361: Why Childcare Owners Need Formal Management Training — Or Risk Burnout With Laura Biederman

Unlock the secret to rapid growth in early childhood education—without burning out your team or drowning in disjointed systems. Laura Biederman, from Ebenezer's eight locations, reveals how she transitioned from classroom teacher to business leader, and the surprising lessons she learned along the way. If your expansion feels overwhelming or you're managing chaos with patchwork technology, this episode is your blueprint for smarter decisions and sustainable growth.

Laura shares her candid journey. From being thrown into the deep end without formal management training to realizing she was actually running a business all along. She reveals the crucial shift in mindset needed to lead with confidence, make tough decisions sooner, and embrace the leadership role you might not feel fully prepared for. You'll also hear how her team uses personality assessments and streamlined systems to improve collaboration, reduce turnover, and create a healthier, more efficient workplace.

Bamboo HR: https://www.bamboohr.com/homepage-customer

Laura's email address: lbiederman@ebenezerchildcare.com

Dare to Lead book: https://www.amazon.com/Dare-Lead-Brave-Conversations-Hearts/dp/0399592520

The personality compass:
https://www.leadrighttoday.com/uploads/9/4/1/6/9416169/personalitycompassandtests.pdf

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Transcript

Childcare Conversations 0:00

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 this quarter's sponsor, Playground, the all-in-one child care management software. We're all about managing monkeys and saving you time at your center. With this platform, you can. We're proud to partner with a team that's as committed to your success as we are. Learn more at TryPlayground.com. Now, let's get into today's conversation. One we think you're really going to love.

Kate Woodward Young 0:47

Welcome back to Childcare Conversations, and I am so excited for today's conversation because, well, we're going to talk a little bit about making some smart business decisions. And today's guest that we are going to chat is Laura Biederman. And Laura is with Ebenezer, and they have eight locations. And I'm so excited to talk with Laura about her journey and specifically about that whole growing in business and what it's like to go and keep adding schools and more locations. So, Laura, why don't you tell folks a little bit about how you got into the industry and from there we'll see where things go.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Sure. So well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Um, but I got into the field a really long time ago. I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, right? From growing up, played teacher in my grandpa my grandma's basement. But I think the biggest piece that shifted is I've taught, I've lived in many different states, and along the way, you need teaching licenses to teach. And I was and when I moved to Wisconsin, I was waiting for mine because I wanted to teach fourth grade, my all-time favorite grade. Um, and it wasn't coming quick enough. So I got a job back in childcare because I knew I loved kids, and I never left. That was that was back in 2014 when I moved here, and I never went, I mean, I did get my teaching license just because it came through, but I never left the field. Um, I just loved it. I started as a pre-K teacher. I've held every position into becoming a district leader, so I've held all those roles to see the differences and the and what they play in all of childcare. And now here at Abedizer, I'm the associate executive director.

Kate Woodward Young 2:25

Love that. So, Laura, now that you have spent a little time um in the industry and you went from teacher to administrator, what was one of the things that probably I'm gonna go with surprised you the most when that transition, that first transition? So think back, that first transition from really qualified teacher to now you're an administrative leader. What was the the thing that kind of resonated with you? Like, um, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

It was that I was actually a leader. I'm running a business. And I think that was the biggest thing that I did not understand when I first took over my center. Um, is I didn't realize that I was a leader and that I was running a business. And those are things that we don't think about. Like we're great teachers, right? We get promoted along the way. Um, and that I had to really learn and I had to dive into. And I had to um like just embrace my surroundings. I worked at a corporation then. So really just being led and trained and soaking in how to run a business. And then I also had to go back and get my administrative credential um in Wisconsin that like helps you with the business side. Um, so I I think just all that learning. Um, but the first thing I had to identify is that this is a business and we have to sometimes make hard business decisions, and we are really good at putting those off.

Kate Woodward Young 3:43

Hard decisions, hard conversations. Those are never, those are never phrases any director loves to say. So tell me a little bit more. How much training did you have to be a teacher?

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Oh, I mean years, right? I had my bachelor's in education, so I have four years there, and then I think I even had a no, yeah. So I mean, four years there, plus like I'd always wanted to be at the field. So I'm doing other stuff to learn more about how to be a better teacher. So minimum four years.

