352: Pod Swap with The Early Years Exchange with Dr. Jason Lody: Leadership Stability and Capacity

In this episode, Kate Woodward Young and Jason Lody have a really eye-opening conversation about leadership stability in early childhood education. Kate shares her impressive journey from family home provider to business coach, then dives into findings from a survey of 620 programs across 30 states. Spoiler alert - the results are concerning! Over half of programs feel they're one crisis away from closing, and accountability gaps are widespread. They also explore a cool new tool called Center IQ that helps directors make smarter financial decisions before problems arise. Really valuable stuff!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Child Care Conversations, the podcast where early childhood leaders like you get real-world strategies, honest talk, and a whole lot of support. Whether you're running one center or many, we're here to help you lead with confidence and clarity. This episode is brought to you by Center IQ. If you've ever added a child to a classroom, adjusted staffing, or made a quick schedule change, and then spent the next two weeks fixing the ripple effects, you're not alone. Most leaders make decisions and then see what happens. CenterIQ's decision intelligence lets you see what happens before you decide. Start your free trial today at centeriq.io. Now, let's get into today's conversation. One we think you're really going to love.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Welcome back to the Early Years Exchange, a place where we explore leadership, learning, and the people who shape our youngest learners. I'm Jason Lodi, CEO of Adventist Education. And today we are joined by a special guest, Kate Woodward Young, host of the wildly popular Childcare Conversations Podcast. And today we're going to talk a little bit about leadership, about readiness, about director capacity, and probably a lot more other topics. So welcome Kate to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Thanks, Jason. It has been so much fun uh getting to know you over the last few years and to watch um eventus grow. And I am excited to share a little bit about some research that we had commissioned uh this spring and that we got to be a part of. And so uh where do you want to start? Well, first of all, because I'm like, wait, I'm supposed to not be the one asking questions.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

I was just I was just gonna say I wanted to thank you because I was a guest on your podcast, and um, and I we I was that was a really great conversation and and uh kind of a deep dive into my background and what brought me into early ed. Um maybe you can share uh some highlights of the work that you've done and the work that you're doing, and that can maybe take us into some of the research that we'll chat about today.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Sounds great. So uh I actually started as a registered family home in early learning uh in 1993. So somebody can do the math and figure that out. I'd rather they didn't. But um, after a few decades, but before that, um I think what makes my my transition into early learning different is that I was a certified business analyst for the SBA. So I worked with a lot of small businesses, and most of the time I worked with female-owned businesses who were passionate about what they did, but didn't understand the business aspect. And then I had my first child. I started an in-home program. And literally within the first couple of years, I started working for the Ohio Small Business Development Center, teaching in-home programs how to run their business like a business for the next several years. When I moved to Texas, I came to work for the Texas Center for Women's Business Enterprise with the plan and with the intent to do that exact same program that I did in Ohio for in-home programs in Texas. Uh, I get here and they change their mind and they want me to work with women in construction, uh, which was not my background, but I did move to Austin, Texas, which is actually where my cousin worked and lived. And back in those days, what is really interesting is that we didn't have social media, right? So to know what your cousin did meant that you were either making long-distance phone calls or somebody somewhere wrote you a letter. And this was back in the day where literally our family communication all revolved around our grandmother. So uh there were five siblings, they all called grandma on Sunday. Well, our moms were not childhood friends. They were not adult friends, they were child one and child three. And so I got to Texas not knowing what my cousin actually did for a living. So when I got here and found out that uh Carrie was in early learning and she owned a program, I was like, this is awesome. Like we spoke the same language. And I was here um literally not even a week when she closed on her second and third location. So literally, my growing up in the industry in Texas, uh, in you know, my late later 20s, uh, was around uh Carrie's schools. And so Carrie had three schools, all very different types of personalities. Um, and Carrie had a great um informal leadership advisory board. And her mom had been a very successful businesswoman in the Austin, Texas community. So there wasn't really anybody in business in Austin that Carrie or her mom didn't know. And so um we watched the benefits of having that informal advisory board kind of come to be. Uh and literally I was here for a few years and I was tagged to do some uh basically, I was the federal evaluator on some nonprofits that had early childhood grants. And so I did that for a while. And then Carrie and I decided that we would do a director credentialing course, partially because one of our clients asked us to do it, but then didn't think we had the expertise to teach it because we didn't have a PhD. So we could write it, but we couldn't teach it. So we decided to do it ourselves. And that was in 2002. Um, meanwhile, we ran, um I ended up becoming a director of one of Carrie's programs, school number four. We ran a substitute service back when there were landlines and pagers. Yeah, it was a pink sparkly pager. Um, and then over the years, um, you know, I was the executive director of a couple of early learning nonprofits and uh the Texas After School Association. I was a military spouse. So I got um it's people are like, you did a lot of things. I'm like, I was a military spouse. That should just answer everything to everybody, right? So um as a military spouse with four kids, we we traveled, our kids were definitely in early learning programs. And, you know, when we came back to Texas, um, I was lucky enough to be able to continue to support early learning programs and whatever that looked like. And so as a consultant or a business coach over the last, you know, before that had a label. Um, you know, I have been a ICF, so International Coaching Federation coach since like 07 or something, like long before people had labels and called everybody a coach. And I've I've loved being able to help people figure out um how to get from overwhelmed to a little more confident and know that they've got that. So wow, that took a lot longer than I was expecting that too.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Yeah. Well, thank you everyone for joining us. That's the end of our podcast. Uh no, just joking. But I I think what what I what I I find most striking is the amount of experience and time that you have in, you know, a variety of roles within early education as well as business leadership, decade after decade. Don't have to say it quite like that. Well, the world has changed so much, you know, the world has changed. And I'm not even everyone kind of emphasizes COVID, pre-COVID, post-COVID, but the world was changing way before COVID.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

