Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / From Corporate Trainer to Spanish Immersion Preschools: Krystell Guzman's Entrepreneurial Success | Childcare Series

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From Corporate Trainer to Spanish Immersion Preschools: Krystell Guzman's Entrepreneurial Success | Childcare Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
0:07
share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
0:10
how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
0:13
they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
0:18
the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
0:21
experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
0:25
by how they've overcome adversity.
0:27
My name is Anthony Codispotti and today's guest is Christelle
0:31
Guzman, founder of La Plazita Preschool, a true Spanish
0:35
immersion preschool with four locations in the Oakland, CA
0:39
area where your child will not only learn and retain Spanish,
0:43
but also become fully prepared for kindergarten.
0:46
Christelle holds an undergraduate degree from the
0:48
University of Santa Cruz and a Master's in Public
0:52
Administration from California East Bay.
0:54
She is a training expert by trade, having travelled the
0:57
world to set up training programs in such diverse areas
1:01
as coffee production, human resources, and perhaps most
1:05
famously, for the Google book scanning project called Book
1:08
Search. She was inspired to start the
1:11
school as a way to preserve the language of her heritage, while
1:14
at the same time ensuring that her own children would be fully
1:17
ready for kindergarten and beyond.
1:19
They love the letter Z at Kristell's house as all three
1:22
children have a name beginning with the letter Z, and we'll
1:25
find out what they are in just a moment.
1:27
But before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
1:30
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1:56
Now back to our guest today, the CEO of La Posita Preschool.
2:00
Crystal, I appreciate you making the time to Share your story
2:02
today. Thank you, Anthony.
2:04
It's a pleasure. So, Crystal, before we talk
2:07
about La Posita, I'm curious to hear just a little bit about the
2:11
Google book search project. That sounds pretty interesting.
2:14
What part of the job were you training people to do?
2:18
So can't remember the exact year it started, but one of the
2:22
projects that came out of Google was to scan all the books of the
2:25
world. And so the way that they started
2:27
this program, actually my mentor Tilly, she started the entire
2:32
system, but it was a really, really complicated system where
2:35
there were multiple scanning centers throughout the world.
2:38
And she had developed a system where they would receive the
2:42
books from the library, pass them through a actual scanning
2:46
system where somebody's sitting at a computer and flipping
2:50
pages. I think it was something like
2:52
4500 pages per hour. And then they would click with
2:57
their foot a camera to take an image of it.
3:00
And that would go to a quality control team that would look at
3:03
all the images and then make sure they were all good before
3:06
they sent the books back to the library.
3:08
So it was an extremely complicated system.
3:13
I guess I had imagined because I've read about this project
3:16
before. I had imagined there was some
3:17
kind of automation and I don't know what I had in my brain, but
3:21
something that has to turn the pages for you and is doing the
3:23
scanning. But this was all.
3:25
Done manually, they were actual, actual people.
3:28
And it was, you would walk into a scan center and you'd see
3:31
about 100 people sitting at a scan desk that they had created,
3:36
you know, specifically for the imaging.
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And it was just impressive. I mean, it was a hard job.
3:41
I I don't think I could be turning pages for that many
3:44
hours a day, but it was definitely amazing to see how it
3:47
all all was done. Oh, that's neat.
3:50
OK, so you are an expert in training people, which suggests
3:55
to me that you must have a certain aptitude yourself for
3:58
learning new things. I'm curious if you've got a
4:01
process for breaking down new or complicated concepts in a way
4:06
that makes it easier to understand and retain
4:09
information. Yes, that's actually something
4:11
that I find quite fascinating, and it all started when I was a
4:15
little girl in my mom's classroom.
4:17
She's a an amazing teacher and I didn't realize this, but through
4:21
osmosis I was actually gaining all the skills of how to
4:25
transmit information by just being physically present in her
4:28
classroom. In elementary school, she was an
4:31
elementary school teacher. So I took that basis and I
4:35
started to actually look at curriculum, like how do you
4:38
create curriculum so that people can understand it?
4:41
How do you make it so that you're not just speaking at
4:44
somebody, but you're actually, you know, utilizing activities
4:47
and concepts and moving people around so they can really retain
4:50
the information? So that's one of the things that
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I, I absolutely love. And when I started in the coffee
4:57
industry, I was training people that some of them were not
5:01
really literate and are able to actually read or write.
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So I had to be extremely creative on how I shared
5:07
information such as how the international coffee market
5:10
worked and, and that got me really thinking about all these
5:13
concepts and how to make things understandable at all different
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levels. So for me, I find it as an
5:19
exciting challenge when I'm having to create a, you know,
5:23
explain a concept and have people retain the information.
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So I got fairly good at at setting up these rubrics I make
5:30
that are all about what is the goal, what's the objective, and
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how do we make the steps to be able to retain the information.
5:38
You know, it's interesting, I would like to hear more about
5:41
how you were relaying complex information to folks who were
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illiterate because I would think that that whatever sort of
5:52
approach that you use there would probably be helpful in
5:56
most work environments because from my own experience, I know
6:00
from having created pretty lengthy, SO.
6:02
PS That getting people to actually read and digest them,
6:06
even when they are literate, when they know how to read, can
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be really challenging. Tell me more about what that
6:11
experience was like. So I the most unique experience
6:15
I can mention is one of the one of the first projects I did in
6:18
the coffee business. I was working with small farmers
6:21
in Chiapas, Mexico, and they were from indigenous communities
6:26
that many didn't even speak Spanish.
