Schools of Excellence: The No. 1 ECE & Private School Leadership Podcast

I want you to think about the last stack of unanswered inquiries sitting in your inbox. The missed calls. The tour you meant to follow up on three days ago. If you're a school leader who feels like you're working harder than ever and your enrollment numbers still won't budge, this episode is for you.

I've audited hundreds of school leader schedules over the years, and here's what I keep finding. The schools that are full, the ones with waitlists and a reputation that does the marketing for them, aren't winning because of a bigger budget or a better location. They're winning because of how they structure their day.

I tell a story in this episode about a multi-site leadership team I worked with. Six locations, each one needing to enroll seven to ten kids, which meant they were staring down sixty enrollments they needed to fill. When I asked each director what she was doing to drive enrollment, the answers broke my heart. One had changed the answering machine message. Another rearranged the front desk. Someone updated the website fonts. None of that is enrollment activity. None of it is close to the cash.

So in this episode, I walk you through what I call the Daily Profit Plan, four frameworks that separate the schools spinning their wheels from the schools that are full. This isn't about doing more. It's about doing the things that actually move the needle, and building a rhythm around them so they don't get pushed aside every time something urgent shows up.

What You'll Learn

• Why "activities closest to the cash" matter more than busyness, and how to tell the difference
• How to protect enrollment time so it doesn't get swallowed by the daily fire drills
• Why generic follow-up scripts fail, and what a tiered follow-up system actually looks like
• How to turn your current families into a natural referral network without feeling pushy
• Why enrollment can't live on one person's shoulders, and what happens when it does (including a real story about a nearly $50,000 mistake)
• What it actually takes to make your whole team enrollment ambassadors, not just your front desk

Connect With Us:

• Join us on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

You don't have one type of parent in your school. You have three, four, maybe five. And if your marketing, your website, and your enrollment tours are all speaking to the same imaginary "average" parent, that's exactly why some of your best families are scrolling right past you.

In this episode, Chanie breaks down the Parent Archetype framework, a structured way to figure out who is actually enrolling in your center, what they care about, and how to stop guessing at your marketing and start speaking directly to the families in front of you.

This is the enrollment conversation most schools skip. Everyone wants to talk about Facebook ads, website redesigns, and getting more Google reviews. Chanie makes the case that none of that works until you understand the data underneath it: who your parents actually are, what they actually value, and why they actually choose you. Whether you're short on enrollment, sitting on a full waitlist, or just want a marketing strategy that finally makes sense, this episode gives you the foundation everything else is built on.

• Why enrollment is "the lifeblood of your business" no matter what season you're in
• The five data collection methods to understand your actual parent population (not who you assume they are)
• The exact demographic categories to track, from family structure to decision-making style
• Why online reviews mean almost nothing to certain parent avatars, and everything to others
• Five real parent archetypes Chanie uses with clients: Career-Focused, Highly Involved, First-Time, Multicultural, and Grandparent Guardian
• How to validate your avatars once you've built them
• Why throwing money at Facebook ads won't fix an enrollment problem rooted in bad messaging

Connect With Us:

• Join us on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

You don't need a bigger ad budget to fill your classrooms this month. You need a plan you can actually execute in the next 30 days, and that is exactly what I'm walking you through in this episode.

Right now, you're probably in one of two camps. Maybe enrollment is humming along, you've got a waitlist, and you just raised tuition again. Or maybe you're in a season where things feel harder. Parent retention has dipped, you've had a wave of families leave, or you just opened two new classrooms after an acquisition or a hiring spree and you need those seats filled to hit the profit margin you're working toward.

Wherever you land, this episode is for you, because every leader benefits from knowing how to move fast when enrollment needs to move.

Here's the distinction I want you to sit with first: there's a short-term plan and a long-term plan, and most schools only ever build one or the other. Ads, a new website, an SEO strategy, these are long-term visibility plays. It takes weeks to get the right creative, the right targeting, the right cost per lead down. Building a website that actually drives traffic is a two to three month process. That work matters, but it will not put a family in your door by the end of this month.

So today, we're playing short-term. Three strategies you can start this week that get real families walking through your doors before the month is out.

What You'll Learn:

• Why ads and a new website are long-term plays, and what actually moves the needle in 30 days
• How to run an open house that turns strangers into enrolled families, not just a nice event
• The exact way to “work the room” so every conversation moves a parent closer to signing up
• How to run a parent working roundtable that turns your current families into an active referral engine
• Why personalized incentives outperform generic ones every time
• How to turn everyday errands, like the gym or a nearby apartment building, into enrollment opportunities
• What “ethical eavesdropping” is and how it can shape your long-term marketing strategy

Connect With Us:

• Join us on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

What if I told you one of our clients added 80 new families to her enrollment for the upcoming school year, and five more who enrolled on the spot, in under 30 days? Not through luck. Not through crossing her fingers and hoping tours would convert. Through a system.

