Welcome to ECE biography siege wisdom for child care leaders. My name is Tony
D. Austinino. I’m the founder and CEO of Inspire Care 360. In this series of
exclusive podcast, we will meet with tenur and growing leaders in the child care field. Typically operating medium
to very large childare operations from tens of schools to thousands of schools.
Our incentive is to learn what has been the path and traits that make
outstanding leaders. Join us to glean the sage wisdom from these experienced
individuals. Now, let’s get started with ECE biography, Sage Wisdom for child
care leaders. [Music] When you think about training, it really
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tip and trick about ECE University. Welcome to ECE CEO biography sage wisdom
for child care leaders. I am your host Tony D. Austinino, founder and CEO of Inspire Care 360. Over the last 10
years, we have been bringing solutions and support to the early care and education industry to focus on our why
to help develop the next generation of amazing children. Today’s guest is Joe
Kchner, CEO of Primrose Schools, which provides premier early education and
care for families in more than 530 locations across the US. I am excited
for this. I’ve been looking to have Joe come on this program for a while. Joe started with Primrose back in 1990 and
became president and CEO in 1999 under her leadership. Its growth from just
four schools in Atlanta to a national leader in early ch uh childcare education has been amazing. She founded
the Primrose Schools Children’s Foundation and launched the Primrose Promise initiative raising over 5.5
million for underserved children to date. Joe is a longtime advocate for highquality education and care in the
early education space, co-chairing the early education and care consortium to
help shape public policy and advocacy in our field. Under her leadership, Primrose pioneered a model that blends
purposeful play with leading and learning, becoming the first early
education franchise to earn corporate accreditation. She is a strong voice for
public private partnership and champions a mixed delivery model believing families deserve both choice and quality
when it comes to care. Joe has been recognized with multiple honors including IFA entrepreneur of the year
in 2023, two gold Stevie awards for female executive of the year and a lifetime achievement back in 2022. EY
entrepreneur of the year national finalist in the resilience category. Joe
helped launch the West Lakes Early Learning Center, an innovative model that brings together early education,
health, and social services all under one roof. She’s now working to replicate that model and other communities
throughout the foundation. Joe’s journey into the space started with personal challenge many parents face, finding
quality child care. On her desk, she keeps a plaque that reads, “I’m still
learning.” a Michelangelo quote she also gifts to new executives to promote growth, curiosity, and collaboration.
I’m very excited for this conversation today. Please join me in welcoming Joe
Kchner to the ECE CEO biography. Here we go. Joe, how are you today?
I’m doing great. How are you, Tony? I am doing great. We almost act as if we haven’t had a pre- call, but we actually
have had a little bit of pre- call here and it was wonderful to catch up with you. And uh she is uh I’m talking to Joe
who’s down in sunny Atlanta right now. Uh that’s probably an understatement. It is an understatement. It’s fine.
And I have the pleasure to be up in the Fingerlakes region region today. So I have a little bit cooler on her. But
we’re going to just jump right on in. So with that said, Joe, thanks for joining us on ECE CEO biography. Um, and I want
to start off just on a little bit of a a lighter note. you know, when you were younger and your younger days, not
saying that you’re not already still young, but in our younger days, uh, when
you were actually more of, um, you know, children, adolescence, teenage years,
was there ever anything that pointed to the fact that you’d find yourself in leadership or anything that you saw in
yourself that said, I might have capabilities in the area to help move
something forward? Well, this is going to be a funny answer. It
Okay. My first job as a president when I was 15. Wow.
Was the president of the Beatles Club in Oh, wow. in Ohio.
And I loved it. Of course, I was very passionate. I thought I was going to marry Paul McCartney someday.
The problem is he just never had a chance to meet me. Exactly. I’ll tell you that. Linda messed it all up for you.
I know. But um you know that was my first leadership role and um it was
something I was passionate about. I loved their music and then found the found myself in an opportunity once I
joined the club that they needed a leader and I thought well let’s go ahead and do it. I’ve never done it but it was
fun and I enjoyed it. So I think that really had something to do with my confidence and lack of lack of fear. I
would say when I had the opportunity to become the CEO of Primmers, I didn’t start out to be a CEO.
Sure. But it is interesting that you mentioned that uh being the president of a Beatles club. When you saw that
opportunity, you know, within you, did you just have the confidence or was it
just a maybe a lack of understanding the positives, the the south sides of it,
the things that may, you know, be become difficult, things of that nature at that age, or was it something that you were
starting to learn once you got in and saying, you know what, this is something I really can do. So I’ I’ve unintentionally followed a
path that became intentional and that is being involved with things you’re passionate about, right? So I was very
passionate about their music and and really a very strong fan. And so the
passion led me to not have the fear. Okay. the passion of the opportunity to
be engaged with like-minded people and um and then you know I didn’t know
what I didn’t know and I I’m a learner. I’ve always been a continuous learner so I knew there’d be opportunity to learn.
Yeah. Well, and it’s interesting that you say that because we do we will obviously talk more about Primrose and
overall your passion for different things because you um obviously have done different things with different
foundations and the like. And I think passion is really important. When I got
into the child care business myself, I had no intention of getting in. Um but
my passion actually came from viewing one or two schools and recognizing, wow,
there’s a lot of work that could go on here. but there could be a really big outcome. And that’s where I started
getting my why on it. When you were young back then, who were your biggest influences?
