If you’re anything like me, you have a love/hate relationship with perfection. Specifically, being perfect.

When you’re growing a business, a brand or even a baby, you can’t expect everything to go perfectly. It’s simply not going to happen and the more time you spend on things being perfect is more time not spent on growing and even enjoying what you’ve built. Not fun.

I have a need to please and a need to be liked and naturally, those needs can’t be executed without a dose of perfection sprinkled in as a shock-therapy motivator. At least, this seems to be true in the world that is my head space.

I do love doing things well. There’s nothing wrong with having pride in your work. However, I also love being creative and spontaneous. There’s really no way that you can be successfully creative and spontaneous when you’re worried about perfection.

This has come into play once again.

I started teaching a Cardio Cabaret Class at my friend Trina’s studio in Burbank, CA. It’s called Rock Star Dance Fitness. Fabulous. I love what Trina is doing. A dancer herself, and now wife and mom with two kids, she’s hustling like a passionate wild woman to create fitness programming that speaks to her community and to also create a non-profit foundation that helps the community beyond the dance studio. I don’t know how she does it, but she does and she has been grinding at it for several years. I’m proud to be teaching there.

We reconnected at Bettie Choreographer Tanya’s birthday last month. I’d approached Trina about doing BYOB workshops, and somehow I left the birthday happy hour basically agreeing to teach a dance class! Trina is that much of a hustler, baby.

Luckily, happily and thankfully I’d branched out into the world of teaching dance class with Brown Betties several years ago. We created a Cardio Cabaret Class at Meridian Sports Club in Hollywood. It was fun but it never really took off, so I abandoned it. And now, years later, I’m back to it!

I had some reservations about teaching. And for all the wrong reasons. I quickly focused on all the things I didn’t have. I was worried I didn’t have the perfect dance clothes or shoes. That I looked out of shape, and that I wasn’t jazzy enough. You know all the important things.

Fear is a great motivator, this is true. But when fear comes from irrational places like being perfect, it is no longer motivating, it is immobilizing.

So, once again, (and you know this is a common theme, and something I’m constantly working on), I sat down with myself and gave myself a talking to. I said, “Stop it. Just stop it. Don’t over-complicate things. Give yourself the time you need to make this work. Keep the moves simple. Keep it fun and you’ll have a great time.”

I’ve done that and it is working “perfectly”! I make mistakes, I forget counts like I’ve done my entire dance life, I mess up the sound system sometimes, but now I communicate my blunders to the class and we laugh along with them and keep it moving. I’m looking forward to growing with the women in the class and with myself in this new, yet familiar capacity. I love that this class is on-brand and that I’m incorporating music that was used in Harlem’s Night Cabaret (including my original songs like Hey Joe and Fever). We put red lipstick on before we get started, so we feel sultry. I have an empowerment theme for each class, so we feel sophisticated. And we swivel our hips a lot so that we feel sassy. Everything is working toward the greater good, and that is to make women feel confident, inspired and happy — a Bettie.

Cardio Cabaret
Tuesdays, 8:30p
Rock Star Dance Fitness
517 N. Glen Oaks Blvd
Burbank CA 91502

Click here for the schedule.