IAM2549 – Music School Founder Helps Individual Tap Into Their Creative Side Through Art

For 20 years, Matt was an executive in the radio industry before becoming an investor and the founding CEO of the School of Rock.

In five years, Matt grew the franchise from five locations to 55 schools, the largest of music schools in the world.

In 2012, he opened the first One River School of Art and Design in Englewood, New Jersey, and he franchised the concept in 2017, with 12 locations, with up to five more expected to open this year.

Matt believes that creativity is essential—not just for artists, but as a foundation for problem-solving, innovation, and emotional well-being.

He focuses on empowering and mentoring his team, prioritizing personal development and strong culture over rigid efficiency.

Over time, Matt has come to deeply value self-awareness and patience. He now shares these lessons with others and recommends using tools like Clifton Strengths and Born to Build to uncover personal strengths and build more cohesive, capable teams.

Website: One River School

LinkedIn: Matt Ross

Instagram: mattross_oneriverschool

Previous Episode: iam334-music-school-founder-helps-individual-tap-into-their-creative-side-through-art

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Transcription:

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Matt Ross Teaser 00:00

Well, there's truth. Math and science is where a lot of folks need to go, but not everyone. Sometimes, just pure art making and being, good at spatial thinking and abstract thinking, it's going to help you be a good marketer, or other things in life that help you solve problems.

And so, there's vocational benefits also of being good at being creative. I'm one of those guys. I acted when I was a kid, and I did music and other things.

Intro 00:29

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:57

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Matt Ross of the One River School of Art and Design. Matt, are you ready to speak to the community?

Matt Ross 01:07

Yes, I am.

Gresham Harkless 01:08

Awesome, super excited to have you on. And what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Matt, so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

And for 20 years, Matt was an executive in the radio industry before becoming an investor and the founding CEO of the School of Rock.

In five years, Matt grew the franchise from five locations to 55 schools, the largest of music schools in the world. In 2012, he opened the first One River School of Art and Design in Englewood, New Jersey.

He franchised the concept in 2017 and currently has 12 locations with up to five more expected to open this year. Matt, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Matt Ross 01:43

Yes, I am.

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Gresham Harkless 01:44

Awesome, let's do it. So, to kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Matt Ross 01:50

Yeah, so I had been, I spent, before School of Rock, I was 20 years in the radio business. I was in traditional media, but I was that guy, as I got into management, that always got the assignment to fix the broken radio stations.

I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, and Atlanta, and I was sort of handed keys, and people would say, we're losing money there, do whatever you gotta do. Change the format, fix it, this, that.

So as time moved on, I realized that there was a lot of parallels between that intrapreneurship and building a business, the only difference was having a concept. After I left radio and was involved with the School of Rock, which was not my concept, I built this fundamental appreciation for creative education.

And the value of learning music and how important it is for people's development and fun, and really just to complete people who have an interest in it. And I simply asked that question, how come there are no cool art schools in my community?

I grew up in the city where, in New York, there's anything you want or need of any kind, particularly the arts and culture. So, we're one river from New York City and virtually no culture. And that's probably indicative of suburbia everywhere. Right.

Kids here, but you know, lacking a lot of things. And so, we built the school in England, New Jersey, sort of to create a really cool current experience. That's fun and compelling. And here we are now with 12 schools and opening a lot more.

Gresham Harkless 03:23

Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate you for doing that because a lot of times people have ideas or they don't see something, and then they pretty much just sit on it. They don't do anything with it.

But in true entrepreneurial form, you've decided to create something and build something for the betterment of society, I think.

Matt Ross 03:39

Yeah, I feel that way. It's become my mission in life. I think people of all ages need to do things that tap into their creative side. And it makes us better, smarter, and prepares us to problem solve.

And at the same time, it's just fun. I mean, I play the guitar. I'm not on tour, but I play the guitar for me. And it makes me feel good when I do.

Gresham Harkless 03:59

Exactly, exactly. And I think there's a lot to be said, too, on how really therapeutic to some degree that music can be and how music is kind of like a, something it's a form of expression that we can use, whether we're listening to it or whether we're playing it, if we can play it or singing it, even if we can't sing it, sometimes it's still a form of expression.

Matt Ross 04:20

No doubt, no doubt. I have this saying that I tell people, when kids come out of their mom's womb, in effect, there's a few things that they connect with. They connect with Mom's face, obviously. They need food and all those things.

