We were lucky to catch up with Ariana Ollendick recently and have shared our conversation below.
Ariana, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.
Teaching has always been the most rewarding part of my job. I started teaching private music lessons in 2011, and had never really considered myself to be a business owner. I was 16 years old and teaching out of my grandparents basement. Being my biggest fans, they had renovated their basement to have a waiting room for parents, and a teaching room for myself. Back then, I received most of my students by advertising on Craigslist and I met some VERY interesting people.
I received an inquiry from a grandmother who was looking for guitar and voice lessons for her “incredibly talented” granddaughter, Bailey. We set up a meeting time and I excitedly began preparing for this fellow Taylor Swift-loving 10-year-old girl.
The day we met Bailey did not speak a single word. She was so shy! Considering I did not have an introverted bone in my body, this was completely foreign to me. So I did what I did best- talk! I talked about my favorite music, how long I had been playing guitar, all about my younger siblings, grasping at ANYTHING to get this little girl to open up to me. And it worked! Each week Bailey began to slowly come out of her shell. Her grandmother was right, she was insanely talented, kind and overall a good kid.
Bailey went on to accomplish MANY things, including performing at open mic nights, going to college for audio engineering, performing at sporting arenas, getting featured in her local newspaper (at 13-years-old!), AND eventually, becoming a wonderful music teacher alongside me at Pave Creative.
Music lessons should focus on growing kids into the best version of themselves, building confidence and most of all, having so much fun. I hope to inspire as many kids to go into careers in the arts as they grow. Find what you love and figure out how to make money doing it.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?
Of course! I am 28 years old, and happily married to my incredible husband, Chad. We recently bought our first home in Kansas City and have three fur babies.
I started teaching private voice and guitar lessons when I was 16 years old out of my grandparents basement. They had renovated the room to have a teaching space and a waiting area for the parents. I taught all the way through undergrad while I worked on receiving my bachelors degree from University of Missouri- St. Louis. In my family, music was never viewed as a “real” career choice, so I had decided to become a therapist.
When I went to grad school at University of San Diego, I realized that I didn’t love the path I was on and needed to re-evaluate where my life was headed. I dropped out of graduate school and became a full time nanny. I loved working with babies and their families and knew that I wanted to work with kids for the rest of my career.
When my husband and I decided to move to Kansas City, I really missed teaching. Pave Creative was initially going to be a mommy and me music class, but when the pandemic hit, our enrollment crashed. I looked at the needs of our market and vegans teaching online music lessons and found my passion and joy of helping kids learn to love music the way that I did growing up. I’m so proud of what Pave Creative has become and I’m excited for our future!
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
Making Pave Creative a place that is kind and inclusive has been my number one priority. This culture should extend to our clients AND our staff. I find when you have a staff that you trust and invest in, they return that investment tenfold. We see higher rates of staff retention and loyalty by focusing on the mental wellbeing of our staff and making it a priority. My teachers are allowed to set their own hours, work with the students they connect with best and teach the instruments they enjoy teaching the most. I allow for them to develop their own teaching styles and offer help to mentor and guide them along the way. I’m not here to control them, because I’ve hired people that I trust to uphold my brand.
I also believe the key to having a strong team is having a training program that is constantly being evaluated and analyzed to make sure it is consistent with your brand and the message you want to send your clients. I allow my teachers to decide when they feel they are done with training. By leaving it up to them, they can take their time in building their confidence and I’m not pairing students with unprepared teachers. Happy teachers make for happy students and families!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
While in grad school, I quit teaching private lessons. I was pursuing my masters degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling in San Diego, because I felt working in music industry wasn’t a “real” job. Well the joke is on me and it only took me about $90k in student loans to come back to what I love most. I dropped out of school and took some time to work in the child development field, and I learned that I desperately missed teaching. My husband was finishing up optometry school and we were planning on moving back to Kansas City to be closer to our families. One day, after I had a MISERABLE day at work he asked me the million dollar question.
“What would you do even if you made no money doing it?”
I would teach music. All day long. So I began the plans to launch my business on March 27th, 2020. Obviously, I could not have picked a WORSE time to launch a business. When we moved back to Kansas City, I had three jobs lined up to float us while my husband finished school and I launched Pave. When the pandemic hit I lost ALL of my jobs, except Pave. I panicked for about 24 hours before coming to the realization that I was simply going to have to make Pave Creative my full time job. At the time of the pandemic I was making less than $500/month in my business. I put everything I had into learning how to market myself, coming up with new ideas to serve families during the pandemic, and grasping for all of the free education I could to learn how to properly run a business. By May of 2020 I had increased my income by 600% because I didn’t give myself the option of failing. Honestly, without the pandemic I’m not sure my business would be shaped like it is today. I’m always grateful for the curveballs life throws at me because it’s all a part of my journey, and I’ve decided that my journey gets to be incredible.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.pavecreative.co
- Instagram: @PaveCreative
- Facebook: Facebook.com/pavecreativeco