Heather Reekie - Casa de Corazón

On Working With the SBA: "Getting the SBA loan was literally the hardest thing I've ever done. And I've given birth twice, naturally."

We all wish we were smarter.  As we get older, it becomes more difficult to learn new things.

What if children could learn new things while they have a developing brain that can handle faster education.  What if you could immerse a child into an environment that helps children learn another language, eat healthy and fresh food and do it all with peers that are learning and playing alongside you?  It is with questions like these that Casa de Corazón got started.

Heather Reekie is the owner of the Madison, Wisconsin based Casa de Corazón.  She shares her inspiring journey from speech and language pathologist to entrepreneur, detailing the transformation of an old translation office into a thriving early childhood center focused on nurturing bilingual minds and compassionate hearts. She highlights Casa de Corazón's unique approach, including their in-house app for real-time parent updates, commitment to organic meals and sustainable practices, and the importance of intercultural learning.

Heather details the challenges of launching a business, the joys of fostering a strong community, and the impact of quality early education.

Listen as Heather gives more insights into how passion and purpose can create lasting change, one child at a time.

Enjoy!

Visit Heather at: https://casaearlylearning.com/location/madison-wi/

https://www.instagram.com/casa.madison.wi/

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 "Bilingual Boost at Casa"

06:54 "Acquiring a Language-Focused Property"

16:20 "Connected to Franchise Core Values"

17:17 "Eco-Friendly Childcare Practices"

23:33 Franchisee Frustration with Franchisors

29:09 "Teachers Genuinely Care Deeply"

33:39 "Raising Thriving, Empathetic Early Learners"

42:15 Playground Requirements and Safety Standards

44:48 "Overcoming Leadership and Loan Challenges"

53:19 "Staff Excellence and Parent Resources"

59:12 Infant Curriculum and Monthly Themes

01:02:37 Storm Shelter and Flags Display

01:07:09 "Elevator and Furnace Challenges"

Sponsors:

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Some videos have been recorded with Riverside: https://www.riverside.fm/?utm_campaign=campaign_5&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=rewardful&via=james-kademan

Podcast Transcription:

Heather Reekie [00:00:00]:

But the Casa app is special to the Casa brand and it's real time updates on what your child is doing throughout the day, including photos. So that's throughout the day innovation. Yep, yep. And so you know, like no notates when the child falls asleep for rest time or what they, you know, how much of the lunch they ate and you know when they used the bathroom or had a diaper change and that kind of thing.

James Kademan [00:00:23]:

Holy cow. So that's cool.

Heather Reekie [00:00:26]:

It's informative and just fun to interact with as well.

James Kademan [00:00:35]:

You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found on the podcast link found drawincustomers.com we are locally underwritten by the bank of Sun Prairie and today we're welcoming slash preparing to learn from Heather Ricci of I'm going to destroy this. But I don't mean to Casa de Corazón remotely close Casa de Corazón and I just learned is that House of Hearts.

Heather Reekie [00:01:05]:

House of Hearts. House of Love.

James Kademan [00:01:07]:

All right, very cool. So let's go on. What do you do, Heather?

Heather Reekie [00:01:12]:

Well, so I'm the owner operator of Casa de Corazon Madison, which is a franchise from the corporate offices which are in Minnesota and we opened almost exactly two years ago, November 15th of 2023.

James Kademan [00:01:28]:

Nice.

Heather Reekie [00:01:28]:

And so I am trying to keep.

James Kademan [00:01:31]:

Running the place and this place, I gotta say, this place is huge. I expected a little daycare and this is. We're in two story building.

Heather Reekie [00:01:41]:

Yes.

James Kademan [00:01:42]:

In what I would consider to be the southern heart of Madison. So we get the belt line right here and all that. So I got a lot of questions for you, so let's just knock it out first. So Heather, tell me about the Spanish immersion.

