Jennifer Hill Barlow

by Pam Baumeister

At age 8, Jennifer Hill Barlow knew she would be a dancer.
Her first ballet class at the Clytie Adams School of Ballet in Kaysville clinched her decision. “If you can have an epiphany at 8, it was then I knew,” Barlow recalls. Nearly two decades later, she would be turning pirouettes into profits as a business owner.

Barlow studied ballet throughout her young life and leaped through college, earning two degrees at the University of Utah in five years: a BFA in Ballet Performance and a Masters in Teaching and Choreography. There she met her future husband — Blake Barlow, an aspiring film actor from Park City. After graduation, Barlow taught dance at Brigham Young University and at the U. She felt teaching was “equally fulfilling” as dancing.

Married in 2002, the ambitious couple moved to New York City. “He wanted to live in New York City and I was curious. It was a great season of our lives,” Barlow says. The pair returned to Utah three years later, expecting their first of two children.

Realizing that her age and her geographical location would limit a career in performance, and wanting more sustainable long-term success, Barlow decided to start teaching dance in her basement and at BYU. Becoming an entrepreneur was a new challenge. “It shocked me to learn how much needs to be done as the owner. You have to have a lot of patience and diplomacy, care and love,” she says.

After two years, the number of students had grown — but her basement hadn’t. No longer needing the BYU teaching job to pay bills, Barlow started renting class space at Noah’s, an event center in Lindon. Renting month-to-month allowed the couple to save. “We didn’t incur any debt,” she says. “We could manage our rent and the demand of classes.”

The Barlows’ patient practicality paid off when they received an SBA loan to cover expansion expenses and manage the business’s growth. Leasing a building in West Lehi this past August was a big leap. Barlow now has around 150 students and continues to grow.

“We were so grateful we could get the loan in this climate,” Barlow says. “We could show that we ran this business out of our basement for three years and were able to show a profit.”