Conversations with Ian Flaws

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ian Flaws.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started Breakin’ in 1997 in Boulder, Colorado. I was very into Hip Hop music and graffiti and the dance was just another part of that culture. It was not something I was serious about until 2005. At that time, I moved back to Colorado after finishing college in Chicago. I reconnected with some of my old friends and started attending practices at the gym at CU, Boulder. I was asked to join a crew and started training very seriously. Over the course of the next couple years, I continued to get more and more serious. However, I felt I was treading water in terms of my career. I was working on an assembly line and didn’t have any direction. So, in 2008 I moved to Seoul, Korea to teach English. I also moved there because they had one of the elite dance scenes in the entire world and I wanted to train with some of the dancers that I was looking up to.

From 2008 to 2010, I trained in Korea with some of the best Breakers in the world. From there, I went to Cambodia to volunteer at an organization called Tiny Toones for six months. Tiny Toones offers education to street kids and uses Hip Hop curriculum to incentivize students. So when a student finishes a math class, they get a credit for a Hip Hop class like DJing, dance or graffiti. It was that experience that inspired me to return to Colorado and open my own center. I moved back in 2011 and opened the Bboy Factory in 2012.

Since 2012, the Bboy Factory has become one of the premier studios for Breakin’ in the country. We consistently attract top dancers from around the country and world to come teach in Colorado. We host an annual event that attracts dancers from around the country and is one of the longest-running and largest events of its kind in Colorado. We have performed at the Buell Theater with the international show Breakin’ Convention as well as at Denver Chance to Dance, Wings Over the Rockies and several times at the Dragon Boat Festival. In 2018, Breakin’ debuted in the Youth Olympics. One of our students, Imran Islam, was the only male to qualify for the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In 2018, US did not include Breakers in their delegation of athletes and our student did not get to participate. That experience led me to get involved with the organization USA Breakin’. Today, I am serving Vice President as a volunteer. We are in the process of applying to the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee to be recognized as the governing body for Breakin’ as sport in the US. The Bboy Factory is in its 10th year and continues to be recognized around the country as one of the leading Breakin’ studios in the country. If you had told me 20 years ago that I would still be Breakin’ and doing it for a career, I would never have believed you. But, here I am today.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has not been a smooth road. The biggest challenges have been finding a balance between work and personal life. When your business is your passion, it can be very hard to separate yourself from it. That has certainly put a burden on personal relationships and my family. It is also a struggle to interact with a community of dancers who don’t all have the same views of culture. A lot of the dance community is very young and do not have the same responsibilities of a business owner or a father. It can be very hard to stay motivated to serve a community that doesn’t understand the hard decisions that a business owner sometimes has to make. Ultimately, my younger students are the ones that keep me going.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a teacher first and foremost. That is my calling and what I enjoy most. Working with young dancers and inspiring to be creative and expressive is incredibly rewarding. My students have been very successful and I believe that is because discipline and foundation are at the core of my curriculum. I do not take shortcuts or provide instant gratification.

In fact, my process is centered on hard work. However, when students live up to that challenge, they will be prepared for the tough demands that come with this dance. To be frank, I believe that a lot of dance teachers focus more on building their student’s hype than their skills and while that can be very rewarding in the short term, it does not set them up for long-term success. I am also an event coordinator and curator of Hip Hop culture. The Bboy Factory is synonymous with Breakin’ events in Colorado and we are known for bringing dancers, DJs, musicians and artists together to preserve the authenticity of Hip Hop culture.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Risk is a fundamental part of being an entrepreneur. You have to believe in yourself and your vision before anyone else will. To take on the responsibilities of managing a business without any guarantee of success is a daunting task. Like many small businesses, it took several years for the Bboy Factory to turn profitable. Meanwhile, I was taking on debt and spending savings to live on. That felt extremely risky, but I knew that this dance form would continue to grow and that we would be well-positioned to take advantage of that growth. To this day, our margins are very small and even recently, staying open through Covid felt like a huge risk. We had to pay several months of overhead with almost half our revenue coming in. Now we are doing better that before the pandemic.

Contact Info:

• Email: flawsian@yahoo.com
• Website: www.bboyfactory.com
• Instagram: @Bboyfactory
• Facebook: facebook.com/TheBboyFactory

Image Credits
Matt McDonald