Well, I went to a Catholic school. My parents um were both Catholic. So the
school that I went to um the nuns that were there were very influential with
me. But the culture within the school was very much about giving back and
making a difference in the world. that your life was an important part of the
ecosystem of of the community and the country and that you had a
responsibility to find what you could be good at. And at the same time, whatever
you did, you also had a responsibility to give back. So that that was instilled
within me. And then I just loved I said already I loved continual learning and I loved that the teachers were teaching.
Yeah. the constant I never didn’t want to go to school and I loved learning everything I could learn and so learning
and education was important to me and then the I would say the fact that I was
I loved watching the teachers teach obviously the people they were teaching were children and I had a spark for
children a real spark for children and I’ve always had it
when you look back at it was there any, you know, where you gleaned off of one
person, whether it be a teacher, a non, a family member, anything that you sort
of remember back where you got some aha moments about engaging with people and
how to best engage with people that started to evolve who you were as a person. So my dad was a a
telecommunications engineer and he uh he too was very passionate about his work
and he I wouldn’t say was really a workaholic but he was very very engaged in his work and I would listen to him
talk about it at dinner in the evenings and um he gave me a book um a Dale
Carnegie book okay that he had read and he’d underlined it and it was highlighted And I I can’t
remember the name of the book at the moment, but um I remember reading that and just devouring it. And of course
that was all about interpersonal relationships, right? Yeah. I think it was it uh how to win friends and influence people.
How to win friends and influence people. Absolutely. That was it. Yeah. If that’s not a cornerstone like I
already gave that to my boys too and they’re like who’s this guy universal truths in that even though the world
changes as much as it changes what’s you know the real things that drive success
are the same. Exactly. Exactly. And you know and it’s
interesting because a lot of that the whole foundation of that book is really about how to build trust with others.
That’s right. Right. That’s what a lot of it is. And I’m assuming as we get into this a little bit more, I’m going to find out a
little bit about your ascension into there. When you look at going through
those more formative years as to what you were doing and what you wanted to
do, you said you started engaging and getting more into like that of teaching
in young children. Did you know out of the gate that this was likely the kind of field you were going to be into or
were you headed another direction and then took a turn? No, I had I had no I
was I wasn’t I had no ambition to be a teacher. Um and I didn’t think that I
would be involved in education. I had another passion and that was fashion. Okay.
My my direction when I graduated was to go to a junior college that taught
fashion merchandising. I thought I would go to New York and be a buyer. That’s what I wanted to do. And um I I loved
that experience, the learning of it. But as soon as I got out of school and went to work, I did not love the hours of the
retail business. It was, you know, seven days a week and and of course when you’re on the ground floor of that,
you’re working, you know, from 10 or 9 to 9 at night. And I I really have
always been also very strategic. So I couldn’t see myself doing that the rest of my life. And um but I loved the
marketing part of the the courses that I took and the marketing that was embedded
in the fashion merchandising, setting up the products, producing the products. I
I just went in that direction and um then I met my husband. We lived in Ohio
and we moved to Atlanta and I began to look for careers in marketing and um I h
I ended up a manufacturing sales rep for Proctor Sillex Corporation and I
traveled the southeast. My husband was a pharmaceutical rep and he traveled the southeast and um without children that
was a wonderful life. We both had a lot of fun. But as the thing that spark of
children that I told you, I wanted to be a mom. I really wanted to be a mom. It was important to me. And so once we got
to the south, I we we got pregnant. And my mother never worked. So I had never
experienced child care, but we had no family infrastructure. And when uh after
the baby was born and I’d been home for a few months and decided I was going to go back to work and I started to look at
child care centers and I I literally was appalled at what I saw. They weren’t
very professional. Of course, this was in the um 80s, late 80s. They weren’t
they weren’t very professional and they also just didn’t meet the needs much of
a working parent that wanted early education. They were minimum for the most part minimum wage babysitting and
not very nice facilities to the point where I I just didn’t see how I was going to be able to leave my child. So I
I looked at all the other opportunities of people working in in the neighborhood
who might keep my child. Um, I I looked at bringing someone in my home. I tried
all those and then I decided I’ll go back to what I knew, which was church and and a Catholic school. They had
church preschools and I was like, “Okay, that’s what I’m going to do.” Um, the church preschool though was only half
day. I knew my child was safe and there was good values there, but there wasn’t any early learning. It wasn’t early
education. and this passion for learning. I knew I didn’t I didn’t know it from a research base, but I just
inherently knew those first five years were important. Today, of course, I know about brain development. I know so much
more, but back then it was just in inherently I knew that that was important for my child and it wasn’t
there either. So, I had two children two and a half years apart. So for for about
eight years I I worked and I juggled all that schedule of who could pick my child
up at noon and go take them home and then if they were sick or they were traveling I had to cancel my
appointments and and I started my own company for that reason to have the flexibility because my husband didn’t
have that flexibility to have that flexibility to be able to when somebody couldn’t pick them up pick them up or if
somebody was sick take care of him. So that 8 and a half years was was I just didn’t ever foresee that having children
was going to have that much disruption to my life and never feeling peaceful
about it because I felt like continuity in their day was very disrupted from
getting up and taking them to a church preschool to picking them up to going or letting somebody else take them and it
wasn’t always the same person and it was just not a very good situation. So, I’d
never thought about child care as a business, but then I happened to meet the founders. I started my own company.
Okay. I did work marketing consulting work um for midsize companies here in Atlanta.
And I founder of Primrose. They had three half-day private preschools.
