Hey, , thanks for signing up for this newsletter. =)

Well, here it is finally, I've been meaning to create this newsletter for my nerdy dance ideas and ramblings that I've been putting out on social media for the past few months. I'm not sure why it took as long as it did, one side of the delays was definitely due to the technical side of choosing the right email provider (by the way, if you noticed this email is coming from Active Campaign instead of ConvertKit it is because after some YouTube research I found AC will give me more features for less moolah, so I made the switch) and the other side of the delay was part self-doubt and lack of a concrete idea of what this newsletter will be about. I finally said screw it and despite self-doubt and not having a concrete idea, I decided to move forward, and here we both are, chilling in your inbox.

This email will be a little long, but hey, I wanted to give full context and show up in a way that I really can't on social media.

I appreciate you signing up to listen to the things I have to say when it comes to dancing, and I also equally am excited to be able to build a little tribe (53 of you have signed up for this in the first 24 hours of me putting this out, so you all rock!) As far as the vision of what I would like this newsletter to become, I definitely don't want this to be a one-way channel of communication, feel free to reply to any email I sent and send me about anything you think is cool in the dance world!

By the way, the word newsletter feels kind of outdated now in 2021, no? I was playing around with the idea of "The Intellectual Dancer Guild" by I'm not sure if Guild would fly. (I really like the word guild after watching the anime series Fairy Tail, if you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it! I don't watch much TV but I did watch 300+ episodes of this over a few months) If you have any ideas of another name, or want to vote in favor of the "Guild" version, reply back!

So, back to the newsletter. There are several reasons I wanted to create this newsletter. One, I've been finding myself going down more and more rabbit holes of seeking knowledge in various aspects of dance. This has always been something I did over the years as a traveling dance instructor and organizer in the kiz world, but with all the dance events canceled and/or postponed, I found myself with a lot more time to indulge in my dance nerdom. After recovering from my open heart surgery last year (this month on the 13th will actually mark one year) I definitely did some soul searching to figure out how I wanted to include dance in my life with no travel and no teaching in person.

To "dip my toe back into the dance world" to figure out if dance was something I wanted to continue pursuing, I rebooted my dance podcast with episode 65 and started interviewing other instructors and other members of the community about different cool topics. Through these conversations, I feel like my dance passion has been rekindled in a way, and this time it's definitely been more on the intellectual side of things and also not limited to just the kiz world. Last month I hit the 100th episode milestone of my weekly podcast!

Two, I upgraded my content production in several ways. Last year I upgraded my web design skills by no longer using Wordpress and I switched my main website neokizomba.com and my membership site learntokiz.com to Webflow. I invested in a new mirrorless camera to start to create higher-quality videos. Lastly, I took an After Effects course and have watched a ton of content on Youtube to reboot my YouTube channel and upgrade the production value of the videos I'm putting out to share my nerdy dance ideas.

Three, the past couple of months I've also been using a really cool app called Notion to implement a life approach of being more intentional about how I consume information called Building A Second Brain. I will definitely be writing about it in future emails, but this has definitely helped me organize my thoughts and ideas and literally level up my cognitive skills to develop and build on more complex ideas over time. Using Notion led me to create my first digital product (yes to dancepreneurship!) which is a Notion template called the Dancer's Training Journal, where I provided a digital template of a cool system to help you become a better dancer.

So to summarize the last 6 months or so, several initiatives have been combining. My rekindled intellectual dance inspiration + new skills and tools to create higher quality content + a system to organize and develop lots of ideas = freaking cool intellectual dance content. In the last few months in addition to my weekly podcast episodes, I created a kiz remix database, triple kiz demos, musical loops as a musicality tool, the Dancer's Training Journal, and several video essays on my YouTube channel. So. Much. Content. and I love it all and I feel like I'm just getting warmed up, but the question is warmed up for what. I'm not exactly sure what direction I'm heading in because most of the time I'm in my bubble and I feel like I'm in uncharted waters as an intellectual dance content creator.

I asked myself, who is even interested in the type of content I'm creating? How do I even speak to people across different dance genres? Am I getting too nerdy? How do I balance my intellectual side with my artistic side? How do I continue to invest tons of time to create this high-quality intellectual dance content in the dance world and financially sustain myself during a pandemic? All valid questions floating around in my head, and this newsletter I hope will be the start of starting to gain more traction towards building a guild of intellectual dancers across the world.

So, I feel I've rambled enough about myself. How about you? Where in the world are you? How are you adapting in this pandemic? What kind of intellectual dance content are you interested in? Let me know!

Until the next email, thank you for signing up again for the newsletter, it means a lot to me!

Charles Ogar

P.S. Some of you have already seen the post I made about my "Buy Me A Coffee" page, if you enjoy the content I'm creating and are able to and wish to support me to continue to produce this content, please consider buying a coffee or few. I've seen other content creators in other industries create different levels of value to offer their followers (like Patreon) in exchange for varying monthly subscriptions. I wonder what kind of value I could potentially create for you all if that was viable.

P.S.S. My content creation skills from graphic design, video/audio editing, and web design are also available for hire! If you know of someone whose brand could use a level-up, feel free to hit me up!

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