You know, even from technology with a pager versus, you know, uh, you know, I mean Carrie and I did one of the very first Yeah, we did one of the very first social media for early childcare workshops uh in Savannah for Sika, like in, you know, like 04. So like um yeah, so yeah, we've we've we've tiptoed around. Um I tell everybody I kind of am a closet techie. I actually came to work in Texas for the University of Texas as a Unix programmer. It's actually what brought me to Texas. And then I went into um helping uh teachers and librarians set up local area networks. So um, but that was when like I would take a sample lab. So this I would take they they built their own computer labs in the classes with me. And so I would take a 12-passenger van with the monitors strapped into the seats and all of the CPUs underneath the seats, and literally we would build a local area network in a hotel um space.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

So my goodness. Yes. We're gonna we're gonna pause now so everybody who's of a certain generation can start Googling what a CPU is and what a pager is, because you know, those those those terms aren't technic technically used uh much anymore. But but that that's where we started, you know. Um as a side note, uh I I just came back from from Georgia speaking at a cogmia uh early learning conference, and on my uh presenter uh needs list, I'm going to start doing this moving forward. I keep putting uh overhead projector just to see what kind of response I get. Because some people don't even know what an overhead projector is with the transparencies and the uh the erase markers that I just loved as a teacher, because that was the technology, that was the cool stuff at the time. If you got one of those dedicated and not on a rollie cart that had to go up and down the hallway, you were special, right? And so I was always very, very happy to have those. But you know, I think that that kind of brings us into our conversation today about, you know, even as technology evolves and our our businesses evolve and the industry evolves, our leadership has to evolve as well to be adaptable to the needs that are in our current times and not have antiquated leadership styles or views of business, because it's just not gonna match or set the leader or the operator up for success. So, could you talk a little bit about the uh the the research that you um have have recently completed and some of the insights that we can we can chat about?

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Absolutely. So we did a leadership stability snapshot because if you have attended any conference in the last five years, if you have listened to any podcast, if you've read any article, you will hear people use phrases like leadership, like stability, like you know, getting grounded, understanding. But we had a hard time quantifying any of those statements. And so one of the things that we wanted to do was to kind of get an idea, what did the leaders in the field actually think? So um about 51%, so we had 620 folks fill out the survey across the country. So we had 30 states, 51% were directors, and 29% were owners, and the others were multi-site leaders, so maybe regional managers or that kind of role. Uh, we had programs from um the bulk were programs with 100 to 199 children.

SPEAKER_05 11:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Okay. So that was the the the most people who responded to the survey. And I think it's good to know kind of who we were, who responded. Um, I think that says an awful lot about who was looking to find out um kind of how stable were their their programs. Uh what we found to be the most, at least concerning for me, were things that over half of the programs felt that they were literally one crisis from being done. So to me, that's the business version of paycheck to paycheck, uh, with absolutely no reserve fund, with no way to know or to be confident that we could handle what might be perceived as a crisis. And for a lot of programs, that is something as simple as a delay in their check from state for their subsidy co-pays.

SPEAKER_05 12:42

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

And we hear that in unfortunately, probably about half the states uh in the in the last five years have had at least one time where they have missed that check deposit by which the state may think of as not a big deal by a couple of days. But it means that the director or the owner or the organization might be covering personally payroll, mortgages, that kind of stuff. So if you think about the fact you have 620 programs and over half think they are literally one oh crud away from not being around, that that's a little disconcerting, at least it is to me, when you start thinking about the number of children, the number of families, the literal financial impact into those communities. Because most of the time our directors, our owners, they they forget that they might have like if you think about programs with a hundred, a hundred children, a hundred children probably mean that you probably have pretty close to you know, 75 to 100 adults who get to work because of your program. And if they're all making, even if they're all just making, you know, $25,000 a year, that's an awful lot of money back into that community because of your program. And most of us don't think about that, right? When we start talking about numbers and data, we're usually thinking about revenue. Um, more and more people are are are realizing they need to pay attention to payroll numbers and stuff like that. But a lot of times we forget that we've got such a financial impact in a community that when you start closing those child care centers, you know, you look at states like Oklahoma and Indiana, and you start hearing numbers like 300, 3,000. Like you hear the number of childcare slots that have disappeared, the number of programs that have disappeared in less than a year. Um, you know, the communities, the employers, and our early learning leaders. Our early learning leaders feel like there's no accountability. So accountability is the industry's biggest gap, at least according to our study, right? One in 10 programs report that consistent accountability from the leaders just isn't there. Or that 17% felt it was so infrequent that it didn't really count. And I think that's hard as a owner, uh, as a leader going, but I but but but I thought or I feel um and a lot of times there's that communication disconnect. You've got directors and owners that aren't on the same page, and you got owners who want their directors to make smart decisions without having to call them all the time. Who wants to be the bottleneck? And I know you guys have that. You guys have systems in place in your organization, but not every organization came in and built their infrastructure first.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

Yeah. But even as we were building our infrastructure and now we're we're we're implementing that infrastructure, we're constantly modifying it because it's it's it's human-led, right? It's not it's not automated. And so as the unique skill sets of each director gets their hands on the processes and implements them, you you know, you mentioned accountability. You know, accountability, uh I have found, um, and I'm not sure if your research has shown this, uh, but there's always a, not always, but there's sometimes a disconnect between perception and reality, where the leaders are like, I am on it, I am on it, I am, I'm, I'm operating it on all cylinders. Meanwhile, the staff are like, we never see that person, we never get feedback, um, you know, I I don't know how I'm doing until I'm told I'm doing it wrong. So even though the director might have a certain perception of how they're holding their team accountable, their team is feeling totally disconnected. And that's that's not even like a a slight difference. Like that's huge. And so I'm I'm I'm I'm wondering what your what your thoughts are around that.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yeah, so we actually we did have a metric that kind of talked about that, and that metric gave us about 38% of the folks really felt like the metrics were there but not there.