And in that process, they asked me to come visit them and see their schools. They heard me speak at a uh Chamber of
Commerce event where I was talk I was doing a project with the Chamber of Commerce uh to recruit major developers
to the north side of Atlanta. And I was speaking about quality of life and they were going to do these plan communities
and where people could live, work, and play. And that quality of life was important for all three. And I told my
story about the lack of quality of life with children that are young if there isn’t an infrastructure there. and the
founders were in the audience and they came up and said we’d love you to visit our schools. We’d like to be part of this project. And when I said schools,
they said schools and I’m I said do you mean a daycare center? And they said no, it’s a school. Um by then my children
were in elementary school. But that’s how I met the founders of Primrose. Oh wow. You know, it’s interesting
because your marketing background, starting a marketing company, and then
really sort of identifying when you went in and you saw those different schools,
what resonated with you when you saw those particular schools and why did you
really want to engage with them? Well, it wasn’t again that wasn’t
planned, but it planted a seed. Sure. my personal challenges of what was
right for my children. When the founders I met them and they asked me to come visit, I already was preconditioned that
it was going to be a minimum wage babysitting environment that I had seen. And from the minute I drove on to the
campus, and it was a campus of multiple buildings. Um, the minute I drove on, I knew it was
something different. It was beautifully landscaped and you got out of the car and walked in. It smelled good. It
looked good. There was a professional person there greeting me in a beautiful office. And then she knew I was coming.
She knew my name. And she took me through the schools and let me see what
they were doing. And what I saw was happy children engaged. teachers engaged
music and art and singing and play and joy to and it was consistent from room
after room, classroom after classroom after classroom. I knew there was some intentionality about how did they bring
that to life because that’s not normal. Yeah. No, especially back then, right?
They had to be doing something. Um when the tour was over and I had the opportunity to talk to them afterwards,
they said, “Well, we invited you here. One, we wanted you to see our school, but part of it is you have a marketing
background and we have three schools like this. There’s about a thousand children in the schools, but they’re all
half day. And we’re getting all these calls from working moms who want to know, can you give me someone who can
take my child home in the afternoon?” And the light bulb went on. It was my
very experience, right? And they said, “We think that we could get licensed by
the state and wrapped child care services around our early learning model
and we believe we would meet the need a big demand on the north side of Atlanta
and we’d like you to do the research to tell us if you think you could do that.” So I did, but I already knew if if they
could get licensed and wrap child care services, they would fill those facilities. And so within 18 months,
they engaged me within 18 months, three half-day facilities with all the fixed costs already there. Three half-day
facilities were 90% full-time, which changed the financial model dramatically. dramat for a full day
already all the operational expenses the personnel for the most part just adding a little bit on for time
right and so that’s how I got involved as a consultant first and then uh Mr.
Irwin, who came from a background in retail, merchandising, federated
department stores, multi-chain, multi-management, brand strategy. Um, he
came to me and he said, I have a problem. Can you meet me? I’m like, yes. and he said, “I bought a fourth piece of
property, but my wife Marcy will doesn’t want me to open another school because she has relationships and built trust
with the teachers, with the families, with the communities.” And it’s three is enough. She doesn’t want to do anymore.
But I’ve already bought the land and I the only way I can figure that I can build this fourth school is if I
franchise it.” And I I remember looking at him like he had two heads. He said,
“You’re not usually negative, Joe. Look, think about this. If if we really could replicate this, then we could do 10 more
schools in Atlanta.” And I and he said, “But I need you to go do the research. You study child care, early education,
franchising. I’ll give you a month, and if you come back and say it’s a bad idea, I’ll just put the land up for
sale.” And I won’t even tell Marcy because I don’t want to get a divorce over this.
No pressure, Joe, but I did the research and I I knew it could be more than 10.
He had a map right where he wanted to put 10 schools. And I remember saying to him, Paul, if you can do 10 and you can
replicate exactly what you and Marcy have. If you can do that, then it isn’t just 10. It would be something that
could some be a national brand. And then he looked at me like I had two heads. And he said, “Joe, you got to crawl
before you walk. You got to walk before you run. And you’re trying to fly. Could you just help me franchise?”
Well, sounds like he was reading your personality pretty right. Right. He did. So that’s the journey. That’s
how it happened. And then I did the I did the research and set up the franchise sales and marketing strategy.
Um his wife had the operational experience. He had the finance and the development background. And um once they
opened that first school, it was full within a year. Wow. And we know that you folks now are
up over 530 schools throughout the nation, which is amazing. And
congratulations for what an achievement starting Well, you started in 1990 with Primrose.
Yes. And uh when did the franchising piece really start to take off after
your first school? Obviously. So the the actually the first franchise
owner was a parent in that school who was a franchise and before we actually
had the franchise agreement developed and the sales strategy put in place and
the they came to us and said, “We would love to do this. Could you could we be your first franchise owner?”
