Latest / ChildCare Conversations / Bonus Episode! What Playground’s founder say really changes after the Procare deal with Sasha Reiss

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Bonus Episode! What Playground’s founder say really changes after the Procare deal with Sasha Reiss · ChildCare Conversations

• 0:00
  Childcare Conversations: 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.
• 0:10
  Childcare Conversations: Whether you're running one center or many, we're here to help you lead with confidence and clarity.
• 0:17
  Childcare Conversations: This episode is brought to you by this quarter's sponsor, Playground, the all-in-one child care management software.
• 0:25
  Childcare Conversations: We're all about managing monkeys and saving you time at your center.
• 0:30
  Childcare Conversations: With this platform, you can.
• 0:32
  Childcare Conversations: We're proud to partner with a team that's as committed to your success as we are.
• 0:37
  Childcare Conversations: Learn more at TriPlayground.com.
• 0:41
  Childcare Conversations: Now, let's get into today's conversation.
• 0:44
  Childcare Conversations: One we think you're really going to love.
• 0:47
  Kate Woodward Young: Welcome back, you guys.
• 0:49
  Kate Woodward Young: I am so excited to do a bonus episode, which I don't do very often, but I felt that this one was so timely and so important for so many of y'all who have been part of childcare conversations for the last uh six and a half years.
• 1:05
  Kate Woodward Young: And over the last couple of years, we have had an opportunity to really collaborate and partner and get to know and watch Playground grow up.
• 1:15
  Kate Woodward Young: So today, one of the co-founders, Sasha, is going to join me in a conversation, which I am sure that anybody who's been in the industry for more than, oh, I don't know, four weeks is a little familiar with what has kind of gone on.
• 1:28
  Kate Woodward Young: And so, Sasha, I'd love it if you shared with us kind of the, you know, the the the in in real-world, very simple kind of vocabulary, what happened and why this is a good thing.
• 1:43
  Kate Woodward Young: And then we'll talk about all of the great opportunities, everything about the software, what's going to continue, what's going to get to get be get to be better.
• 1:52
  Kate Woodward Young: I think that's the words I'm looking for.
• 1:54
  Kate Woodward Young: So um, if you haven't already ever listened to an episode um about the the playground founders, um they have a previous episode.
• 2:03
  Kate Woodward Young: I will drop their story in the link.
• 2:05
  Kate Woodward Young: I'm also gonna drop in the link two of the co-founders, their mom was on our episode October 1st in 2025.
• 2:13
  Kate Woodward Young: Uh that episode aired um with Dr.
• 2:16
  Kate Woodward Young: Tamar Andrews, because I think that that gives you also a little more insight into Sasha, Josh, and Daniel.
• 2:22
  Kate Woodward Young: So, Sasha, thank you for joining us.
• 2:24
  Kate Woodward Young: So we are excited for you, but a lot of us were still scratching our head and going, but, but, but, and um, I'm sure y'all got like lots of phone calls four weeks ago.
• 2:36
  Kate Woodward Young: Was it really four weeks ago?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I cannot believe it was four weeks ago.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So time flies when you're having fun.
• 2:43
  Kate Woodward Young: Yeah.