But very quickly, it's the sound of mom's voice and this sort of rhythmic flavor and the heartbeat. So, music is rooted in a beat. And I think it's rooted in us when we're literally in utero as we're developing, and we play music to mom's bellies now, and they have all those things.

But then, when kids become little, they also scribble and they draw. And they, they're making art.

And then we take it away from them, because we tell them, there's nothing valuable because it's not practical. You need to study math and science, math and science.

Well, there's truth. Math and science is where a lot of folks need to go, but not everyone. Sometimes just pure art making and being, you know, good at spatial thinking and abstract thinking, it's going to help you be a good marketer or other things in life that help you solve problems.

And so, there's vocational benefits also of being good at being creative. I'm one of those guys, I acted when I was a kid, and I did music and other things.

My dad was into sports. So, I dropped all creative stuff because I had to do what my dad was into. And I wish he was fed more to me as a kid. So, I've come back to it for that reason as well.

Gresham Harkless 05:57

Well, definitely. I appreciate you for doing that because it's funny. I was at some networking event, and there was an engineer there, and he was talking about how much design thinking is becoming a part of engineering. They're not two separate things anymore.

So, you have to have both sides to some degree. So, like you were saying that the crackdown on not having art, design, music, all those things is now really starting to come to head because now it's starting to become such an integral part of everything that we do.

So, I appreciate you for supporting that and continuing with what your goal and your passion is. So, I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper, hear a little bit more about the school and what you feel kind of is like your secret sauce and what makes you unique.

Matt Ross 06:39

It's a really good question. So, one of the things I sort of, when I did research, so one idea was, hey, is there an opportunity to build a cool art school. What did cool mean?

Cool to me meant not studying stuff that was 200 years old. Now it's amazing, Van Gogh may be the most compelling painter ever, but who's making art today? And how come we can't name three living artists?

Most people. And one day I'm going to take a camera into Times Square, I'm going to ask people, name three living artists. And that will get you 95% positive.

I started to ask, is there a way to create context for living artists? So, we combined our, we built curriculum that really teaches the art of today, celebrating artists of today.

And we built a curriculum that's constantly changing. So, object-based and every month you focus on a new project, and you, so in our core product, which is called Art Shuffle for kids and adults, we'll spend a month working on a project.

It might be drawing, and it might be a figurative drawing project about a based upon some current artists.

And then we might do a sculptural project, or we might do a painting project or use watercolor.

So, we're constantly shuffling the medium, the reference artists, and it remains fun as opposed to boring.

If you just take a 16-week drawing class, after eight weeks, you might go I'm kind of done with this.

Maybe not, but I think people need variety. It's one of my, it might have to do with the fact that my attention span is sometimes a little shorter than most, and I want to bite off a little piece of every apple rather than just eat that one apple.

And I think it's, so it maybe is fueled a little bit from the way I look through, the lens I look through a little bit.

But, so the Arch Shuffle is a curriculum we built and trademarked, and it's this project-based curriculum that's constantly changing.

Gresham Harkless 08:38

Nice, I appreciate that. And it might be a little bit more on the prism I'm looking through as well, because I always like to have variety and things to change as well.

So, I'm also of the same ilk and cut from the same cloth, it sounds like. So, what I wanted to do is switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Matt Ross 09:01

So effective and efficient. I look at that through two different lenses because my effectiveness is not always efficient. So, what makes me, one of the things I do as it relates to being effective is I kind of empower people a lot. I give people a lot of room. I really focus on really hiring great people and really mentoring them.

It sounds kind of like old hat and textbook stuff, but most people really don't coach. Most people really don't make the people around them better. They give them a task and they hold them accountable to work.

I'm 58. I've been around the block and I've learned a lot. I have an MBA, and I've studied and built businesses, and I've really focused on mentoring a lot.

So, if you come to work for me, I may not be able to do what other folks do well as a CEO, but I spend my time giving my ear, my time, and real serious commitment to making the people better around me, challenging them, not just challenging them to get the project done on time, but challenging them to understand themselves and how to grow.

It would be if you were a golf coach or someone else. I view myself as the person whose primary job is hiring great people to make them better.

And that creates a more self-sustaining sort of business. And it gives me, actually it serves me because then it lets me to get in my box and do things I need to do and really sort of rely on my folks to do what they do well.

Gresham Harkless 10:38

Right. That makes perfect sense. And so, I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget, and this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine and talk to your younger business self, what would you tell yourself?

Matt Ross 10:51

Well, my younger business self was always struggling with patience. So, I was type A, aggressive, get it done. But the things that I was just talking about really have also come with a bit more age and wisdom.