unknown 17:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

That makes sense, right? Like they're tracking them, but they didn't know what to do with them. Or they weren't shared, like they'd share the numbers, but nobody gave them any insight into what that meant, right? So, like, I'm giving you all the KPIs, I'm filling out all of the forms, most of my time that's how they described it, right? So when you asked the hours, like where did you spend your time? My favorite was um they would say things like, they'd mark, most of my time was spent doing paperwork. And then when you ask them the hours that they spent doing that, it was less than 10 hours a week that they were spent doing paperwork. Because, and this is that perception thing, right? Over 20 hours a week, they were doing things like staff call outs and covering classrooms. And, you know, this is where I could get on a whole soapbox about overstaffing and and always hiring substitutes, and you should have a bazillion floaters and substitutes on your list because a substitute is should be paid a whole lot less than your directors and your leaders and your administrators. And that's who needs to be covering those shifts and those bathrooms and those call outs and um, you know, for for well over 20 years. So for well over two decades, I've been telling everybody your staff need to be doing their own substitutes, right? Like, why are they ever calling into you? They should only be calling you from the emergency room. Like to me, that's the only time that uh a staff person should be calling the director as they're in the emergency room, whether it's them or a family member, but you know, in that setting, as an as a director, I'm like, okay, I'll handle your call out because that's an emergency, but I'm not handling your call out on a Thursday night when you're at a bar.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

So how much of this, how much of this is self-inflicted, right? Some some of the you know, the hard conversations and pushback I have to sometimes have with the with the directors in our in our network is I I get it, you're telling me that you're working 12 hours a day, but I'm here to tell you you shouldn't be working 12 hours a day. And I think sometimes in especially in early ed, the the the directors feel like they have to do it all. But that's just not sustainable. Like I have to open, I have to close, I have to prepare the lunch, I have to go to Costco on Saturday, then on Sunday I have to go in to make sure everything is set up for Monday. Meanwhile, you've just set up a seven-day work week with, you know, 15, 16 hours a day, and then you're wondering why you know you're you're angry all the time, or you're not sleeping well, or you're gaining weight, or you are not being perceived as pleasant to incoming families, so you're not enrolling them, or like it you don't have to. And pushing back, I feel that sometimes we directors, administrators, owners, operators have these self-inflicted environments that just set them up for long-term failure, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:18

You know, I agree with you, and a lot and so much, and we gotta remember two things. One, most of the people who actually get into early childcare do because they love children. And we we go to, you know, last year Carrie and I were at 26 conferences, and every conference we asked people this question at least once, sometimes more than once, uh, because we would do multiple sessions, not because we didn't hear them the first time, but you know, how many of you got into childcare because you had a child? Right. And so about 80% of the room got into childcare because they had their first child, whether they needed free childcare or they didn't trust anybody else to watch their child. And so we've got these folks who are passionate, they're loving, they love children, but nowhere, and nowhere did we train them to do the job of owner or administrator. We have 120 hours to be a CDA, which again, when the CDA was created, not the way we do it now, but when it was created, it was to validate the professionalism of somebody who'd been in the industry. So it was go get all your training hours, not not go get them, go get copies of the ones you've already had, right? And so show us over the last five years how you've gotten this 120 hours, right? And then we're gonna give you a piece of paper that says, look, they're a professional. Uh now we use it almost as basic training, right? But there is not anywhere in the country a standard in any way, shape, or form for doing the same thing for administrative business tasks. Hence, you know, teaching this for 32 years, right? So for 32 years, we've been here going, I'm so glad you love children. But now what do you know about parents? What do you know about staff? What do you know about Here's the four-letter word, right? Like the budget. What do you know about numbers? And, you know, we we meet some of the most incredible superheroes, right? Like the women in this industry and the men in this industry, you know, they want to be the superhero, right? Like they're going to, I'm gonna work my 12 hours. I'm gonna do everything. Because somehow working more they've taken internally is being, you know, they're being successful. And I have to remind them that the cape is an accessory. It is not who they are. And you don't, you know, the cape doesn't pay your bills and it doesn't give you back your life with your family. And the whole concept of delegating or boundaries, or I mean, there's a reason why, like there's whole, like, there's a reason why left them became, you know, a best-selling book because we had to start talking about it and it being okay to the women in the industry that you can do this. And and I'm gonna say something, and I'm not really poking at you, Dr. Jason, but you know, we have all these men in leadership who talk about leadership in early childhood, but it's different for women. And we don't have a lot of leadership books by women in our industry. And, you know, yes, some of the skills that you can get from old leadership books are still very valid, but they look different from a, from a woman's lens. They look different from an ECE lens. So just because somebody has this great tool or or or metric or framing, but was it a framing that was built for a widget, or was it framing that was built for a service industry for women to implement who are passionate about what they do?