• 2:43
  Kate Woodward Young: So tell everybody who doesn't already know what happened, and then give us just, you know, the short version uh of maybe why this was actually not a bad thing.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Also, thanks for having me.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's always good to be back here and excited to chat through everything.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for those that aren't familiar, uh Playground is, I guess Playground was, as of four weeks ago, a venture-backed company, meaning we uh the way that we funded our growth was by raising money from venture capital firms.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh essentially every two years or so, we had to play this sort of like song and dance game where we had to take a break from building the software, which was our sort of core um energy booster, the the part of the you know, how we spent our time that gave us the most joy.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: We had to put that on pause to go out and raise funds from investors to make sure that we could continue to fuel the growth, invest in our products, um, and build our team.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it basically got to a point where the the distraction of having to raise money kind of outweighed the joy and passion we got from from building.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: We wanted to spend as much time as possible fixing problems and building solutions for childcare providers.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so we made the decision to find a permanent home for playground while also helping us accelerate and reach our mission faster.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, for those that don't know, our stated mission is to make excellent childcare accessible to all.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what that really means is we believe that there was a better way to build technology and there was better technology to better technology to be built for childcare providers.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that we can make uh childcare accessible to more people is by giving providers the tools they need to build thriving and successful businesses.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so things kind of naturally aligned where we started talking with the the new ProCare leadership team, and it seemed like a really, really good fit for A, just that permanence of capital and that security and stability for our team and for um sort of like the the financial outcome of our company.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um but in addition to that, we also you know, ProCare is the the leader in the space, they've been around for 30 years, they have 40,000 customers, and there's no faster way for us to achieve our mission and to get into as many providers uh as possible than by teaming up here.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we decided to do.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And like really nothing actually changes for the day-to-day experience of our customers.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if anything, this should only accelerate the in the pace of innovation and the uh capacity that we have.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's kind of the the why.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was for like this uh ability to focus strictly on building solutions um and sort of putting aside the the parts of this entrepreneurial journey that we've been on for the last six years that kind of detracted energy from us.
• 5:52
  Kate Woodward Young: All right.
• 5:53
  Kate Woodward Young: So I have a question for you because this is the question that I got all over the place, which was are they gonna merge the softwares?
• 6:02
  Kate Woodward Young: Like, because you know, like because you just said the quickest way to get in is here.
• 6:06
  Kate Woodward Young: And so my main, my immediate, and I know that in their press releases, so let me just make sure that everybody understands Playground is now a are you guys a wholly owned subsidiary?
• 6:19
  Kate Woodward Young: Is that how that would be referred to?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Of ProCare Acquired Playground.
• 6:23
  Kate Woodward Young: Okay.
• 6:24
  Kate Woodward Young: But but you didn't merge, they just bought you.
• 6:26
  Kate Woodward Young: So like you are still an independent company.
• 6:29
  Kate Woodward Young: So like for people who maybe don't know Pizza Hut and Frito Lay and Taco Bell are all owned by PepsiCo.
• 6:39
  Kate Woodward Young: Um, so they're all owned by the Pepsi company, um, but they're all their own company, right?
• 6:45
  Kate Woodward Young: Like you don't see Taco Bell generally owning or having a Pizza Hut, right?
• 6:49
  Kate Woodward Young: Like, you know, yeah.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Let me add some color there.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the the playground company and brand and team is not going anywhere.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like we are continuing to operate as we have been, right?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like the playground brand is not disappearing, the playground product is absolutely not disappearing.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, part of the reason why this happened in the first place is because of the um sort of excitement that the pro care team has about what we built, the the product itself.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's not a world where like these two softwares merge into one.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's not happening.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:21
  Kate Woodward Young: All right, because I think that's what a lot of people were thinking.
• 7:23
  Kate Woodward Young: A lot of people were like, Yeah, no.
• 7:25
  Kate Woodward Young: You know, are we gonna lose what we loved about Playground and get the things that we didn't like about the other software?
• 7:30
  Kate Woodward Young: Okay.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: The the things that are going to happen, well, for actually, and maybe I should clarify and back up for a second that like we Josh, Dan, and I, three founders, we're staying on.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um Dan is actually now on the C-suite of Procare.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we are now also part of like the executive leadership team where we're able to influence the decisions being made at the highest levels of this company.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um but Josh is still running.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you guys know Josh, Josh, he's still running the engineering team, he's still pushing code.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, new engineers that are joining our company still have to pass his bar, which is a very, very, very, very tough bar, let me just say.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's like five times easier to get into harbor than it is to pass the whole.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not even kidding.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: We ran the numbers.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's it's crazy.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but so none of that has changed.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: What's changed though is we have a bigger check now to invest in hiring more engineers.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's okay.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now we can spend more money to find hopefully more people to pass his bar.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and same for the support team.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like our support leaders and our post sales leaders are the exact same as they were, and they're that's not changing.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our processes are the exact same.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like nothing is changing on how Playground is operating at all.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think the only thing that was and and even me, I mean, I you know, I I'm like the least important part of this whole thing, but like I'm still gonna do what I've been loving to do.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I I'm still gonna be hosting my early childhood investigation series.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I didn't know.
