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 podcasts 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 welcome to ECE CEO biography Sage Wisdom for Child Care Leaders my
name is Tony D augustino the founder and CEO of Inspire Care 360 ECE University
Askreggie.ai and owner and operator of several child care schools in Western New York today we have a special guest
of Deborah Milner CEO of Kids Park she has a background in business and
marketing with an MBA and extensive experience in various industries including information system management
just in time manufacturing and production control however in 1988 Kids
Park opened its doors deborah currently oversees one corporateowned Kids Park in
San Jose as well as 21 franchises across the country with two new centers in
production today as an industry outsider Deborah brought a fresh perspective to
traditional child care reimaging it as a ondemand service to support parents who
need flexible options which I know is often a request from many different parents her innovative approach has
reshaped how families access child care setting a precedent for adaptability convenient care and solutions within the
child care field so Deborah’s work has provided parents especially those
without local family support a reliable and accessible child care solution helping them balance the work life home
family parenting needs that most families need today her leadership and
insight into modern childcare solutions has positioned Kids Park as a leader in
flexible franchise-based child care systems deborah’s inspiration for Kids Park came from her own experience as a
mother when she relocated to California without nearby family support she realized the need for child care that
worked around parents schedules rather than the other way around where
obviously she had to adapt to what the child care centers needed kids Park continues to expand with new franchisee
locations and development to bring its flexible childare model to even more families so today welcome Deborah to the
ECE CEO biography Sage Wisdom for Child Care Leaders thank you for joining us
really thank you for coming on today Debbie this is Debbie Milner and she is
with Kids Park and she is the founder and CEO and I’m really looking forward
to this podcast she has a very interesting business model but beyond that too what I’ve learned about Debbie
is she has a very interesting story and so today we’re going to have a podcast that lasts about an hour or so and
hopefully everybody out there you have an opportunity to join us and glean some insights from our conversation and
Debbie it’s a real pleasure to have you how you doing great it’s wonderful to be here thank you wonderful and I think we
of course we were having a little pre-con conversation before we jumped on here and uh you mentioned you’re out in
Carmel how is everything in Carmel today it’s as usual very beautiful it’s um
little jealous yeah well it’s still a place for for work though yes it is
gorgeous setting but it’s it makes work a little more palatable I guess a little
bit more palatable well I’m sure it’s absolutely gorgeous there today too and I’m in uh wonderful upstate New York in
the Fingerlakes area so I can’t complain too much since it is a summer day not a winter day but with that said let’s go
ahead and get started you know one of the ways I like to kick off is I like to ask a question about possibly a favorite
or fond or maybe even a funny memory of when you were young and something in
your life sparked interest in leadership you know did you ever ever have a time like that or anything that really
started to stand out where you’re like you know what this might be something I eventually may want to pursue is some
role in leadership even if you didn’t know it back then i think I was always in awe of leaders
when you know going through school or in just current affairs being able to see
people who took control and really made a difference and people who
uh introduced new ideas without any fear as a child that was not me um I actually
had trouble speaking when I was little and had to go through like six years of
speech classes so I was a extremely shy extremely quiet child and then it was
after college when I think I just said enough of this and decided to venture
out and speak up in different occasions and
the more I did the more comfortable I became so it really wasn’t one thing
well it’s a very similar path for me i I’ve never mentioned this before but until you mentioned it I had a very bad
stutter when I was young and so and it stutter was probably because of lack of
confidence to some degree and I oftentimes was the quiet one in the
group all the way to college so when I got into college I actually looked at it as soon as I got there there i was like
“Okay these people don’t know me i’m going to start new.” Fresh start exactly
and I actually joined a band but that’s a different story for a different day oh that would be interesting
but we’re not going to talk that today today’s about you Debbie okay so you know tell me a little bit though when
you were growing up you’re talking about leaders and the fact that they sort of took control of situations when you were
rather young growing up who were your bigger influences in your life
i think you know on a small scale definitely my grandmother sure um a
woman who uh immigrated to the US when she was 15
and she was actually turned away the very first time okay because she had uh
gluccom she ended up uh going to Germany all on her own and living there for a
couple years before coming back and being reunited with her family in in the
States um hearing her stories and seeing what she was able to do without any
support was certainly very eye openening for me um that was probably you know on
a person most personal level be the person who um what was it about what was
it about your grandmother um obviously the story of her getting there but you obviously had some relationship with her
