Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Katie Flashner. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Katie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
In 2021, I moved from Southern California to the state of Maine – literally from one corner of the country to the opposite corner. It meant leaving behind everything I had spent 7 years building as a competitive ballroom dancer, blogger, and published author. But like so many others, when the pandemic hit, I was presented with the opportunity to pause, sit back, and take a look around. As successful as I was, I was also struggling mentally and emotionally. I was burned out on the hustle culture that is rampant in entrepreneurship, and I craved to reside in a place where I could wake up to the sounds of birds and wind in the trees, as opposed to the impatient honking of cars stuck in traffic. I needed peace and rest, even if it meant leaving all of my dancing and publishing successes behind.
So I decided to move to Maine, where there are more trees than people and little to no opportunities for a ballroom dancer who, pre-pandemic, was poised to take her dancing to the next level. I refused to call it a final goodbye to my ballroom dancing days, but I also had no idea if or when I would be able to compete again. My brand, The Girl with the Tree Tattoo, was built on my dancing journey and sharing my experiences with other ballroom dancers. If I stopped dancing, would that also mean the end of my brand?
Two years later, I sit at my desk writing this story for you and all I hear outside are the birds and the wind in the trees. The weight that I didn’t realize I carried for years has fallen off my shoulders and disappeared somewhere in the forest behind my home. I feel peace and joy, without the pressure to prove anything to anyone. I still dance. In fact, Maine has given me the chance to explore new styles including ballet, modern, jazz, and hip hop. And The Girl with the Tree Tattoo? She is still inspiring others, though at a much lower volume.
By most standards, I have failed as a side hustler. Marketing and sales experts would write me off at first glance at my abysmal sales numbers and social media metrics. I’m ok with that, because as a creative human being, my soul is reveling in the natural peace that surrounds me. There is a quiet magic here that has allowed me to explore my creativity without fear of failure and live my life in the way I danced at every competition – joyfully me.
Katie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Prior to moving to Maine, I had spent 7 years as a competitive ballroom dancer in the professional-amateur circuit (pro-am for short). Southern California was perfect for such a journey, where top coaches and world-class competitions were within easy driving distance. At the same time, I developed my niche brand, The Girl with the Tree Tattoo, which provided a voice for other adult amateur dancers like myself whose passion for dance was realized later in life. And oh by the way, I was also working full-time as a technical editor and taking care of two shepherd huskies.
Ballroom dance helped me discover who I truly was, beneath thick layers of fear and self-doubt. It gave me the courage to not only step out on the dance floor and walk away a champion multiple times over, but to finally accomplish my dream of becoming a published author.
The Girl with the Tree Tattoo started as a blog, a place for me to document and reflect on my dance journey as an adult who was also working full-time. The name of the blog was inspired by my full-back tree tattoo and others telling me, “hey, you’re like that girl with the dragon except you have a tree!” I always wore a backless dress at my dance competitions because it was important to me that I didn’t hide part of who I was simply because tattoos were taboo in the ballroom world.
By my second year of competing, people were coming up to me at events, having recognized my tattoo, to tell me how much they appreciate my open honesty on my blog. Learning up to 20 different dances within the ballroom style to a level advanced enough for competition was a unique experience when you were starting out as a 30, 40, or 50 year old, and no one was really talking about it. I realized I was filling a gap. My fellow pro-am dancers needed someone to speak out about the challenges they were facing who actually understood those challenges because they had also lived them.
Eventually, I expanded beyond the blog and published three books, all around the experiences of the pro-am ballroom student, as well as two dance journals. At the peak of my side business, book sales were covering the cost of my weekly private lessons with my professional teacher and dance partner. While that felt like a huge accomplishment, the more inspiring personal success was meeting other dancers who, through my writing, found the courage, support or inspiration they needed to keep going on their dance journey. It’s hard to be a passionate dancer AND a parent AND a career person, but these dancers were doing all they could to make it happen. I would receive messages from people telling me that they were ready to give up on their dancing dreams and then they found an article I had written about the topic they were struggling with, and they decided to keep going instead. It was hard for me to imagine that I was able to have such a huge impact on someone’s life, but the heart-felt emails or direct messages kept coming and all I could feel was gratitude and honor to be a part of someone else’s artistic journey.
Since moving to Maine, my dance journey has slowed down dramatically as have my published writings. I continue to share snippets of my dance experiences, which have expanded beyond ballroom and into other styles like ballet, Modern and jazz. I also started to share snippets of the natural peace and beauty around me to offer my followers 30-second breaks from the hustle and daily grind. For years, The Girl with the Tree Tattoo acted as a source of inspiration and encouragement to pro-am ballroom students doing their best to navigate the many facets of the competitive ballroom world. Now, while still always here for her fellow dancers, The Girl is evolving to act as a source of inspiration and encouragement to anyone who needs a moment of peace as they try to navigate life in a volatile and uncertain world.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
My third book, The Solo Practice Guide for Ballroom Dancing, was born out of one of the most difficult years of my dance journey. I was an early success in my competitive career as a pro-am ballroom dancer, consistently placing 1st or 2nd at every event I entered. But in 2017, I found myself faltering in my placements without a clear explanation. Each competition that year, I placed lower than the one before. It all came down to an ego-crushing end at the 2017 World Championships where I placed lower than I ever had before. The cruel twist is I felt like I had danced better than I ever had.