• 9:00
  Kate Woodward Young: Well, so I was gonna ask you.
• 9:01
  Kate Woodward Young: So is ECI now because right now ECI is labeled as a project of Playground.
• 9:06
  Kate Woodward Young: So does it stay playground or is it not gonna be pro care?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing's changed.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's still produced by Playground, it's still my team at Playground.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Hannah, who's wonderful, she's still doing it.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still hosting it.
• 9:16
  Kate Woodward Young: Um well, except you weren't on the last episode we did.
• 9:20
  Kate Woodward Young: I was very confused.
• 9:21
  Kate Woodward Young: I was like, well, I love Hannah, but it was that week.
• 9:24
  Kate Woodward Young: I mean, I get it.
• 9:25
  Kate Woodward Young: It was that week.
• 9:26
  Kate Woodward Young: So, you know.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so the cool thing about ECI and Hannah specifically is that sometimes like one of our travel schedules is just insane, and so the other one steps in and covers.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So um, I I was sad to miss that one.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: But like, you know, I did one yesterday, I'm doing one today.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, where it's it's back to our regularly scheduled programming.
• 9:41
  Kate Woodward Young: I love that.
• 9:42
  Kate Woodward Young: Okay, well, one of the things I heard you say, which I think is huge in early learning, and we say it all the time, is finding your joy.
• 9:50
  Kate Woodward Young: So I'm hoping that people who are listening who were confused, shocked, mad, angry, whatever the emotion was, because there were very few people who I talked to in the last four weeks who were excited for you.
• 10:02
  Kate Woodward Young: I will be honest, most of us had our reservations, we were mad, we felt blindsided, you know, like there was a lot of reservation because I think that we just didn't understand.
• 10:14
  Kate Woodward Young: And of course, I understand why you guys can't tell anybody before a deal is done.
• 10:18
  Kate Woodward Young: But I think there were a lot of people who were like, but I just signed on and I just left the other software.
• 10:25
  Kate Woodward Young: So all of you who are listening, if you are an owner, director, you're an administration, maybe you're a mentor, you know, you're you've got a state affiliation role, I want you to remember why you got into early learning, right?
• 10:38
  Kate Woodward Young: And it was for the joy.
• 10:39
  Kate Woodward Young: It was for the joy for yourself, the joy you watched on the kids' faces.
• 10:42
  Kate Woodward Young: So we really should be joyful and excited for Sasha and the team at Playground because they get to now do what they love doing.
• 10:51
  Kate Woodward Young: And just like all of us who got into the business because of what we love to do, we didn't necessarily get into business and say, yay, I want to push spreadsheets.
• 11:00
  Kate Woodward Young: Yay, I want to go raise money, yay, I want to go do the business part of the business.
• 11:06
  Kate Woodward Young: So it is perfectly reasonable that you guys create a software that allows us to continue to have the joy in what we do every single day because we aren't having to figure out all of the 14 million spreadsheets, notebooks, all of the different things, post-it notes, literally, of you know, this contact called and left you a phone number and they want you to call you back because they want to come to see a tour.
• 11:31
  Kate Woodward Young: You've now made our jobs easier by creating a great tech product that allows us to get rid of a variety of other tech products and we get to keep the joy in doing our job.
• 11:42
  Kate Woodward Young: And so we really should be um absolutely elated that you guys get to do the same thing on your end.
• 11:48
  Kate Woodward Young: So although my reservations are there, I will be perfectly honest.
• 11:54
  Kate Woodward Young: Yeah.
• 11:55
  Kate Woodward Young: I, you know, we are um 100% playground fans.
• 11:59
  Kate Woodward Young: We drank the Kool-Aid.
• 12:00
  Kate Woodward Young: We loved meeting you guys for the first time four or five years ago.
• 12:04
  Kate Woodward Young: And, you know, we just get really excited.