Heather Reekie [00:01:54]:

So that's the icing on the cake of just a really high quality childcare and preschool situation. Here at Casa de Corazón, Spanish immersion is help helping grow the synapses in the children's brain. So even if you don't go on to a bilingual or Spanish immersion elementary school after attending casa, you will have reaped the benefits of growing your brain cells by becoming bilingual or learning a second or sometimes in some cases a third language. Because what it does is it gives you multiple words for the same vocabulary and the same sentence structure. And all you're just learning all of these ways to think about language. It increases your empathy, it increases your ability to start talking at a younger age and communicate your thoughts and feelings. One mom told me about her two children who attend here. They're siblings and they speak in Spanish when they're playing together at home.

James Kademan [00:03:00]:

It's oh nice.

Heather Reekie [00:03:01]:

Sounds really adorable. And then they're code switching when they're talking to her because they know that she's not fluent in Spanish like they are and so they'll switch to English to talk to.

James Kademan [00:03:10]:

I'm just imagining a pair of kids that know a language that the parents don't. I don't know if it's good or bad.

Heather Reekie [00:03:14]:

Yeah, it could be fun.

James Kademan [00:03:16]:

Interesting. So the, the age. I guess I never asked you that. What are the ages that attend here?

Heather Reekie [00:03:23]:

We are licensed to provide care for children starting at six weeks and then up through school age. So we have had some school age children attend on days off of school school, you know, old older siblings a lot of times and also in the summer when they're not in public school or the school year school and but technically the franchise caters to birth through four year old kindergarten.

James Kademan [00:03:52]:

Okay.

Heather Reekie [00:03:52]:

Right before they would go to 5 year old kindergarten in an elementary school.

James Kademan [00:03:57]:

Tell me. So the daycare is way back when I had to deal with daycares and stuff like that when I had a kid. I shouldn't say I did, my wife did. I didn't have anything to do with it, but I learned from other people that there's wait lists and all that other kind of stuff. Where are you guys at with the wait list? Or is there a wait list or that whole people can't find daycare anywhere? Is that still a thing?

Heather Reekie [00:04:19]:

It can be, yes. Because we're still Fairly new at 2 years old, we have been able to enroll children for their desired start date. So we do have a wait list. It's through the branded CASA app it's called. And we keep track of families based on when they tour and when they want to enroll their child. And for certain ages, the younger the child wants to be enrolled, those are our smaller classrooms with lower teacher to student ratios. So those ones fill up more quickly. And then because we're still like the children who started with us at a young age haven't grown into be a three year old and able to attend or be enrolled in one of our older age level classrooms where the ratios increase so those classrooms are not full.

Heather Reekie [00:05:20]:

And we are sitting in one of our our 11th classroom which we haven't opened yet. We've opened the other 10, but this is our pre K room. The franchise calls it pre K which is essentially a four year old kindergarten classroom because we are currently combining the three And a half year olds and four year olds together.

James Kademan [00:05:39]:

Okay.

Heather Reekie [00:05:40]:

In our two preschool B classrooms. So there's a little multi age learning going on right now and so we have more capacity to enroll those older children right now.

James Kademan [00:05:54]:

Well, I imagine if somebody starts with you at birth or early, whatever, six weeks that they'll go with you through until they get to school age, is.

Heather Reekie [00:06:03]:

That safe to say that is the, the most beneficial way to benefit from a Spanish immersion environment.

James Kademan [00:06:10]:

Yeah.

Heather Reekie [00:06:11]:

And just the high quality education and the loving teachers. Yeah. Yes. That is the, the corporate idea is that the children would start with us, you know, as soon as they find out about us whether their babies are a little bit older and then. Yes. Stay through that four year old year and then possibly go to kindergarten when they're five or six.

James Kademan [00:06:32]:

That's cool. That's super cool. They'll find out about you on a podcast. So it's all good. Tell me, how did you end up. A couple years ago you opened this place. So let's first talk about location. So to me this is pretty, I mean you can get to this place anywhere pretty easily.

James Kademan [00:06:51]:

So how did you end up in this building?

Heather Reekie [00:06:54]:

I had hired a broker to find a location and there just weren't a lot that were in a price range that I could afford. And so we looked at several options but kept coming back to this. And this used to be Geo Co. Geo Group, which did translations in all different languages for like manuals and, and auditory, verbal, you know, and written translations. I'm sure they did way more than that.