as well as the fact that you were able to observe her in action what were some
of the things that you gleaned from her she did not shy away so she was able to
uh despite her background um she just went for it at all times um a as an
independent uh woman and which is very surprising because this is back before
women were really um thought of in in that in any kind of
business role i keep thinking if she was alive today she’d be a CEO for sure uh
but I did spend a lot of time with her both my parents worked um and so she was
a primary figure in my life was she someone who you know influenced you
directly had conversations with you directly maybe even you know gave advice
or was she someone you basically just observed in the way she did things and you took away from that
i definitely observed her but she was the type of person who would encourage
you um and she’d be uh honest too i mean if you weren’t doing a good job you knew
you weren’t doing a good job she let you know yeah yeah but she was inspiring or
she was encouraging supportive um and I did like that she was direct
and I think sometimes I get that directness from her and I have to always be cautious not to be too direct because
not everyone um had that grandmother to know that that directness is out of love
out of love and not out of criticism sometimes exactly so well you also
mentioned too that it wasn’t until college when you started to for lack of
a better term come out of your shell and what was it for you that started to turn
the tide for you where you started to say “Hey you know what um it’s okay for
me to speak up it’s okay for my ideas to be heard.” I think it was getting recognition from
the people I was working with it’s one thing when your family may say something’s good kind of like grandma I
guess but to actually have it from a third party who is just meeting you for
the first time and giving you recognition for good ideas for implementing a project for being able to
um convey all the information into a in a memo uh to build a group around you uh
because management does recognize who the leaders are in every team it’s not
necessarily the person who’s appointed as the leader it’s when they look at the whole team they see who gets it done who
is inspiring and who is giving the good ideas interesting and so this was
obviously soon after college because I’m I’m gleaning that you uh went into the work world after college and do you mind
sharing with us what you graduated in what was your degree in business i was in an undergrad in business at Indiana
University and then I went on for an MBA later on oh fantastic and so what was
one of your first job roles when you came out of college that people started seeing some of this leadership emerge
um so when I graduated I was uh hired by
Inon Corporation into an intern management program the management
program would send you around the country six-w week stints at different
uh eaten facilities to learn different things so I was all excited i just
couldn’t wait to get out get going get my life started and they called and said
“Well uh we have a position in Savannah.” And I thought “Huh Savannah
Georgia i’ve never been south let’s try it.” But it wasn’t Savannah Georgia it
was Savannah Illinois which very very different very small
town and I just out of school i didn’t have a car i remember going to buy a car
and basically took off the next day drove from Ohio to um
Savannah and started a career that I had knew nothing about um I was a very young
college student very not informed on on everything um
and the job was production control in a manufacturing facility oh wow i was the
first woman there wonderful that’s beautiful it was It was exciting um and
I just learned on the job was it intimidating for you
it was it was at first but the people
were just phenomenal and I still think most people always want to assist they don’t want to cut you down they really
want to help build you up and uh it was great i learned a lot i think I think
they almost enjoyed it from the standpoint of “Oh my gosh it’s a woman what can she do?” And uh we were
great friends great um it was a great team i mean everybody was willing to
share and that’s what I still love about working in a team people really do want
to share their knowledge there i don’t think for the most uh for the most part
people are trying to to keep secrets in order for them to
look better i think if you really are part of a team you all want to get the
team to to be as successful as possible so you know you just mentioned two
things there that you know though we’re talking a little chronologically here I want to sort of go down this rabbit hole
a little bit with you you talked about you know people want to build you up people want to share as being part of a
good team how has that been something or elements in your
life as to how you structured any of the organizations you’ve been in or were part of and you pursued so were these
things that you had intention in pursuing or even when you started getting into more leadership roles where
you were structuring that into your teams it was definitely a conscious conscious
effort to incorporate it and at Kids Park for instance our job descriptions
are very fluid i won’t necessarily say “I’m going out to hire
um a director or a manager.” I will instead look at the person and ask “What
can you bring to us?” And when their ideas start coming in that becomes their
job description so it’s very fluid i look for the the talent but also the people
who who can come into an organization or into a team because this can be people
already at Kids Park and say “What can you bring to this problem that we’re
trying to solve to this um program we’re trying to implement?” And I’m always
amazed at some of the different insights that people will bring and even though
that one insight might be right by the time three or four people touch the idea
you have it that’s awesome so one of the things that I think that