• 12:06
  Kate Woodward Young: Actually, we realize we've probably even met you before you were playground.
• 12:10
  Kate Woodward Young: Um, Carrie and I were going back through some old conferences and we realized, wait a minute, I think that was them before they were playground.
• 12:19
  Kate Woodward Young: Um, um, so we actually feel like we probably have known you since 2021.
• 12:24
  Kate Woodward Young: And where I think we usually just kind of say 22 or 23.
• 12:27
  Kate Woodward Young: So, anyway, long story short, we are excited for you.
• 12:32
  Kate Woodward Young: Now, if somebody, this is one thing.
• 12:34
  Kate Woodward Young: So, one of the things that I had a conversation with some clients that are mutual clients, and I said something and they were talking about how much they love the product, but also places where they had some frustration.
• 12:46
  Kate Woodward Young: And so, one of the things, what is the best way if somebody is using your product or really any product, any tech product, how do they share their experience?
• 12:57
  Kate Woodward Young: What is the best way to get that that experience to you so that you guys can make it better?
• 13:02
  Kate Woodward Young: Because you always know, I mean, and we say this even in our own businesses, right?
• 13:05
  Kate Woodward Young: If you don't like something, if you don't tell me I can't fix it, right?
• 13:09
  Kate Woodward Young: So, what would be the best way to know that the people who can fix it hear it?
• 13:14
  Kate Woodward Young: Like who didn't?
• 13:14
  Kate Woodward Young: I mean, I can give everybody your email address, but you may not want that.
• 13:18
  Kate Woodward Young: Um it's not hard to find.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's not hard to find.
• 13:23
  Kate Woodward Young: If somebody had kind of a, you know, I I love this part, but man, this piece, uh, could could we tweak it this way?
• 13:31
  Kate Woodward Young: Could we tweak it that way?
• 13:32
  Kate Woodward Young: Have you ever thought about what is the best way for people to do that with y'all?
• 13:37
  Kate Woodward Young: Especially now that people's perception is you're part of a big and I know playground's playground, I get it, I got it.
• 13:46
  Kate Woodward Young: But people still have a still have that perception of Yeah, you know, maybe for sure.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I maybe I'll abstract this and then I can talk about specifically at playground.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: But hopefully, you know, for those listening in, you you feel like this is a situation you run in.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, first and foremost, you've picked a a a good vendor or tech partner that is built on a modern enough tech stack to actually be able to uh implement your feedback as quickly as it comes in.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, there's a lot of platforms that were just built, you know, 15 or 20 years ago that just can't adapt as fast as you know some a team like Playground can simply because we just have investments.
• 14:26
  Kate Woodward Young: Well, and I think that was the selling point from the the big two, and I'm just gonna leave it generic that way, is the big two, that was what a lot of people talked about, right?
• 14:35
  Kate Woodward Young: Like they couldn't make that pivot.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 14:38
  Kate Woodward Young: Yeah.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so usually there's gonna be a few different avenues for feedback to be passed along.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, before it even gets to feedback, it's usually in the form of like how did the conversation even materialize to begin with?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because depending on where you're at, uh maybe I'll make it specific to playground, depending on where you're at in your journey with us, you'll be interacting with different people.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like we have a whole team that is here to support each provider as they go through it.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, especially in the beginning, you know, you're in the onboarding phase, you're gonna have an onboarding manager whose entire job it is, uh to get you launched and successful on playground as soon as possible.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's their entire job.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's all they know is launching people who previously were not on playground on playground.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a great person to go to talk through strategically and try to understand like how do I map like this business function into playground or how do I, you know, I did it on ProCare this way before, how do I do it on Playground?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: That sort of thing.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um in addition, we also have a phenomenal support team that's there sort of throughout the entire experience.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're all human, based in the office with me in in New York or in our office in Denver, um, we actually won an award for having industry leading support, which we're we're all very proud of.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they're there to answer questions sort of like in a heartbeat, right?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do I refund a parent?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: How do I change my payment method?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: How do I uh swap out my um registration packet?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like things like uh, you know, you get the answer in just a few seconds.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for things that are much more sort of strategic and high level, and you want to like sit down and really talk about it, you also have an account manager that you can set some time up.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Those are usually conversations that should not be super pressing, meaning like, okay, but I have a question.