6:27
They spoke their Mayan language and I brought Jim Reynolds, who
6:31
at that time was the buyer for Pete's Coffee.
6:33
He was the very first roaster for Starbucks when Pete's and
6:36
Starbucks were the same company. He was my mentor.
6:40
He taught me how to taste coffee and I took him down to this
6:43
region in Chiapas to do a training on how the
6:46
international coffee market worked.
6:48
So you can imagine if you live in a village that takes 4 hours
6:51
to walk to because there's not even roads, the international
6:54
coffee market is something that's completely foreign to
6:57
you. So we had to do a lot of
6:59
pictures, a lot of drawing, a lot of conceptual things.
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We had a lot of people assisting potentially take out concepts
7:08
and, and write those concepts down for for the participants.
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But that was an example of how we really had to take something
7:14
complicated and display it as very graphically on the board.
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And it was such a great experience.
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And to this day, Jim Reynolds says because he traveled all
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over the world for coffee, he says that's one of the most
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authentic experience. He's experiences that he had
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ever had. That's fascinating.
7:32
I had no idea that there were pockets of Central South America
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that didn't speak either Spanish or Portuguese that are still you
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said they're they're native Mayan language.
7:42
Yeah, in southern Mexico, especially in Chiapas and then
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and then also in other areas of of the Yucatan Peninsula,
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actually the Mayan languages are still the dominant language.
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And so I'm curious if the experience that you had there in
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creating lots of visuals, if those were skills and ideas that
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you carried over with you into other training programs, you
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know, even when folks had the the benefit of of understanding
8:07
and knowing how to read. Yeah, absolutely.
8:09
I mean, most importantly, your first reflection when you're
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creating training programs is who is my audience, Who is my
8:15
audience? What are their capabilities and
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what are what are they, how are they used to learning?
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And so you really build it based on that.
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So what what you know, how do I get to my audience the best and
8:25
most effective way? So that's my my first step.
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So, OK, talk to me about the transition that took place from
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your background in training to starting a school.
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I mean, all of your work is is still like in the education
8:39
space, but now you're transitioning from teaching
8:42
adults in a corporate environment to teaching little
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ones. What was that like for you?
8:47
So it was definitely a shift. I think the reason, the main
8:50
reason why this came about is because my middle daughter, who
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now she's 14, but when I started the company, she was going to
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going to be two years old. She was going to be ready for
8:59
preschool. And I was looking at the
9:01
environment here in Oakland of what Spanish immersion programs
9:04
existed. We only spoke to her in Spanish
9:08
for the first five years, and I wanted to make sure that she
9:11
really retained her Spanish and only learned in Spanish for
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those first five years because I knew that it would be harder to
9:17
retain her Spanish otherwise. So I looked what was at what was
9:21
out there. I had a bad experience with my
9:23
son in the sense that they were speaking Spanish in his
9:26
preschool, but they weren't. They didn't have a curriculum.
9:29
They were not preparing him for kindergarten.
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So at that time, coincidentally, it was 2008, I managed to buy a
9:36
nice duplex where I could put a preschool downstairs in my
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house. And I looked for a partner to
9:43
help me to create this concept. And one of the mothers at my
9:47
son's school was interested in joining with me.
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So we started a school out of my house, and I call this our
9:53
laboratory. It was our laboratory where we
9:56
had all of these theories about what could work, but we really
9:59
had no clue. So we had one paying customer
10:04
and two of our own children, and we started basically with the
10:10
concept of training children, which was totally different than
10:14
training adults. So we went through a lot of
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great exercises and we learned fairly quickly.
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The community responded amazingly.
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We ended up filling up our first school within the first eight
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months. And immediately, because I've
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always had this entrepreneurial spirit, I was started to look
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for a commercial center that we could occupy to spread what we
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were doing. So in those early days when
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you've got one paying customer and your own two kids, and
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you're trying to figure out what this looks like and how it
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works, were you drawing inspiration from, I don't know,
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any existing programs that were out there?
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Or were you just kind of throwing stuff against the wall
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and seeing what sticks, see what the kids respond to and see what
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works? No, we were definitely using the
11:02
foundation of immersion. So we almost took, you know,
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English as a second language and and kind of reversed it.
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So we were doing Spanish as a second language.
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Some of our children already spoke Spanish, so that was a non
11:14
issue, but some did not. So with the concept of ESL and
11:19
immersion programs, you use a lot of physic, TPR, total
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physical response. You use your whole body when
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you're explaining concepts with with young children, it's almost
11:29
better because there's No Fear of saying something wrong or
11:33
inappropriately. Children are not afraid.
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They also have the ability to interpret cues from your body
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more so than we do as an adult. They're very good at sensing
11:44
energy and all these other concepts.
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So it was, it was fairly exploratory, but it was it was
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easy in the sense that we had the training background and also
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those early years of spending time in my mother's classroom
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that really came back to me to help me understand how to how to
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run a great circle time, how to get children to do what you
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wanted. And then also how to resolve
12:07
conflict. You know, over time, we got
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really much, much better at all the little things that come up
12:13
in a preschool, which could be anything like biting or slamming
12:17
a slamming a Lego on top of another child's head.
12:20
I mean, there are definitely conflicts that exist.
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Quick little funny aside, as you were talking there reminded me
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when my own youngest son couple years ago, he was in a preschool
12:31
environment and they were trying to teach some Spanish words.
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And he came home one day and announced to me that he knew how
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to speak and he called it Spanish.
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And and then he proceeded to demonstrate for me.