SPEAKER_05 23:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Right. So we gotta learn to delegate. We gotta learn those boundaries. We have to remember that no is a complete sentence.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

Period.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Period. Yes. Right.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Yeah, yeah. Like there's the yeah, sometimes uh when when when when someone says no, it it might be, you know, received uh by the hearer as, well, maybe there's an opportunity to continue the conversation, but you know, standing firm in in your in your decisions. It's that's one of the more difficult pieces of of leadership is is closing the loop on things and moving forward without always having that but and however like no conversation's over. And you're right, you know, I think different leaders are are perceived differently, sp you know, definitely based on gender, um, for good and bad. You know, sometimes when if some a parent walks into an early learning environment and they see a male, they walk her out like or they they close off in their mind.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Oh yeah. My my second husband was an infant teacher.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

The fact that he was a military medic and he went on to be a physician's assistant didn't matter to people. There was a dude in the infant classroom. Like they were like, what is he doing in there? And I'm like, he's taking care of the infants. Like, you know, like yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

Yeah, and and mean meanwhile in Adventist, we have a uh, you know, a school, one of our schools that that that came into our network kind of struggling, and we hired a male director and it's turned around. Like it's just parents have responded to that perceived role as a director, totally fine. But if we put him in a twos room, probably not the same response. Right. So um, so you know what what other insights um were you able to to pull from this uh stability snapshot? Because I'm I'm I'm really interested in in you know continuing the conversation about like what next, now that we have this data, how do we reverse some of this troubling information sets?

SPEAKER_00 25:44

I think I think one thing that is really great to see, and I think that this is interesting because it wasn't what I'm sure I didn't do this snapshot 20 years ago, but I feel like the fact that backup coverage and leadership development being valued is an important message because that means that the people in those roles want a backup and they love the fact that the fact that they go out and do this leadership training, maybe even on their own, that it's perceived as valuable. And um, you know, we're still running into folks that don't understand the concept of creating some leadership training unique to their program. Uh, and they think that, oh, I've hired somebody who was that role at another company, but that other company has a different culture. They have a different vocabulary. And they probably just because it has the same title doesn't mean it's the same role.

SPEAKER_05 26:46

Right?

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Like, you know, curriculum coordinator. A curriculum coordinator at a at a small mom and pop single location looks very different than maybe a curriculum coordinator for, you know, a large corporate program that actually has somebody who says, this is the curriculum we're using. So really that curriculum coordinator is the person who pulls the inventory of materials.

SPEAKER_05 27:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

They're not they're not coordinating anything. They're going, I need X number of widgets and 14 crayons, and I'm going to put it in a box and give it to the teacher. Um, you know, so it's a very different, like the words we use for things are so different. And so the fact that we struggle with some of that in our industry is not really a surprise because, you know, a director doesn't always have the same role at every program, an assistant director, a regional director, curriculum coordinator. I mean, for the most part, I think we're pretty consistent on what does an infant teacher do. You know, but we forget some of the other things that are incredibly valuable to our program, but sometimes we just forget them. Um the confidence in long-term stability is is was was over was a concern to over 25% of the folks who filled out the survey. And I think that, and I don't know if you found this with the schools that you brought into your network, but I feel like in our experience, having worked with over 4,000 directors in the last 20 years, that a lot of directors and owners don't understand financial transparency. And they've definitely never shared it with their mid-level staff. I'm not saying that every infant teacher and that every cook needs to know the finances of a program, but an owner and a director have to be, I really think they have to be as transparent as absolutely possible. But I get that the perception is, because we've all met the staff who've done what I call envelope math, right? They've counted the number of heads, they've looked at what your published rates are. And so they do the math and they think you're making all this money. Um, and yes, in some programs that are really, really good about their finances and their ratios and their structures, they are because they understand the numbers. But there's other folks that are running at 91% payroll of their revenue, right? And that that should make us all like, you know, a little nauseous.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

I'm sorry, I just lost, I lost my breath. I was about to give you a moment to catch my breath.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:26

Goodness gracious.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Yeah, we had a client who did that, and I said, How do you pay your mortgage? And she goes, I pay it out of my personal account. And she had three locations, and and every location operated between 88 and 91. And um, yes, I did the same thing you did, and I I thought I was gonna lose my mind because she brought us in to help her hire a regional director. And I she kept telling me she couldn't pay them what that regional director, like the executive director, regional manager, whatever you want to call that role. And I was because she wanted to be more hands-off. And so then we started doing the numbers. And I went, well, here's the reason. She was still staffed at what she was when she was full.

SPEAKER_05 30:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

So she was no longer full. She hadn't adjusted her staff at all because she didn't understand some of the basics. Like at, you know, how many kids did she have to have in a classroom to pay the, to, to pay all of the expenses? Break-even points were not something she really like, she knew it was the term, but she for so long, everything just worked out. She didn't really have to dig in and ask the hard questions.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Yeah. And I'm gonna say something very unpopular in in many, in many circles right now, but we we have to run our centers like a business. And I would say a hundred percent of the schools that have joined the Aventus Network, they were run, and they used to, I'm gonna do air quotes around this because I really don't truly believe in the term that we're all family here. And so you get that 91% staffing, right? Because the director or the owner, the operator doesn't want to let anybody go. They've been with that they've been with us for 10, you know, 10 years, they've been with us eight years, they've been with us, they're nice. And I said we we while nice is a great qualification to have, we don't keep people on on the payroll because they're nice. We keep them because they're they're needed and they're successful, they're coachable, they're an asset to the team. Like those are the reasons why. Um but a high-free thing.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Yes, if they're if they're if they're rude, they need to be going.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