Kate Woodward Young 4:10

Okay. So you had four years of training to be a teacher, and then you did such a great job. They promoted you to enroll and to a role, and you said you mentioned you were with a corporation. Did the corporation even have kind of a manager and training track, or were you literally thrown to the wolves?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

I was back, I was a generation that was thrown into the wolves. Um, so a fun fact, I was an assistant director for six months, went out on maternity leave, came back as the center director. Um, so happy birthday promotion, everything all those things. Um, so I had hardly any training. Now I was doing it well, right? I'm a really quick learner. I've worked in restaurant business, right? Like I've had all those things and those experiences that have helped me learn. Um, but I had no formal training. So then when I got the credential, it helped. But the biggest part was really just being curious and trying to understand like all the different things, right? The PLs, the enrollment, the parents, everything that goes with it. It was a lot of learn as you go. And I had a day and a half with my previous boss when I came back. Um, so it was it was a lot of being thrown in, but I do learn really well that way. So, however, we learned along that way that that is not best practice. So at that corporation, we did start to create a manager in training, and we had that towards the end. But I mean, we didn't have it for a long time for many people. So a lot of us just had to kind of learn as we go, right? Like you had to learn how do you become NAC accredited? What does that process look like? Like, how do you do re-accreditation? All those things you're learning as you go, where having a manager in training would be wonderful for any type of.

Kate Woodward Young 5:46

Well, you know, it's so funny because I always laugh when I have conversations with pretty much anybody in the industry. And like you, I've been in the industry for a long time, a little bit longer than you. And um, but I also did a lot of other industries. And one of the things that I found interesting is in healthcare, in retail, and in food service, uh, hospitality, all three of those industries, which are often people will go, oh, well, I can make as much money or I can do it over here, right? But the one thing that those three industries do across the board, across the corporations, the mom and pops, is 90% of them have a true manager and training track. Like you can jump into a retail setting and join, you can get hired as their MIT. Yeah, right. So you get hired as a manager and training. Uh, you can go to Taco Bell and get hired into a manager at training, right? Hotels, all these things. And so from day one, you know your path is towards management. We don't do that. We take these awesomely well, very confident, well-trained educators and now go run a business. And like you said, you didn't have any real formal training. So they expected you to manage a budget, manage people, manage parents, manage marketing plans with zero training. And we wonder why sometimes our directors, our administrators get burned out. It's because we've set them up to fail from the get-go. And the other part of that that I also find interesting when we talk about like that you weren't trained to manage people, the staff piece. The other thing that I think is so interesting, because I'm one of those people, right? I'm one of those people that kept telling people, you've got to make sure you're training your staff. You've got if you don't want the staff, don't ever train your staff. But like everything else, like we didn't teach you how to manage a budget, you know, we also didn't teach you how to teach adults.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Right. And that's so different. It is not the same as, I mean, okay, you can use some of the like philosophies and you can kind of change it to adults, but nobody taught you how to do that. So I've spent most of my career learning how to become a leader and reading books like Dare to Lead, um, any type of books like that I can um Do you have that one? I love it. It's a great one. Um, right, but like she's so right in it. It's such a good book. And it's she's also really funny, which I like. Like, I like any type of book that has some humor in it too. Um, but just diving in and trying to figure out like where are my strengths, how how does that, how does that relate to others and how do I then lead them? So one thing that we've actually been doing is we do monthly manager trainings here at Ebenezer for our just our managers. Um, and we've really been diving into personalities and how important they are, right? So we've been using the personality compass to see where everybody is. So you have north, north, south, east, and west, and they all everybody's different. But what was really eye-opening to me is we had a lot of people who were south and west, and I'm northeast. So, like automatically I'm very different, and my brain is wired completely different, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I'm leading people who are different, so I have to figure out where how to meet them where they are. So our managers took it back to the teachers, right? Because then they're leading other people, and it completely for one set of managers, it was like it helped them fully understand each other better and to see, okay, so your strength is my weakness, and it just was they balance each other out so well, but to get through that, like can be hard sometimes.