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And I thought he was going to say, you know, like Hola or
12:47
gracias or, you know, some of the, the basic words he just
12:49
started speaking in gibberish. And at that point, it was clear
12:53
to me that Spanish or Spanish, as he called it to him just
12:57
meant speaking incoherently, speaking sounds that he didn't
13:00
understand. But obviously this was something
13:04
that's really important to you. It's the, the language of your
13:07
heritage. What, what is your, your
13:08
heritage? What's your your your
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background? So I was born in Mexico, in the
13:13
Mexico City area, but my mother had actually grown up in high
13:17
school in the Bay Area. So she was already familiar with
13:22
the Bay Area. And when she went to Mexico
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after high school, she met my father.
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And so we lived there and then they separated.
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And when that happened, I came back to the US and I grew up in
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Fremont, CA. OK, so let's get to present day
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now. We started, you know, in the,
13:39
the basement of your duplex, you know, quickly started to grow.
13:44
You're at 4 locations now. Tell us, is it still the same
13:48
sort of foundational experience that you had in mind when you
13:51
first started this Spanish immersion, you know, for for
13:54
people that you know, that's important to their heritage,
13:57
that the language skill is important to them and their
13:58
families, as well as that solid foundation and prep for
14:02
kindergarten. Is it still that that same kind
14:05
of foundation? Yeah, it's definitely still that
14:07
foundation. And it's we, we have a very
14:10
diverse clientele. So we have a lot of parents that
14:14
don't actually speak Spanish at all, but they want their child
14:16
to learn a second, second language early on.
14:19
I mean, now we have studies that show that if you learn a second
14:22
language as a young child, it's first of all, it's easier, but
14:25
it also opens up another side of your brain that otherwise would
14:28
be dormant. So it's something that a lot of
14:30
people are really, you know, appreciating and, and into, if
14:34
they're going to pay for preschool, why not learn a
14:36
second language while you're doing that?
14:38
So it's an easy, it's an easy sell in the sense of, you know,
14:42
people understanding, especially in the Bay Area, the importance
14:45
of speaking a second language. And so I'm curious for families
14:52
where they don't speak Spanish themselves at home, how much is
14:56
the child, you know, in a preschool age?
14:58
How much are they learning and retaining in those, you know,
15:01
couple of years that they're with you?
15:02
So we've had everything from we had one, one girl who was like,
15:06
I, I think she was a polyglot, but she started to learn the
15:09
language within three months. She was fluent.
15:11
I mean, she was completely responding to us in Spanish.
15:14
So the way that we do it is that immersion basically means that
15:17
we're not gonna translate for you clearly when you first
15:21
start. In the first week, we will use
15:22
English so you feel comfortable because, you know, children have
15:25
to feel like they're in a comfortable environment.
15:27
Once we pass that stage, they quickly learn the main things
15:30
that we say. And preschool is very
15:32
repetitive. You have routines that you do
15:34
every day. So people immediately start to
15:36
understand vamos a lava, Las manos, vamos a fuera, you know,
15:42
all these things they start to immediately retain and then it
15:45
just goes grows from there. So parents are always amazed at
15:50
how well their children speak. And it's really beautiful.
15:53
Like if they come into one of our classrooms and they'll sit
15:57
in circle time and they're going to hear all these people
15:59
responding and asking questions in Spanish.
16:02
And I can say that, you know, we have a few feeder schools that
16:07
are also immersion schools and they absolutely love us.
16:09
All of our kids get in because they speak great Spanish.
16:14
And one of the things that's been really important to us,
16:16
especially because of my background in training, is to
16:19
have a really strong curriculum. All of our teachers are required
16:23
to follow the curriculum that we send to them monthly and then
16:26
plan their week based on that. And they have to have everything
16:29
from a science goal, a vocabulary goal, and emotional
16:35
development goal each week. And so all of that is, you know,
16:39
supervised by our our amazing staff and children are come out
16:43
not only as better human beings because the thing about
16:47
preschool is that it's the first time your child is in society
16:51
for the first time. It's the first time that they're
16:54
balancing their individual needs with the needs of the group.
16:58
So they have to learn to manage. You know, I can't get everything
17:01
I want at all times and I have to follow directions in order to
17:06
do have a good day, right? So they learn everything from
17:10
the social, emotional aspects of being a better human being, but
17:14
also being able to sit and listen and have patience and be
17:17
able to follow simple directions.
17:19
I mean, these are all things that make you successful in
17:21
kindergarten. Tell me a little bit more about
17:25
the curriculum itself. I'm going to guess there's still
17:27
quite a bit of play that goes on, but in a probably a more
17:31
structured environment. Yeah, so we look at it, it's
17:34
based on the age of the children.
17:35
So 2 year olds will have more play based type of exploratory
17:39
learning. They'll have a circle time
17:41
that's maybe only like 10 to 15 minutes long.
17:44
And then as they get older, that curriculum gets a little bit
17:47
more developed. So say they're four years old.
17:50
And so at 4, they're going to be learning how to write their
17:53
name. They're, they're going to be
17:54
learning the sounds of letters. One of the things that we do for
17:58
phonetic awareness and being able to learn how to read is we
18:01
don't say the name of the letters because there's a
18:04
different name in English and Spanish.
18:06
Instead, we do the sound because when you start to put letters
18:09
together to read, it's all about the sounds.
