Meet Heather Amelia Johnston – Founder of AstroCat Consulting

Learn how her journey as a piano teacher led to a career of entrepreneurship and mentoring fellow professionals.

As the Founder and Lead Strategist of AstroCat Consulting, Heather Amelia Johnston has combined years of work in varied business fields into one, accessible umbrella by starting a firm specializing in small businesses and helping their leaders achieve ongoing success. 

Heather is an accomplished entrepreneur and innovator in the field of Music Education and Private Instruction, as well as in-home services.  As her hallmark career achievement, Heather developed the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore Lessons In Your Home school (LIYH, D.C.) over 16 years.  She stewarded the DMV school from first inception and launch in 2010, to reaching an annual revenue of $2.5 million in her final years and at the school’s height in 2026.  Heather’s career-mission is to empower other professionals to achieve this same success through their own ventures and share everything she has learned along the way.

Heather holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music from Georgia State University, and her primary instrument is Piano.  In the immediate years after college, she had the opportunity to begin her career fully immersed in the business-world by working with two start-ups based in Atlanta.  A week after graduating from GSU, Heather began an internship in web marketing with an agency called Nebo, and she expanded her teaching studio to 5 days a week with LIYH Atlanta.  In the morning to mid-afternoon, she was in an office and the web marketing world.  Then in the afternoon to evening, she taught private piano lessons, travelling to students’ homes for instruction.  She never would have guessed these initial two roles would eventually merge into a new opportunity.

At the marketing agency, Heather started out as an assistant to the CEO and office manager, and she quickly ascended into different roles and learning opportunities within the company.  She worked first as an e-Commerce Specialist, followed by a stop on the SEO team, and finally settled in as Paid Advertising Specialist (PPC Specialist) for several years.   There, Heather established important foundations for learning the advertising industry and insights that would benefit her future ventures.  She stayed with Nebo for 7 years of its first 10 and gained invaluable experience with advertising, customer service, understanding start up operations, office management, company culture, as well as the principles of good business and quality work in practice.  Heather was Google AdWords certified for all 7 years of her tenure and worked with internationally recognized brands through Nebo’s award-winning, paid advertising team.

Then in 2010, Heather had the opportunity to start her own venture in her primary field of Music Education by launching one of the very first franchises for Lessons In Your Home:  a music school that specializes in on-location and in-home, subscription-based music lessons.  Heather’s lessons in Atlanta were taught through Lessons In Your Home, and she realized the potential of this business opportunity to open her career path and become an entrepreneur.  In June of 2010, Heather moved to Northern Virginia (outside of Washington, D.C.) from Atlanta to start Lessons In Your Home’s third US location.  She became the first external Director and partner to the Founder of Lessons In Your Home, as well as the first independently managed and launched branch.

From 2010 through 2026, Heather grew the Lessons In Your Home, D.C. program at a record-breaking rate.  In 2021, she became the very first member of the organization to ever surpass 600 weekly students in current enrollment with their location.  She continued to trailblaze for the organization to be the first to reach the height of 850 recurring students per week across a staff of 85 professional music teachers from 2023 to 2026.  She was also the only Director and franchise partner in Lessons In Your Home’s history to maintain a single location for 16 years, from inception to the max capacity of the school’s infrastructure.  LIYH D.C. remains one of the largest commercial private music lessons programs on the East Coast today. 

In her time with LIYH, Heather introduced Google Advertising and set up the school’s initial AdWords campaigns in 2010, which became a huge revenue builder and gateway to continued growth for the organization into 2026.  She started the addition of instruction-based training programs for teachers in 2014, which led to groundbreaking success throughout the Lessons In Your Home corporation since implementation.  Heather also pioneered and tested the role of “Director” from inception through all stages of growth, which is a critical role in company’s successful local operations and leadership.

Through her work with Lessons In Your Home and mentoring independent music teachers throughout her career, Heather has found a passion for helping businesses and professionals thrive within their industries.  It’s amazing how much owners of personal training businesses, life coaches, and landscapers have in common with music teachers and any professional performing their trade as a recurring service.  Though our skills vary, the concepts are very much the same.  It is through identifying these connections and the universal-ness of our challenges that we become innovators.  Heather’s unique interdisciplinary expertise and experience allows her to see throughlines between different industries and opportunities to create the biggest impact.

In the Summer of 2024, Aubrey Lisowski joined forces with Heather Amelia Johnston, and they became AstroCat Consulting – a 2-person management team with the mission to help music schools and other small businesses achieve the same success they created for LIYH D.C., Workhouse Arts Center, and others.  Through their combined teamwork and strategy with Lessons In Your Home, D.C. from 2024 through 2026, AstroCat was able to scale the school’s local operations to its next level and prime it for its next milestone, as well as sharpen workflow processes and create synergy and community within the staff. 

Today, Heather and Aubrey work as a team to bring these same results to a wide array of organizations – from music schools to sales teams, yoga studios, catering businesses, and more!