Exactly, no matter how long they've been there. They they could have been rude for the last 10 years, right? That and because we let a lot of things you know go under the carpet or unaddressed, the accountability slips away because you because staffing may be more difficult where you're located. So, how am I going to replace this person? And and and and poor employees know that they they they see themselves as indispensable. They're not gonna let me go, they're not gonna find somebody to replace me. And so those behaviors will continue. And you know, when we talked earlier about the the accountability disconnect, that's that's part of it because it's a it's a tug of war of the power dynamic. Um, but when you were talking about you know knowing your your break-even points, knowing your numbers, I can also say with a hundred percent uh certainty at all the schools in the Adventist Network, when they came into our network, the directors had zero insight on finances because the owners kept that close to their hearts and only their eyes saw what actual expenses uh were connected to that particular center's operation. So when we came in and we empower our directors to kind of own their PL to like a P and what? What's what's that? Like I I don't know. I don't know what that is. I I know what the ratios are, like I know licensing, like I know I all those other pieces, but in terms of the being able to literally keep the lights on, I don't know any of that. So we've had to you know introduce some liter some financial literacy for business skills for our directors so they have an understanding that, yeah, it's not just about collecting tuition, it's about making sure that you have enough of that tuition collected that gives us everything we need to pay the bills and provide the resources for a high-quality program. So, how do we provide for the directors, for the owners, for the operators, tools or or or resources that allow them to truly understand the stability and health of their program?

SPEAKER_00 33:34

Well, I am so glad that you asked that question. That was a great segue. Thank you. Can I can I get you to tee that up for me everywhere? Um So literally since I've run an in-home program. So since the 90s, um I have been doing a workshop that was literally, I called it butts in the seats. It was understanding your break-even point. And I taught it for a long time and then I didn't teach it for a while, and now I'm teaching it again because to me it was like, well, I'm surely people know this, right? Like surely this is coming out other places. And I'm discovering it still really isn't coming out in conversations. And what was crazy is so Carrie and I have now written 12 books in early child care, business management leadership, stuff like that. Our last book was more than tuition, and it was marketing and finance, because there hadn't been a new finance book since the 80s. 88 to be exact. And um we we made it a challenge to get that book out and published. And even with that discussion, even having conversations at the college level. So a couple of our books are used as university textbooks for child care administration courses. None of them are actually teaching budgeting. Like that whole P and what, right? Like PL profit and loss statements. Now, for Carrie and I, that was kind of a foreign concept because Carrie and I both had business owners as parents. We both knew what PLs were in our teens. We just thought this is what people did. Um, and since we didn't grow up together, we didn't really realize that a that was something that we knew. So um, over the course of the last six months, um, as a closet techie, um, I actually have worked with an organization to build some software, an app, whatever you want to call it, a tool that literally helps take that decision making, makes it easy. Now, what do I mean by making it easy? You still have to put in all your overhead numbers. You still have to put in your state licensing. But if an owner doesn't want to share those numbers, the owner doesn't have to. The owner can build the school profile on their own with all of the overhead numbers. And then it translates it and gives you red, green, and yellow. I love red, green, and yellow because we all kind of know if some if a room is in the red, that is probably not a good thing.

SPEAKER_05 36:07

Red bad.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Right? And so it shows you, oh, well, if I take out that staff person or I make that staff person half pay or half time, all of a sudden my room goes from a red room to a yellow room. Ooh, if I add two more kids, look, now I'm green. So it's basically simulation software. And so it can, my favorite part of it, and because I have had this happen to me all the time, is where I'd have a family with three kids show up, and I'm like, oh yeah, I've got openings in those rooms. I had openings, but I didn't necessarily have the staff. Right? So I put in one of those children into a room, and that room now becomes a green room because now we're past breaking even and we're now we're making profit. But the other two kids required me to hire some staff. And so now I have two rooms in the red. And nobody really wants to say no to families, but understanding where you are in your enrollment cycle, like I would happily do that in the month of August. I I would take that family because I know based on my enrollment cycles at my programs, I always have a lot of kids in August and September. I I'm not taking that family in October. Definitely not taking that family in November when I'm probably gonna lose some folks in December because people go on Christmas vacation and don't come back. Right. And so this decision intelligence is what it's called. It is by Center IQ. So it's center IQ dot io. And this is the only thing they do. This is the only app that they have. And the idea behind it is literally anybody can make intelligent decisions if they have the right information, but you have to know how to use it. And so it takes away that whole how to use it mystery because it goes, oh, look, green, green, green, you, you know, your room is making money, or red, red, red, your room is not making money. So you need to change some factors. And we can't often change our payroll, but payroll is one of the options, the number of teachers, the number of hours. So you still have to set up your state licensing. Um, and I say state, but we also know that some programs have their own internal ratios. So, or you're using a quality. So, whatever the ratios that you follow in your program. So instead of calling it state ratios, we're just gonna go with ratios, you still set up the ratios of how many staff to how many children at different age groups, and that's how it bases its red, green, and yellow.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

I love that because one of the one one of the the pet peeves that I have when I when I chat with with owners and and directors about their their program growth is absent center IQ, they they kind of have a sense that many of their classrooms are in the yellow, right? Because they have, you know, their that room is licensed for eight, they have, you know, six students or seven students, maybe eight, and they're good with that one teacher, and then they have a floater in the after, whatever their staff their staffing is. But they're hesitant to hire for the growth that they clearly want. So they're their own worst enemy by not spending money to make money. But an you know, a an app like this, you know, in a in a simulation environment could really help a director or an operator see which particular part of their programming they should start staffing for in advance of what enrollment trends they already know. Oh, I get a lot of twos in the in the spring, or I get a lot of threes, or those, uh at least in my programs that I that I had before I started Aventus, I would get this huge surge of four-year-olds uh each year because the parents were like, oh no, my kids go into kindergarten next year. I should think about preschool. So where we were regionally, a lot of you know, a lot of uh of uh um cultural reasons kept kids home with grandma or with other relatives, but a year out, we need to take these last four years of their development and squish it into this one year to get them kindergarten ready. Right. So, but were we we and we were ready for them because a lot of schools around us didn't staff heavy in that room, like, oh, we're at capacity, we'll start a wait list. We were, we'll take them, we'll take them, we'll take them, we'll start a next room, because I knew that's where our trends were. Um how how how could this software or this app be used strategically for future decision making, as opposed to saying, okay, well, these are all yellow or this is red, this is green. How do we use it for predictive hiring or predictive enrollment trends?

