Learn more about how we went from being a couple of public school art teachers to business owners with a whole TEAM who make our studios and programs magical!

Becoming a business owner wasn’t exactly the plan. We were fortunate to have parents that encouraged us to pursue our dreams and in college, we both majored in Art Studio, me with a double major in Art History and Emma with a minor in English, and we didn’t spend much time during those four years thinking about how these degrees would translate into careers. We just did what we love. As a senior, our mom encouraged me to look into getting my education degree or certification so I threw myself into applications and was thrilled when I was accepted to Belmont’s Masters in the Arts of Teaching program. It checked all the boxes- in Nashville, only a year, and it included six months of student teaching which was triple any other program and would count as a year towards tenure with MNPS. That year confirmed that I was, in fact, meant to be a teacher and Emma followed suit the next year. She too was a natural. While we absolutely LOVED our students and the act of teaching art, life happened and shifts in the educational system in Nashville occurred so we started thinking “What if?” and the dreaming and planning took off from there.

Initially, we discussed what we would do differently if we had free reign as far as structure and embedding art education in a joyful, more natural way that is based on child development rather than standardized reports. Then we started dreaming about the fun stuff - how we wanted our studio to look, feel, and what we’d like to offer the community but as we got further into it, we realized we had so much more to learn and work out.

A business owner wears many, many hats and when you also run the entire show with no other staff like we did originally you have to learn how to do everything. We signed up for free classes via different entrepreneur groups to learn how to write a business plan, how to run Quickbooks, and more. We researched registration systems and website design. Emma took on the lion’s share of this work while I continued teaching full time and we met together around my schedule to determine the day to day things like offering USN camps and then after that, finding our first location and the buildout of that space and so on. As sisters, we definitely argued but during those early days we were so excited and honestly, naive, that we just kept powering through making things happen.

During the first five years, we learned a LOT and realized we had very different gifts. When we let the other person use their gifts and trust them to work, we thrived. We met with a counselor who helped us determine how to separate our personal lives from our business side (work we still do to this day since we are intertwined so closely) and we were able to more clearly define our roles. As the business has grown, we started to identify new roles that other people could help us with even beyond teaching classes such as studio management, birthday coordinating, and developing adult classes. We are continuing to outsource responsibilities and trust team members to take on more every year which is incredibly exciting but it also stretches us to define and refine our processes constantly. We haven’t even touched on how aspects of the world (covid you say? A recession?) affects our roles but that is for another day :). For now, we wanted to highlight how Emma and I became co-founders of Little Art House, what it’s like developing a business, and our amazing team that carries us every day.

10 years later, we have compiled a phenomenal team of like minded people who thrive in a part time space. While some team members are teaching and working with us year round, others join in during school breaks for all of the camp fun. For this summer, you’ll see some familiar faces and some new ones in our studios, at USN, at Anzie Blue, and at The Getalong. We can’t WAIT to greet you soon!

Wearers of Many Hats: Mary, Margaret, Jenn (not pictured)