Community Highlights: Meet Jessica Grosch of New Boots Line Dancing

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Grosch

Hi Jessica, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’m from the Chicago suburbs but called Nashville home for the past 17 years. My college friend, fellow Belmont Alum Jimmy Chapin, and I created New Boots in 2016 when we went out for tacos and we’re chatting about the Nashville tourism boom. We discussed how visiting friends and family always wanted to go line dancing but there weren’t any options for people to take private line dance lessons as a group during the day. We figured, “why not start the business ourselves?” Jimmy has marketing and entrepreneur experience and I came from small business background and grew up dancing. So we put our heads together and created New Boots from the group up!

What began as an idea (literally on a napkin at a Local Taco) has since grown to include multiple types of line dance lessons that host small gatherings to large corporate events with a team of amazing professional dance instructors.

In 2024 we brought our on Lead Instructor, Andréa Howard, as a Co-owner and she’s helped to grow the business exponentially. Within these past 8 years NBLD has taught more than 900 lessons to over 7,000 attendees and we’re all very proud of that.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think small business owners find that it can be hard to turn off “work mode” because you always want to be growing and improving your business. Whether it’s making operations run smoothly, or coming up with new ideas for the future, there’s never not a good time of day to be taking action. We’re also really proud we made it through the pandemic with our business in tact. We reconfigured how we held our lessons and we’re able to make it to the other side bigger and better than before, thanks in part to our fabulous Instructors and the reemergence of tourism. There’s just so much joy, from receiving a booking confirmation to hearing a group say our lesson was the most fun thing they did in Nashville, and that makes it really worth it.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We’ve been teaching custom line dancing lessons since 2016 and love what we do! We offer three types of lessons so groups can pick what best works for them. For groups under 30 people, they can either join us at our Studio space in Wedgewood Houston or we’ll send an instructor to their location. For larger parties and events we send a team of instructors to customize a lesson that gets their crowd moving and grooving. From the coolest pop-up studios, to the flashiest Honkey Tonks, swankiest hotels, and cutest vacation rentals in town, we’ve taught our moves all over town.

Guests can to pick their own songs to dance to (in any genre of music) and we film a video at the end of the lesson of the group doing their favorite routine. Our mission is to bring a custom experience to each of our guests so that they leave with a smile on their face and a kick to their step.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
We feel really lucky when it came to timing. We started our business when the mid 2010’s tourism boom was happening in Nashville and there weren’t any other private line dance lessons available. But we found there was a quite big market for it. From the first weekend we opened we’ve been flooded with reservations, which really establish us as a top tier line dancing experience in town.

Pricing:

• $350 for a 1 hr private lesson at your location
• $380 for a 1 hr private lesson at our studio
• Corporate and large event pricing by request

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.newbootslinedancing.com
• Instagram: @newbootslinedancing
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newbootslinedancing/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@NewBootsNashville
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/new-boots-line-dancing-nashville

Image Credits
Elisabeth Donaldson