Oh wow. They were our second franchise owner. So would you could we be your franchise owner? So we had that one
under construction by the time we got the agreement completed but they opened as a kind of a quasi partnership and
then the first couple signed a franchise agreement and then the second one became a franchise too. So, and it it moved
pretty rapidly in Atlanta because there was such a demand and most up up until maybe 15 years. 90% of the franchise
owners were parents in the schools. Well, I’m not surprised. I was living in Atlanta from 87 to 96 because I wanted
to get out by the Olympics. And uh I remember though it was like
people like every U-Haul in the country was moving to Atlanta at that time. Right. It was just a it was a wonderful
time. What a what a boom, Tom. When when you look back at it, because we do have a number of people who we’ve engaged
with and we’ve talked to and we’ve seen who listen to the podcast to who are on
the cusp of wanting to do franchising and it’s a it’s a different world now for sure. Um, and we know that it’s not
as easy. when you were going through the the beginning of the franchising
business, I I assume there’s issues that you don’t know what you didn’t know and you had to figure things out and there’s
legal considerations and all those type of things. What did you find is the biggest challenges of helping develop
the first franchises with Primrose when you were, you know, even outside the
company as to you coming into the company? Well, if you have a great concept and you think it can be
franchised, it’s got to be packaged in a way that someone who’s never done it can
implement it. So, the biggest challenge initially was packaging it right
putting putting the content for the curriculum, the marketing and and clearly first and foremost safety and
security. So your operational procedures um you know your finance all the
different aspects of a business any business um needs to be integrated and
systematized in a way that you can teach another person how to implement it well.
And the good news is we didn’t start out, you know, with a big loan and a lot
of stress on the owners and of the business because they had three businesses that were thriving and doing
very well. So we took our time in the first five years and we opened one and
then the next year we opened two and then the next year we opened three and we took the time and continually
uh assessed where the opportunities were to strengthen our systemic approach that
then helped us when we decided to start accelerating the growth. But all our
growth was in Atlanta probably for the first five years. Um, so we didn’t try to just award franchises anywhere and
try to support them. We were strategic in that too. Create a market first where
you can support it while you’re learning all the things you didn’t know and and need to know to be successful because in
franchising as you know unit level economics or the school’s financial success is everything.
Sure. Yeah. You can’t replicate that financial success and keep that brand
continuing to replicate the model you initially developed. And then your core model has to keep evolving too, which
means your systems have to keep evolving. And so that complexity of running a successful business and then
innovating and driving continuous improvement in the core business and then constantly evolving the franchised
model takes intentionality and very strategic.
Yeah. And so that brings up some kind of questions, you know, whether it be franchising
or building out additional corporate offices. You know, I have a friend locally here who talked to me about
getting into the childcare after I had my own schools up here in Western New York. And you know, we had breakfast,
number of conversations. He decided to get in and acquired two schools. Now he’s at about 15 schools. Very proud of
what he’s been able to do with where he’s gone. He’s he’s our friendly
competition in the area and he’s well s uh surpassed what I was doing and he’s
he’s done a wonderful job. Um but what advice and guidance as people start to
go from that one location and start to evaluate and go into others. We have a lot of different pressures like you know
after co all of the stuff the cost of land and supplies have just gone through
the roof. I just know in the past two years alone, you know, you’re talking about adding additional millions for
developing a brand new property, right? We’re not talking tens of thousands or hundreds. We’re talking millions. And
it’s crazy for I’m sure you folks in both franchising, but also in developing
your own, you know, corporate approach where someone is doing their own schools, whether they have equity
investment or they’re doing it themselves. What kind of advice would you give for those aspiring leaders who
are trying to expand? So market you know postco I always think about
looking for opportunities that exist to do things differently when you hit a
wall like that which there is a wall right now on being able to get a good return on investment if you’re not with
something that’s already a proven model or you don’t have scale and you can’t reduce costs in other ways to a business
right um but in in the case of today postcoid
I’m you’re you’re I’m sure aware of this, but there is probably 80 at least
80% of the child care delivered in America today is by an independent
operator and many of those never started in the early education business. They
were child care centers. So you can have a child care center that takes good quality care of children, but they don’t
have early education expertise. And today with all the research on brain development, more uh states are
requiring that the child care centers have early education. So there’s a lot of independent operators getting out of
the business. And to me, if I was looking at this and I just had three, four, 10, 15, and I wanted to take
advantage. I would think about, you know, what are the independent operators? Can I get to know them? And
if do they fit the price point of the model that I have? Sure. Would I be able to acquire those and
convert them then or or acquire them and some people do multi-branded models. I I
have three different brands or there is some value to keeping a brand name if it
has a lot of legacy within a community. Yeah. Like for instance, I have Inspire
Learning and Child Care in addition to the back-end software company Inspire Care 360. I’ve had six locations. I’m
actually down to three of them. One of them though I acquired as Cran Campus and we just changed it to Inspire Cran
Campus because there was so much passion behind it. We had generations of families who actually came through there.
So, you know, when uh parents would come in, they would say, “You’re not going to change the name.” it because I remember
going to Cran campus as a kid and I was like I I just haven’t been able to
we’ve gone as far as we could but I I hear what you’re saying. Um when you when you think of you know and you look
at this Joe from where you guys are going and where you’ve come from. Uh
talk to me a little bit about the people side of the business. As we all know typically the secret sauce is in the
people. You know, I’m a my background is marketing also, so I have a lot of passion for marketing like I’m sure you
do, but I have a gut feeling that your success is oftentimes a lot. And I’m sure you would pontificate this about
the people you work with. So people first obviously if you’re in a
service business, I don’t care how good your model is, how brilliant your ideas are, if you can’t bring them to life, it
doesn’t matter. And if you can’t bring them to life consistently over and over and over again, that’s the beauty of
franchising because the concept is you get the right people, you put them in with the right model, they can replicate
it, then you get that consistency and then you can grow. And and so in the
service business for us, it’s always been children first. It’s that personal
passion of children first. If you if you make every decision is this right for
the child and the family then if you deliver what you promise to
the consumer and if you can be differentiated for us we were early childhood educators we were a half-day
private preschool when we started. So we didn’t have to take a child care center and convert it to an early education and
child care center. We took a early education school and wrapped child care
around it. That that’s the difference and I think really the essence of what makes primrose. We’re deep deep in our
DNA. We are educators that use franchising as the method to replicate and scale our model. And we driven
passionately driven to children and families first and the teachers who
bring it to life. And for us too, it’s the leadership teams that are leading in
every one of those schools. And the only way we get that replication of the quality that we want is by recruiting
franchise owners who are aligned with what we believe. And our belief statement is who children become is as
important as what they know. Wow. So we recruit people for who you are is
as important as what you know. Interesting. You know, when you give guidance to franchise owners and your
team provides that guidance too, whether they’re their own director or whether
they have a director on staff when you talk to them about interviewing and
recruiting, what is your overall guidance about their recruiting process?