The loss made all of the previous victories seem like lies. How could I be such a great dancer as my coach and others claimed when I placed so poorly after feeling like I danced my best?
After throwing a minor tantrum, I decided that was the last time I would ever let my results blindside me in such a devastating way. I sought feedback and advice from multiple dance coaches who had seen my dancing, and received some hard truths:
1. I hadn’t been as prepared with my choreography as I thought I was.
2. When I danced, I looked like I was seeking approval from the judges rather than owning my dancing with confidence.
I shut down my ego’s desire to throw another pity party. I was determined to make a comeback. I had identified my improvement areas, but how was I going to work on them?
Traditionally, a ballroom dance student simply takes more lessons with their teacher when they want to improve faster. I was on a very strict budget though and could not afford more private lessons. I would have to work on my dancing on my own time. Practicing a partner dance on your own is awkward to say the least, but it was my only choice.
Working full-time also meant I didn’t have the freedom to spend hours in the dance studio like a professional dancer would when they wanted to improve their skills. I tried to create a daily practice schedule that required just an hour of training every day, and immediately felt overwhelmed. So I went minimalist – I started with one hour of solo practice once a week. No pressure or stress, just a little bit of extra time devoted to my dancing.
The results happened quickly. Within a few weeks, I was dancing my four different routines on my own. I was able to stay on time with the music, keep my balance, and even stylize my movements without the benefit of a dance partner. When I did partner with my teacher to dance the routines together, the dances flowed. I was finally able to match my teacher’s effort and energy in the partnership.
I maintained my weekly solo practice sessions and finally returned to those World Championships a year after my loss. My teacher and I danced away with the World Champion Title in my category!
This comeback story became the framework for The Solo Practice Guide, in which I shared not only what I practiced each week, but how I incorporated those practices into my already busy schedule. To this day, the book is my best-selling publication and has been credited for helping others reach that champion status.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
When I decided to turn my little blog into an actual brand and business, I dove into the world of entrepreneurship and hustle culture. I signed up for group coaching programs, and learned how to create email funnels, social media campaigns, and product launches. I invested in myself and my business like all the great coaches said I needed to, all while still working full-time and training for my next dance competition.
I invested a lot of money and, if you’re looking strictly at financial returns, I received little. Entrepreneurship is basically an intense personal development bootcamp though, and I learned more about myself than I ever did in therapy. Those learnings included the realization that I did a lot of things because I thought I was “supposed to” do them, not because they aligned with who I was or what I wanted to create in my life.
There’s a saying: “time is money,” and in the entrepreneurship world, that translates to the idea that if you aren’t hustling for business, you’re losing business. I worked all day in an office and then came home and worked on my couch, or I would go straight to the dance studio from the office and then come home and work on my couch. I worked over weekends while my dogs wondered when we were going for a walk. I pushed myself to the point that I ended up being sick with the flu the week of one of my biggest launches.
Moving to Maine and physically removing myself from the environment that pulsed with the hustle energy was like finally exhaling and being able to take my time with the next inhale. The rush and the pressure were gone, and I reveled in a wave of calm and happiness. Soon though, that little voice inside started whispering that I needed to be productive, I couldn’t just “be.” If I wasn’t producing something for my social media pages or my blog, my brand would fade into nothing and be forgotten. I realized my creations had turned into a production; it was no longer something I did because it fueled my artistic soul. I was doing it because I thought I had to, in order to keep up with the algorithms.
So I rebelled against the machine. I stopped launching. I stopped marketing. I stopped posting altogether for a time. Book sales dropped, of course, because now I wasn’t appearing at dance competitions or on social media, my two main ways of reaching new people. But I wasn’t going to try to beat the social media algorithms anymore, and no longer believed that it was the only way for me to be relevant as a creative. I wasn’t happy living that way. If I wasn’t happy, then what was the point of creating?
Instant gratification is rampant in our social media era, and there is tremendous pressure as a creative to provide that for our followers. However, if my favorite music artist didn’t release their next album for a year or more, wouldn’t I still buy it when it was released? Of course! So why can’t I take the same amount of time in my own creations before sharing them with the world? Why do I have to be in creation overdrive all of the time?
The short answer is I don’t, and I am allowed to give my creations as much time as they need to be ready to be shared with the world, if I decide to share them at all.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thegirlwiththetreetattoo.com/
- Instagram: @thegirlwiththetreetattoo
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thegirlwiththetreetattoo
- Twitter: @treetattoodance
- Other: https://ko-fi.com/thegirlwiththetreetattoo
Image Credits
Gary Flashner, Katie Flashner, Debbie Burns