schools child care schools ECE schools have struggled with for a long time you
know down to the teacher level down to the cook level the the bus driver level
but also to the administrative level and then up into management you know levels
is really solid hiring and the recruiting process how with what you
just talked about how does that affect the way that you try to recruit and you look to build a team what is it that you
know is there any secret sauce to the way that you like to interview or have your team interview candidates
i definitely like to get multiple opinions just from the standpoint the person’s going to be working with
everyone in and depending on the position itself
um it can vary but I will always
ask once we go through our concept since we’re not a traditional child care center so our positions may or may not
be as traditional as other centers um And from that standpoint I always want
to explain what we do why we do it and then ask what would you do differently
or what would you add because I don’t think any organization can just say
we’ve got it we’re done i think we’re always improving and growing well that’s
wonderful and I can’t wait a little bit later in our conversation i want you to describe for our audience exactly what
Kids Park is and where the concept came from so when you
have when you have recruited and you have hired has there been anything in
particular in the candidates you look for or a common thread that you’re like “Yes they’re a fit for
us.” or no or is it just individuality no I think you’re right there is a
thread and I think that’s one of the thread you know to have that thread makes us cohesive as a group i and I
think that thread is everybody recognizes the
mission of the company and they want to do something different as well
um I think what’s interesting with Kids Park
is nobody ever really leaves we may have teachers who go from full-time to
part-time part-time to temp uh or to a sub then they may come back it’s a
revolving door um we because
everyone wants to see the company succeed they they recognize that we’re
meeting a need for the community um so we really look for people who are one
flexible because that’s all that’s what we’re about
um we also and it’s flexible not only in their time but in the positions that
they want because we are always rotating
um different areas of supervision or different age groups so somebody has to
be able to be flexible and want to uh work in a very in a very team
environment where they may have two-year-olds to 10 year olds uh they
may be doing art they may be doing movement activities they may be doing
story time they have to be flexible and um ready to pitch in basically wow well
I I appreciate you going down that rabbit hole with me a little bit because it gives me a little bit of insight onto
how you think and also how you’ve started to build your organization you know getting back a
little bit to your history have you had any mentors in business whether you name
them or not um have you had any mentors that you feel and the value of what a
mentor might be to you if you’ve had any
i think I was fortunate in that I worked in the tech industry for quite a long
time and specifically at Huelet Packard back when it was what people would call
the HP way which was management by wandering around yeah and that’s what or
it was it was also not only management by wandering around it was also getting
ideas from talking to the guy in the next bench it was a very team oriented
company at that time where they they wanted their and I’m not an engineer but
they wanted engineers to speak to to each other in order to come up with new ideas and that resonated with me both of
those main functions resonated with me after uh working in
nontech it where sometimes your role was your role was
your role and don’t you know stay in your lane basically and I like the fact
and I think many people like the fact that you can do a lot of things and
still be in in one position were you there during the Carly days
um just before her but yes no I was just there okay now I had read her book and
she had a little bit of that theory in her book yeah I think uh I was she the
CEO after John Young I believe or there was someone in between i think there
might have been someone between but still I just remember that you know a little bit of the theory and when you
were there you know at HP um you know obviously wandering around a little bit
not just staying sort of in your box what do you think that gave you from a
leadership perspective what what did you take away from that
from a leadership perspective it was the idea that a
leader has to understand what is being done and you in order to make reasonable
asks and to be able to know what an implementation process
would be you know it’s very easy sometimes to just say “Oh I wish they
would just do this.” Well you just can’t wish no matter what level you’re at you
have to make sure that it makes sense and that people agree with you
um and that you it’s a wellthoughtout implementation
yeah well is I use the term often and they’ve written a few books on it you know hope is not a strategy
exactly not not one you should stick to for too long yeah so wishing is not a
strategy it’s nice but it’s not a strategy no no you know with with these
previous leadership roles how do you think those affected where you landed today in your current capacity as a
founder and CEO i think one thing I learned about myself
is I wanted more control over my my life
basically um you know you hear people talk about work work life balance i
heard someone say it’s really um oh lost my train of thought i can’t
remember what they said it was it was a great great one but
um it was you know work life work life balance i knew I was going to work and I
know I’m the type of person that I’m going to give it my all i’m definitely going to work more than 40 hours a week
but I want to choose when I work it and that was the big thing for me especially
