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

Brittney, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

Scaling One in a Melody wasn’t glamorous; it was a grind. I started as a travel teacher, hauling equipment from house to house, squeezing lessons between commutes, and manually tracking every payment and schedule in my head. It was exhausting and completely unsustainable.
The turning point came when I made two big decisions: establish a home studio and implement systems that could grow with me. Opening my own space meant I controlled the environment, the culture, and the client experience. But space alone doesn’t scale a business; structure does.
That’s when I integrated Opus1, a studio management software that automated scheduling, billing, and communication. What used to eat hours of my week (chasing payments, sending reminders, managing waitlists) became largely hands-free. It freed me to focus on teaching, growing my team, and expanding offerings like group classes and drum lessons.
The middle chapters nobody talks about? They looked like late nights learning software, rethinking my pricing, and building policies from scratch. Not overnight success, just consistent decisions that compounded over time.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Brittney, and I am the founder of One in a Melody, a music studio based in Georgetown, Texas. I started playing piano at six years old and began teaching at sixteen. My journey into music education was sparked by my high school choir director, who believed in me enough to ask me to accompany the choir on piano and compete alongside them. That confidence she placed in me led me to pursue music education in college, and I never looked back.
I never set out to own a studio. It happened one student at a time until I looked up and had twenty students, and suddenly I had a vision for fifty. Five years later, I achieved that goal and built a studio generating over ten thousand dollars in recurring monthly income. That milestone is something I am deeply proud of because it represents years of showing up, building trust, and refusing to quit.
One in a Melody is a studio that accepts students from zero experience to professional level and challenges every single one of them to dig deeper, build a disciplined practice habit, and expect the best from themselves. We offer piano, guitar, ukulele, drums, and songwriting lessons, along with group adult piano classes and group adult guitar coming soon.
What sets me apart is my philosophy: music is for everyone, at every age and talent level. I approach every lesson with patience and the belief that we are here to have fun. I never turn down a song request. If a student walks in loving country, pop, classical, or anything in between, we are going to learn it. I also push back on the idea that you need to know anything before you start. I expect students to walk in on day one with zero experience, and I am here to build from the ground up.
I am largely self-made and self-taught. I did not have private lessons growing up and only pursued music professionally for a short time in college. What I have built, I built by pouring my entire energy into becoming the teacher, performer, and composer I am today.
Success for my students looks like learning one song, practicing it, performing it well, and moving on to something harder. Music is one small project after another, and every project gets more rewarding than the last.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The most significant pivot in my business was also one of the scariest: raising my lesson rate from thirty-five dollars to fifty dollars.
It started with a goal. I wanted to make a hundred thousand dollars a year, and to get there I had to get ruthlessly honest with myself. I broke that number down monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly, and when I looked at the hours available in a given week, the math was clear. My rate had to change.
The fear was real. I worried my current students would leave and that new clients wouldn’t sign on at a higher price. I held my breath and made the announcement anyway.
That was five years ago. Since then, I have built a waitlist of families wanting to get into the studio. New clients sign on without hesitation. And just this past month, I finally retired every grandfathered and legacy pricing model I had been carrying, bringing every single student to the same current rate.
The moment that told me everything was when I announced the price increase to the families who had been with me for years at the old rate. Not one of them pushed back. Every single one stayed.
That said more than any revenue number ever could. It told me that what I bring into that studio week after week, the patience, the joy, the growth I pour into every student, is genuinely worth their time and their money. That is the greatest honor my business has ever given me.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

The most effective strategy for growing my clientele has been simple but intentional: talking about my business in real life. Showing up to neighborhood events, meeting people in daily conversations, and even sitting down at a piano on the spot to give someone a taste of what we do at One in a Melody has been one of the most powerful tools in my growth.
Beyond in-person connection, Google SEO has been a quiet but consistent engine. A lot of families find me by simply searching “piano lessons near me,” and having a strong local search presence has brought in a steady stream of new students over the years. Word of mouth from existing families has also played a significant role, as happy students tend to tell other people.
Pricing transparency has been equally important. I list all of my rates clearly on my website so that families know exactly what to expect before they ever reach out. That upfront clarity attracts clients who are ready to invest and naturally filters out those who are not the right fit, which means I spend less time on conversations that go nowhere.
My Instagram presence is newer but growing intentionally, and I am already seeing positive movement from consistent posting and engagement. That channel is still building, but I expect it to become an increasingly meaningful part of how new clients discover the studio.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://oneinamelody.com
• Instagram: one_in_a_melody

Image Credits

Michael Davis
Raeanne Hogner