366: The Greatest Secrets to Managing Change and Growing Your Childcare Center with Confidence with Cindy Morgan

In this episode of Childcare Conversations, Kate sits down with Cindy Morgan from One Place Childcare to dig into a topic every early childhood leader needs to hear — "Change is inevitable. Growth is optional." Cindy shares her incredible journey from family childcare to running a massive nonprofit food program, and now helping centers ditch the paper chaos with smart, cloud-based compliance tools. They get real about why we kick the can down the road on tough decisions, how dashboards save your sanity across multiple locations, and why your "bench" — coaches, vendors, mentors — matters more than you think.

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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 today's conversation. And today's co-host is Cindy Morgan with OnePlace Childcare. And we are going to, well, you know, have a conversation. And today, I am so excited about what we've decided we're going to talk about, which for me is all about change is inevitable. Growth is optional. Cindy, tell everybody who hasn't heard you before on the podcast how you got started in childcare and what you currently do.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Oh my gosh, I have done everything it feels like. So started in family childcare in my home because there were about 35 kids in my front yard one day. And I thought, well, I might as well get paid for doing this. If I'm going to watch everyone's kids and use my child development skills with them, I might as well get paid for it, right? So then I my family childcare was always busy and full and had a wait list. So then I opened my own center, started running those. Subsequently, I had no entrepreneurial background. I had no business degree, and in the middle of the night had a panic attack because I felt responsible for everyone on my teams and all of the employees and families that worked in my business. So I took a step back and then I migrated over to the world of nonprofit, ran a large nonprofit, grew it from sponsoring about 800 locations on the food program to well over 1500, expanded into 13 counties and really learned a lot about don't kick the can down the road because the whole thing just gets harder as you grow in scale.

Kate Woodward Young 2:20

So Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, you jumped the gun. So come back to that. Kick the can. We'll talk about that just in a minute. So you went from home base to center base to then being a food program provider for folks. And now you have um, now you are currently working for one place childcare. In 30 seconds or less, tell me what one place childcare is, and then I want us to talk about well, kicking that can.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

So what OnePlace is, is an operational platform that helps you to not just comply with regulations and quality metrics, but have the evidence to back it up, to say, to go from being, I think we did it all, I think we did all the checks, and I think we're good to go, I think everything's safe and under control, to I know we're compliant and I can prove it with date and time stamped evidence. So that's what one place is. And we like to say it fits between your center management software and whatever you're using to communicate with parents. So healthier, healthier, safer, simpler, compliance, and high quality.

Kate Woodward Young 3:33

Oh, I love that. And if you haven't seen uh Cindy and I talk about this topic, I want you to think about how many filing cabinets and how many three-ring binders do you currently have in your office? Now, if you were one of those folks who have had any sort of flooding like we've had in the South or wildfires and other parts of pretty much the continent, the country, the globe, um what would have happened to all of your stuff that's in those filing cabinets, that's in those three ring binders, if something did happen to impact your program? And just think of one place childcare, and it's way more simple than they're ever gonna say it, but your electronic filing cabinet for those oh shit situations that you don't know are coming ahead of time. Because if we did, we'd all already be there because we just never know when that flood's coming down our program. So with that, um, I do want to talk about that kick in the can. So tell me a little bit more about what you meant when you said kick in the can is still gonna be harder regardless of when the time comes.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Yeah, there is no good time for change, right? Everyone resists it. Everyone, myself included. So you're amongst friends here. You know, we we all tend to shy away from change. We want to stay in our patterns of behavior and our operational cadences that we're familiar with, that we're comfortable with. And dare I say, here in early education, we love paper. We love paper, and paper's a huge risk. Here's why. And I and I don't just mean paper either. It can be something like, well, we're beyond paper, Cindy. We're using Google Docs and Google spreadsheets and Google this and Google that. Great. I had a very large entity come to us just recently and tell me that all of their Google Docs got lost when they transitioned from one server setting to another server setting. So I'm gonna say, get it all into one place because compliance, health, and safety, having that evidence trail takes your shoulders from up here where you're, as one COO put it to me, I was scared to death that something awful would happen and we wouldn't have the records to show we were doing the safety checks. So, yes, a flood could happen, a fire could happen, but even a Google Doc can go away. So when you have a cloud-based system backed up by a third-party software company, you are able to, even if the whole house burns down, you can be up and running again in seconds because it's cloud-based. So, what I meant by kicking the can down the road is when I'm working with multi-locations, I think back to myself as I was growing in scaling and in growing my food program. I always knew there were things I needed to do that I should do. Just from understanding a little bit about business, like looking around at banks, at insurance companies, at other businesses, I knew that using technology was a good idea. But moving your program into technology or switching from one to another is one of those painful processes we all want to just push off. We want to push it off. I don't know why.