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Absolutely. So hopefully you're using some sort of software in their program to begin with, right? Like some sort of a CRM or accounting software. And more and more of those are giving you the birthday version of predictability, right? So they're letting you know, hey, it looks like in September you're gonna have these three kids move up to a room, right? So that kind of stuff. So then you've got that, it's in your head, but now you can run it through the simulation and go, okay, so if I add four more kids, I add five more kids, where does that put me into that licensed capacity, right? Or the preference ratios, right? So the capacity ratios um versus staffing. And what's great is so we actually did this with one of our directors, and it was really interesting because she took it to her owner and actually got fired. Um well, but here's why. Okay, so she had an owner who didn't like the fact that she pointed out that he kept trying to run rooms in the red. Um, because the owner was like, no, the room can be like should have six kids in it, except at six kids it required two staff. It was an infant room. So had the infant room always run at four, it was at least yellow. It was never green, it was never gonna be green in that building. But every time the the the director took it to six, the room was so in the red, and it totally threw off their percentage for staffing and for hiring. And so she would not put two kids in there and then not have it staffed, and then she'd get in trouble. She'd get a write-up for not meeting her KPIs because she should have those two other infants in there because of look at that revenue you're not bringing in. And so she would try to have discussions with the owner, operator, who had six schools. This is not somebody who didn't have six schools, but they still didn't understand their breake-even points. So they've been in the industry for 15 years, six schools still didn't understand their breake-even point. She took this tool because she was excited about it. She really was like, this finally helps me explain what's going on, because she had done breakeven with me about 15 years ago. And so this was a great tool that she thought, look, I can share this online, I can share this with, and she got fired.

SPEAKER_05 43:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

Because now she knew more than her owners did. And so it is a great tool. It give gave her the confidence that she needed because she wasn't really um, I don't want to say standing up to her boss, but right? She wasn't, she wasn't doing the pushback. And not every owner's gonna handle that well. I think that if somebody came to you and said, Hey, I know that, or do you know that our quality ratios just changed in the state. So now we've got to take out every room has to have one kid fewer, you know, if somebody came to you with a with a new rationale or a new tool and said, Hey, I think we need to do this. You're probably open-minded enough to go, I never thought about that, or I didn't realize that state did that on every age group. I thought it was just on the infants or just in the toddler room, right? And all of a sudden, because we've seen we're seeing that happen both directions. Um, some states are making it where you can have more kids per human, and you know, other states are making it less per human. Um, because if it's less per human, you get a higher percentage of, you know, reimbursement, but that's a whole other episode and a whole different surprise.

SPEAKER_02 44:36

But you have to be strategic about these decisions because I I had a very intense conversation with an operator in December about their it their corporate intention to in their state, it was a star rating. They intentionally chose corporately to remain at two stars instead of going for three, because when you go to three stars, you commit to lower ratios, but you don't get a higher reimbursement. You just get the honor of having a higher rating. Economically, it doesn't make sense for them to get three stars, but no additional revenue. In fact, it it's a loss of revenue when you factor in the one student or two students less per age group. Uh and it's it just doesn't make sense on paper. And families in in their region aren't drawn by the stars. It's it's it's more of an operator's badge. You know, parents aren't going to two versus three stars. It's just a a bragging, bragging right. But, you know, I I I think these are these are really intense conversations to have. And, you know, do you recommend running breakeven and a break-even analysis at the center level or at the at the the classroom level? Because there are some classrooms that are kind of lost leaders, right? Right. There are some classrooms that are.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

Yeah, so I think it's important to do both. That's why. So the tool started out as just a break-even room tool, uh, where it literally just told you how to break even in that room. And it now is the entire center and it can do the entire portfolio or multi, multiple facilities, or, you know, whatever, however, you're structured. So you can kind of take a snapshot look at going, okay, so this school is breaking even. And then you can dig into are all of the rooms breaking even? Do you have some rooms that are lost leaders? And again, we can't even say generically that it's this one particular age group, right? Because you got some places, even in the same city, but they're one zip code over or one street over, and they just don't have the infant care. So they can have ridiculous infant rates, and literally half a mile down the road, you got infant rates that are half the rate. And so it really is when you're looking at your business every year, when you're looking at your tech stack, when you're looking at your finances, you also have to look at your market. I were I'm working with a school right now that for years always had a wait list and they they're like, I don't know what we're doing, I don't know what we're doing. I'm like, you didn't do anything. Your neighborhood just grew up. Right? A lot of people in that neighborhood still live there, have lived there since their child was an infant, and now they're empty nesters. So the the although it's got three elementary schools, it's got a middle school and a high school, you know, even the school district is feeling it. So the school district is talking about closing one of those elementary schools. Well, ding ding ding, that's a big radar for you, you know. That may mean that hopefully you own the building and you have a physical asset because it may be one of those things that just because you've always been a childcare center doesn't mean you're gonna stay that way. It may need to be that now you're gonna have to be entirely school-aged care or a micro school, or maybe you sell the property to somebody who is gonna do, you know, a daycare for seniors.

