March 6, 2017

Meet Sarah Breck of Lindy Loft in Downtown

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Breck.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Sarah. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.

My husband and I have been traveling 30 weekends a year as guest teachers to dance events all over the world. Our personal relationship turned into a marriage proposal which turned into a baby! We knew we couldn’t sustain our current lifestyle so we opened a local dance studio. Our studio is a live work loft. It’s a perfect setup to raise a child and own our own business. We have been steadily growing for 3 years and are lucky to have very loyal students. We still travel on a limited basis to stay relevant in the world of swing dancing.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?

The beginning of the studio was rough. We have a well-known reputation throughout the world and were used to just showing up to a room of a 100 people but we had little experience owning a local studio business. I’ve had to teach myself management, bookkeeping, scheduling, billing, marketing, etc. We have only recently hired our first employee. In the beginning, there were a few months where I had just given birth and we were worried we wouldn’t be able to pay the rent. We got super lucky with a few film location rentals that sustained us just long enough for the studio to start getting the clients we needed. The great thing is we do very minimal marketing. Most of our growth has been word of mouth.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Lindy Loft story. Tell us more about the business.

We are dedicated purely to the swing era. We didn’t want to be a typical dance studio that has a lot of dance options but not always the highest quality of instruction. Swing is what we do and we have 15 years of international teaching experience to back it up. We also didn’t want our space to feel like a dance studio. We wanted it to feel like a club; a home. Students spend time here practicing, hanging out, etc. We believe in building a community. People who meet hear have ended up long term friends.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?

In the beginning, we didn’t know if our business would grow fast enough for the high rents of Los Angeles. Our saving grace was a group of 5 friends who became our first set of students. They financially supported us enough for months. Most of them are still with us training to be teachers and one of them recently married our best friend! If they didn’t come to us, I’m not sure what would have happened. I also think my husband and I are either really lucky or we reap the benefits of working hard. We have lived a life traveling the world. Timing has always been on our side, whether it’s in the jobs we get (like booking Dancing with the Stars 6 weeks after I gave birth) or magically finding our first home (a successful Airbnb rental) at a time we weren’t planning to buy! We hustle but I can’t help feeling like good things come into our life.

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