Kate Woodward Young 9:33

So one of the things that Laura mentioned is is like a one of one of a hundred, probably personality or the way you think kind of indexes. And so um, in the first book that Carrie and I have been teaching with since 2002, the very first thing we have is know yourself. And so in the know yourself, uh, there for a while we had a lot of brain dominance language, but over the years we've kind of picked a different ones because we want people to explore what works for them, right? So, um, so we're not gonna sit here and say you have to use, you know, you have to use Herman brain dominance or you have to use Myers Briggs or you have to use disc or you have to, right? Or that you have to use, you know, whichever pick pick the flavor of the month. Um, because I think the really the key part of that is as a leader, you have to know exactly who you are, right? You have to know how you think, you have to know your personality, how do you lead, how do you manage, how do you learn, how do you communicate? Because if you don't know how you do that, then you have no way of really being better and being able to do that with the other folks in your program. So, oh, I love that. So I am really curious. Um, when you talk about some of the books and the fact that you read books, so you know, as an author, I always get excited when people say they read books. Um, do you have a director bookshelf? Do you have a bookshelf of books behind you that you often pull from and maybe even share for those leaders you're you're building up in your organization? And if so, tell me what's on it other than Dare to Lead.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

So one of them is we started as a group, it's called Finish. It's by John Acoff, and he really talks about how to finish things. Um, it's a really good one. Um, that's one of the biggest ones. I do have a lot right now, um, but that's one, and also fish is one that we have. So um the fish philosophy is a big thing, right? Like it's the um, it's a huge thing. And it just really talks about how to build a culture and it's so simple. It's right, have fun, um, just all the different things. That one's on there. Um, I have some that I have not read yet that are waiting for me to do that. Um with our growth this year, it got a little, a little busy. But another one is like who moved the cheese? Like who moved my cheese? It's just that it's such an easy read. So I found that if I give somebody an easier, simpler read, they're going to do it better than if it's like a really big book. Um, and others are just fine. Others I can say, hey, this is a great book, and they'll just go straight for it, or they'll tell me, Hey, I read this book in my class, it's really good. We should do this. So those are the biggest ones that we've done. Um, there's a few others out there that um we're gonna start reading, but yeah.

Kate Woodward Young 12:17

All right. So I would be remiss and people would go, I can't believe you didn't say something. Okay. Okay. So first of all, I just want to remind everybody who's listening that children are not widgets. And the reason I say that is that so many of the business books you just mentioned, Laura, are designed for different types of organizations. So I am going to strongly encourage you to go look for and to add to your bookshelf. I got this. The Childcare Director Leadership Blueprint. Yep. Some of our positivists have read that one. Transform Your Team by Beth Cannon. Okay. Rachel Sapala has a great book out. And so does Latrice Galloway, that is called The Power of One. Now, here's why I'm saying this. Other than the fact, you know, is the publisher for some of them. There is a publisher twist there. But in early childcare, female leaders managing female staff, we don't think the same. We are not the same and we aren't producing widgets. So I am going to challenge you to go find those books by those early childhood education leaders, the Beth Cannons, the Vernon Masons, um, Latrice Galloway. Um I'm I was trying to do it without actually looking at my shelf, but I was not successful. Um, you know, even Kathy Lingon's five pillars of um profit-driven success. So there are some great books. If you want, if you're curious where to find a list of them, um, I actually have a Pinterest board for child care conversations that says director's bookshelf. And so it includes Dare to Lead, it includes um Cheryl Sandberg's Lean In, um, and some of the other like really strong female leadership books. But one of the things that I keep getting stuck in, and I will tell you that I got this, the Childcare Leadership Blueprint, which I am the author of, um, was actually written because I went to a conference, child care conference. Keynote speaker was a dude. There were 300 women in the room. Every quote, everything he said was attributed to a dead white guy. And um so I was like, you know, you are in a room with 300 women and you couldn't have found one female inspirational quote, just one, right? And so um I like to challenge folks. And so I did not uh so just so you know, I loved every book you just mentioned. I also would have added Raving Fans, the one minute manager meets the monkey. Like I've got those on my bookshelf too. So don't get me wrong. But the fact that every single book you mentioned, although popular, although very helpful when it comes to leadership, you know, for those of us listening, we have to remember that as women, we're gonna learn different, we're gonna lead different, you know, than a guy in the industry or even just a guy in any industry. So it doesn't matter uh what where it goes. But I love when I hear organizations doing book clubs with their managers, even just regular monthly training for managers. That is just truly inspirational. Now, earlier you talked about one of the things you learned is that you sometimes you have to make the hard decisions. And I I'm gonna tack that on that sometimes we have to make those hard decisions sooner rather than later. Yes, we wait way too long, way too long. So tell me a little bit about a time or or maybe the the result of not doing something when you should have. Um, and I think you know where I'm trying to go here, but indirectly. Uh so tell me about kind of a solution or something that you're like, we are so glad we did this. Why did we not do this sooner?