not so much where to do it, but when you’re interviewing and talking to people, obviously passion is one of them
for those interviewees that they’re looking to bring in. What thoughts or guidance do you have as you have, you
know, leaders, owner, operators out there who are trying to build up even maybe just one school and really trying
to get the right people on their team? What guidance would you give them? Build trusted relationships first, which
is have a conversation and ask questions and then listen.
And then as you do, as you’re doing with me, what is the why? Why did you feel like this? Why did you do this? that if
you talk to someone long enough before you start into the the hard questions of
you know can you work these hours and you know all all the things that you
need to know in terms of uh recruitment and retention as far as a position itself. It is really important for them
to understand you care who they are and what they know and what they believe not
just what they can do. Right? And so when you try to find out about what they believe, are you around
situational awareness? Are you around storytelling? What happens to be the way
that you like to consume that from when you’re talking with someone to get to their why?
Interpersonal skills, right? Because the number one way a child learns is through
adult child interaction. I mean they can learn many ways but the thing that has the greatest richest
continual learning is when a child can connect with a teacher or a child can connect with a parent. The research
tells us that. So if that’s what we’re looking for is people either people
leaders that can recruit those people or those actual people themselves who are really who’s who are delivering the
service. If you can connect interpersonally with them and have a conversation and and they’re able to
express who they are and what they think and how they feel and also ask questions that are it’s the questions they ask
too, what’s important to them that buil builds that interpersonal relationship.
And if you can do that very easily, those are probably going to be the people what if if you talk about values
and what’s important to them, what what would they like to do, how would they like to grow, what kind of environment
do they want to be in? And if they talk about loving to work with other people,
loving to interact with children, loving to be in environments that are joyful
and happy, then you’ve got the person who will be a spark in a classroom, which is what you need to deliver on the
promise. Absolutely. Absolutely. And from there, and you talk about so much about that
interpersonal connection, how would you characterize your own leadership style?
Well, I’m a purpose-driven leader, but I’m also a strategic visionary. I I I
look for opportunities. And then behind behind the passion is strategy. And I
think strategy is so important. And it’s not that I’m an expert at strategy. It’s that I’ve learned from every every way
that I can, whether it’s joining other organizations like the International Franchise Association or reading books.
My two favorite books are built built to last and good to great. Yeah.
The speed of trust. Those are all books that are are deeply deeply steeped in case studies of other
people’s successes, what they did right, what they did wrong. And you learn over time there are consistent things that
drive success. And it starts with the people. Yeah. Absolutely. And so when you talk
about strategy, some people out there think of, you know, there’s really two sides. There’s the tactical thing and
then there’s the strategic element. And in our industry, one of the bigger
challenges we have, especially when we’re small, we don’t have a ton of investment dollars and there’s no real
backing. A lot of us proverbbally are just keeping the wheels on the bus, right? And we’re trying to make every
day happen. We’re trying to stay in ratio. We’re trying to make sure that the health department doesn’t come in,
you know, and we’re trying to make sure, well, we’re not trying to make sure they don’t come in. They don’t come in and find anything that would close us down,
you know, and so there is a number of things that almost force a lot of owner
operators to be tactical. How do you you know and and I think you have to look
back because I know now you’ve built a wonderful organization with some probably wonderful leaders who support
uh the vision that you folks have. How do you think you know if you’re looking at those folks and saying you
know and you probably do this with franchise owners too to sometimes you have to move away from just the tactical
so you can look at the bigger picture you can look at the strategy. What is your guidance around there for people?
Well, the leaders of our schools work on the business and not in the business.
Right? In the business, you don’t have time to work on the business. And if you’re not
working on the business, you’re not assessing what’s working, what’s not, and thinking about how to do it more
effectively, more efficiently, more coste effectively. um or and and really in this business,
my my belief is you fill a school and everything else is right.
You have but if you’re if you’re trying to pay the rent and you don’t have the
children in the school, then it is a constant battle, right? And you can’t you can’t save yourself to success,
meaning financially save your save money, save money, save money. That’s just not. So don’t go into a business
business if you’re not so if you are so underfunded that you can’t do what it
takes to make it successful. It whatever whatever your model is at whatever price
point it is. Know that you can actually deliver whatever it is you say you’re
going to deliver and make a profit. If you can’t make a profit, then you get into the tactic side of the business and
it’s a vicious flywheel and you never get out of it and you don’t have time to work on your business because you’re
literally working in it. So, it’s a complex business. It’s not a simple business and one one school, one center
on its own depending on what your income is that you’re used to in general um in
a startup is hard to do. That’s why franchising has been so successful. Sure. You don’t have to be a startup. You can
take the investment and someone’s done all that for you and has continued to keep it competitive versus trying to
start up on your own, which is why there are so many franchises in so many industries.