18:13
And the sounds in Spanish and English are, are somewhat
18:15
similar. There's some that are different,
18:17
but most are very similar. And so that's one of the ways in
18:21
which now when they're four, they have we have very specific
18:24
rubrics and different things that they need to know at that
18:28
time. So we have stages, each of our
18:31
classrooms has the two year old goals, the three-year old goals,
18:34
the four year old goals. And so by the time they go to
18:36
kindergarten, they are pretty much reading within three to
18:40
four months. We don't focus on reading, but
18:43
we focus on all the basics that you need to put it all together
18:47
and start reading. You make sure that they've got
18:50
that foundation in place before they go to kindergarten.
18:53
Yeah. So, Crystal, I'm curious to hear
18:57
about the the growth trajectory here and how you've managed
19:03
that. You know, it takes a certain set
19:06
of courage and skills to start something from scratch in the
19:11
basement of your duplex without having had background in that.
19:16
And and then once you've got the concept proven to take it and
19:21
then grow it to another location and another one and another one.
19:25
That's a different set of skills.
19:26
Like you have to transition yourself from doing everything
19:31
yourself, you know, having your hands in everything to now
19:35
building a team and get getting a network of people in place
19:39
that you trust to be able to do those things.
19:41
Tell me about how you managed your own transition through
19:46
these different stages. Yeah, it was definitely
19:49
challenging. I think for us, it was the first
19:52
thing that was challenging is how one of our core values was
19:55
to really share our culture in a family environment.
19:58
When children are in preschool, they're sometimes there for over
20:01
10 hours. And so really they're being
20:03
raised by us as a family. And that's one of the things
20:07
that that Lupe and I, Lupe is the person that started the
20:10
school with me. We were really concerned about
20:12
when we grow, how do we keep that?
20:15
You know, love family culture together and really train our
20:20
teachers if we do grow to have that same feeling that we
20:24
created out of my house back when we started.
20:27
So that part is is is and was continues to be a challenge, but
20:32
it was one of the things that we were really cognizant of.
20:34
Like we want our kids in a bigger center to have the same
20:38
experience that they had in in the house.
20:40
So using training, leveraging training, that's one of the
20:44
things that that I luckily was able to create more and more
20:48
training for teachers as they evolved and grew.
20:53
We had some core values that we set up, and one of our core
20:56
values is growth and development.
20:58
And so how does that translate to your staff?
21:02
We have to teach them how to run a center.
21:06
I mean that there's a big difference between, you know,
21:09
running a preschool lottery house and running a preschool in
21:12
a center. There's a lot more standards,
21:13
there's a lot more procedures that we had to develop.
21:16
So what I did is I looked at what are my weaknesses, what are
21:19
the things that I do not do well so that I can hire people to do
21:23
those things. One of the main ones was
21:25
accounting. I'm not good at the day-to-day,
21:28
you know, payroll and accounting.
21:30
It's something that can take a lot of time.
21:32
It was something that I said, you know, I'm not good at.
21:34
I'm going to outsource that so I can focus mainly on the training
21:38
and on the curriculum part of the school, which is my
21:40
strength. So you start to grow up as a
21:44
business. And I can say it happened in
21:45
stages. And I did have some different
21:49
financial advisors that I would ask for assistance.
21:52
You know, I did work with the SBA initially when I needed my
21:55
first micro loan. That helped me create an amazing
21:57
business plan. From there, I moved on and
22:00
graduated to a financial planner that I would use to say, hey,
22:04
you know, what do you think about the numbers for this new
22:06
center? Do you think that this is going
22:08
to work out? And they gave me a lot of advice
22:10
on what they thought. And they helped me create a lot
22:12
of really strong spreadsheets. And then the other part was, you
22:16
know, where are we really going to staff these schools from?
22:19
Where are we going to obtain staff?
22:20
And in our particular case, we're dealing with full
22:24
immersion. So we need people that speak
22:26
Spanish fluently, preferably that's their first language so
22:29
that they speak it without an accent.
22:32
So, so all of those different things came into play as we
22:35
grew. And luckily it was, you know,
22:37
somewhat slow, you know, not extremely fast, but you go
22:42
through stages. And I definitely feel like there
22:45
were times that there were growing pains.
22:46
But you know, you, you deal with it when it comes little by
22:50
little. And it's hard, I think sometimes
22:52
when you're the boss that you're the top.
22:54
So for example, Lupa, who's my business partner, she doesn't
22:57
know anything about the whole financial side of the business.
23:00
That's something that only I know about.
23:03
And why? Because it's not her strength.
23:05
If I were to, you know, tell her all about those things, then she
23:08
would not be doing her job right now, which is director of
23:11
operations. So she's an expert in the
23:13
staffing aspect, in the training aspect, and being able to, you
23:17
know, really supervise the day-to-day operations of the
23:19
school. So, you know, looking at the
23:21
strengths of the people that are part of your company and being
23:24
able to, you know, resource them in the right way is, is crucial.
23:29
I really like this part of your story because it highlights the
23:32
importance of having good partners in place, being able to
23:36
lean on experts that can give you advice as you're going
23:39
through these different stages. And sort of this, this
23:41
realization, this understanding of, you know, as much of it as
23:45
does fall on your shoulders is you can't do it alone, right?
23:50
And it's it's smart to look for that help and it's smart to
23:53
understand where your strengths are and where your weaknesses
23:55
are so that you can help, you can get help to fill in those
23:58
gaps. Yeah.
23:59
And actually one of the most important things, and this is my
24:02
personal gauge on whether or not you're a successful entrepreneur
24:05
or not, and that is can your company survive on its own?
24:09
Can your company walk on its own when you're not there?
24:12
And I think I draw a lot from manufacturing when it comes to
24:15
this. So when I was in the coffee
24:16
business, it's very much a manufacturing process.