• 16:17
  Kate Woodward Young: How do they know?
• 16:18
  Kate Woodward Young: And this might be a system you all have to put in place.
• 16:21
  Kate Woodward Young: How does somebody know that if they give you a suggestion, A, it got to the right people, yeah, or that something is actually really going to change?
• 16:28
  Kate Woodward Young: Because you and I have had a conversation about a couple of different scenarios, and you know, and I don't know if clients get an opportunity to rate their staff.
• 16:40
  Kate Woodward Young: Um, because yes, traditionally I hear glowing things about customer service, but I've had a couple here or there that go, I like these people and I will talk to these people.
• 16:49
  Kate Woodward Young: I will never talk to this person again.
• 16:51
  Kate Woodward Young: Um, and and my suggestion was please make sure that you take this to somebody.
• 16:57
  Kate Woodward Young: I don't care who, because obviously if you've got a problem with one person, you can't go to that person and say, I had a problem with you, right?
• 17:03
  Kate Woodward Young: Like um, because I think there is, and this is, and this is not necessarily just playground.
• 17:09
  Kate Woodward Young: I I have people say this with CACFP software, other vendors, other sometimes it's equipment vendors, right?
• 17:17
  Kate Woodward Young: And I'm like, you know, if you don't tell people that you thought your customer service was subpar or you thought the interaction with this staff person, you know, we can say that maybe they had a bad day, but if everybody has a bad day with them, somebody in that company needs to know that you had a bad day with this person because maybe it's a pattern that we go, eh, it was one day.
• 17:39
  Kate Woodward Young: But if you hear eh, it's one day about five times about the same person, then you now know you've got a pattern to look for and that maybe some training or something needs to be tweaked, right?
• 17:50
  Kate Woodward Young: Or maybe people just aren't the right fit.
• 17:52
  Kate Woodward Young: And again, I'm not just talking playground because I got like three stories in my head and they're not all playground related.
• 17:57
  Kate Woodward Young: So, um, but I think it's worth having a conversation with you because there's a lot of folks who who are uncomfortable going to somebody in a C-suite or, you know, even in a leadership role at a company to say, I had a bad experience, right?
• 18:12
  Kate Woodward Young: Um, we also have a really hard time, I think even worse, about going and saying, I had a great experience.
• 18:18
  Kate Woodward Young: So I want to to start maybe there.
• 18:21
  Kate Woodward Young: If somebody has an absolutely rockin' experience with one of your staff, is there a place on the website to tell you, in other words, other than just like a contact us?
• 18:31
  Kate Woodward Young: And then there is, is there in that same sense a place for us to come back and go, hey, you know, these five people I love, but this one person, you know.
• 18:39
  unknown: Sure.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, I I will say that um our support team, they're they truly are absolute rock stars.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: We have a channel, an internal Slack channel in our company called uh Feel Good.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: So anytime like there's any sort of like feel-good moment across anything, it could be like internal, it could be the customer.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I would say that probably 80% of the posts in that channel, which is one of our uh most active posts, uh most active channels in the company, 80% of the time it is our support team sharing love that they got on behalf of other teammates.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um so our customers feel like more than comfortable and then have on more than one occasion um love to share the experience that they have, good or bad, because sometimes like people do have you know rough days or they're dealing with something that's particularly frustrating.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um hopefully, you know, systems we're talking about, you know, for us, for example, every single conversation you can always rate if it was good or not.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the the team itself, like our incentives are structured, but um, our support team, they need to have a minimum sort of like satisfaction score, which is like the most objective way you can do it.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and again, our our team, absolute rock stars.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um now, again, it it sort of depends on like the nature of your feedback and requests.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: If it's like a small thing, hey, this button should probably be here because uh right now I'm doing five clicks to get somewhere else, that's something that you can just leave in a form.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, though, like the use cases that come up are much more complicated and you just have to talk through it, right?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like if we're talking about a specific subsidy reconciliation um pattern that's specific to Texas versus Missouri or whatever it might be, like you just have to talk through that.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the point where like you know, if if you can't write it out in a sentence or two, then you probably want to talk through it with your account manager.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Again, and and there's nuance here, and sometimes it's like an extension of existing functionality, and sometimes it's like net new, completely brand new functionality from the ground up, and that also warrants a conversation or not.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's hard to give you like a specific here is the hard and fast rule.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: I would say it's more of a spectrum uh with a dimension or two of like does it exist or not, and what's how you know how much lift is required to get it live.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And based on like where that's plotted on those four, like those four uh axes, or those two axes, those four grids, um you kind of figure out like who it is that you talk to.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: General rule of thumb, if it's a quick answer, uh, and if you're usually about like uh how does this work or where can I find this, support's great.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: If it's much more like sort of high-level, you know, here's this like business problem I'm wrangling with, how should I represent that in playground?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's a usually a live conversation.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully that gives a little bit of like a framework on how we think about it.
