AUSTIN, Texas — Tucked away at the Casa de Luz Village in South Austin are standalone rooms separated from nature’s ambiance. One of them is dark, filled with people chatting while they wait for Monica Landois to start the music.

Landois rents the space to provide the fitness dance class to her students, though it might be more accurate to call them followers or friends. 

“I love bringing joy to people and I love bringing joy through movement,” Landois said.

After class, Landois sits down next to a bouquet of sunflowers just outside the dance space reflecting on life. She’s a first-generation Austinite and graduate of Texas State University in San Marcos. There she received her bachelor’s in geography natural resources and environmental studies. She minored in business Spanish.

“I thought I would do something with environmental investigations and maybe I could help the Latin community and bridge gaps with language,” she said.

Out of college, Landois accepted a job with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. She remembers her parents were thrilled when she shared the news. 

Landois had a short gap between graduation and starting her new job. That’s when she discovered Zumba classes. Zumba is described as a group exercise class that blends rhythmic Latin music with high-intensity cardio dance moves according to its website.

Instructors noticed her ability to keep up with the class and suggested she audition to be an instructor. 

“It’s one of those things that was so random that kind of just fell in my lap,” Landois said. 

Her first class had more than 50 people. 

“There was so much community. I would meet so many people from different walks of life,” she said. 

As her community grew, she would discover even more opportunities, including a contract position with the City of Austin, to teach Zumba classes. Landois says she got paid significantly more for 45 minutes of her time than she did at the TCEQ for the same amount of time. There were several of what Landois calls “aha” moments along the way. 

“That’s where the wheels started turning,” Landois recalls.

Eventually Landois got married and welcomed her first child, a baby boy. At this point, she was trying to gather how she could be a present mother, work her government job with an added commute and teach fitness classes. By the time her son was around 4 months old, she decided to quit the TCEQ and focus on her dance classes.

“Even though I like this job, I can’t sustain being a mom and working those hours,” she recalled thinking. 

Unfortunately, her then-husband doesn’t understand what she’s trying to do. 

“Sometimes your partner or your parents or people closest to you don’t really see your vision because they’re not in your shoes,” Landois said. “They don’t have the knowledge you have within the spaces that you’re in.” 

Landois separated from her partner. Culturally, her parents didn’t approve of the divorce. But Landois pressed on, determined to provide for both of her kids. She had since brought a second boy into the world. 

“At any point you can say, ‘I’m not going to listen to the noise. Even though I’m in this space, I can still walk my path’,” Landois said. 

Landois admits the path wasn’t always easy to travel. Two weeks after going all in on herself, the pandemic swept across the state, closing businesses deemed nonessential. Landois had already shot dance videos for Amazon’s Prime Video service, so she was at least a step ahead, ready to provide virtual classes to anyone who needed movement. 

“I learned about resilience, having grit and how it’s so worth it,” Landois said. “As soon as you feel like giving up and decide not to, those are the moments.” 

The number of hours she works week to week can change, but recently she’s been able to manage on fewer than 20 hours a week while raising her two boys. She’s proud to share she didn’t miss their first steps or their first words. 

Landois just recently trained two more instructors to provide more classes for her community. She’s a motivational speaker, sharing her mom-preneur story with other women. She also gives dance lessons to couples interested in learning new styles of dance. But most importantly, she’s happy.