Kate Woodward Young 7:05

Human nature. Tell everybody I have kind of this secret tech side of me, but even with the secret tech side, I still absolutely dread tech stack updates, software updates, changing platforms. I mean, I still have a fairly old phone because I don't want to update the phone. I do the same thing with my laptops. I keep them until literally they're dead. Um, and then that gets expensive because then I have to go figure out how to get the hard drive content. Right. But yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think all of us, right, we all have that point of ooh, how painful is that gonna be? And I think that um one thing to kind of remember is when you're looking at different providers, know that some providers have some duplication. Some providers do some things extra, extra, super soft, super well, right? And if customer service is something you are not really sure about, I mean, have conversations with whatever platform you're going to ahead of time. Um, share with them stories, ask them questions. Um, I think you brought up a really good point, which is but you can you can update now or you can update later. It's never going to be less painful. No. And sometimes you might have more pressure. So, like, you know, if you find yourself in a you know, an oh crud situation where this is like where it used to be kind of a yeah, we're thinking about it, and now it's a ooh, right? So let's talk about multi-locations. So you had multiple locations at your program. I was a director of an owner who had four locations. And I know that we spent tons and tons of time constantly sending feedback back to the owners. And so sometimes that gets really frustrating. But what's really great now is that more and more tools have things called dashboards. Tell me a little bit about why somebody might be looking for platforms with dashboards. How does that make life a little easier? Because again, it it almost sounds like a buzzword, but if you don't know what a dashboard is or how or why to use one, you may not understand. Oh my goodness, why do I need one?

SPEAKER_02 9:30

Let me give you an analogy. Oh, so I think that everyone in childcare, especially the brands that are growing, you know, whether you have one location and you're opening your second or your three to five and trying to push to 10 or your 10 locations pushing to 20. Everyone is then in acquisition mode, right? And there's all these words. We used to just call it growing, expanding, right? Now it's growth and scaling, and there's all these fancy terms for it. No, it just means you're acquiring more schools.

Kate Woodward Young 10:00

Well, and then it's screen build or ground build, or you know, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Exactly. I don't, I really just don't care about the terminology as much as I care about what really happens is you have all these various team members. It's like herding cats. So now I own three schools. Well, that means there are three sets of teams who have their own ways of doing things, and that's genius, right? There's genius in there. And what you're trying to do is capture all of that genius and put it in one space, kind of collate it, and say, okay, out of these three forms, which is the best, you're trying to get the cream of the crop to rise to the surface. Well, the longer you kick the can down the road, the harder it is to establish your brand's way of doing things. No matter what that brand thought process is, it really is difficult the bigger you get to establish those standards and make them consistent across all of your programs if you wait too late in the game. Now, I would conversely say that most of childcare will refuse to meet with their sales or their account manager, someone like me. What I try to do is I say, listen, tell me where the pains are. No, really, tell me more about that. No, tell me more about that. And then what I say back to you is what I'm hearing, and from what I can see in your data, hear the three to five things that you should prioritize, maybe shrink those three to five down to only two to three, and really focus on those, get them established, get them moving inside your organization before you bite off anything else, right? Go through that process. Very short, iterative goals mean you make progress that much faster. But please rely on your bench. Your bench is anyone that is serving your business. So whether it's your banker and you're going and asking them, what more can you do for me? If it's your insurance agent, what more can you do for me? If it's your software or technology partners, why should I keep using your platform? How are you going to continue to help me? What can you help me with right now? Do you have a reference or a suggestion for how I might solve this problem? You would be surprised how often vendors actually know the other support networks around an industry. We all know each other, right? And we're high.