Yeah. And it makes an awful lot of sense because it really gives you a kickstart. And more than that, it gives you that
whole back end and office support. So it keeps you focused narrowly so you don’t
go wandering off into the woods as I like to say. Think about we have an IT department, right? We have an AI department. We have
a marketing department, right? We have an operational department. We have a finance department. We have all of these
services that an independent operator wouldn’t have on their own to pull on
with all the systems and processes there to provide to them. And we have scale so
we can bring cost effective per um um purchasing to them.
Sure. And so I you can tell I’m very passionate about franchising but I didn’t start out to want to be in the
franchise business or be a franchiseor. I was passionate about the business itself.
All this just came over time. But there was a point at which I had to step back
and say when I became the CEO of the company, what is it that we’re going to
do? Are we just going to be a regional company or are we going to be what you thought it could be someday, a national
brand? And if it’s going to be a national brand, this is this is strategy and vision. What does that look like?
And how do I get there? And and it wasn’t like I had to go figure it out myself. There’s other other industries
with other successful brands that have done it. So just go study what they did
and figure out what is it that the ones that are the best at it do and then
replicate it, deploy it and customize it to your model. I’m glad you just set the
whole purpose for our podcast today because you are the expert and one of
the experts in this industry and we’ve we’ve had some wonderful people on and you’re you’re just you know articulating
a lot of those things when you you know what I look at there’s a few things that you just said that I want to play off
of. One thing that you mentioned is you have an AI department. Um and I have some background in AI.
We’ve developed an AI tool for regulations for all 50 states to be able to quickly go to all that. How I’m not
going to ask you sort of what your AI department does, but how do you think AI will be influencing the future of ECE
and child care? How do you think that’s going to play? And where do you think where are your cautionary tales as to
where you think the advantages are? Well, I don’t think the robots are going to take over the classroom. I do not
believe that but they are coming and they don’t have hearts. You know that robots don’t have hearts. So
interpersonal skills that we talked about are not going to come from a robot.
Right? So we happen to be in one of those industries where I don’t think we’re
going to be as disrupted as some others will. But obviously there’s significant
opportunities to use AI whether you’re talking about curriculum development,
actual lesson planned content or you’re talking about marketing strategies or research that you want to do um in you
know and all the back-end services that are getting automated today like in the accounting departments, the finance
departments, the reportings and dashboards and those kind of things. AI is just taking it to a whole new level,
right? And fairly quickly, too. Um, but there are places where I AI cannot
replace the human skills. So, we know this. We know that the I’ll call them,
you know, we have IQ school IQ skills and then we have EQ. And it’s the EQ
skills that we know in the 21st well in the rest of this century and and for the future. It’s the human skills that will
be so much needed and AI can’t replace those. Yeah. And I think that’s really
important because I know there’s a lot of people who are resistant because of not understanding and not wanting to
understand. So there’s a lot of value in understanding how you could take advantage of it because one of the
things you mentioned earlier that I think was very strong and important is an operator to work on the business and
I sort of made a mention of the book the E-Myth revisited and um it’s a really good one because he’s like are you the
one gave that to a new a new uh we have a new chief marketing officer I just gave that book to her on Monday. It’s another
one favorite things. There you go. Yep. are are you the one wearing the hat behind the counter or
you know are you the one who’s thinking about the business and when you think about that because you were saying you
know you should be really looking at the operations and I think it’s very important because we’re we are getting
to a very quick it’s not a crossroad but it is this it is another uh and I
wouldn’t say an evolution it’s almost a revolution how quick AI is ascending upon us and with that there are so many
opportunities to manage back office costs like you mentioned from accounting to
finance to legal to marketing and everything in between but the EQ portion
of that is missing things will fall apart. So there is significant value of
taking advantage of some of those operational components of it. Um, when
you look at, you know, because of your strength and your background in marketing, when you when you look to
other people who are starting to build out their schools
and and this is a little bit more tactical, but I think it’s because of your marketing brain. I want to ask you that. What should be their thoughts
around the marketing side of investment and marketing? A lot of people love to go by word of mouth. that that word of
mouth will get them to the next level and sometimes it can but I think it’s also difficult from your marketing brain
what do you say Joe as to guidance of how to invest in marketing and look to get a return for your company through
how you market yourself well obviously the internet you know anything to do with today’s consumer
does word of mouth is still the number one way that parents make a choice who
do they trust the people they know who have children and where are they and what do they think about the location,
right? Is it’s that hasn’t changed. We first started talking about universal truths and that’s one of them. Safe,
happy, and learning didn’t change. It’s not going to change. That’s what people want to hear. But but once they have
that word of mouth, the first thing they do is they pick up their phone, their cell phone mobile and they then start
searching the name of the location and they search, you know, testimonials and
they go to the website and they look at, you know, they look at the name of the owner and they look up the name of the
company and they go to LinkedIn and they So, you have to have a presence online. It’s it’s not optional if you’re in this
business or any business anymore. You have to have a presence online and your
social space, your social media, that’s social media is earned and social media
is so important because the the ability for other parents to talk about you and
for you to talk about yourself and tell your story is what connects. It’s the human side of the business. There’s if
it if it were me and those are only dollars I had, that’s what I would do. I would make sure that I had a incredibly
powerful internet presence. Yeah. And you have to develop a website on your own. You know, there’s platforms
you can get that can help you create a website. There’s all kinds of resources to help you in understanding the the
media mix for marketing and how to use both paid and earned and
owned marketing online. because it can scale. It can scale. Whereas, if you’re
buying advertising, it doesn’t scale to that level. And that’s where the consumer is going to go.
