Episode#135: Balancing Guts and Glory – Misty Lown (Entrepreneur)

We see it all of the time – entrepreneurs posting photos from their latest vacation or a conference they’re headlining or another notable event. However, people rarely talk about the guts behind the glory and what it took them to get there. Misty Lown has a different approach. Written on one of the nicest napkins we’ve seen on the show, Misty Lown explains her philosophy behind why rock bottom is a pretty good place for building.
“Everyone has a “ground zero” moment. I like to hear about those moments because they aren’t broadcast often. We do a great disservice to people by only showing the shiny parts of our story,” Misty explains. Currently, Misty owns nine businesses, including “Misty’s Dance Unlimited”, a dance academy Wisconsin where she and her staff inspire over 750 kids to be their best selves through dance and community involvement. Additionally, she operates “More Than Just Great Dancing”, a training school which teaches 145 dance schools worldwide on how to run with the same core values as her main business.  “My dance school is eighteen years old and the other [More Than Just Great Dancing] is four. And let me tell you, their ages and how they operate line up so much with parenthood,” says the mother of five children.
But things weren’t always so rosy. Misty’s beginnings in dance came from an unlikely start. She was born with a club foot (which was later fixed). “I thought that starting a dance school was [one of the last] things I’d be doing with my life,” she remembers. She admits to having been a troubled youth. She refers to those years as her “rock bottom”.
She recalls her days of partying and a devastating eating disorder, “My body was my tool and I was abusing it in every way possible. There’s no elegant way to put it, but it was just a hot mess. I had to do some hard heart work to figure out what I wanted to do with the gift God had given me.” At 18, she was accepted into the prestigious Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City. During the summer before sessions began, she realized her love for instructing – and, instead of taking her talents to the stage, she decided to take them to the dance studio. While she now sees the purpose behind her swift change, at the time, she referred to herself as an “accidental entrepreneur.”
In time, she began to realize that her rocky past wasn’t something to be ashamed of or hidden and made the intentional effort to begin to pay those lessons forward. She often ran into students who were facing similar difficulties and was able to provide them with her story as a source of guidance and inspiration. “Initially, I wanted to keep the shiny parts and remove the bad history. But, the benefits of owning your journey is to be able to tell people that you’re old enough to know better, but young enough to remember. During that rough patch, I wasn’t being buried, I was being built for something greater,” she muses.
Misty never regrets her decision to choose the classroom over the stage lights and applause. “Being in the classroom provides an ROI for a lifetime, especially when being compared to being on a stage for a few hours. I still talk to students from years ago; I wouldn’t be able to do that with an audience member,” she says.
As someone once said, “Successful entrepreneurs owe it to the next generation to pay forward their failures and just not their successes.” As Misty began to own her story, she began to find value in the creation and the process, not just the outcome. She shares this mindset with her teams and her family. “There’s great value in doing small things well. I didn’t understand this straight out of the gate and I still don’t have it perfect. Entrepreneurship is a muscle that needs to be built and exercised.”
Check out this episode!