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Uh, I mean, there have been many along my career. Um, because I think you wait so, so long uh because you don't want to lose anybody, right? You don't want to, I think attendance is one of our biggest ones that I that um we don't want to tackle because we're afraid they're all gonna leave. And that's really hard. But then your good teachers are the ones who are gonna leave. So um before I came to Ebenezer, I had a teacher who had just started with us. And at the time, my um superior came from retail, no clue about childcare, but she had experience being a district leader, so they hired her, which is fine. And many do just fine, but she did not understand the field at all. Um, and uh she made me, it was just a really bad thing where we had a teacher who'd been with the company for 15 years, wonderful. Parents loved her so phenomenal. And um I didn't stick up for her as much as I should have because the new teacher went above me, didn't even talk to me, went to my boss and said, All these things happened with this teacher. And she made me write her up as a final written warning. And I was like, She's never had anything. But I was so new in my role, I thought I had to go with it. So I did not stand up for her. And in the long run, we actually lost the good teacher and kept the teacher who really didn't know what was going on. And um, I learned from that. So I was like, okay, we're gonna start working on things sooner. So that was a huge life lesson of I know my people, you're not in my building. So how do I help you understand where I'm coming from? But it's also helped me now, as I'm overseeing center, center coordinators, we call them center coordinators here, um, to help actually listen to them about like they know their teachers better than I do. So we need to support them as well as everybody in a whole. And if there is any issue, we need to make sure we tackle it right away.

Kate Woodward Young 17:44

Well, I love that. So, what are some other issues? I don't know, maybe technology based, maybe ways of communicating based that you guys struggled with and and what solutions did you move towards? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

So um before I came like so we use um, okay, there's many, many different things, but in childcare, there can be so many different solutions for all the different things. So you can have one system for this, one system for that. You have all these different systems. So that was a big struggle when um when we onboard anybody is okay, well, first you're gonna go to this system to do the CRM. Now you're gonna go to this system to prove tent cards. Now you're gonna go to this system so you can talk to the families. Now you're gonna go to this system. Like there's just so many different things. So we were really looking for a like all-in-one inclusive type of system. So we recently switched, um, not recently, it feels recently, but it's two years ago, to a different uh communication app that had its playground. So we just switched to them and we now have them as our CRM and it goes directly into the enrollment for families. Um families inquire through there and they're in the system and they don't have to re-enter their information. We don't have to go in and enter it into anything. Um, we also um use that for, I mean, you can use it for payroll. We personally do not because that when they piloted it, we they could you can only have one location and we had more than one. And then we were already looking for a new system, so we just went we went a different way. But there's this wonderful, um, and then they also just just all the features and they listen. So one of the biggest things I've struggled with before is when I call somebody to say, like, hey, do you have this report? Or hey, we're looking for this in a system for any type of communication or um reporting, they they just say no and they don't even want to have a conversation. But with Playground, they actually like listen and they created an entire report, which is a business report, which is a revenue summary that we needed for our business. Um, they were more than happy to uh create it for us. It did take some time, but um that was one of the things that we worked with them on, and they were so wonderful, and they just listen. Um, and even now they're listening to feedback, they've made changes based on on what anybody is saying. Um yeah, it's just been wonderful. But I think that's the biggest thing is we have so many different systems and so many different places where managers have to learn and having just one is so much easier. It's like just go to these two different um things and you'll find everything.

Kate Woodward Young 20:04

Yeah, I think that you just you made a you made a great point of that whole the onboarding of the staff and how if you have a really um piecemeal tech stack now, you know, um often in the industry, especially over the last probably 15 years, I've often had a side gig in addition to being a training and consultant. And a lot of my side gigs ended up in the tech industry. Um, we won't talk about how long I've been I've been in the tech industry, actually longer than I've been in the childcare industry. In some way, right? So I got my my foot's always been over there. I kind of tell people that I'm kind of a closet techie. Um I don't really tell people until somebody looks at my resume and they go, You worked at Microsoft. I'm like, Yeah, just put that to the side. So um, but as a result, I think that it's really important for the directors for the owners to go back and regularly review what's in your tech stack, what is your tech stack costing you? Do you have a provider you really, really like? And have you talked to them recently about what features they might have added? Um, who are the provide who's the tech who's in your tech stack that you don't like? And I'm not just talking about things that are designed for ECE. And actually, this probably applies to anybody in any industry, right? Like, you know, back in the day you had to have this QuickBooks software and you had to have this newsletter software and this, right? Well, yeah, yeah, the QuickBooks or Quick Intuit, actually. Yeah, it's the Intuit is now literally bought all those other companies. And so now again, you have now one login and everything self populates.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