Kate Woodward Young 12:42

I mean, we have ridiculous amounts of. Okay, so let's just think this through. For those of you who go to conferences, you come out, you chat with the vendors for like 15, 20 minutes, and you go back in a session for another 90. Meanwhile, that 90 minutes you're in the session, the vendors are getting to know each other. They're asking, what do you do? How can we partner? Who's your ideal client profile? We all get to know each other. So really, vendor references are great. And if you haven't listened to the episode uh that Alicia does, who is with Free Notes Harmony, um Harmony, Free Notes. Uh, she's an upcoming episode. Um, you know, if you haven't listened to her episode about having some vendor relations and what it means to pick vendors, definitely grab that one, take Cindy's suggestions as well. Always ask what I love that phrase, what can you do for me? Right. I think that's really important. But coming back to the whole kick in the can and and and delays, I mean, we see it time and time again. It doesn't matter. It could be I mean, I had this conversation with a with a tax with a tax strategist, and he's like, Yeah, I will give people numbers. I will show people how they can save money and or invest that money back into themselves versus giving it to the IRS to the tune of six figures, and people go, I have to think about it. No, no, you don't. Six figures, you don't need to think about it at all. But but then but then it's they figure it out and they're like, Yes, I want to do this. But then it's four to six months to get the information to him so he can actually do the work. Like, I I I don't um, as somebody, you know, and again, I've realized that sometimes it might be, it might feel embarrassing because you may not want to admit that you've waited six months, so maybe two tax bracket years. I mean, ooh, you know, the right six months, that could really, that could sting. Um we we sat here and talked, he talked about clients who he met the first time four years ago. Meanwhile, they have spent a hundred thousand or more every year over the last four years. Now, with tax credits and tax strategy, it doesn't necessarily mean that you don't pay that money somewhere. It means though that you're investing that money into things that give you tax credits that then build your personal wealth. So it's not like, oh, I don't have to pay the six figures, but I get to pay it in a place where it supports me. All right, I'm I'm off that soapbox. I'm not gonna say I'm off all of them because you know, it's it's it's still a one day thing, Kate, because I mean to me, that would have seemed like a no-brainer decision, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:30

Like if it's really like dollars and cents usually is a little bit easier for people to make decisions. So I think there's two things at play here. There is a lot of incoming messages to anyone in early education, and they have to try and prioritize what are the things they can make decisions about today and what they need, more information about, things like that. So I encourage the folks listening here, if that's you, if you've just got so many emails, so many calls coming at you, and so many decisions you need to make, pull out a good old piece of paper and literally just make yourself a list of those, because it's likely spinning around in your brain a lot. And meaning that's giving you that feeling of overwhelm. Just get it out on a piece of paper that you can later throw away and then put, like, you know, one, two, three, four next to the ones that you can make right away. Don't worry about the rest for now, but just kind of get those done. And then I think what you're also describing is decision fatigue. So decision fatigue is where we're making so many decisions throughout the day. And are we making the right ones? Are we making them too quick, too slow? What? I try to tell people have a rule, have some sort of rule that guides you, a framework. I learned this from a mentor years ago. Never make a decision until you have at least three options in front of you, which by the way has saved my children over and over and over again because I might, I might have done something really bad to one of my teenagers if I didn't have three options. Keep them alive, don't keep them alive. The third one was the one that I had to come up with, right? If you've been through the teen years, you know what I'm talking about. So I'm just gonna say get three options on the table. At least if you've got three options, you can feel like you've done some due diligence, you'll feel more confident, you know, all of those things. If it's a critical decision, say to yourself, okay, for critical ones, I'm gonna come up with five options before I make a decision. But that's when you're paged in.

