An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Diverse businesses have a more diverse customer base. As a Person of Color who grew up in a predominantly white area and unwelcoming area, I know how much representation really does matter. Once consumers see people that look like themselves in your company, then they’ll be more likely to choose your product over someone else’s.
As a part of our series about “How Diversity Can Increase a Company’s Bottom Line”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Aaron Gray.
Aaron is the co-owner and founder of Practice Makes Perfect Music Studio, A Black, female and LGBTQIA+ owned music school. In addition to running the studio Aaron also serves as a private piano, voice, and organ teacher. Aaron started Practice Makes Perfect in March of 2020 with co-owner Sam Specht-Burns. He lives in Greensburg Pennsylvania with his wife Julia, and their daughter Cadence.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive into the main part of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit more. Can you share a bit of your “backstory” with us?
I started taking piano lessons from my grandmother, Frances, when I was 7 years old. We always had a special bond I was born on her birthday, and we shared of love of music, specifically piano. She continued to pay for my piano lessons until the day she passed away around my 18th birthday.
I continued to get a degree in piano performance and held several full and part time music director positions at local churches, while also trying to balance playing for musicals, gigging, and teaching private lessons. When the church jobs started conflicting with my other jobs, I realized I needed to have control of my own schedule. That’s when I reached out to my friend Sam Specht-Burns and we started Practice Makes Perfect as just the two of us teaching during the pandemic. We eventually gained a few students and asked a couple of our friends to hop on board. Fast forward a year and now we have 220 students in two physical locations, with virtual teachers across four states, and developed our own children’s music courses for infants and toddlers, and are well on the way to starting our Frances and Marian Foundation. I have a beautiful wife Julia, and we have a one year old daughter, Cadence.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us the lesson or take away you took out of that story?
So a few years ago, I was serving as the music director for a musical at a theater in Scottdale, PA. The music director would also serve as the pianist for the shows, and the shows were at 7pm with an early matinee on Sundays. Anyway, this Saturday performance of the show was at 7pm and the evening before I had made plans to go to the Casino in Pittsburgh, for a brunch around 11am. Upon leaving the casino and proceeding toward the city to go home to get ready for the show, we were greeted with stand still traffic about 2 minutes into our journey. Now we think, we’ll be here for maybe 45 minutes maximum. Turns out the traffic was built up due to an eight-car accident in the Squirrel Hill Tunnels, the ONLY way out on our route.
We ended up being stuck in traffic for 5 hours, my friends had to drive me to the show I arrived about 10 minutes late and was wearing jeans and a T-shirt instead of the traditional concert attire.
I learned three things that day, always have backup concert attire with you, always arrive early, and just stay home when you have events.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you tell us a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
“Always be over-prepared.” Just recently I had a gig where I had to bring my whole keyboard setup. I always try to bring two of everything because something inevitably goes wrong or missing at every event. This particular gig I had decided against bringing a second keyboard stand, as my car was already filled and I was excited about this new stand I had just bought. Once I started unloading my gear we discovered that the top bar of the stand had snapped off and there I was without a keyboard stand, two hours away from three extra ones laying around in the studio. Had I just packed that second stand I could have avoided the entire situation!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?
I have several and there is no way I would be where I am without any of these people. My wife, Julia Gray and my business partner, Sam Specht-Burns. They both do a ton of the heavy lifting at the studio and I literally would not be anywhere without both of them.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Practice Makes Perfect stands out in a number of ways, our biggest one is that we are completely devoted to being a safe, diverse studio. We are an LGBTQIA+, woman and Black owned business, the only music studio of its kind. We strive to keep a diverse staff, which in turn attracts a more diverse student base. We’re also able to offer lessons anywhere in the U.S. via our online lessons, and already have some teachers and students in other states.
Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?
We are in the process of turning something we have called the Frances Fund Into a non-profit called the Frances and Marian Foundation. Frances being my grandmother, and Marian being Sam’s. We are starting this foundation to eliminate barriers to learning music by paying for lessons, covering costs for instrument purchase/rental, instrument repairs and other financial needs of our students and music students anywhere.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
Well so far we have started the Frances Fund, which provides free and discounted lessons to students. We currently have 6 students taking lessons for free, we have provided two students with a keyboard, one with a violin and a several other instruments. We also fundraise for our community, we donated $600 for a family in our neighborhood over after they suffered a house fire. We are constantly fundraising for these students and our community. Our Frances and Marian Foundation will soon be up and running and help us bring more good into the world.
Ok. Thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main part of our interview. This may be obvious to you, but it is not intuitive to many people. Can you articulate to our readers five ways that increased diversity can help a company’s bottom line.
- Diverse businesses have a more diverse customer base.
As a Person of Color who grew up in a predominantly white area and unwelcoming area, I know how much representation really does matter. Once consumers see people that look like themselves in your company, then they’ll be more likely to choose your product over someone else’s.
2. Having a diverse staff solves problems.
Sometimes you run into obstacles while running a business that you otherwise wouldn’t have thought to prepare for. A lot of these problems can be solved by having an effective, diverse, efficient staff. One problem a partner organization recently had was that they held an event in a mostly Spanish speaking area where they placed sign up sheets for their newsletter. They had a record number of sign ups but they were unable to read any of the email addresses because they were all in Spanish! This is a problem I’ve never thought about before and one my company is prepared for, as we have two teachers on staff who are fluent in Spanish, just because my company is committed diverse hiring.
3. Pride.
Employees who feel welcome, seen, and safe, will also be employees who take pride in their position. We empower our teachers to be themselves and promote diversity and inclusion and in turn they feel more empowered. Having employees who believe in your mission and the work you are all doing together makes running the business significantly easier.
4. New Perspectives.
Having a diverse team brings about new and welcome perspectives on every aspect of the business. I consult with several employees and make sure I always consult with people of varying backgrounds so I can get as many perspectives on something as possible. Often times you’ll learn something incredible that you wouldn’t have dreamed up because your life experiences are so different from someone else’s. I use this a lot with marketing, and teaching, it is an incredible and important resource.
5. Representation.
Having a diverse staff also gives you the chance to offer a diverse representation to the community. As a music studio, we have a lot of diverse school-age students, and it is great for the students to be able to see a teacher who looks like them, that they might not otherwise get at school, or even at work. I never once had a Black teacher myself, but now I have over 30 students who can’t say that now.
What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees to thrive?
If you really want your employees to thrive, the absolute best advice I can give is to pay them what they’re worth. If an employee doesn’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, I find they’re a lot more productive, and generally happier. Our lowest pay tier is $27 an hour, and that is only our student rate!
What advice would you give to other business leaders about how to manage a large team?
Communication is extremely important to manage a large team of people, but the biggest thing is trust. If you can communicate a welcoming and safe environment to your team, they will be much more likely to trust you and communicate better. Remember you choose your team, so get your team a safe space, stand behind them and don’t let them down.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this 🙂
Honestly there are so many that I would choose, but if I had to pick one right now it would probably be Billy Porter. He represents all lot of the things we are trying to accomplish in the community, being a gay, Black performing artist and succeeding really inspired us to persevere.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can check us out online at pmpmusicstudio.com. We’re also active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. The links to all of our socials are located on our website and our handle is @pmpmusicstudio
Thank you for these excellent insights. We wish you continued success in your great work.
Aaron Gray Of Practice Makes Perfect Music Studio On Why Diversity Is Good For Business was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