24:19
When I was at the book search project, it's definitely a very
24:22
much a manufacturing process on how the entire books would cycle
24:25
through the whole system. So how do you create a system
24:29
that will walk on its own that is not contingent, contingent on
24:33
one specific person, but it's spread out in such a way that if
24:37
one person is missing, you can still operate and function.
24:40
And, you know, as my dream as a young child was to be a boss of
24:44
something, I didn't know what it was going to be, but my second
24:47
part of that dream is be a boss that that is living her best
24:51
life. So I would say right now I work,
24:54
you know, not a huge amount of hours because the amazing group
24:59
of people that, you know, run this school.
25:02
So I'm, I feel like that's living the dream life, honestly.
25:08
That's fantastic. You found you found your groove.
25:12
I'm curious to hear more about the contract that you have with
25:16
Alameda County and the Carolyn Hobbs Academy.
25:21
Yeah. So recently we started a new
25:24
contract. There's a program that was
25:27
actually started maybe over 20 years ago by Carolyn Hobbs.
25:31
She was seeing young mothers having to drop out of high
25:35
school because they were getting pregnant when they were still in
25:38
high school. And so she wanted to create a
25:40
program that could potentially help these young mothers finish
25:44
their high school education, even though they were, you know,
25:48
with young children. So this program, they were
25:51
looking for a new space and a new vendor that could help them
25:56
with the childcare part of it. And so we met with them through
25:59
one of our partnerships at the city of Oakland, and we decided
26:03
to house them in the building that we have just finished
26:06
building right now temporarily until they can find a bigger
26:09
space because it's a huge need. And we started to care for the
26:13
young infants. And these are young, young
26:14
babies. So these are babies that are two
26:16
months to three years. So there's a diversity in age,
26:20
but most of them are young babies.
26:22
And so it's a new age group for us.
26:25
We, we mainly work with ages 2:00 to 5:00.
26:28
So we had to learn a lot about, you know, infant care.
26:31
And what we realized through this program is that it's way
26:34
more than just caring for the babies.
26:36
It's actually teaching mothers how to be better mothers.
26:40
And, and one of the things that'll happen is that, you
26:42
know, some of these mothers are coming from really low income
26:44
areas. Some of them don't even have
26:46
parents with them because they immigrated by themselves.
26:50
And they're giving their child a telephone to look at when
26:53
they're four months old or they're giving them, you know,
26:56
at six months, they're giving them Cheetos and Coke for break.
27:00
And we're just horrified. We're like what?
27:03
And so those are some of the things that that we've had to
27:06
teach, you know, some basic things such as nutrition,
27:10
attachment theory with your baby, how to sing to your child,
27:14
how to bond with your child. All these things that we take
27:18
for granted that I think people who, you know, have a privileged
27:21
background can kind of spend time reading about and doing.
27:24
But when you're in the thick of it as a young child yourself
27:27
having a child, you know, you don't know those things.
27:30
You don't understand nutrition, you don't understand the
27:32
importance of caring for your child in a specific way.
27:35
And so this program has become much more than just childcare.
27:39
It's actually created a curriculum of how do we educate
27:42
young mothers to be better for their babies and themselves.
27:46
This is amazing. I, I want to ask a couple of
27:48
questions here. So I'm curious because you said
27:51
this is servicing a new age group for you, how you're,
27:55
you're dealing with infant care. How did you sort of level up and
27:59
and become familiar with what that kind of care was going to
28:02
be involved in? Well, we do have one center
28:04
where we care for four infants and then 12 toddlers I would
28:09
say. So that was the first experience
28:11
we had and we basically had to just, it's the way that you care
28:17
for infants. It's very much, you know, take
28:19
leveraging your mother role and really understanding the needs
28:23
of the child. You don't fit young children
28:25
into your schedule. You fit the schedule to whatever
28:28
they need at that moment. So it's very responsive to each
28:32
individual child's needs. Creating a routine with them is
28:36
also important. However, you know, any being
28:39
flexible is also very important. So for example, in in that
28:43
particular program, we might have up to 12 infants at one
28:46
time. So it takes a lot of bodies and
28:49
teachers to be physically able to to do that work.
28:52
It's a very hands on and it's very physical because you're on
28:56
the floor constantly with babies, you're doing tummy time
29:00
with them, you're stimulating them constantly and then you
29:03
also have to get them to nap at the same time, which is very
29:07
hard. But it, it does work.
29:09
They, they do understand the routine and they get into the
29:12
routine because young children love routines.
29:14
It just helps them feel confident and taken care of.
29:19
And what's fascinating to me is how you quickly realize that,
29:23
oh, we, our job here is not just to take care of the children,
29:29
but it's also to help teach these young mothers how to
29:33
better care for their children. I'm curious, how much time do
29:38
you get with the mothers? Is it just sort of in the
29:40
transition of, you know, drop off and pick up or do you have
29:44
sort of blocks of time set aside where they come in for group
29:47
classes? How does that all work?
29:48
Yeah. So the way the program is set up
29:50
is that the child care is basically next to their high
29:53
school classroom. And so because of that, it
29:55
becomes like a very family environment.
29:58
So one, you know, we basically started to realize early on that
30:02
the needs were so diverse. So for example, we open at 8:00,
30:07
but the young mothers are out there with their babies at 7:00
30:10
because that's the time that they could get a ride in the
30:12
middle of the winter. And so my director's like, no, I
30:15
need to come in early because I can't have these mothers out
30:17
there with their babies in the cold.