once I had a family I had a daughter my everyone has different hot buttons my
hot button was I want to be home uh when she gets home from school okay i um both
my parents worked uh days and evenings so I went home to an empty house and I
didn’t want that for her and that was important well I couldn’t do it didn’t matter how early I went in to a regular
corporate job I was still expected to stay to the end and so um for
me leadership was also a way to be able to get some control over my life because
I’d be calling more of the shots and even to this day I like leaving work
around 2:30 3:00 taking a break and then I can catch up in the evening and we
offer that to our employees too um you know everyone has different
things that are important to them and we want to try to make sure that they have access to that yeah today’s world if
you’re not in tune with flexibility you’re going to be out of tune with
Well well said yes so and it’s it’s fortunate or unfortunate but you have to
definitely do that if you can’t consider flexibility these days but you know with
kids park was this you know tell us a little bit about kids park tell us about the model what is kids park all about so
kids park is non-traditional child care it we do child care differently in the
sense that we’re we’re primarily hourly care so we’re not for the parent who who
has you know 8 to five type job we
really are trying to address the needs of people when they just need a few hours here and there or they only need a
few days a week but the days may vary so it could be someone who uh has a hybrid
working schedule they’re at home but they need a few hours so they can have a focused meeting or it could be a shift
worker but their shifts change every week they may only need child care well
they may need child care this week Monday and Wednesday but they may not need it again until next Thursday Friday
it’s only it’s on demand child care and it’s for the parent let’s say both
parents work but mom drops off at 3:00 to go on to her job but dad picks up at
5:00 when he’s coming home and it could be for the parent who just wants to go
get a haircut a doctor’s appointment go to school work it it’s endless the main
thing is if you had grandma living down the street and you needed care and you knew
you could always count on her to be there for you that’s who we are you can
count on us to be there when you need us but you only need to use us when you need us and we charge by the hour and so
we can do hourly care backup care uh we do uh we do offer enrichment programs
preschool in the morning um we we try try to meet all the needs that a family
might have but we’re we do not want to be full-time care that’s not that’s not
our niche so are you a licensed program or are you in the category of not like
Okay so you’re licensed we are licensed we have to meet all of the regulations for each state uh we have done some uh
work to get some of the regulations changed for K for our type of care um predominantly we’ve done this
in California which is where we’ve started but we are looking at working with other other states the main thing
is most regulations and I think many people might agree most of the
regulations haven’t been updated to meet the needs of today’s families there yeah they’re still too
I know they’re still geared to the 1950s you know mom’s at home or you know it’s
it’s just very very strict and it doesn’t give you much room to to be
innovative which is what we need um and
and so because of that I think it’s really important for all of us in child care or those who who who might be
interested to try to get legislative change because licensing is there only as an enforcer they’re not an inventor
they don’t have a vision no it’s not for them to facilitate the growth obviously
but no for you to be innovative here what was it did you right out of the
gate did you start in more traditional child care and and migrate to this or did you incept this idea right from the
beginning and be like this is where I want to go how did this idea come about for you i needed this car one of the
best advices I’d gotten um when we were talking at one time about well how do
you come up with a an idea if you want to go off on your own you can consult or
you can start a new business i didn’t really want to consult and so I was
trying to think well what is it that I want that I can’t find and I had a long
list some of them were pretty crazy but I I hit upon this one because I was in
California uh with a two-year-old uh my husband at was traveling about three weeks out of
the month and I was trying to work full-time i was at my wit’s end trying
to juggle it all and I thought I just wish I I could put her in an environment
where she could play with other kids it’d be fun for her i’d be guilt-free
for me because I know she’s having fun and it’ll be safe um and I thought well
yeah why isn’t there such a thing and so I uh asked some friends and even went to
preschools mother’s groups this is before Facebook so I actually went out
and did all my research face to face asking people would you use this too or am I the only crazy one and I would get
was getting so much uh feedback that yeah we needed and especially in the Bay
Area where I live in uh California a lot of transplants many many of us do not have
a support system out here right and I’m also you know sure too that you know
with in the Bay Area there’s very large populations and a lot of people you know coming and a lot of people going so when
you developed this idea you know how many locations are you up to now we are
up to 222 that are open and we have four who are looking for locations fantastic
and we are growing organically through uh franchising at this time so you’re franchising which is wonderful that’s
wonderful for you when you started this you know did you uh what did you take to
ascend from I have one location maybe two locations but I actually want to
