Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Boyd.
Hi Amy, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I’ve sung ever since I can remember. I grew up in Houston and made Texas All-State Choir in high school. At 18, I moved to Austin on a National Merit Scholarship to study music at the University of Texas. I changed majors several times, but my main focus throughout college was vocal performance, singing with the UT Chamber Singers under Craig Hella Johnson. (Dr. Johnson was my muse. His love of music made you want to create the most beautiful music possible.)
Before finishing my degree, I took a temporary part-time job in 1998 at Origin Systems (an Electronic Arts studio) as an assistant game designer on Ultima IX – but that short-term job became a six-year career. I moved from design into online community management, eventually becoming Director of Online Community Relations for Origin Systems, overseeing global player communities and large-scale digital communication.
When EA shut down Origin in 2004, I returned to UT and completed my degree in English. I started grad school at Southwest Texas pursuing teaching certification, but after a divorce needed immediate full-time work and took a job at Coast to Coast Tickets as an accounting assistant. From there, I worked up to Director of Marketing, managing advertising, promotions, and budgeting until the company was sold in 2012.
By that time, I was remarried to a guitar teacher and shifted my focus from corporate marketing to helping grow his private teaching schedule, building systems for scheduling, billing, marketing, recitals, and client management. Those efforts became Sense & Color School of Music in Cedar Park, which grew to a dozen teachers and 170 students by the time covid hit in 2020.
(The guitar teacher and I split up in 2017. He still teaches in the Cedar Park area, but I continued managing Sense & Color.)
During the COVID shutdown in 2020, we transitioned fully online, and in 2021, I purchased our permanent location in Leander. It felt SO amazing to finally reopen in person after 16 months online – and I love owning my space now instead of renting.
I like to refer to us as the little hippie school around the corner, since we’re not a chain, and I fill almost every role – CEO, accounting, marketing, janitor, and while I don’t take many private students myself, I do also teach voice. In the past few years, I’ve added a fabulous band director and audio engineer, Todd, and my amazing admin assistant, Gwen, and they’ve helped me keep my sanity while helping Sense & Color do awesome things.
We’re also branching out into the area of equipment rental, as Todd’s built an impressive high-end audio setup for our rock band program, and it’s available to rent by other local musicians.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It hasn’t been the smoothest… I’ve had to change gears and reinvent a few times, mostly driven by external forces – companies being sold, divorce, covid, financial struggles, etc. COVID was a major disruption. We lost access to our physical location and had to pivot the entire school to online lessons almost overnight, while still supporting our teachers and students emotionally and financially through a highly uncertain time.
I also have three children – boys ages 12, 13, and 25 – and balancing trying to be a good mom with also trying to support a household on my own is a heavy mental load. I don’t always feel like I strike the right balance. Running a business is important, but kids are only kids for a short time, and they rely on you. It’s a tough world when you don’t have all the tools yet to navigate it.
My youngest has severe ADHD, and needs a lot of daily help with school and routines, so when I’m focused on work, it’s easy to feel guilty, like I’m leaving him behind. I’m also diagnosed with ADHD myself, so a lot of my daily routine centers around systems and tricks to keep myself – and him – on the right track. It’s the curse of being a business owner and mom, I think. Both are full-time jobs.
Sense & Color has stayed small – intentionally, for the most part – since the faster you grow, the harder you have to work, and then that work-life balance is even harder to maintain. But there are much bigger much schools around me with deeper advertising pockets, which can get pretty stressful. Word of mouth has always been the source of our growth, and I just have to keep hoping that’s enough.
We still have a few online teachers and students, which is great since they don’t add to our physical overhead costs, but it’s hard to market to online students without big pay-per-click search engine budgets.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
On a day-to-day basis, I keep the machine running. I play Tetris with lesson schedules, make sure clients and teachers feel valued and informed, book recitals and performances, teach voice lessons, arrange the vocal parts for our rock band program, and when I have extra time, I try to get the word out to new students.
But when I’m not running Sense & Color or trying to re-learn algebra to help my middle schooler with his math, I love to sing – and I’m actually a rockin’ karaoke host! For the year or so before covid, I ran the KJ booth part-time at TopSpin Karaoke in Cedar Park, and a few times a year, I run big karaoke events with an event group based on Dallas. It’s a lot of work, but it breaks the routine – and there’s no time to sit around feeling old when you’re lugging speakers.
I also sing in a local community choir called Panoramic Voices, along with my 13 year-old son, which has reawakened my love of singing in a group. I forgot how good it feels to hear yourself as part of a vocal fabric – and I hope it’s okay if I include a shout out. Juli Orlandini, director of Panoramic, is the bomb. She loves music so much that you can’t help but want to perform your best, and I feel inspired to teach better every time I work with her.
Anyway. I’ve also sung in wedding bands, pop duos, live karaoke bands, bluegrass groups, and for several years I was the lead singer for a Pink Floyd tribute called “New Car Caviar.” (That one was a favorite.) Currently I make up half of the duo “Story Lane” along with our band director Todd, and we’ve released a few songs on Spotify.
As far as what sets me apart vocally – I’m a good singer, but I think my best skill is listening and harmonizing. Lots of singers know how to sing, but they don’t all know how to *listen*.
And with regards to the school… I think of Sense & Color as being inclusive and welcoming. Everyone belongs, whether they’re neurodivergent, anxious, gender-fluid, or just unsure of themselves. We prioritize emotional safety alongside musical growth. Students are seen as individuals, not time slots.
Our rock band program is also near and dear to my heart. There are other music schools with rock band programs, but we value quality over quantity, and I’m so proud of the kids in our rock bands! I’d put them up against any teen band in town any day. 🙂
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
Admittedly, this isn’t my strong suit. Thanks to my ADHD, I tend to be a perfectionist, and I have a hard time reaching out when I need help – and when left to my own devices, I generally keep to myself. This is probably why I gravitate to being in control of things (managing the bands, running the karaoke, etc), since it gets me working with other people whether I want to or not.
(Maybe don’t include that part. Heh.)
Pricing:
- Weekly 45-minute music lessons ($215/month)
- Student rock band membership ($149/month for current students, $189/mo for non-students)
- Private event karaoke party (price varies)
- Stage equipment rental and sound engineering (price varies)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.senseandcolor.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/senseandcoloratx/
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/senseandcolor
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elderberries/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Insertbandnamehere-tf3cn
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/sense-and-color-school-of-music-leander-3
Image Credits
I didn’t include a photo yet – I need to go have one taken that I actually like. I’ll send you some very soon! Thanks so much for this! – Amy
