Meet Dustin Ripkens

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dustin Ripkens. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dustin below.

Hi Dustin, great to have you with us today and excited to have you share your wisdom with our readers. Over the years, after speaking with countless do-ers, makers, builders, entrepreneurs, artists and more we’ve noticed that the ability to take risks is central to almost all stories of triumph and so we’re really interested in hearing about your journey with risk and how you developed your risk-taking ability.
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Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
First of all, I want to say thank you for having me on boldjourney.com and for this interview. I was born and raised in a small town in Germany where I was known as “Dustin the dancer”. Throughout my school years, I led, choreographed for, and danced in a school-based dance group. We performed all over town. After high-school, I took the next step to making my dream of becoming a professional dancer come true by moving to London to attend a prestigious three year dance college called Performers College. At the age of 22, I challenged myself again and moved to Los Angeles to further pursue a career in dance which was one of the best decisions of my life. In my twenties, I danced all over the USA, Canada and South Africa which was a dream come true.

My journey to the US would also be the evolution of my career as a fitness professional. In addition to my dance career, I originally started teaching group fitness classes at the age of 16 in Germany, but throughout my 20’s, I enjoyed the stability of teaching a set amount of fitness classes every week at gyms all over LA such as Equinox and Barreworks. Helping others with their fitness goals while also giving them an affirming outlet to release stress and anxiety is what I am passionate about. In the last few years, I have been blessed with many exciting opportunities that led me to work with some of the top fitness brands and fitness professionals out there such as: Fabletics, Steezy, BODi (better known as Beachbody), Andrea Rogers, Billy Blakes Jr. and Shaun T to name a few.

Lastly, since I have been married to my incredible husband Arnel Calvario Ripkens, my motivation to establish my focused niche on serving gay and queer man helping them on their fitness and wellness journey grew. Many people feel nervous about going to the gym often because they don’t know what exactly they should do and can feel anxious about being judged by other men. My role is to give them the resources they need to reach their fitness goals and also to help them boost their self-esteem to unleash their fullest potential outside of the gym in their everyday life. In addition to working out, I am working on nutrition, mindset, and habits with my community. I offer all of that online through my app. The program is called PRIORITY: ME – My Fitness Solution. In this way, I am able to reach gay and queer men all over the world.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
That is a great question.

1) From a young age, my desire to live out my passion for dance & fitness was always stronger than the need to fulfill anyone else’s expectations of a career path that stereotypically would bring me more money or that is easier to achieve. It has been important for me to wake up each morning being excited for the day because I get to do what I want to do instead of what others told me to do. My passion led me to live all over the world, travel the world, meet my husband, and now live an incredible life that I love.

2) The grit of working hard through endless hours and sleepless nights made me the person who I am today and brought me the success I had in the past and nowadays. We might not always be the most talented person for the job, but no-one can take away your drive, commitment and hard work. Thus, I believe you can outwork your competition to reach your goal. It might not come over night (most likely it won’t), but with time, persistence, and patience, you will get there.

3) One of the most important skills that I keep expanding in today is to be continuously more compassionate. Especially in my line of work where I closely work with gay and queer men one-on-one, I strive to really be present and meet them where they are first before I am able to help them create meaningful change. Every individual is a beautiful, unique person with their own extraordinary story. Even if I haven’t experienced exactly what they have in the past, I can listen, learn and see if there are any personal experiences in my own life that relates with their human lived experiences. All of this helps me to understand and connect with my clients on a deeper level.

What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?
My answer is both. Where I am in life currently, I would say it is important to niche down first on one thing that you are passionate about and that you want to make a profession out of. Be the expert in your field, learn everything there is about it, and walk the talk. Therefore, you can attract a specific audience into your niched down business and maximize your positive impact. Once you reached a level where you are deemed an expert, I feel that it is important to always have a strong growth mindset and keep expanding your knowledge into other fields you are authentically interested in. Everything we learn when brought together with a focused purpose can meet a unique need in the world. Since every individual at every point in their life possesses a unique set of talents and ever-growing wisdom, our reach can always grow and expand. Many doors have opened for me because I have a different and broad skill set in the area of dance and fitness. Working with Shaun T, for example, only happened because I have a deep understanding of dance and strength training, and even more importantly leadership skills in how to motivate and encourage a group of people to help them reach the targeted goal.

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Image Credits
Dliciousphoto Esen Visuals Benjamin Veronis

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