377: How One Childcare Operator Scaled to 21 Schools Without the Tech Chaos With Dr. Jason Lody

So if somebody's listening to today's episode, Jason, and they're like, "Wow, that's really cool.

I'd love to do something like that maybe in my own state or in neighboring communities," what do you think is something that really, like it helps you go, "That's my kind of program"? What does the anchor or the heart of a program look like that you're like, "Yeah, that might fit our portfolio"? How did you determine that?

That's a really great question.

Because s- the communities where we serve are so unique and so different, what I did not want to do is create such a narrow, um, kind of assessment tool to determine whether or not a school was going to be a good fit or not.

That's what a lot of national providers do, right?

Mm-hmm.

A lot of national providers have, you know, a threshold of how many private pay versus subsidy families can exist, a minimum square footage, a minimum license capacity.

And I, as, as important as those data points are, uh, there are many more that we look at that are more qualitative, uh, than quantitative, and that helps us develop a balance of how that school is going to fit.

Uh, 'cause at the same time we are running a business.

Mm-hmm.

So if we shift entirely to the qualitative, then we're gonna end up not being able to sustain that school because it will feel good, right? It'll be nice, but it's not gonna be able to sustain itself in- independently.

And most of our schools are working towards independent stability because we do find, especially in these high-need communities, schools that are, are just not operating at its full potential.

So it takes time, it takes energy, it takes investment to get them to where they need to be.

And we, we're, we're, we're generously patient in that process because we have our, our hope set out on their potential growth.

So what we do look for is, um, first we have to identify if the need still exists.

'Cause you can't be an anchor in the community if the community is evaporating.

So if there is, you know, redevelopment where housing is, is, is leaving in exchange for retail, right? Um, for us, the amount of cars that drive by the front of the school isn't as important to us.

We're, we're not, we're not selling a commodity where people will stop on the way to and from work to pick up a, a new battery or, uh, you know, um, some dinner.

Uh, so, so that's not as important to us.

But if, if the population doesn't exist anymore or year over year has been declining, well, that's a, that's a factor for us to take into consideration.

Uh, we also wanna look at, um, what the local school districts are doing as well.

A lot of our research h- goes into what the climate is like educationally.

'Cause if we're seeing a school board conversation around, uh, bringing early childhood programming into the, uh, into the schools that are operating, then that might be a sign that there's competition down the road.

Um, and then what we also look at, uh, are, um, the reputation, uh, history.

What is the reputation history? 'Cause that's gonna help us determine what our starting point is, and if we need to rebrand, press reset.