SPEAKER_05 48:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:02

Because that that that sometimes that happens in this particular community, that's the direction that's happening. I told her, I said, if I were you, I would figure out what is the real world, because the school district is talking about doing a school age program, right? So if the school district picks up an in-school school age program, then she doesn't even have the market for that anymore. And so I was just like, you know, you might put an exit strategy in place. She's got multiple locations, so she can easily move most of her families to one of her other two schools and just, you know, look at either flipping the building to something completely different, um, but just understanding that just because you own the building and it's been a childcare forever, sometimes we have to understand that if a major employer is the reason you were a child care center and that major employer moves, right? You can't you can't force people to come to a place unless you are unique, which you know, we did have a program that was a bilingual program in Chinese and English, the only one within about 80 miles. And yes, people that was a destination business, right? So people came from all over to go to that particular Chinese bilingual monosauring program because there wasn't another, like that was a unicorn. And if you're a unicorn, you can stay a unicorn and you can probably be anywhere. But if you're you know, a Shetland sheet dog. I was like, I'm like, I don't know, something other than that, right? You're just the neighborhood cat. If you're the neighborhood cat and we can find you anywhere, you know, you need to.

SPEAKER_02 49:37

Sometimes even with a differentiator, you have to have uh uh a few differentiators to become a destination spot. Some someone who who's willing to drive past five of your competitors to get to your school. You have to have a hyper, hyper focus, which has a a very uh a smaller enrollment pool, right? Those those families are not just because it's convenient. They're specifically looking for what you are offering, and so maybe finding something that doesn't exist in a certain radius around you and and and experimenting, trying it out, opening a single classroom with this model. I know Montessori is where Montessori inspired is is is a buzzword here in Northern Virginia and in the Northeast. And so a lot of traditional preschools are opening a classroom, and that's where their biggest demand is, and they're slowly weaning away from traditional preschool and becoming full Montessori if that's what the market is demanding. One of the things I really like about this uh this app potential is you know just just running you know scenarios. What you know, because every year we look at you know, what is our tuition increase going to be? And if you and if you adjust, like right now with this current enrollment, if we raise tuition by five dollars a week, how many of our yellows turn to green? How many of our yellows?

SPEAKER_00 50:52

And that's exactly and that and it does that. It also changes, like you can flip the reimbursement rates, you can t take care of take out all your discounts. Yeah. You know, what happens if you take out all the discounts? All of a sudden the entire school is now green, and you just have to figure out how to get rid of your discounts.

SPEAKER_02 51:08

Right. No, that but the I don't, you know, it's again going back to that 12-hour workday, 70-hour work week, we we spend all our time working, you know, in the business and not on it. And this is working right. This is working on the business that helps actually reduce your workload over time. Because, you know, whenever all the classrooms are green and and cash is flowing and like, ah, I can I can leave an hour before close because I know I'm staffed and I got a PM supervisor, and my phone gets turned off because I have set up an infrastructure and a shared leadership model where tasks are distributed, not all my responsibility, right? Like we all own the the outcomes, uh, but you got to plan for that. It just doesn't happen organically. And this could be a tool, because our our probably one of our biggest stressors in the industry is finances.

SPEAKER_00 52:04

Oh, it and it's also the one that nobody talks about. I mean, literally before COVID, there was maybe one workshop per conference on finance, and I often taught it. And, you know, nobody wanted to talk about it. It was the it was the ugly duckling. It was like nobody wants to talk about it. COVID happened, and all of a sudden, every operator in the world had to figure out how to they all were worried about pinch and pennies instead of operating efficiently or figuring out their break-even point. Because again, like you said, they they brought staff on because they loved them.

SPEAKER_02 52:39

You know, and then the grant money and the federal money flowed like water, and people stopped thinking about, well, or maybe didn't even think at all. At some point, this is gonna stop. And now I've given all my teachers $50 an hour rates, and then the money's gone, and now I can't afford those rates. And, you know, when those when those grants started to dry up, the child care centers for sale websites exploded because you're like, I can't sustain this. I need somebody else to come in. And and yeah, so the thinking ahead and that our current reality is not going to be next year's reality. So plan for it. You know, and and honestly, in this in this legislative environment as well, locally and nationally, plan for worst case scenarios. Get that app center IQ and um and start planning out A, B, and C, you know?

SPEAKER_00 53:35

Absolutely. And if anybody's got any questions, you can always find me over at childcareconversations.com. Uh, it is uh we we love to be able to be a resource. If you have a situation that you'd love to share, um you can always jump on Jason's podcast, but you can always come over to ours. We'd love to have a conversation with you over there as well. And, you know, uh sometimes the more people who can hear it, the better, because we know that folks who listen to us may or may not listen to to Dr. Jason. Um, and that's okay. Uh we we know we've all got our our our folks who are listening.

SPEAKER_02 54:09

And I got people who live in my house who don't listen to me. So it's okay. It's you know, they're called kids. And uh, you know, it's uh I'm used to it. I've I've built up a thick skin over five years. So childcareconversations.com. And what tell us a little bit about where we can find some of your books. If if some of our listeners are looking for um, you know, resources to for themselves or for their team, for a professional learning community, a plc, uh a book study with their with their team, where can um our listeners find uh access or get access to your books?

SPEAKER_00 54:42

Absolutely. So the probably the easiest way is to literally just look up Kate Woodward Young on Amazon and you'll find them all there. Um, if you're more of a Pinterest person, Childcare Conversations does have a Pinterest page. And in that Pinterest page, there is something titled the director's bookshelf. And not only does it have all of our books, it has every book that we actually have on our bookshelf as directors. And so some of those are new books by other trainers and experts. Some of them are the classics, um, but some of them are what I would call female leadership books. So Brene Brown, Sheryl Sandberg. Um, and we do have, like I said, we've got some of the classics that I just am gonna leave as a generic phrase.

