49: Ofelia de La Valette, Dance 101, shares how to pioneer an innovative concept

40m · Mastermind Your Launch · 02 May 14:54

Ofelia de La Valette, owner and founder of Dance 101 didn’t find her calling to the dance world until the age of 35. A successful insurance agent with her own company in Atlanta, Ofelia had been pounding away on the treadmill at her gym when the sounds of a cardio dance class caught her attention. Though humiliated at her own lack of skill, Ofelia jumped right in. Despite her embarrassment at being the worst in the class, Ofelia found a strengthened sense of self and scorched 20 pounds in the process. She was hooked.

After 10 years of intensive dancing, she was asked to teach a class at Emory University, and after two years there, she took a huge leap. At the request of five of her students, Ofelia dropped her lucrative career and opened the original Dance 101 location off of Miami Circle in Buckhead. The first studio of its kind in the WORLD, Dance 101’s unique offerings and accessibility made it an instant hit.

Ofelia teaches weekly dance classes and manages all aspects of the business. Currently, she is working on expanding her studio both locally and nationally. Driven by a passion for dance and an innate need to make the world a better place, Ofelia has picked up numerous awards in her years at the helm of Dance 101. With the advent of her new Alpharetta location, Ofelia is looking to develop Dance 101 into a franchise—so fellow dance fanatics can reap the benefits of adult beginner classes nationwide.

Her efforts have been featured in several local as well as national publications, webisodes, podcasts and recently in CNN Small Success Stories, Passion to Portfolio, Making It In America (both CNN domestic and International) as well as Headline News. In July, 2011 Ofelia was invited by the White House to deliver the afternoon key note speech at the Atlanta Urban Entrepreneurship Forum and was presented with The Phoenix Award by Mayor Kasim Reed. She was recently featured in the top 10 Atlanta Best Self magazine’s Over 40 and Fabulous Atlantans and was one of 50 women profiled in Marlo Thomas’s book, It Ain’t Over…Till It’s Over.

Ofelia is providing the public with an opportunity to do for themselves what, until now, they could only watch others do on TV: to make their own leap — from their living room to a classroom, from the audience to the stage. Listen and prepare to be transformed by the power of dance at Dance 101!

The episode 49: Ofelia de La Valette, Dance 101, shares how to pioneer an innovative concept from the podcast Mastermind Your Launch has a duration of 40:30. It was first published 02 May 14:54. The cover art and the content belong to their respective owners.

Permalink

More episodes from Mastermind Your Launch

Series Finale: Stefanie Diaz on Closing a Chapter and Making Waves

On this episode, Stefanie Diaz closes out the Mastermind Your Launch Podcast series with a special episode recap highlights from the two and a half year run. With over 100 episodes and over 130,000 unique listeners per episode, it’s a bittersweet end to a transformational endeavor.

Listen as Stefanie shares how the radio platform impacted her life and business, and what projects she has on the horizon.

Stefanie Diaz/Mastermind Your Launch

Stefanie Diaz has always had a keen ability for developing marketing strategies for entrepreneurs, but it’s her ability to position startups for accelerated momentum through personal branding and content marketing that has become the cornerstone to her professional success. Her background includes being a strategic adviser to CEO’s spanning startup phase to over $100 million in annual revenue. She has led strategic partnerships with global retailers and Fortune 500 companies, as well as facilitated multi-million dollar government contracts. There is something magnetic about the energy of startup founders that draws Stefanie in. They’re hungry, driven, and committed to making positive change for themselves and the greater community. After conducting over 60 interviews to date, Stefanie is excited to bring Mastermind Your Launch to the Business Radio X platform. Learn more at MastermindYourLaunch.com.

96: Kimberly Barnes with ContentPark

Kimberly Barnes/ContentPark

An advocate for social justice. A tireless volunteer. A wannabe hacker. An honest and thoughtful friend. A weekend karaoke singer. A serial entrepreneur.

One thing that can’t be said about Kimberly Barnes is that she’s one dimensional.