But you can go in the cloud, you don't have to be desktop. That's that was a huge thing that we did as well. And being a nonprofit, we got it for a reasonable price, but um, we would have to have it on somebody's computer and nobody else could use it. So now we're trying to move also towards the cloud. So, like we have Microsoft the whole package, right? Because we want to make sure if we did get hacked a long time ago It was a disaster before I was here. So I'm very thankful. It was a disaster. So now it's all in the cloud. Everything is so easy to you can access it from anywhere. And that was our purpose moving forward. I mean, even our door systems were moving towards like our locking ones to just a cloud-based, so that everything like it's so much easier. But that was one of the biggest things was um how do we make it easier, especially QuickBooks, because we grew so quickly and are into it, whatever you want to call it. But we needed similar use.

Kate Woodward Young 22:33

Well, and you got eight eight locations. So yeah, so regardless of what software. So yes, Laura is talking about playground and how they use it, but she also mentioned they use other software. And I even threw out the concept that regardless of your industry, go back at least once a year. At least some people might even need to, especially right now with the with all of the AI tools. If you have added a subscription to this AI or this AI or this AI, go back and look at them. Are you getting all you need to out of this AI? Um, I used to have seven or eight because of different features. And again, I've been doing AI for about four years because of having worked for Microsoft and when Copilot came out way back when, its predecessor, actually. And so, you know, one of the things I encourage folks to do is to go back and and and really look at where that money might be be sneaking away. Cause you can, man, you can pick up those $19.99 a month subscriptions pretty dang fast. And next thing you know, oh, it's only five, I've only got a subscription to four. Well, yeah, four of them at 20 bucks a month plus all their taxes means you're spending 12,000 1200 a year. And if you're only using one and you're only using it enough that you could have been using the free version, you know, 1200 versus free. Let's let's come back and look at that, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:50

So that was the same thing we also did with our uh payroll system. So we were not happy. We were having horrible, they messed up our benefits so bad that we had to manually calculate them. Not me, I should not say that. Somebody in our agency had to manually calculate it for four months, four months for 87 employees. And we knew, I know, okay, and we knew we were gonna have a merger, and we're like, how is this even gonna happen? Like, there was no way. So we did look at that, and then we also found a platform that was so user-friendly. Like I had to do payroll unexpectedly last Monday, and I could do it without anybody showing me. Like, that's how easy I know. Like it's kind of like this helplessness.

Kate Woodward Young 24:31

We're not we're not gonna pitch them here, but I want you to share that link. We'll drop that in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

No, we're not. But I mean, but you need to know what you have, right? So the one before was so cumbersome some it took like two or three hours and um just consolidating, and now we also have recruiting through there. So we actually spend, we spend a lot more with this company, but we don't pay any money to indeed. We have zero paid ads, and we are able to still actively hire without any help from paying the paid ads. So we actually save money, but okay.

Kate Woodward Young 24:59

So I think that that might be a whole separate podcast. I'll come back.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

But you're right. We go through and we analyze, we look at, we see, okay, how can we save money? What is the easiest way? How can we take any work off of our director's pleats because they have so much on them? Like, how do we support them? And if we're not looking at our systems, like that's the easiest way to do it right there.

Kate Woodward Young 25:18

I love so, Laura, thank you. I love that. You couldn't, we couldn't have wrapped that up any better. So look at your systems, not just your paper ones, but look at your digital ones. What are your digital ones? Are you duplicating? Has somebody added a new feature? Um, you know, again, ask around and don't forget, if you are a 501c3 nonprofit or church-based, don't forget to ask for nonprofit rates. Um, a lot of times, if you've got multiple locations, you might also just be able to get to get a multiple location site. If you're small, ask about a small business plan. Like if you don't ask, the answer will always be no. So, with that, Laura, thank you so much for joining us on today's conversation. And if you haven't already subscribed to our newsletter, go to childcareconversations.com, click on the newsletter link, and join the newsletter. We published two episodes a week, which means you get two newsletters a week, and those newsletters do not tell you everything that's in that episode. So we look forward to talking to you in a few days.

Childcare Conversations 26:25

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 kateandcary.com. If you learned something today, share the show and leave us a review below. We'll see you next time on Childcare Conversations.