And one of the things that, you know, and I’m going to pay you a big compliment right now, even though you’ve
more than deserved it from me, is Primrose has a brand and likely has a
brand experience at the very top of the game in the industry. And I haven’t been
in a Primrose school. Next time in Atlanta, I’m gonna call you up. I’m gonna bring out to lunch. I’m gonna have you bring me into a school. Okay.
And I’d love to see it. But the brand precedes itself, which is super
important. And the only way for me to get that is through the brand experience
that I see through levels of marketing. And that doesn’t mean that someone is pushing a story on me. That isn’t true.
All it means is whether it be testimonials, whether it be visual experiences, things of that nature,
you’ve created an image in my mind about what Primrose is. You know, sort of like how Nike or American Express or Apple or
some of the biggest brands have created an image that when you hear the name, you all of a sudden think of something.
Primrose has done an amazing job of that, of who they are and what they
believe in. So when you look at that brand experience and cultivating that
brand from a leadership perspective, what’s important to you in cultivating a brand?
Uh authenticity and consistency, but most emotional connection,
the emotional connection. Explain that a little bit more with the emotional connection. I think I have it,
but for those who might be hearing going, “Okay, what does she mean?” Well, you know, whether it’s visual or verbal
or um or content messaging, it needs to connect emotionally. If if
you have just a second or two to connect with someone, the words that are there
or said and or the picture that you see for us, it’s trust.
Yeah. How can you bring the word the word trust to life, right? Because at the end
of the day, that’s the number one thing a person you’re leaving your child with a stranger. Can I trust them? And if you
can’t reflect visually, verbally, content, messaging,
if you can’t reflect that in your marketing, then you’re you get caught up in the we
have a lot of people in in not just in child care, but in almost any kind of marketing thinks that they have to put
everything they can possibly say about their business, you know, in a in an ad or say everything they can immediately.
And in reality is it’s an emotional connection. And you’re building trust. And the power of trust is is in the
world we live in today more than ever before. The word trust is so critical.
Absolutely. because I think it’s been broken so many times by so many that we
value it so greatly, you know, and just when you talk about that, Joe, I just
imagine driving down like I75 or I 85 and seeing billboards and seeing the
billboards where they want to mention every possible thing about their product as to the one that might just have a
child in the arms of a caretaker and not even a word on the billboard, you know, other than maybe, you know,
who it is in the bottom right hand corner. Which one is going to have much more of an impact? I think we all know
it has nothing to do about the words. No. In fact, you know, we have a very good mentor here that we’ve watched over
the years here in Atlanta and that is Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A. Absolutely. Open six days a week and they outperform
all other brands in the same category that are open seven days a week. So, that’s pretty powerful. But what you
know, their cows, they have had the Chick-fil-A cows. I don’t know, 15 or 20 years. And and when you see those those
billboards and you see the ads, it’s there’s an emotional connection. Yeah.
Many times it’s not even talking about chicken sandwiches. Exactly. A chicken it’s a good chicken sandwich,
but it’s a chicken sandwich. Yeah. Emotional connection to the way that they built that brand and market that
brand. And I think it’s really important because that is one of the areas that that that brand purpose and that brand
identity um I think is something that helps you get there and I think you folks have done a great job with it. I
want to because we actually have some limited time. We only have a few minutes left. Believe it or not, we already blew through all this time
so fast. I don’t know how but I we I’m just learning a ton. So I I’m the thief here
I guess in the conversation. I’m b I’m burgling everything you have. Um but I I
want to go to sort of the you know the bigger challenges maybe in as you
ascended as a leader. What were some of the bigger challenges that really gave you pause during your journey? And
sometimes you know they don’t even have to be with the business. They could be things how they have affected your family, how they’ve affected you
personally, your health. It could be how they’ve affected you know the people you work with. What are some of the things
that have given you pause through your career where you’re like, “Okay, I had to take a really deep breath and you
know, this is how I got around it.” If you don’t mind sharing one or two. Uh, I don’t mind. Um, so I’ve I’ve
talked a lot about strategy and consistency, consistency and experience, consistency
and execution. That that is a mindset that has been a big part of this brand and and the
success of the brand. And it is of any brand. if you’re trying to if you’re trying to scale to a national level, the
consumer needs to experience the same thing wherever they go. Right? So part of that um is I would say I’m an A type
personality and I am what I call a reformed perfectionist. So
um this is leading somewhere. The re the reality of this is that for many years I
was so driven with the passion for the experience for the children and the consistency
that when I spoke or when I um had opportunities to interact with
either our entire support team, our entire franchise owner organization, a
small group team. I was always talking about how important it was we get it right, get it right, get it right. You
know, we have to deliver the be our our vision is to deliver the best and most
trusted early education and child care services for children and families across America. Best. Well, the best in
my mind was everything’s right. Well, you know, the reality of that is human
beings are not perfect. If I thought that we and I did run a
couple of the schools when I first came to learn the business, you know as well as I do that you cannot
create an environment. Let’s say you have 180 capacity school and you have, you know, 50 teachers and you’ve got
twice that number of parents or families coming and going all day long in one
building and you think you’re going to orchestrate perfection. It isn’t possible.
