Q: How did your experience at UH shape you as a break dancer and professional?
For me, at University of Houston, I was able to adapt, and I think this is the main thing everybody should get from any school. Learning to adapt with your peers. Learning how to communicate, learning how to compromise through group work. There’re just a lot of things that you had to be able to adapt to and be respectful as well. Everybody’s from a different place, and you don’t know where they’re coming from.
Being able to adapt helped me also in my professional life. I was able to create a business called FitBreak at the University. Mentally, I was already in an entrepreneurial type of mindset where I’m thinking ‘what’s the next thing to do?’ How do I adapt something from breaking to modern day fitness and create a fitness program? Even with my dancing on this world stage, the main thing is adapting. That’s been a huge advantage for me, for sure.
Q: Were there classes that you took in business or entrepreneurial basics at UH that helped prepare your business model?
JL: I took a corporate entrepreneurship class where we talked about promotion strategies, which is pretty much how to position yourself in a competitive market and how to thrive in an uncompetitive market. You have to create your own market. So that’s the tricky part, separating yourself. And I’ve seen a lot in breaking — you have to separate your style from others but then you have to make your style work on the stage. Same thing with business. You have to create your own market if you want to create something new and stand out or be the best in a competitive market.
Q: I love that you’ve taken this passion for the sport and you’ve turned it into a business that can sustain even once you move on from an active participant in it.
JL: Exactly, It’s just finding a new way to get people physically active. Breaking could be used in a lot of different ways.
Q: Can you describe any specific challenges or milestones that you’ve encountered, on your journey? What has been the most difficult thing and what are you most proud of?
JL: The most difficult thing is trying to get people to appreciate or understand breaking, because it could easily be misinterpreted. A lot of people associate negative connotations with just hip-hop in general, and breaking is a branch of hip-hop.
My family came from Haiti to the U.S. looking for opportunities, and for me to find breaking wasn’t the first thing that they would expect. It was a fight to get them to understand breaking and what I’m doing. But once we started getting some traction, they see how things are moving. They have supported me, and they’re 100% behind me.
Q: What advice would you give to aspiring athletes from the University of Houston who dream of competing in the Olympics or have a dream of making a living doing what they love.
You have to be obsessed with it. To excel, it has to be on your mind, 24/7, and I’m big on mindset too. Even though some people might not want to hear something like this, it does help me cope with just the idea of things not going your way. It could go the other way. It could go better and a different way.
I tell people to have no expectations but give it your all. Expectations could hurt you but giving it your all is giving it your all. Whatever comes out of it is what’s going to come out of it. You just got to give it your all and have no regrets. You have to push. As long as you’re a hard worker, it’s going to happen.
Jeffrey Louis, a.k.a. B-boy Jeffro, attended Westside High School in Houston and graduated from UH in 2018 with a degree in kinesiology and sports administration. He is the founder of FitBreak, a dance-based fitness company. He calls it a new approach to fitness that incorporates hip-hop’s full body movement for effective training.
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