Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Cyrus Bongalos. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Cyrus, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Here at Legacy, we try everyday to think of what is next and keep doing things differently. One of the main things currently is how we try to cultivate the dance community. Although we have high standards for those we hire for our instructors, we also try to provide opportunities for up and coming dancers to improve their skills in teaching and build up the dance community to ensure growth for our future generations. One of the most important ideas we believe in is that we have to properly prepare the younger artists so that they can grow up to do the same. And that is our legacy. The industry standard for most these days is to only have well established social media influencers for master classes and workshops, but even they needed somewhere to get started, and the more equipped instructors that the world has, the better off we are as a whole. That’s where we try to fill in the gap. We want to help give a stepping stone for those that spark potential and hope the additional experience and exposure can help garnish the skills necessary to become a better instructor and dancer.

Cyrus, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Cyrus Bongalos and I have been part of the dance community for nearly 2 decades. I have had the opportunity to be a part of projects such as Maxt Out 2007’s Chor Division Winners Keone Madrid and Vinh Nguyen’s the assiGnment, Boys and Girls with Short Hair, House of Mo, and Daydreamers. At the age of seventeen, I founded my own studio team, Hip Hop Junkies, who has appeared on BET’s 106&Park, as well as directing teams such as Super Galactic Beat Manipulators. Culture Shock SD and Future Shock SD. Along with my brother, we created the junior division dance competition, Artofficial. In 2018, I opened my own dance facility, Legacy Creative Arts Studio. As an aspiring choreographer, I wish to one day impact and shape the dance community and share knowledge with the future generations that my mentors have passed on to me.

I am a choreographer raised in the San Diego dance community and providing lessons to the general public. At our studio, one of the biggest goals we have is to be able to make dance more attainable and affordable for everyone. We know how expensive investing in our passions or hobbies can be and so we try our best to keep our prices down as much as possible. We do not want finance to be a barrier to entry. By doing so, we hope we can see a world where everyone is open to taking a dance class.

One thing we are most proud of is how our guests feel about coming in to our space. We have created a vibe and atmosphere that is positive and welcoming and not intimidating to anyone of any skill level. We encourage the idea that anyone, anywhere can dance as long as they open their hearts to it.

As a new and small business we hope everyone is willing to give us a chance to show what we are able to do and provide to others and so that we can continue to do those things for many decades to come!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

One of the hardest things during my journey would have to be navigating a business through a global pandemic. I am sure that all business owners felt the same way during this time, however, I can’t compare that time to any other moment of hardship in my career. Never in my life would I have thought or planned for the possibility of starting and running a business at the height of a worldwide health crisis. Our studio had just been opened one year before the Covid-19 swept through Earth, and just when we felt we were gaining enough momentum—the world stopped. At this time, there was so much uncertainty of what was to happen and for how long and now we had to close our doors for the foreseeable future. All the while we had to keep paying our bills and our rent just to make sure we make it to the other side with our business in good standing with these institutions that also needed to keep making money. Although I knew everyone around me was experiencing the same thing in their personal lives, I still felt alone in trying to save my business—my main source of income and livelihood. But most of all my passion. This was my lifelong dream, and I wasn’t going to let it be short-lived.

Next, when everything resumed, and we were able to get back to our space the next roadblock was everyone having a change a passion and career. We had instructors who stopped dancing, moved away as long as our regular clients doing the same. It was just like starting all over again.

However, I persevered and just kept believing in what we have and who we are as a studio. We kept pushing forward and ramping up the services we offered and adjusted to the new needs of the community.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Our philosophy behind our social media is to simply show our audience our personality as a collective. We showcase the works of our instructors to give them the opportunity to reach others, but we also aren’t afraid of showing who we are as humans. We do a mix of posting our work, but also tips and tricks about being a dancer, and entertaining videos as well where our staff may get a little silly.

The two things (that are not so secret) to us building our social media audience is to engage with our community, both current and potential guests, and providing value to people’s lives. The content needs to be more than just making a sale.

Our advice—if you want to be different, then you have to do things differently. Cater your social media to the audience that you want to attract, and don’t be so worried about what is working for others in your same industry. If you do what others are already doing, then you won’t stand out.

Lastly, be accessible. If you are going to reachable on a specific platform, make it easy for others to find the information that you want them to find. There isn’t much point to having a profile that doesn’t answer people’s questions about you. This means making your professional information reachable such as how to contact you, message, and pricing.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.legacycas.com
• Instagram: @legacycreativeartsstudio
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/legacycreativeartsstudio
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/legacy_cas
• Yelp: https://yelp.to/qTKq/DblmGjplF0
• Other: https://clients.mindbodyonline.com/classic/ws?studioid=692660

Image Credits
Cyrus Bongalos