30:20
So, you know, that kind of thing, responding to their needs
30:22
that way. They now that we started to, you
30:27
know, one of the things that we do in the regular preschool is
30:29
that we'll send out an e-mail with everything that we're
30:32
working on, the themes of the month, the songs that we're
30:34
singing. And I told my director, I said,
30:37
an e-mail is not going to be sufficient.
30:39
They're not going to read an e-mail.
30:40
So why don't we just ask for 30 minutes of their time and then
30:44
we'll go and we'll present the information that we have for the
30:46
month. And so when my director started
30:49
do that, the teachers of the high school program were like,
30:52
Oh my God, this information is amazing.
30:54
Can you do it more? Can we do this more as a
30:57
partnership? So then they created a program
31:00
which we're starting next month in July, which is an internship,
31:06
99% of it is an internship with us where we're teaching these
31:09
young mothers how to be early childcare professionals.
31:13
And so it's an it's an on site internship where we spend an
31:16
hour with them in the morning explaining a concept about early
31:20
childhood education and then doing the actual activities
31:24
together with the mothers and their babies for the rest of the
31:26
day. They also get a little bit of
31:28
high school education at that time.
31:30
However, the whole program is based on being a child care
31:34
provider, being a better mother for my child and how to develop,
31:38
you know, a long term success for myself and my baby.
31:43
It's really terrific. I mean, you're, you're checking
31:45
multiple boxes there, right? And the course of teaching them
31:48
what could become, you know, a workplace skill for them.
31:52
It's obviously very relevant and and and incredibly helpful for
31:56
the stage of their own personal lives that they're going
31:58
through. Yeah.
31:58
And it's, and it's a great partnership with Alameda County
32:01
because they're funding this, they're giving the mothers a, a
32:04
stipend. If they fulfill their attendance
32:07
and their goals for the program, they can get a stipend at the
32:10
end of it. So it's a, it's a great concept
32:13
and it's something that's going to enhance the lives of of these
32:16
young families as well. So looking at La Plazita as a as
32:21
a whole, you're just open your 4th location recently, you've
32:24
got this new partnership, you guys have got a lot going on
32:27
right now. Is there an even bigger term
32:31
vision of where you want this to go?
32:33
Or is it, hey, this is the next stage.
32:35
We're going to wrap our arms around this before we think
32:38
about, you know, what might come next.
32:40
Well, before we do that, we have to talk about the horrible COVID
32:43
time we all had. All right, let's do.
32:46
It so, you know, we, we almost lost, yeah, we almost lost
32:50
everything. I'd say one of the worst days of
32:53
my life in general and definitely as my life as a
32:55
business owner was that day in March when we had to sit
32:58
everybody down and say we're closing our doors because we
33:02
inevitably didn't have a clue what came next.
33:05
I mean, I think all of us were terrified at that moment.
33:08
Like, what does this mean? Are we still going to be alive?
33:10
What's going to happen? So I just remember that I'll
33:13
never forget that time sitting in that room and looking at all
33:16
of these women in front of me and, you know, telling them we
33:20
have to close. And I don't know what this
33:22
means. It, it was a terrible thing.
33:25
And just to see the fear on their faces and the, the
33:28
uncertainty, you know, that we all had at that moment.
33:32
So we closed our doors for two months after that.
33:36
We decided we needed to reopen because we had to do something,
33:39
you know, we, we couldn't just stay closed and we had to start
33:42
to reopen. So we reopened with 10% of our
33:45
enrollment. So we went from having a waiting
33:47
list to enter our programs down to 10% enrollment.
33:51
And we could only bring back, you know, four or five teachers
33:54
at that time. So we had to rebuild.
33:57
We went, we were pretty much negative, negative, negative.
34:00
And we had to rebuild. And a lot of our clientele
34:02
didn't really need care 'cause they could do it from their home
34:05
as they worked. So we started with first
34:08
responders, started to, you know, provide care for a lot of
34:12
the first responders that had to go to work.
34:15
And then we rebuilt from there. And it honestly took like three
34:19
years to come out of that hole, you know, and, and you come out
34:22
of that hole and you want to continue your plans like to, you
34:25
know, be able to build out that building that we bought 2 years
34:29
prior. And the banks are like, well,
34:33
why are your P and LS look like that?
34:35
You know, why is this like that? You know, and it's like, well,
34:37
what do you think? You know, it's like, how do you
34:39
think that just because one year of COVID, we were down to 10%,
34:43
we're going to be recovered in three years?
34:44
It doesn't work like that. So that was a really tough time.
34:49
We definitely leveraged everything from the PPP saved us
34:52
two rounds of PPP saved us. We were able to finally get all
34:57
of our staff back. And now we're, we're where we're
34:59
at now, which is at, you know, 8090% enrollment again.
35:02
So I can say we're finally in the light.
35:05
Last year we saw the light and this year we're actually in the
35:07
light, you know, but those were, those were terrible times.
35:11
And I'm sure that, you know, there's so many businesses that
35:13
didn't survive, but, you know, we were blessed to be able to
35:16
have survived. But that was definitely a very
35:18
challenging time. So the early part of COVID,
35:22
right, was March of 2020 where everything shut down.
35:25
There was a lot of uncertainty. There were a lot of people who
35:28
thought a couple of weeks, this will blow over.
35:31
But in reality, you know, nobody really knew how this was going
35:35
to unfold. And so on your side, you're two
35:38
months into it and finally you're like, hey, we've got to
35:40
do something. We have got to open our doors
35:42
and we've got to try to get a little momentum going.
