The Blueprint

Our goal

Our goal is clear. To share valuable dance insight at an affordable price, develop better dancers at a much more rapid rate, and give everyone a far more enjoyable time doing it.

And bigger than that, to change our dance communities’ direction away from doom. Progression is stagnant and concentrated in only a handful of dancers. The business side barely breaks even. The younger generation is not coming through. If we do nothing, or continue doing the same shit expecting a different result, then our communities just keep heading down that same pitfall again, and again, and again.

The whole model is built on one belief: it’s about win win win win, every one needs to win, and no more of this doing things for free when we all spend so much time trying to build and grow a community with zero incentive other than it’s sucking the life out of us.

A community cannot survive without money. A community cannot grow without people. And the future cannot be handed to the next generation without younger people. So we designed a model where the dancers, the schools, the venues and the team all win together.

The problems we’re seeing and solving

I wrote about these problems in Why major cities struggle to grow the Brazilian Zouk dance community and Bad music destroys the dance community more than you think. This blueprint answers each one of them.

The dance is too hard to learn

Unfortunately, Brazilian Zouk is the hardest fucking dance in the world to learn. It can take 5 to 10 years to even get good at it, and we cannot dumb it down any further, because you lose the essence of this beautiful dance. That is not a trade we are willing to make.

So the fix has to come from somewhere else. Affordable coaching and mentorship is that fix. We are not another set of classes teaching you the basics. We refine what you have already learned, help you train and practice the right way, and develop you at a much more rapid rate. Better dancers, faster, without watering the dance down.

The community is fragmented

There is no union and no agreed direction on how to make it all work together and grow the pie larger. Everyone is nibbling on their own little pie to feed themselves only. This is probably one of the biggest problems that will kill a dance community.

We are not here to compete for a slice. We are the entry gateway. We bring new dancers in and funnel them onward into the established local dance schools’ classes and socials. The schools keep teaching as they always have, and they receive the new dancers. Partners, not competitors. That is how the pie grows for everyone.

The business model is not working

The turnover is barely breakeven compared to the number of dancers who stay no more than a couple of years. Dancers hit a plateau in their progression and they leave. You cannot run a healthy business on a two-year churn. You cannot run a healthy community on one either.

Our answer is a membership model with real incentives. Everyone doing real work gets paid: the DJs, the teachers, the coaches and mentors, the helpers. No more free labour that drains the people holding the community up. And because coaching develops better dancers, retention improves, and retention beats churn every time.

Nobody is talking to the 18 to 30s

Most people who start Brazilian Zouk start way too late. If there is not a steady stream of 18 to 30 year olds starting to learn, then there will not be anyone left to run our communities and continue the legacies that we have built. The youngsters are the future.

So we target them directly. Promotion out in public places where they already are. A low-friction crash course to try the dance. And music they actually recognise.

The music is not chosen for the young

DJs are the people who actually have the most power in the community to change it. Their choice and their selection dictates what the future of our community and our dance will be. And currently, the music is not being selected for the younger generations.

So the music strategy is part of this blueprint. Our DJs are on the paid team, and they work to 3 simple rules: play anything, as long as it is Zoukable. No more than 3 songs of the same genre in a row. Experimental songs are okay, but keep it to 1 or 2 max within your hourly set. On top of that, we play commercial music the 18 to 30s find familiar and want to dance to. Because if the music is not bringing them through the door in the first place, nothing else we do afterwards will matter.

How we plan to solve the community growth problems

We need to grow our community smarter. Most community builders are either a business person, or community builder, not both. Fortunately, you have people in the community like Hoi who are skilled, knowledgeable and experienced in both.

That is why Hoi and Billy are leading this together, dogfooding our own idea and prototyping our concepts of teaching, coaching and mentoring. You know who we are, and you know who is accountable for making this work.

The model itself is simple:

• One good social event, done well, every week. We grow the venue, not the number of nights.
• Two rooms, both used for learning before the party.
• A fundamentals workgroup inside the membership: 15 minutes of coach tips, 30 minutes of closed workgroup practice, 15 minutes of student sharing.
• Coaching and mentorship woven into the social itself. No extra studio hire and no extra night out of your week. We refine you while you are already out dancing.
• A paid team of highly experienced dancers, coaches and mentors, DJs and helpers.
• A youth fund, fed by a small monthly donation from every membership, supporting young dancers who perform at our events.

The funnel

Bring in the younger generation, convert them to members, progress them, and distribute them outward to the local dance schools. That is the engine.

Membership, credits and savings

We keep pricing simple, and every city sets its own numbers. The shape is what matters:

• A party membership for people who just want to dance.
• A membership that adds the crash course for people building their foundation.
• A top membership that adds coaching and mentorship, the highest-value offer we have.
• Pay-as-you-go entry for people not ready to commit.
• An intro price on the coaching membership, so trying the best of what we do is low-friction.

Membership is designed to be the better deal than paying as you go. That is the saving. And private credits come later as the offer grows: a credit will be usable with any teacher on the team, so you choose who fits your journey at each stage.

The prices themselves are volume-first: affordable, so the community grows on volume, and any tweak stays small. A poor community cannot have nice things, like a decent place to dance. A healthy one can.

Copy this for your city

This will be a game changer for partner dance communities in every city in the world who wants to build or revive their dying dance community.

The whole setup is written down as a simple model. Take it, keep what works, change what needs to feel local, and set your own values. The structure is the product.

We got this. See you on the dance floor.