And sometimes, a little patience and a little more sort of kick your foot off the gas a minute, pump the brakes for a minute, listen a little bit longer, ask a few more questions rather than just solving the problem.

Whether that's for a customer or an employee or a strategy question, and I think inevitably it's worked for me early on.

I didn't do it enough. I had all the answers. I was that young Turk, and a lot of bravado grew up on the street in New York and fighting and not fighting in a bad way, but always sort of trying to go forward fast.

And I think as you get older, you'd maybe kind of just modulate that speed a little bit. So, I think people who are super smart and aggressive in type A can also modulate that speed by asking questions and not jumping in and asking more questions, and really listening.

Gresham Harkless 12:09

Yeah. It kind of goes back to knowledge of self, because if you understand that you're that part, then maybe you can tweak that a little bit and have, maybe better results or maybe results you want, or you can just try a different way to get to where you want to be.

Matt Ross 12:22

It also gets people bought into. So, it's not always about you being the smartest guy at the table or the guy with all the answers, or it's my way.

Sometimes you listen a little longer, ask a few more questions, and you realize that someone else had the better idea. So, I've gotten really good at that.

I would say over the last 15 years, it probably took me to 40 to get good. So, for all the young folks listening right now, you've got some time ahead of you to continue growing your toolkit. And young folks don't always wanna hear it. They don't always wanna hear that.

I'm not being the old guy saying, hey, listen to me, I'm the old guy, I'm talking, I'm 58, I'm not that old.

But I'm just at that point where I can care thousands of interactions with employees and people. And for someone like myself, this has been very helpful.

And there's a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of CEOs who are kind of type A driven folks and want to get stuff done fast and best. Sometimes best doesn't always mean best.

Gresham Harkless 13:30

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I appreciate you for sharing that with us. And now I wanted to ask you for my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

We're hoping to have different quote unquote CEOs on this show. So what does being a CEO mean to you?

Matt Ross 13:44

To me, honestly, I think if you're a CEO, I'm going to separate it from entrepreneur for a minute because the idea was mine, but I've been a CEO where the idea wasn't mine. The concept wasn't mine.

I think it is an extension of what I just said, which is, facilitating the best practices around people, strategy, vision, and culture.

Where are we making our bets and why? What's the pathway to getting there? Who's on the bus?

And how do we make the bus a comfortable ride? And that's the culture piece.

Gresham Harkless 14:20

Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate that definition. And I couldn't have told me that was the first time you saying it sounded like a TED talk or something.

So, I appreciate that. And I appreciate your time. What I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there is anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know.

And then, of course, how best they can get a whole review and find out about all the awesome things you're doing.

Matt Ross 14:39

Yes, I mentioned this stuff about Gallup and Clifton before, and I really think people should go there. I should be getting a commission from them, but I'm not, but I keep talking about it. There's a thing about Clifton Strengths.

Don Clifton, who is basically the founder of Gallup and this polling company, probably built more information about what drives employee engagement.

And so, this thing about starting with your strengths, there's a great predictive tool that tells you what your strengths are.

And for those folks who are interested in entrepreneurship, and a lot of folks probably are, that listen to you as well, there's another thing called Born to Build.

And those tools that Gallup has really allows you to better understand yourself as CEO, as operator, what you do well, and probably the most compelling thing is know thyself to cast complementary people around you.

And it's just teams, right? At the end of the day, you know, if you're a shooting guard, you need a point guard. If you're a quarterback, you need a halfback.

In business, it's the same thing, whether you're in a restaurant business or you're in a technology business.

Gresham Harkless 15:54

People that want to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them?

Matt Ross 15:56

So, I put my email out there. It's matt@oneriverschool.com, and I'm available there. And you go to our website at OneRiverSchool.com. So, a little bit more.

Gresham Harkless 16:07

Okay, perfect. And we'll have those links.

Matt Ross 16:09

And I've got a cool Instagram page where you can see all the greatest art in America right now.

Gresham Harkless 16:13

Oh, nice.

Matt Ross 16:14

Celebrate artists and art on Instagram. So, which is fun.

Gresham Harkless 16:18

Nice. Well, we'll definitely make sure to link that as well in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you. But I appreciate your time, Matt. I appreciate all the awesome things that you're doing and you did today. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Matt Ross 16:28

Thanks for having me.

Outro 16:29

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase; it's a community.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at Blue16Media.com. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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