The Child Care Business Podcast

Molly Hichens is a second-generation owner at Bright Beginnings Preschool, which has three locations in Charlottesville, Virginia, and is about to celebrate 40 years in business! She’s also an accomplished child care consultant and speaker. 

In this episode, Molly breaks down some tips for how child care center leaders can attract new families!

Those tips include:

• Highlighting three to five unique selling points, also known as value propositions
• Make the tours special for prospective families (and check out Molly's 2023 podcast on that topic to go deeper and get even more tips!)
• Follow up, even if a family chooses a different center
• And more!

To learn more about Molly and her work, visit IMollyHichens.com, or email her at [email protected].

Kathe Petchel began her education career working as a public school teacher before opening her own preschool center in 1984. She now owns three sites serving more than 300 families in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In 2017, Kathe joined HINGE Advisors, where she now works in business development. In this podcast, she shares her tips on using creative leadership and assessments to train child care center staff.

Among the topics she discusses:

• How to "gamify" staff assessments
• Tips for compliance checklists
• Using secret shoppers for your own center as well as for your competition
• Camera observations

And if you missed Kathe's last podcast with us on how to engage with your child care center's Gen Z employees (and increasingly, parents too!) , listen here for tips that center owners and directors must understand about the newest generation in the workplace!

To reach Kathe, email her at [email protected]. You also can visit hingeadvisors.com as well as brightbeginningsva.com to learn more about her work!

Beth Cannon is the owner of 13 Stretch-N-Grow child enrichment franchises and is an expert in early childhood education working as a speaker, trainer and coach. One of her talents is teaching child care center leaders how to develop talent from within their current staff, which is especially important as owners and directors struggle to retain high quality staff.

In this podcast, Beth shares her tips for identifying staff who are ready for more responsibilities as well as the importance of job titles. On the other side of the coin, she shares what NOT to look for when developing your leadership bench (hint: education is not an automatic for career advancement!).

Beth goes further and tells us HOW to help employees grow into new roles and to accept that some employees are happy doing their current jobs ... and that's okay too.

To reach Beth to see what she can do for your child care business, visit bethcannonspeaks.com.

You also can find her on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn!

Are you ready to take your child care center to the next level? Whether you're a seasoned child care professional or just starting out, the tips from Caroline Jens shared in this podcast will help you grow and succeed in the competitive world of early childhood education and management!

Caroline is the owner and co-founder of Child Care Biz Help and has dedicated nearly 20 years to child care. She is an expert in business development, leadership, finance, web development, internet marketing and building "raving fan" cultures. 

In this podcast, she walks us through three simple, but powerful, strategies to grow your child care center:

• Make a lasting first impression
• Implement intentional, well-rounded marketing
• Find time away from your desk

To learn more about what Caroline and her team do, which includes helping child care centers grow as well as starting a new program and creating a brand, visit childcarebizhelp.com  or email her at [email protected]. 

"We've gone down this path of expecting little humans to sit when they're not developmentally made to sit this long. Brains don't learn like this," says Prerna Richards, founder of Together We Grow.

In this episode, Prerna walks us through how to use developmentally appropriate practices to de-stress teachers and children. Prerna says early childhood education programs are seeing aggressive behaviors and shares how child care staff can use DAP to take the stress out of learning to create a better environment for children and themselves.

These tips include recognizing that attention-seeking behavior is a relationship-seeking need and how to move past just surviving.

To reach Prerna or learn more about her work, visit www.togetherwegrow.online and check out her YouTube channel for informative videos. You also can find her on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram!

As early childhood education providers, your jobs including serving many people, including children and families. But too often, you don't pour enough back into yourselves ... and that's where burnout comes from, says Anisha Angella, founder of the The Early Childhood Coach.

In this podcast, Anisha walks us through the roots of burnout and gives tips on how to stop teacher burnout from starting. She explains there are 12 steps that happen before burnout in ece begins and how to recognize the first steps so it doesn't progress. She also explains that burnout is experienced differently among people, including in ways like trouble sleeping or physical pain.

For more about Anisha and her work, visit her website at www.anishatheecc.com or check her out on her many social media platforms, including her Instagram page!

Kathy Ligon is the founder & CEO of HINGE Advisors. Trained as a public accountant, Kathy has more than 35 years of experience in educational operations. During that time, she has found there are five pillars to the success of a child care business:  occupancy, tuition rates, discounting practices, salary costs and rent-cost management. Listen as Kathy walks us through each of these pillars in detail to learn how you can grow your child care business!

To learn more about Kathy and her company, visit hingeadvisors.com.  And check out Framework by Hinge, which is an easy-to-use app that helps you maximize your school’s value and position it for financial success!

Procare Solutions recently released our 2024 Child Care Management Software Industry Trends Report, which provides a comprehensive look at the current state of the child care industry’s use of technology as well as challenges that early childhood education programs must adapt to, and overcome, to thrive.

But the findings detailed in this report go deeper than software. In compiling this data, the goal was to better understand the obstacles being faced by child care providers. To provide more context to the findings, we partnered with experts in several areas of early childhood education. 

Listen in as these experts — Beth Cannon, Caroline Jens, Prerna Richards as well as  Kathy Ligon and Kathe Petchel of HINGE Early Education Advisors — discuss topics including enrollment strategies, curriculum and much more! This podcast was recorded during a recent webinar in which all were panelists. 

Technology scares people, and that's true for child care employees.

"Easing them into it helps, and really slowing it down and teaching them," says LaToya Riggins, vice president of professional development of CRAFT by Better Futures. 

Proper training and guidance is key, and so is showing employees how they'll benefit from using technology ... and that you're ready to help them.

"Don't be afraid. Technology is a beautiful thing when used correctly. Give it a chance," she says.

In this podcast, LaToya shares her tips for how to get your staff on board with using technology in their classrooms and for running other parts of the business, including using QR codes for check-ins and getting rid of paper documentation that is prone to errors and takes so much time to complete manually.

One such tip is to break staff into small groups so nobody gets lost or is afraid to answer questions.  And she has a lot more to share.

"One thing about technology is that it's very forgiving. Everything has an undo button," she says.

To reach LaToya, email her at [email protected] or visit www.betterfuturesdc.com!

Tuition collection can be a breeze when families can easily pay you on time and with their preferred method of payment. And for today’s parents, their preferred method overwhelmingly is digital, whether through autopay from their checking accounts or by debit cards and credit cards.  

 
The perks of accepting digital payments at your child care program are many, for both you and them! In this podcast, you'll learn more how your center will benefit with streamlined financial processes, and how families can reap the benefits of using their credit cards, such as flights or cashback offers!