• 21:22
  Kate Woodward Young: Yeah, absolutely.
• 21:23
  Kate Woodward Young: And I'm hoping that people who are listening understand that it's the what although we are using playground as our example in our conversation, it really applies to any tech stack.
• 21:33
  Kate Woodward Young: So I don't care if you're using an accounting software, I don't care if you're using a different non-industry CRM, even another industry CRM billing service parent communication app.
• 21:46
  Kate Woodward Young: Um, yes, I I am a firm believer in going back every at least every six months to a year and reviewing your tech stack, right?
• 21:53
  Kate Woodward Young: Like how many different things do you have?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I was the other thing I was gonna say is the piece I forgot.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: That that's sort of like just the collection of information.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Arguably the most important part is the sort of like the closing of the loop.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can think of like that part as like the top part of the circle, and then the bottom part is like us coming back to you and saying, Hey, this is done, or hey, this is gonna be done in three weeks, or you know what?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, thanks for giving the feedback.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're actually not gonna do it.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And here's why.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we try to be as transparent as possible.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: We we've invested a lot of money.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've made a lot of money for really good software where we have all of our customer conversations, and behind the scenes, it actually is tied into where our engineers do work.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: So feedback comes in, we create a ticket for an engineer, the engineer then works on it, giving the support person direct insight into how much progress has been made.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if we need to share updates as to um where that ticket is coming along, we can do that.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, when it's actually done and pushed to the product, it automatically reopens the conversation with the customer, which prompts the person on our support team to let them know hey, this thing you told us about is actually live now.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so we've we we pay a lot of money for really good software that enables us to do that.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um I love that.
• 23:04
  Kate Woodward Young: I love that because I know that a lot of software don't.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we also do, we spend a lot of time also just like not just the one-on-one stuff, but also putting it on our changelog.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't seen our changelog, every single week I put out a new article and I try to do a video.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have to shoot mine for the last two weeks because of the crazy schedule.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: But um there's a video for every single week walking through my favorite features that we released that previous week.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's usually around a dozen, uh, two dozen features or so.
• 23:32
  Kate Woodward Young: So, yeah, so if you didn't just hear what Sasha just said, they are updating not only weekly, they're also making what their updates are transparent.
• 23:40
  Kate Woodward Young: And they that he personally does a video usually, it is every week.
• 23:46
  Kate Woodward Young: Except for the last two.
• 23:48
  Kate Woodward Young: So we're just gonna work.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna I love that.
• 23:52
  Kate Woodward Young: Okay, so there's usually um there is a weekly video that tells you about his favorite changes, but it doesn't mean that all the other changes aren't still transparent.
• 24:00
  Kate Woodward Young: Right.
• 24:01
  Kate Woodward Young: And I think that that is huge.
• 24:03
  Kate Woodward Young: So for those of you who part of the reason you were exploring changing another from another piece of software to another piece of software, um, not only am I going to always suggest and encourage you to take a peek at Playground because we love Playground.
• 24:19
  Kate Woodward Young: Um, we love the fact that the guys really do, you know, they they live that joyful um enthusiasm for what they do.