35:45
So were the regulations in California at the time allowing
35:50
for that to take place then? Oh my goodness.
35:52
That's another thing. So that part was so hard.
35:55
So Lupin, my director of operations, she is the champion
35:58
in this this part because we had to, I mean, they would come out
36:02
with directives, but they didn't even know that the Department of
36:05
Childcare Services, they didn't even know.
36:07
So we were just, you know, dealing with all these children
36:11
using masks. We had to move most of our, a
36:14
lot of our classes outdoors. We had to build a bunch of shade
36:17
structures so that they could spend more time outside.
36:20
We had to use gloves. We had to use protocol.
36:23
If somebody got sick, we had to shut down classrooms.
36:26
I mean, it was just a, a, an amazing amount of regulations
36:31
that we'd never even thought of before.
36:33
And it was just, it was really hard and it was scary because
36:36
you didn't know at that time, you know, every time that
36:39
somebody was sick or not, you just, it was a scary time.
36:44
Yeah, real scary. And a lot of uncertainty as
36:46
you're touching upon there. The rules have changed and
36:49
they're constantly changing. And if California was anything
36:53
like Ohio, you've got multiple agencies who were sort of
36:56
chiming in. You know, you've got job here in
36:59
Ohio, it's the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
37:03
And then you've got the health department and you've got the
37:05
state. And they're all saying different
37:07
things, and sometimes they conflict with each other and
37:09
you're not even really sure where to go to know what to do
37:12
and what rules to follow. Exactly.
37:15
It was so hard. It was so hard.
37:18
And then and then even when we kind of got out of COVID, you
37:21
know, we didn't have a lot of workers.
37:22
We got a huge worker shortage like we, we were, I remember we
37:28
aggressively kept opening up our second two locations right after
37:32
COVID and it was really hard to staff them.
37:35
We didn't really have a lot of staff.
37:37
We were kind of desperate as far as you know, who wanted to work
37:40
when they wanted to come back and things like that.
37:42
So I think staffing became a huge issue.
37:45
One of the things that we did on the staffing part was like, OK,
37:48
we need to do something to proactively plan for the future.
37:53
And so that's when we started what I call the manager training
37:56
program. So we identified leaders in our
37:59
company that we could start to teach them of all about
38:03
different aspects of running centers.
38:06
And we've had the most success with people that started with us
38:10
at almost minimum wage as teacher aides with no
38:13
experience. And we've provided them
38:15
education. We paid for them to take their
38:18
classes in early childhood education, and then we trained
38:21
them on how to become directors. So some of my teacher aides are
38:25
directors of their own centers now.
38:27
And that's something I'm extremely proud of.
38:30
Now, one of the things that we didn't realize when we started
38:32
this company is that we would be creating jobs for immigrant
38:35
women. And so now we can say we've
38:38
created over 45 jobs for immigrant women that are include
38:43
manager roles, leadership roles, director roles.
38:45
I mean, that's, that's for me one of the most beautiful things
38:48
that that you can have a for profit company that is also
38:51
creating opportunity. It's the greatest mix between
38:55
for profit and also, you know, a social mission.
38:59
I love that it's actually aligns well with a question that I like
39:03
to ask, you know, because it is a competitive job market,
39:06
especially since COVID, you know, the, the great
39:08
resignation, there's a lot of folks who just haven't come back
39:11
to the workforce. And so finding and retaining
39:14
good employees can be really challenging.
39:16
And you've got this great training program, which is a
39:20
fantastic way to hold on to and develop and nurture some of your
39:24
best folks. I'm curious if there are other
39:26
things that you've done in the realm of either recruiting or
39:29
retaining that you've found to be particularly helpful.
39:33
Yeah, I think, well, two things. One was understanding that, you
39:37
know, because we have a core value of growth and development,
39:40
there's going to be people that are going to leave.
39:42
You know, I think initially my business partner used to take
39:44
that really personally and I told her don't take that
39:47
personally. Really everything comes in
39:49
cycles, especially we, what we are doing is we're frontline
39:52
workers. We're not tech workers, we're
39:54
not able to offer, you know, 100K salaries.
39:57
No, we're frontline workers. And So what does that mean?
40:00
That means that it's cyclical. That means that every employee
40:02
could potentially be with us for five years and then they might
40:05
find another opportunity like being a real school teacher that
40:08
pays a little bit more. So we have to understand that
40:12
and we have to make that part of our program that will have this
40:15
cyclical process where people are going to come and go.
40:18
And so we have to prepare the people that we find to be
40:21
leaders. And so that's what we started to
40:24
do. We actually have a really
40:26
amazing partnership with a company called Pacific Community
40:29
Ventures. It's a nonprofit that works
40:31
directly with the Melinda Gates Foundation.
40:34
And they have basically partnered with us to help us
40:39
create frontline jobs that are that are better.
40:42
So benefits, you know, do we have good benefits?
40:45
Not only do we have tuition reimbursement for the classes
40:48
that they take, we provide bonuses.
40:51
We also provide benefits as far as you know, health benefits,
40:54
four O 1K benefits. You know, how do you create the
40:57
best job you possibly can create?
41:00
So Melinda Gates, actually, we got to sit down at a small table
41:04
with her with six people because they're really, really see us as
41:09
an example of somebody who's out there creating these frontline
41:12
jobs as a small entrepreneur. They're making a video on our on
41:16
our project as well and in July. So that's exciting, but those
41:20
partnerships that we've that we've made with different
41:23
organizations have been essential to help us grow and
41:27
also to recognize the hard work that we do.