In this episode, I'm walking you through the enrollment gear: what it actually looks like to build an enrollment ecosystem instead of just doing enrollment activity. I'm sharing the real story of a client, Missy, who runs multiple locations and turned one of her struggling centers around by building accountability into her calendar instead of hoping her team would just remember to follow up.

We're covering the four levels of work every gear needs (strategic, implementation, support, and classroom), the difference between green and red activities in your enrollment process, and why your calendar is the real battlefield where enrollment either happens or doesn't. I also get into why disturbances and interruptions throughout your day aren't a sign something's broken. They're actually part of the job, and there's a mindset shift here that changes how you lead.

What You'll Learn:

• The three systems Missy put in place that helped her center enroll 80 new families in under 30 days
• The four levels of work (strategic, implementation, support, classroom) and who owns each one in your enrollment process
• The difference between green activities (closest to the cash) and red activities (busywork that feels productive but doesn't move enrollment)
• Why your calendar, not your to-do list, is where enrollment actually gets won or lost
• How to know when your enrollment gear can move into strategic maintenance instead of constant hustle
• Why interruptions and disturbances throughout your day are an invitation to practice leadership, not a problem to eliminate

Resources Mentioned:

• Five Gears Diagnostic: https://hub.schoolsofexcellence.com/fivegears

Connect With Us:

• Join us on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

You already know your enrollment is down. You already know payroll is eating you alive. You already know two of your best teachers just gave notice. But have you actually looked at your calendar?

In this episode, I'm walking you through something I say to our clients until I'm blue in the face: every single problem you're dealing with in your center right now, profit, staff retention, parent retention, enrollment, traces back to your calendar. Not your marketing. Not your staff. Your calendar.

This isn't a time management pep talk. This is the actual mechanism behind why some centers grow steadily while others stay stuck putting out the same fires month after month. I walk you through how I run calendar audits with our clients (including multi-site operators running 5, 10, 15+ locations), what the School Leader Scorecard is, and why I said no to a well paid, exciting opportunity that came my way this year, even though it hurt in the moment.

If you've ever told yourself "I just don't have time" or blamed a missed goal on a call-out or a licensing visit, this episode is going to challenge that story. Grab a notebook. You're going to want to write some of this down.

• Why your calendar and your bank account are the two most honest indicators of what you actually value
• The difference between working in your business and working on your business, and why both need dedicated time
• How to identify the $10 an hour tasks that are quietly draining your profit
• What the School Leader Scorecard is and how it categorizes your time from $10 an hour to $10,000 an hour
• Why "someone called out" is not the real reason you missed your goals
• How to run a calendar audit that actually holds you accountable to your priorities
• Why saying no to a profitable opportunity was the right call for my business this season

Connect With Us:

• Let's Chat on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chaniewilschanski/
• Join us on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

Ever notice how the first staff meeting of the year gets the ironed tablecloths, the good snacks, and the outfit you actually planned in advance... and then somehow still leaves your team overwhelmed instead of inspired?

That's the paradox we're unpacking on this episode. As a new school year gets underway, it's tempting to use that first meeting to hand your team everything you think is mission critical, all at once. Handbook. Policies. Vision. Values. Classroom management. Every important thing you've been sitting on, verbally dumped into one meeting because it finally feels like the right moment. And then we wonder why the team walks away foggy instead of focused.

In this episode, Chanie breaks down why that approach backfires and walks through a framework for designing a first staff meeting that actually sticks. The core idea: different topics activate different parts of the brain, and a meeting that jumps between all of them without intention is asking your team to do something their brains simply can't do well.

• Why cramming vision, policy, and logistics into one meeting works against you, and the three-part structure to use instead
• How to turn abstract concepts like mission and vision into something your team can actually use when a parent is yelling or a kid needs stitches
• The exact questions to ask your staff so they define, in their own words, how they want to show up when things get hard
• How to build a school theme or headline for the year that actually guides decisions about time, money, and energy, instead of getting lost by October
• A hands-on team activity that gets your whole staff thinking creatively about what your theme looks like in real classrooms
• Why investing in people will always outperform investing in another piece of software
• How to close out the meeting by having each teacher commit to one small, doable habit for the year

Connect With Us:

• Let's Chat on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chaniewilschanski/
• Join us on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

What happens when you've done everything right, built the SOPs, color-coded the calendars, created the checklists, and your business still finds a way to make you sick?

That's exactly where this week's guest, Kathy Gray, found herself. Kathy is the owner of Creative Critters, a growing early childhood education company based in Virginia with five centers (and counting). She's been part of the Schools of Excellence community for years, and in this conversation, she gets real about what it actually looked like to lead “with empathy first” and what it cost her.

