiring success stories. If you want me to help you build your online program and your business, here’s the link. 

Are you with me?