start to franchise and I actually want to get this to a much bigger model what was it that sort of helped propel you
there well it was it’s kind of funny i would
be getting I was getting phone calls out of the blue from people all over the country saying you know my sister uses
you or I used you when I visited California now that I’m back home I want
one in my area can you tell me how to do it i’m thinking in one phone call I’m
going to tell you how to start a business i don’t think so
and uh as it w as um as it turned out
one of our board members knew the president of Jimbury play programs sure
and I had an opportunity to meet him who is now uh Robert Campbell who is now a
member of our board of directors great and he and I had a conversation talking about could franchising work what does
it take what are the up what’s the upside what’s the downside and it it
felt that o that growing through franchising for a childoriented business made
perfect sense because people I think still would rather know that the person
who is in charge of the facility lives in their community and is not just 100
mile you know thousand miles away or whatever right absolutely and you know
as you started to develop this organization and started to grow you started to continue with your leadership
as appropriate to expand from one to then change your business model to like franchising um what would you say is
your leadership style you need to ask my staff
that um I
think well I think it changes based on what needs to get done to be honest i
know that if it is a uh we’re under the gun to get to achieve one thing
um to get a task done or to achieve one thing that is very important i think I
can be more directive and I think in those times it is appreciated because
when you’re under stress to get something done you don’t necessarily want to sit back and try to think this
through it’s almost better just tell me what I need to do to get through it but
I think when it’s a a a leadership style where we’re trying to figure out
something new it is definitely um group oriented everyone gives ideas
everyone um will s will make suggestions and we
can see what we can build on on that um and at that point I think I play more of
the mediator and trying to get it all to to come together into a
plan and I also like to delegate responsibility for
Rebecca i think my leadership style changes i think you froze again
tony i think you froze
are you back we are back so yeah I’m not exactly sure what happened but I think
it was my issue i think I lost internet connection for a little bit ah so my
apologies but it’s something that’s a little bit under out of my control so what we’re going to try to do is we’re
still going to continue again but I’m going to start off by just asking you about your leadership style again and
we’ll start from there and and heck if we can’t get through this question we know the question’s the issue
i agree with you so all right so Debbie we’re having a
little bit of a technical issue there but I wanted to ask you again you know what do you would you consider or what
people consider about you is your leadership style i would definitely think people will say
she has many styles i think I change my style based on the need at that time and
on what we’re trying to accomplish as I would I love to gather
ideas and I think that works when it’s a
nonstressful situation you’re trying to build something new and you have time to put everything together and also time to
recognize the input coming from people so they can maybe take on the role of
being the leader on this new idea so they have ownership of the of the
project but other times if it’s something that has to be done quickly or it’s a stressful situation I know I can
be more directive and I think people do appreciate that it’s kind of like if you’re on a sinking boat you don’t want
to discuss it you just want someone to tell you you got to get in the lifeboat it’s not time to start coaching no it’s
not go do this now exactly
no that that’s wonderful you know in sort of a sense when you look at it and when it applies to the ECE child care
world we have people who listen here who are emerging and ascending childcare leaders themselves who listen to this
um from your experience and yes you’re non-traditional but you’re still dealing
with children you’re still dealing with parents and you’re still dealing with staff you know what would you think are
some of the kind of traits that makes a leader successful in the ECE world
i don’t think it’s any different from any other world um I think you have to
have people’s respect and it’s not necessarily they like you i I know we all say that in many situations but they
do have to respect your decision knowing that you’ve made it soundly it’s not
something that we use you know off the cuff i think you I think people need to
respect you yeah and I would assume that respect comes from your actions of what
you do and building trust i would assume oh absolutely absolutely but and it’s
also the fact you want uh people can rely on you
it’s the old saying um say what you’re going to do and do what you say sure
absolutely making sure you follow through with whatever you say you know I see it all the time where leaders will
do surveys of their teams they’ll have discussions with their teams then they never take any action after it exactly
they did the first part and they thought “Well maybe that’s enough.” Yeah exactly and people are waiting okay wait a
minute i gave all this feedback now what you know nothing’s changed nothing’s changed well let me take the
conversation a slightly different direction what is your favorite part of your day
well I used to say that when I was getting frustrated with um any of the
work my favorite part of the day was to go to our front desk with our check-in
process is almost um it’s almost like a retail or a service industry parents
walk in at all different times they’re greeted and and the children are checked in and my favorite part would be to go