If you've ever felt like being a good leader means being endlessly available, endlessly understanding, and endlessly willing to make an exception for one more person, this episode is going to hit close to home.

Kathy and Chanie unpack the difference between leading by example and leading by self-sacrifice. They talk about what happens when a director is too afraid to protect the standards because she's afraid of losing staff (spoiler: you lose the right staff anyway). And they get into one of the most important distinctions in leadership: care is not the same thing as capacity.

This episode also digs into how Kathy started using data, specifically staff time-off data, to finally see what her culture was actually telling her. One number she found: at one center, they had a full staff only 35% of the time. That's not a staffing problem. That's a standards problem.

By the end of this conversation, you'll understand why the phrase “protecting the standards” matters so much more than “being consistent,” and why the goal isn't to stop caring. It's to stop absorbing everyone else's outcomes as your own.

• Why leading “by example” can quietly turn into leading by self-sacrifice
• The critical difference between care and capacity, and why confusing them costs you your best staff
• How Kathy used time-off data to uncover what her culture was really telling her (and what she found)
• Why protecting the standards is different from being “a stickler” or being harsh
• What it means to let the company, not the leader, carry the weight of the standard
• Why healthy dependence on your team is not weakness, and what's lost when leaders try to do it all alone
• Kathy's honest reflection on what still isn't where she wants it to be, even after years of growth

Resources Mentioned:

• This Can't Be Normal by Chanie Wilschanski: https://thiscantbenormal.com
• Access Chapter One of This Can’t Be Normal for Free: https://thiscantbenormal.com/chapter-one

Connect With Us:

• Let's Chat on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chaniewilschanski/
• Join us on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Jessica Hampton and Katie Dank on Child Care Confidential, and about ten minutes in, Jessica said, "You just described my life." That's usually how these conversations go.

We talked about what's in This Can't Be Normal, and specifically about why a bigger team can still leave a leader feeling completely alone. We got into the difference between systems, standards, and rhythms, why "getting buy-in" is often a leader avoiding a hard conversation instead of building real alignment, and why waking up at 2 am with your brain looping isn't a personality flaw. It's a drift, and it's a signal worth listening to.

If you've ever felt like the only one actually working while everyone else gets to play pretend until things get hard, this conversation is for you.

• Why "protecting your energy" is the wrong goal, and what to do instead
• The real difference between systems, standards, and rhythms, and why only rhythms create safety
• What "performing confusion" looks like when a director avoids holding a standard
• Why proximity isn't accountability, and how leaders end up being the business instead of building one
• Why resistance to a new standard is often a sign the standard is a good one
• The three-part definition of a rhythm: pre-decided, mood-proof, and identity-giving

Resources Mentioned:

• Download Chapter One of This Can’t Be Normal: https://thiscantbenormal.com/chapter-one
• Grab a copy of This Can’t Be Normal: https://thiscantbenormal.com/

Connect With Us:

• Let's Chat on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chaniewilschanski/
• Join us on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

Earlier in the week, we talked about micromanaging, the first thing that shows up in what I call the delegation dip. Today we're moving into the second thing: neglect.

Neglect doesn't look like yelling or control. It looks like handing someone the reins and walking away, especially when they seem competent enough that you assume they don't need guidance. I want to share a story that plays out in schools constantly, where a leader hires someone highly capable, assumes competence means they don't need training, and unintentionally leaves them to fend for themselves.

We'll talk about what neglect actually looks like day to day, why it's just as damaging as micromanaging even though it feels like the opposite, and how to give your team the guidance they need without hovering over them.

- Why hiring someone capable can accidentally lead to less training, not more

- The difference between coaching a beginner and coaching someone already skilled

- Why teachers and directors need different mindsets

- How unclear direction leads people to fill gaps with self-doubt

- Practical ways to guide your team without micromanaging or disappearing

Tune in for part two of this series, and get ready to look at delegation a little differently.

Resources Mentioned:

• Free Delegation Workshop: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/delegation

Connect With Us:

• Let's Chat on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chaniewilschanski/
• Join us on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

You've probably been told you can't delegate because you're a control freak or a perfectionist. This episode kicks off a new series called the Delegation Dip, and Chanie makes the case that sometimes holding onto a task is wisdom, not fear.

- Why delegating a task and delegating an outcome goal are different skills

- The difference between a taskmaster and a profit warrior on your team

- What the delegation dip is and why efficiency drops after you hand something off

- The real, fear based root of micromanagement

- Three signs you're micromanaging, and what to do instead

Tune in for part one of this series, and get ready to rethink what delegation actually requires.

Resources Mentioned:

• Free Delegation Workshop: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/delegation

Connect With Us:

• Let's Chat on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chaniewilschanski/
• Join us on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/