SPEAKER_02 55:24

So And I'm gonna I'm gonna ask one final question. And this is uh probably a question you you get often. If someone is listening and uh they are interested in attending their very first conference that they're going to invest in or have someone invest in their professional development, what would be your top two or top three if you only had these options? Take this professional development opportunity and attend this conference or these conferences. What are what are your tops like best bang for your buck?

SPEAKER_00 56:01

Well, I, you know, so actually on child care conversations, we actually have a field guide that gives all of the 2026 um kind of who's it for. And this isn't that these are entirely our opinions because these are all conferences that we have been to at some point in time. So it also depends on if you're an owner, if you're an operator, where you are as far as stage of business, if you're a director. Um in generic phrases, I love the national association conferences that are targeted towards owners and leaders. So whether it's AELL or NCCA, um, if you are an owner operator, you know, N-A-U-Y-C is a hit or a miss depending on the year. But if you're an owner operator who loves research and you're going from a passion learning about brain research, classroom pedagogy, then absolutely go to that conference. So you need to know why you're going. If you are absolutely struggling as an owner, go find some of the folks that have the niche owners conferences. Um, you know, whether it's Vernon Mason, whether it's Tim Smith, whether it's uh Latrice Galloway and Born to Teach. Like these are all conferences that we send people to, but we do it based on a conversation with you because there's child care business growth. Like there's, you know, there's one a month practically. Some months there's three. Um, you know, like even like if you're a Frog Street curriculum folk, right? That's actually where we met you was at a Frog Street conference. So there's a lot of owner-operator stuff, even at some of the curriculum conferences. So I would look at how far can you afford to travel? Um, is this your first time? Um, but I've also found some folks who really like some people who don't like other people. So if you meet somebody at a conference, exchange contact information. I'm old, I like to change business cards. And so if you're flipping business cards with somebody, ask them. You know, this could be your first person. Say, hey, have you gone to another conference? In Texas, we have a lot that are actually sponsored by our workforce board. So people get really excited because the price is right. It's free and it's within a couple hours of home and the state actually pays your housing. So all you have to do is drive your or fly yourself there. But for a lot of folks, that is a really small pool. Now, there are 15,000 childcare centers in the state of Texas. So it's not really a small pool, but the perception is that's a small pool. So if you hear people go, oh, I'm a trainer, and they go insert state and it says Texas, um, there are a lot of us here. There's a lot of great coaches and great consultants and book authors from the state of Texas, but you have to remember, look at the geographic size of Texas, first of all. Know that there are 15,000 licensed child care centers in the state of Texas. And that will give you an idea why there are so many of us here. Um I could drive to Memphis quick from Austin, Texas. I can drive to Memphis quicker than I can drive to El Paso, which is still in Texas. So if that doesn't hurt your head, um, nothing will. But, you know, most of the Midwest would fit in Texas. Um, all of New England, Virginia, Carolinas, y'all fit in Texas. Uh so um it's so, you know, anytime you can find a conference in Texas, I'm probably gonna tell you, go for it. Uh, because it probably there's probably also three that same month. So if you just want to come hang out for a month and join us, um, I'm kind of teasing everybody that might be coming to Texas for any conference in October or November, because there's like four between state conferences and national conferences that'll be held in Texas in literally over the course of four weeks. I'm like, just come and stay. You might have to drive a little bit, but it's okay. We love you anyway.

SPEAKER_02 59:58

Yeah, I did a uh a podcast episode, uh, I think what I called it uh not all conferences are equal. And so you really have to do your research. Like, you know, for example, you mentioned Nacy and uh and I and I really like going to Nacy conferences, but it's not for everybody. It's super huge, like 30,000 people will attend it. But if you're looking for vendors, that's the place because they have you know 50,000 square feet of vendors of every single, you know, thing that you can buy or get for your school.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:28

Uh but yeah, and the vendor and the vendor, the the manufacturers will bring their vendors. So like if you're looking for one chair, you'll learn that that chair is sold by five people because they're all at the chair's booth, not at their own booth, right? Like you're like That's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:42

And they're getting and it's getting more expensive, and travel is getting more expensive with fuel costs and you know, and being able to build a uh you know a leadership uh uh structure school where you can go away for three or four days and infrastructure's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:58

Yeah, it's it's all of all of those things go into place. But you know, investing in yourself and investing in professional development, even if it's through coaching or online engagement, is is definitely a plus. So so childcare conversations.com.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:11

And anyone who is uh interested in reaching out and learning more, you can go right to that website. And is and the website for your app is centeriq.io.

unknown 1:01:19

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:20

So all of our listeners can go to centeriq.io and um and that is uh where you can find additional uh information on your um on your your projection tool.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:35

Absolutely, and we would love to have anybody just check us out and give us a call.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:40

Yeah, and if you have been happening have any questions, I I know that uh Kate and uh and Kathy are very um responsive and open to uh to ongoing conversation.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:53

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:55

Well, thank you all for listening. This has been the Early Years Exchange, a podcast by Adventist Education. If you liked what you heard, feel free to like and subscribe and share this podcast episode and our podcast with your friends, family members, professional colleagues, anyone who's interested in the field of early learning. Until next time, have a great day.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:18

Thanks for tuning in. We love bringing you real talk and fresh insight from the world of early childhood education. Be sure to follow us on social media to stay connected and catch all of the latest episodes. And if you're planning a conference, training, or special event, Kate and Carrie would love to speak to your audience. You can learn more about their keynote sessions and workshops at KateandCerry.com. If you learned something today, share the show and leave us a review below. We'll see you next time on Childcare Conversations.