there do maybe four or five check-ins get in touch with the customer again and
I knew that within a couple of check-ins someone’s going to say “I don’t know
what I would have done without you today you You saved my life today.” And
it’s when I hear that it’s like “Okay I’m getting re-energized i know what we’re doing is right we just got to
figure out how to do it.” Yeah it’s that’s a really good message because quite oftentimes we get caught
up in the minutia of the entire day we’re working hard we’re working the task we’re working the challenges we’re
solving problems but we sometimes get away from why we’re solving problems
yeah you know the mission is so important yeah and when you start re
recognizing that you’re giving that respit for that parent you’re giving that opportunity for that parent to
spread their wings and have a break themselves so they can be fresh for their child when their child comes back
to them exactly so you know one of the things that’s curious for me because I
run more of traditional schools childcare centers in Western New York in addition to Inspire Care
360 you know how do you look at and I know this is more tactical but it’s
curious for me how do you manage scheduling because it seems like in your world where scheduling is tough enough
with a dedicated families coming at certain times and everything and we’re just trying to manage scheduling for
staff alone that’s like you know that’s part of what I call the secret sauce in our industry your scheduling has to be on
you know the eenth level this is 400 masterclass scheduling
we have some very talented people um there are a couple things that make it
work for us one is we have 30ome years of history we can almost predict when
people are going to come and we can we have data to support that because we were computerized right from the start
so we have a lot of stats that we can go back to and look to compare and know how
to how to um plan for it the other thing is that we have a very flexible
workforce and from the very start we never gave a schedule out just you know
this is when you need to work we would tell our staff here’s a schedule or
request tell us when you want to work if you’re a student you’re going to plan your work schedule around your classes
if you’re a mom you’re going to plan it around school schedule more or less we
would put all of this together come up with a schedule and you would work the hours you gave us because then there’s
no excuse you already told me you could work this so no excuse you’re going to come there’s still excuses
although they have to be really big excuses exactly but for the most part people
love it and then we also ask people you know if we run into a problem would you
sign up to be on call would you let us know if we’re in a bind can you help out
any other time may not be your preferred schedule but you might be available that
day so we always have backup great and that’s and we change our schedule about
three times a year and it correlates with the school year okay that sounds great and thank you for giving me that
there’s one little nugget there though I think is interesting for leadership that you mentioned that we haven’t really
talked about in a few of the other podcasts and that is that you do some of
your management through data in other words you’re looking at data you’re looking at trends you’re looking at
those things some people unfortunately or fortunately for them you know avoid data like the plague you know it’s not
their friend but it sounds like you or your management team are leveraging data
leveraging those trends to make decisions can you dive into that a little bit and where does that sort of
come from for yourself where you started to go you know what this is very valuable for us and why we’re doing it
um so my background I although I had started off in production control
inventory control uh I worked my way into systems management when I left um
the corporate world so I was very much in tuned with data collection and data
analysis so when we started Kids Park especially because we needed we need a
large database to be successful we had to understand the family demographics or
their interests to know what do we need to do to make sure we can meet those
needs and how are they going to use us so that we can do the predictions for
the schedule and do the predictions for you you know your profit and loss statement how do we know how much how
many things to buy if we don’t have any inclination of what the business level
is going to be so we will look at things like uh visit lengths how long do you pe
how many times a month does the same family come uh what is the
um the times in between what is the makeup of a family how many have
multiple children how many are school aagers preschoolers or mixed family in
in terms of ages um we look at all that data we try not to get lost too much
into the detail and get more of the the overview we look at how many new
families do we get a week um how many of these families convert to heavy users or
to light users uh what’s our loyalty program like all of this builds into
looking at the data so that you can make uh educated assumptions
okay well that’s very helpful and I think there’s a lot of people who you know recognize that there’s data
available to them but sometimes avoid it but you know I’ve learned through the years that it really absolutely can be
your friend and you know supporting your vision of where you’re trying to go because basically history just repeats
you know as we like to say it really does um and families are families it’s
um there isn’t that much change when we look at our 22 centers right it’s
consistent we don’t it’s very unusual if you see something that is that different
in an area because families all use child care in somewhat
the same way well you know as you mentioned that too what are some of the
most significant challenges in leading your organization