Nor is it possible to get every single school to do everything all the time, right? It’s just impossible. And the
stress level of aspiring to do that was creating all this joy that I wanted was creating
tension and stress level of what if I don’t get it right? What if she finds out I didn’t do this right or I didn’t
do that right? And I I don’t know, one day it just hit me. I I was actually
giving a speech at a conference and and I looked across the room and the people
were looked tense and I just stopped and I said, “Oh my gosh, I I I just realized
I’m talking about how how we are the best.” But the fact is that the joy in
this business is the children and the families and giving back to the communities and the success that you
have with your businesses that you have quality of life and you can control your lives. Franchise owners and we don’t
need to be perfect. What we need to do is tell parents we’re going to do our very best. The word best is I’m giving
it my best. My best today and if I don’t get it right, I’ll do better tomorrow.
And it was I lifted a giant cloud off of the organization but I didn’t mean to do
it but in unintentionally I was creating a stress level. And I can tell you even
today I can walk into a school the minute you walk in you can feel is the
culture and environment in this place happy? Are they joyful? Are they is
there a is there a feeling of comfort and peace? or is it a stressful
uh rigid unhappy place to be? And if that’s what you walk into, no parent
wants that for their child. Nobody wants to work there. Yeah. You you you you really nailed
something that I think is super important because a lot of people who are entrepreneurs tend to be perfectionists, too. And they
tend to want things a certain way. Unfortunately, some of us couldn’t work out in corporate America because we
wanted things our way, you know, and so we were like, “Okay, I’m going to do it my way now and I’m putting the
money in. I’m pushing all my chips in.” And, you know, and I’m hoping to get there. And sometimes you just said, I
think something that was really important. Instead of being the best, striving for your best are two totally
separate things. And one can be managed and one can actually be accounted. The other one is almost an impossibility to
be planning on being the best as to striving to be the best. So, well, when people when you you know,
I’ve always felt like when you tell someone we’re going to strive to be our best, but it’s okay to make mistakes and
it’s okay to question why and it’s okay to say what if we did it this way or
that way because really the innovation comes there, right? Um, and so
giving up perfection is one of the best things I ever did in my life because people around me are happy now. And I’m
a much happier person, too. I can’t say every day I I’m this way, but most of
the time every day I am this way. And when I backside, I just have to get get myself back in that mindset.
Oh, that’s wonderful. I only have two more questions for you because we’ve actually run out of time. The the first
question is uh for you if you were to pass on any words of guidance. You’ve
already given a bunch like interpersonal skills and how to engage and you know
passion around what you’re doing but if there’s anything you want to leave the audience with any thoughts what would
those be? So, I have a plaque on my desk and it says on the front, “I’m still
learning.” And on the back, it was given to me years ago by someone. I I don’t even really remember who it was, which
is a sad thing, but I have bought this plaque over and over again. I share it with people because it means so much to
me. But at 87 years old, Michelangelo was finishing painting the Systeine
Chapel on his back, this magnificent, magnificent chapel ceiling. And someone
asked him, “Oh my gosh, how did you do this at 87 years old? How did you do
this?” And he said, “I’m still learning.” So he at 87 years old could still be
still learning. We all could be still learning all the time. And that’s probably how he got to be as successful
as he was at what he did. Yeah. Well, if I get to the point where I learn how to carve marble to the point
that I can make a cloth look transparent, I’ll know that I have learned a lot.
But there’s an attitude in that, right? That’s right. Better tomorrow than I am today. I’m absolutely
My last question for you, Joe, is what’s your favorite Beatles song?
Oh my gosh, I love them all so much. Um,
and I’ll share mine if you you share yours. I got pressure on you now for being the
former president. I know. Shame on me. Um, A Heart Saves Night probably is my
favorite song. Oh, there you go. Way back then. And it’s awesome. It’s an amazing song. Um,
I played guitar and band for years. Yeah, I’ve been a lead guitarist for blues bands and bands and what have you.
And I’ve I’ve recently been out of it for about 5 years, but for about 35 40 years, I’m un I’m fortunately getting up
there. I’d have to say Something cuz George Harrison was so underrated. Something is probably one of my uh
favorite songs, but it’s hard to have a Beatles song that’s your favorite. There’s just so many. And you know, when I was young, I sang a
lot of those songs, but the words didn’t mean to me what they mean to me now as an adult when I think on them, right? They just didn’t have the same meaning.
I had the rhythm and I loved the words, but I really didn’t pay that much attention to them. you go back and listen to some of the words of some of
their songs, they’re just magnificent. It’s just prolific. It is sort of the Michelangelo music. So, hey, we keep on
learning. That’s how it is. Thank you so much, Joe Kersner with Primrose. You’ve
just been absolutely wonderful and a delight to talk with today. Hopefully, everybody out there has had an opportunity to grab some tidbits, grab
some ideas, some thoughts about your business and look at how this can be helpful for you. We are also always
looking for interesting people to be on this uh for different leaders within our industry so other people can learn for
this. So don’t hesitate to reach out. Um again I want to thank Joe. My name is Tony D. Augustino. I’m the founder and
CEO of Inspire Care 360. And thank you for joining ECE CEO biography Sage
Wisdom for Childcare Leaders. We’ll all talk to you very soon. Have a wonderful day and a great rest of your summer.
Take care. Yeah, you have been listening to ECE biography, Sage Wisdom for Child
Care Leaders. Thank you very much for listening. We are greatly appreciative of your time.
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