Kimberly is the founder of ContentPark—a tech-driven content agency that specializes in the production of premium content for large brands and mid-sized businesses. ContentPark provides its clients with content that’s narratively compelling, culturally attuned, and SEO-smart.

Their work can be seen on web assets managed by Fortune 500 companies, such as Macy’s, AT&T and Southern Company.

Prior to ContentPark, Kimberly spent more than a decade putting her marketing expertise to work in higher education, at Fortune 500 companies and at globally-recognized, privately-held small businesses across the country. She guided company and campaign strategies and improved organizational efficiency as a data analyst. And as a creative director, both in an agency and in-house, Kimberly led teams through marketing campaign design and execution.

In her last corporate role, Kimberly was an SEO analyst where she worked with some of the more influential leaders in the industry on national telecom accounts, including Verizon, DirecTV and Frontier Communications.

Kimberly is a proud graduate of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where she began her post-secondary education as a chemical engineering major. She discovered, however, that marketing was a better fit, as it exercised her high aptitude for creativity and her desire to be challenged technically and analytically.

After graduating at the top of her business class with a bachelor of science in marketing, this self-proclaimed technophile taught herself HTML, CSS and PHP and received formal training in Ruby on Rails. She has since used this knowledge in a variety of her roles.

Overall, Kimberly desires to improve the content world and the community as a whole. She passionately dedicates her time to eradicating hunger and homelessness and is a staunch advocate for diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

A lifelong learner, Kimberly is rarely seen without a book. She invests energy in self-study topics, such as self-improvement, marketing and consumer behavior, or cutting-edge tech, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.

To learn more about her and her team at ContentPark, visit their website (www.contentpark.co) or social media; Twitter (@_contentpark) and Instagram (@contentpark).

Stefanie Diaz/Mastermind Your Launch

95: Gene Hammett – author of The Trap of Success: A Brutally Candid Guide to Overcoming Your Fears, Finding Significance, and Achieving Profound Success

Gene Hammett

Gene Hammett works with companies to discover new strategies for growth. From small businesses to large corporations, he presents his ideas on becoming THE choice, not a choice and unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit by activating internal brand ambassadors for companies. Gene’s podcast, Leaders in the Trenches, has been recognized by Inc. and Entrepreneur for its insight on marketing and sales leadership.

Gene is also the author of The Trap of Success: A Brutally Candid Guide to Overcoming Your Fears, Finding Significance, and Achieving Profound Success. A regular contributor to Entrepreneur, Gene has also been featured in Forbes, Success, Business Insider, and Inc.

Contact Gene via email directly at [email protected] or via the Contact page.

Stefanie Diaz/Mastermind Your Launch

94: Kimberly Graver, Susan Smith and Maranda Bennett with E-Transform

Kimberly Graver, Susan Smith and Maranda Bennett/E-Transform

The team at E-Transform began with one simple goal in mind; to revolutionize the call center business. So many of us had seen business done the wrong way, and they have set out to change it. They are proactive, instead of reactive. Their internal corporate culture reflects the way they do business – with respect, communication, and a positive and energetic attitude. This successful model has transferred to their other related lines of service as well. They like “e” words. One of their favorites is execution. They truly believe that the secret to a successful business model is exceptional execution, all the time. And that is what E-Transform gives you. They push themselves to go the extra mile, provide the same level of service they want to receive, and think out-of-the-box by providing flexible pricing models.

Stefanie Diaz/Mastermind Your Launch

93: MASTERMIND YOUR LAUNCH: W.O.E. (Women Only Entrepreneurs)

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

6pm – 9pm

The Metropolitan Club

Alpharetta, GA

W.O.E. (WOMEN ONLY ENTREPRENEURS) is a night of galvanizing unstoppable women to be empowered and comfortable in their own skin while being united and uplifted in sisterhood.

Stefanie Diaz/Mastermind Your Launch

Every Podcast » Mastermind Your Launch » 49: Ofelia de La Valette, Dance 101, shares how to pioneer an innovative concept