and they could be things you know obviously from just the business itself but just being a leader working with
people working with technology what What are your most more significant challenges that you deal with personally
oh boy that’s a big question it’s very it’s much easier to be a
leader when you’re present so for our San Jose center and our our corporate
center our uh corp corporate office it’s much easier because I have contact with
people face to face and daytoday for the
most part so it’s very it’s much easier to be established in that
respect to manage a franchised organization is very different we have
agreements with everyone but they’re not employees right so so we’re trying to
establish our leadership based on our performance in our corporate center to be able to say this is what we know to
be true and this is what we can show has worked
um with a franchise corporate um organization we have to establish that
trust by showing you know that we can be relied on and that we do know what we’re
talking about um but we can’t force anything we can encourage we hope we
inspire uh we hope we can help troubleshoot but the leadership for that for me at
least has been different [Music] um and now that you ask I’m trying to to
pinpoint it
um it’s it’s well I could go back and tell you
why I didn’t become a consultant let me do that and maybe that will shed some light on it sure i was um I did a lot
while I was in several roles i did consulting for companies and when I led
projects as a the consultant when the project did well it was the team at the
company that got the credit as it should be i’m not denying that but when it
didn’t go well it was the consultant’s problem exactly and Yeah and I didn’t like that
role because it wasn’t necessarily the consultant’s problem as we all know it
could be the implementation at the company side too and sometimes I do feel
that as a franchise organization we can have things pointed at us that it could
be our problem when we can look at it from an implementation standpoint and
say we wish this franchise might have done something different um I think
working with franchises is great i I I have loved the fact of meeting people
and seeing people being able to grow in their you know get self-sufficient and grow in their own right to to be major
business owners i think it’s terrific i’m just saying it can be sometimes hard
um and I guess it’s like parenting too you want to tell your kid do this but
you can’t a lot of times they have to learn it on their own and perhaps that is the better analogy no and I think
that’s a great analogy and as you ascended from running your own organization then to franchising what do
you think was the lesson you know one or two of the main lessons learned about
how you had to implement your leadership style with franchisees who again they’re
investing they’re putting their own money in they’re putting their own time in they’re putting their whole life in
you know so just like you are for your business they are for their business but they’re part of your organization so
what would you say were some of the things that you said “Okay this is how I need to look at things different now
that I have a franchise on my hands
in terms of working with the franchise or in terms Yeah like just of your leadership because you obviously like
you mentioned earlier you know if you’re on the boat you could tell people go take the life raft when they’re usually your staff when it’s a franchise you
really sometimes can’t tell them go take the go take the life raft right you know you know but you could say hey there’s
life rafts on here if you need them might be a good idea might be a not bad
yeah um so I’m just looking at did your leadership style change at all when you
ascended from a leader over your own organization that you had full control
over to the diversity of how your leadership style had to be now working
with franchises in addition to your corporate team
i don’t think it has changed i think the one thing that I have to be very
cognizant of is go slow with the go slow
at first with a new organization because they have to get to know you
uh and I think if you’ve purchased a franchise they must respect you to begin
with or else the p they wouldn’t have purchased it but you do have to get established and sometimes um I’m all set
to get going let’s move forward and I do need to go slower and make sure um that
everyone is comfortable and they understand the not only the process but
the people they’re going to be working with yeah it’s that’s very good advice and
guidance if you don’t mind sharing i know that this brings up some of the uh
humility sometimes but in your ascension of leadership there’s sometimes where
leaders fell or fall is there any times that come to mind where maybe you have
like well that didn’t go the way planned and any major lessons that you learned
from that oh
i was asking the question myself i say there’s so many yeah that that that line
did come to mind it’s um but I’m trying to rem I’m trying
to put in place is the was it the leadership style or was it the situation um
it doesn’t matter it could be either yeah [Music]
um gosh I know there have been many i think I must have short I must bury
those i guess they’re not coming to mind
it’s no problem i don’t want to I don’t want to stump you or anything on that but you know I know that sometimes our
best learnings occur when we don’t succeed uh in some endeavors and it
gives us you know a lesson as to how to possibly approach this last time you
know my I’d probably say with myself some of my number one lessons are really dealing with some team members where I
realized that I was taking some conversations or you know relationships
in a direction I probably could have done better at you know so that’s how I I look at where some of my biggest
improvements were you know over my history of leadership so yeah um and that I think we all fall
into that i don’t think I think that’s pretty common