• 24:29
  Kate Woodward Young: And so I think it's really important for you to find vendors that you can connect with in every part of your business and not just in early learning.
• 24:40
  Kate Woodward Young: So if you are an early learning business owner who has other businesses, pause, go back, listen to this, insert your own business, insert other businesses because we all have tech stacks.
• 24:54
  Kate Woodward Young: We all need to be evaluating our tech stacks.
• 24:57
  Kate Woodward Young: Um, as somebody who still operates on a pretty old, antiquated phone, part of it is because the whole concept of updating my phone makes me cringe.
• 25:07
  Kate Woodward Young: I hate new software updates.
• 25:09
  Kate Woodward Young: Uh, no offense to Sasha, but um, you know, some of us just are like, well, we like it the way because we figured out, and maybe what we it is is because we've figured out a backdoor way that works, right?
• 25:22
  Kate Woodward Young: And um, we all have those situations where software software is upgraded and they're like, you know, you could do it this way.
• 25:28
  Kate Woodward Young: And I'm like, but I know how to do it with these 15 steps.
• 25:31
  Kate Woodward Young: I don't care that it only takes me two.
• 25:33
  Kate Woodward Young: I can make it work here.
• 25:36
  Kate Woodward Young: So sometimes we all need to stop and take a look at our current standard operating procedures.
• 25:41
  Kate Woodward Young: Are there ways to streamline it?
• 25:43
  Kate Woodward Young: If you've been with Playground for the last couple of years and you haven't made any personal changes in your SOPs or how you use Playground, I'm gonna encourage you right now to get on a call with your account manager, go back through all of the new features.
• 25:58
  Kate Woodward Young: Um, are there features that maybe you don't currently use and you didn't even know they were there?
• 26:03
  Kate Woodward Young: Um, are you using another software to do something that could be done on Playground and you're a little nervous to make that transition because you're like, oh, I don't want to have to, you know, import all of that or export all of that or whatever it might be.
• 26:17
  Kate Woodward Young: So um if you're listening, please, please, please go to tryplayground.com or you know, in the in the show notes, um, there will be uh links to scheduling demos, to having phone calls, and you can always go on to childcare conversations.com, um, hit us up uh and send a message to the podcast and say, hey, how do I how do I learn more?
• 26:43
  Kate Woodward Young: We also now on our YouTube channel, if you go to Childcare Conversations on YouTube, we actually have a playground playlist um of um testimonies from Playground clients who've been on the podcast who basically share their story, the solutions, and why Playground was the software choice they used.
• 27:02
  Kate Woodward Young: Um it is not a bashing of other software.
• 27:04
  Kate Woodward Young: Most of the time you won't know what the other clients used software-wise, um, but they give you kind of a little bit about their story, their onboarding, maybe the solution and the real reason they came to Playground.
• 27:16
  Kate Woodward Young: With that, Sasha, is there anything else you'd like to say before I close this out today?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think the the final piece I'd love to sort of leave everyone with is that we are, you know, more energized and excited than ever to continue to build in this industry.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: This industry has given us so much and we we love it so much.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: We we love to pour into it.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this should hopefully just be the beginning.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if you were ever curious to learn a bit more about Playground, or if you are a Playground customer, thank you for your support and your trust.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think you'll be excited about what the future holds on some of the new stuff that we got hooking up.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: So stay tuned.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and thanks again, everyone, for making the time.
• 27:57
  Kate Woodward Young: Thank you so much.
• 27:58
  Kate Woodward Young: Follow us at childcareconversations.com.
• 28:01
  Kate Woodward Young: If you don't already subscribe to the newsletter, remember the newsletter goes out twice a week.
• 28:06
  Kate Woodward Young: Sometimes we have secret things in the newsletter that do not show up in the episodes, and the newsletters are not episode transcripts.
• 28:14
  Kate Woodward Young: So they are two totally different products.
• 28:16
  Kate Woodward Young: Thank you for being part of our platform, and we will talk to you in a few days.
• 28:24
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• 28:26
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• 28:55
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