Kate Woodward Young 17:38

Right. Well, here's the thing. So here's the thing about decisions, right? So as a coach, I actually say I do more decision support than coaching because I think that it's sometimes it's worth, you have to find the right people to bounce those decisions, those options off of, right? So anytime that you're sitting here faced with decisions, in addition to your bench, look at who's outside your bench cheering you on that you're also talking to. Do you have a coach or a mentor or both? If you don't get one, even coaches have coaches, you know. So make sure you've got somebody who is not, I love spouses and significant others. Don't get me wrong, but that is not who you discuss multi-million dollar decisions. If you are even, even if you only have a single location, you are probably running close to a million dollars a year in revenue. If the person you're talking to has never done that, that's not a person whose advice you take. If, and again, even though you might find somebody who's done it bigger, better, bolder, when did they do it? How did they do it? Because again, a a homegrown, I went from family child care to multi-locations as a small business is going to be different and have different levels, levels of support than I opened a franchise, I now have 10 franchises. Or I have venture-backed capital and I just bought 20. Right. So all of those, although we all face that decision fatigue, we're all struggling with a lot of the same kinds of decisions. Try to find some folks that where you want to be, some who are maybe a couple of steps ahead of you, um, and people who've actually really done it. I I really do, I I can't stress this enough. I like significant others, but chances are you want to keep them in your life, same with your families and siblings. Don't go to them with these problems because then they get a little mad if you don't take their suggestions. And Cindy, we can't have that, right?

SPEAKER_02 19:46

So I don't want to keep dating my husband forever. He's like, I love that idea. So handsome for me to ruin that way.

Kate Woodward Young 19:54

So if you were gonna be talking to somebody right now who's listening to this podcast and they're like, okay, it sounds good, but I can't even get my team to message the parents when I want them to. And I got people who still walk around with their phone all day. I don't know if I really want to give them another piece of technology that they have to use because then, oh, Cindy, it just sounds too hard. I just can't make this work.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

Well, first of all, you didn't get into business because you're afraid of doing hard things. Let's remind ourselves that we are not afraid to do hard things. Number one. Number two, get somebody alongside you who's already done it. And I guarantee, we I hear these stories all the time. I can't get my staff to put their little booties on before they go in the infant classroom. I can't seem to get them all to show up in their uniform with all the right components on. I can't seem to get them to put all their devices and their personal backpack, their personal purse into the locked cabinet. It always ends up in the classroom, and then I've got to scold them for that and send them back to the staff room. It's a great, that's a whole great use case for one place. You can build that into the app. They open up the app, the very first checklist they see, it might say, Are you in uniform? You can even embed a little photograph of what they should look like. Do you look at what they should not look like, or you don't, or what they should not look like. That might even be better yet, and you might all have a laugh together, right? So these systems should be supporting the things that you're struggling with. And don't be afraid to go to others and be real and be vulnerable of what are the things you're struggling with. This is one of the things that I love about you, Kate, and is your coaching is real life. I have sat in these sessions where people have come in, you know, tears running down their faces, don't have my contract yet, starting tomorrow. Uh, I've got this problem, that problem, this fire, that fire, where, you know, I'm pulling my hair out, I'm losing my hair, you know, whatever the deal is. And you calmly say to them, okay, look, come here. We're gonna tackle this one step at a time. Break it down to small bite-sized pieces, but do something. Because if you don't do anything, if you stand there frozen in your tracks, well, I can promise you your competitors around you are taking action. Some action, some action, some forward movement helps you to build that momentum. And then you're off to the races and you can tackle a lot more than you think you can. You you really can.

Kate Woodward Young 22:40

Oh, absolutely. And and find your tribe. So, you know, whatever you, however you, whatever you want to call them. Um, and there are official, there's unofficial, there's paid, there's not paid. Um, just find a group of people that you can who absolutely will have your back and will support you um 100%. So, with that, thank you so much for today's conversation. And if you don't already subscribe to our newsletter, go to childcareconversations.com, sign up for the newsletter. The podcast comes out twice a week, and so does the newsletter. And we can't wait to have our next conversation with you.

Childcare Conversations 23:19

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.