um no I I do think there have been some franchises I think could have done
um No I I don’t think I can approach this one sorry no it’s no problem at all
it’s no problem whatsoever but you know you know we only have time really for one or two more questions and believe it
or not we’ve already gone through an hour i can’t believe it i know it’s that
quick but you know when you look at other people who might be on this call
and they are like aspiring to be a leader like yourself like some others
and they’re trying to ascend to new levels you know what would be some sage
guidance or wisdom that you’d like to share with them if you were mentoring them in a very general sense without
really knowing them right it’s old advice but it’s bears repeating
if you really are interested in creating um a new idea opening your own business
whatever it might be write a business plan it’s so important to get your
thoughts down on paper and I ag I or or just to to think it through you know who
is going to be your audience what is the service you’re going to provide will there are there enough people who will
want to use the service what will they pay for the service backend it try to figure out
well if this is what their people are willing to spend how many do you have to
sell or how many hours do you have to sell in order to make it a viable
company i don’t think there’s any other way or one of the best ways to kind of
kick the tires to see is this a valid um option for yourself based on where
you are in your life how much time you’re willing to put into it and do you have the investment to get you through
to the point where it will be beyond break even right
so I I I think thinking through the process is still one of the most
important things to do with with with anything actually planning dinner you know you
got to think it through well hey listen I agree with it and when you talked earlier about a little bit with data
it’s sort of like knowing your numbers it’s about understanding what you’re trying to do some of us shoot by the hip
other of us you know have a little bit more of a plan and usually the ones who have a plan understand a little bit
what’s going to come so uh is there any other Go ahead no I was just going to
say because you know you do mention this this looking at it being more analytical
i know that child care is a warm and fuzzy and you have to be um you know to
be in this industry i think you do want to um recognize the wonderful people who
really make it work and they may not be analytical but they they love being with
the kids and they provide such a wonderful service and I think it’s great but
even they need to look at what is the what’s it going to cost
to do this or How do I make it work because child
care itself is at a very critical um time in its history in terms of you
know public schools are trying to get involved in child care and we need to
make sure that our centers do stay profitable and do stay relevant to the community sure absolutely and with that
because that was dovetailing into my last question really is if there’s any additional advice you would give uh for
those you know uh budding leaders and you just gave some good advice anything
else def and do what you like i mean do what you love uh I know they say that as
well but it really makes a difference if you’re working on a mission that you
really believe in then it’s it may be frustrating but it’s
not work it is something that you are pursuing because it is your dream wonderful well Debbie I would really
thank you very much i want you to uh is there anything you would like to say before we sign off on here you know
about kids play if anybody’s listening to this and goes “Wow that’s a really interesting idea or I’d like to maybe
set up a franchise for Kids Play.” What are your thoughts on that
well if you’re interested in Kids Park please Kids Park my apologies i apologize that’s okay it’s a good name
though kids play yes yeah um if you are interested we would love to talk to you
you can check out our website kidspark.com and look at the franchise
opportunity it’s described in detail or if we’re in your in your city please
come by we would love to meet you um but yes we are growing organically
and uh we appreciate any interest you may have and is that in all 50 states or
is there a priority right now it’s um we we will entertain
all 50 states we always say we are a good fit for wherever there’s children
but it has to be a a good number of children we’re not probably the best fit
for small small towns to be honest but um if if you are
um in a city we are very interested in speaking with you to see if it if it
would be a fit we’re not in all 50 states yet so uh we’re in 10 states now
uh and we will evaluate each one as they come in as the request and one of the
things we will do is if you want to pass on some information to us we’ll put that right into the notes of this podcast so
anybody listening will be able to see some of that information to get a hold of your team so they could reach out and
have a conversation well Debbie I’d like to truly thank you for spending this
time with us on the ECE CEO podcast Sage
Wisdom for Child Care Leadership my name is Tony D austinino i’m the founder and CEO of Inspire Care 360 and it’s been my
pleasure to interview Debbie today and have the opportunity to learn from her to laugh with her and to just enjoy some
time uh with uh some peers in the industry who I always probably get the most benefit out of all of these so I am
uh little selfish that way but I like to share with all of you out there so I want to thank you all very much for
joining us today have a wonderful day and again thank you bye for now thank you 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 we will continue to produce these programs on an ongoing basis and
please hit the download button and subscribe to our podcast so you do not
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