In this episode of the Music School Spotlight series, we visited The Music Studio Atlanta to sit down with owner Cecilia Rowe. Her business started as a family of teachers traveling to students’ homes, and today it’s a school of more than 1,200 students across two locations. Cecilia shares what it took to scale, how she handles the growing pains, and why culture always comes first.
Watch the Full Episode Below
Tour the studio, meet the team, and catch more behind-the-scenes moments from our visit.
Turn Off-Peak Hours Into Revenue
Time and space are two of a music school’s most limited resources. Your studios cost money whether they’re in use or not, because the lights and air conditioning stay on either way. The Music Studio Atlanta is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. five days a week, and it offers a discounted lesson rate between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. That window attracts homeschool families and adults with flexible schedules, who appreciate the lower rate for coming in during the day. The result is full rooms during hours many schools leave empty.
Build a Feeder Program for Young Learners
When the school was new, Cecilia had an extra room and a budding relationship with Music Together, which now uses the space for its classes. The program brings in families with infants and toddlers. It also creates buzz in a market outside her core audience, so new families discover the school through that exposure, and has been a steady feeder for private lessons for years.
More recently she added Music FunTime for ages 2½ to 6, which bridges the gap between infant classes and private lessons. Formal lessons are hard for a four-year-old, but kids that age can learn a lot of music theory through play and arrive ready for their first private lesson. The school schedules these classes in the morning and again after work, so parents can join their child.
Make Performing Comfortable for Adults
More than 100 of the school’s 1,200+ students are adults, and they often feel more nervous about performing than kids do. Many schools struggle with this: if adult performances don’t feel purposeful, adults feel out of place sharing a recital with five-year-olds.
The Music Studio Atlanta solves this by calling adult performances “gatherings” and open mics instead of recitals, which helps ease the nerves. Adults sign up for dedicated evening slots, usually the last performance of the night. That gives adult students the benefits of performing without the intimidation.
Give Students a Second Way to Engage
Cecilia believes the more students perform, the more confident they become; whether that means giving a presentation at school or speaking up in a meeting at work. That’s why the school offers group programs like Rock Band and Vocal Ensemble, which now have a permanent room in the studio.
Vocal Ensemble requires no experience, and students learn articulation, breathing, and harmony as a group. These programs add the social element that make sports so appealing to kids, which private lessons alone don’t always provide. Her rule of thumb: when a student connects with your school in a second way, through an ensemble, an extra weekly lesson, or a workshop, they buy in more, feel more engaged, and learn faster.
Delegate to Each Person’s “Unique Brilliance”
Cecilia’s strengths are marketing, relationships, and creative work. She’s the first to admit she shouldn’t run the front desk. So she hires for what she isn’t good at: a teammate who loves projects and spreadsheets, front-desk staff who love people and details, and an assistant who keeps her schedule on track.
To decide what to hand off, she uses a simple four-box exercise. List what you love and excel at, what you like but aren’t great at, what you dislike but do anyway, and what you never want to do again. Keep the first box and delegate the rest. Freelancers make it easier than ever to start. One company quoted her $20,000 to review her copy, but a freelancer she found on Upwork did it in two hours at $88 an hour.
A Four-Stage Teacher Hiring Process
Cecilia finds candidates on Indeed, LinkedIn, and a “teach with us” page on the school’s website (which includes a video of current teachers talking about their experience there). Above all, she looks for a good human being, because great teaching skills can’t make up for a negative attitude toward the team.
Her process is selective: of roughly 100 candidates, about 75 start the process and around 10 make it through. Depending on schedules, it can take a couple of weeks to get one teacher through all four stages.
- Screening questions: Availability, instruments, whether they read music, why they love teaching, location preferences, and whether teaching is their only income (so the team knows how quickly to build their schedule).
- 15-minute Zoom interview: Run by front-desk staff, who look at punctuality, presentation, and preparation.
- 1-hour audition and interview: A longtime teacher with a sharp read on people assesses musicianship, goals, and fit with the studio.
- Final conversation with Cecilia: She looks at attitude and whether the candidate truly wants to be there. Not everyone who reaches this stage is hired.
That care continues after hiring. The teacher break room is always stocked with coffee, trail mix, and granola bars, because, as Cecilia puts it, you can’t teach hangry.
More Than Music Lessons
For Cecilia, the goal goes beyond keeping students enrolled month after month. Music builds confidence, commitment, and self-expression, and it teaches students to understand emotion. Her team aims to deliver that experience at every touchpoint: the front desk, the relationship with each teacher, recitals and open mics, and next year, the chance for students to go to Carnegie Hall.
She credits the school’s family atmosphere and energy with setting it apart. “We’re not perfect,” she says, “but our intentions are so great. We want to be a great music school.”