41:30
We're never going to be like a billion dollar company, but at
41:33
this point, you know, having four locations, we're building
41:35
over 300,000 a month and yearly, you know, hitting like over
41:39
3,000,000. So you know, we are a strong
41:42
company. We're basically the brick and
41:44
mortar of of society, which is, you know, small business.
41:49
That's fantastic. What a neat experience that must
41:51
have been to have met Melinda Gates and then spend some time
41:55
with her and, and have them help support you and your mission.
41:58
That's that's pretty cool. Yeah, it definitely was.
42:01
It was. It was very interesting because,
42:03
you know, those kind of things are like coordinated to the tee.
42:07
So we met in a restaurant in San Francisco that was also one of
42:10
the promoters of the frontline jobs.
42:13
And, you know, everything was super coordinated.
42:16
All right, she's on her way. 15 minutes. 10 minutes, 5 minutes
42:19
action. You get your little snippet of
42:23
time with her and then she's she's on to the next thing.
42:27
Yeah, great. And so where you're at now, it
42:31
sounds like you're close to capacity.
42:32
Do any of your centers have waiting lists currently?
42:35
Yeah, our San Leandro location, which was a new market for us,
42:39
that one has a long waiting list, especially for infant
42:42
care. We do have a few infant spots
42:45
there. One of the problems that we run
42:48
into being in an urban setting is that in order for providing
42:51
care for children under two, you have to have fire sprinklers in
42:54
the building In the city of Oakland.
42:57
It's a very old city, so most of the buildings don't have that.
43:00
So that's a huge demand in cities throughout the country
43:03
where there's not, you know, the basic fire.
43:06
Fire rules dictate that you have to have fire sprinklers and
43:09
other types of, you know, things in place to care for younger
43:12
children. And so not all the buildings
43:15
have that. So unfortunately, there's always
43:16
a high demand for infant care pretty much anywhere.
43:21
OK, what are some of the most common concerns that parents
43:24
have when starting their kids at a new school like yours, and
43:29
what do you tell them to help put their minds at ease?
43:32
So I think children, I mean, parents in general are always
43:34
afraid when they're sending their child to school for the
43:37
first time. You know, they can have any kind
43:39
of fear, whether it be rational or irrational, they're just
43:43
afraid. And it's actually a really
43:44
interesting process. It's, it's one of those things
43:47
that when you have a child, you really self reflect on who you
43:50
are, but even more so when you send them to school because all
43:54
of your fears come up. And the thing that parents don't
43:57
understand is that children can perceive those fears.
44:00
And so the more you demonstrate or show your fears, the more the
44:04
child is going to absorb them and the more they're going to
44:07
fear the process of going to school.
44:09
So we always counsel parents in saying, hey, it's normal to be
44:12
fearful. Try to not demonstrate or show
44:16
that fear to your child because they will feel that way and it
44:19
will be harder for them to acclimate to the school.
44:22
So we always, you know, we'd give them a speech about how you
44:25
have to be confident. You have to make it fun.
44:27
You have to go get them a brand new lunch pail and tell them how
44:31
proud you are of them because they're big boys and girls going
44:34
to the big school and just really promoting it in a
44:37
positive way. It makes a huge difference
44:39
because children can perceive everything.
44:44
What advice do you have for parents who are maybe trying to
44:46
decide between different schools?
44:49
They've come and they toured yours, they've toured another
44:51
one. I don't know, they both seem
44:52
good. How can I really figure out
44:54
what's the best choice for me? Yeah.
44:57
I think that we, we don't really, I think the well the
45:01
difference with us is because we're really into planning and
45:04
curriculum. I think that that's kind of sets
45:06
us apart from many other schools during our touring process.
45:11
We show all of our, you know, the way in which you, we've
45:14
created our curriculum. We talk about the basis of our
45:17
philosophy. And so those are all things that
45:20
you don't get when you go to a normal tour.
45:22
If you go to normal tour, they're like, here's here's this
45:25
room, here's that room, here's this room, but they're not
45:27
actually getting into the nitty gritty of what we're teaching
45:30
and how we teach. And so that's something that I
45:32
train all the people that give the tours is that you have to
45:35
really explain our philosophy. You have to explain why we do
45:38
what we do. And so that is what really sets
45:42
us apart. And, and when we first started,
45:44
we actually spent $0.00 on marketing.
45:46
It was all word of mouth. I mean, we grew.
45:49
That's fantastic. Out of word of mouth because
45:51
parents had had a great experience.
45:53
And to this day, I think the only time we actually had to do
45:56
marketing was when we were coming out of COVID and we
45:59
really needed to fill the schools more to be able to, you
46:02
know, pay all the salaries that we had.
46:04
So we still don't spend much money on marketing at all.
46:07
I think the program sells itself if you have a good program.
46:14
That's terrific. You know, one of the stories
46:16
that you shared earlier that I really liked was about the young
46:19
girl who, you know, you said, I don't know, maybe she's a
46:22
polygot. She she was basically fluent
46:24
within the first three months. You have any other like fun
46:27
success stories of little kids like that that have come through
46:30
your program? You, you know, maybe somebody
46:33
who really excelled, maybe somebody who came in and, you
46:35
know, in a really challenged situation that you were able to
46:37
help through. Yeah.
46:39
I mean, I could, I can remember another occasion where we had, I
46:42
mean, this is a little different.
46:43
But so for example, we had a young, a young child, I think he
46:46
was about 3 years old. And he had a lot of problems in
46:49
the sense of like being able to pay attention.
46:52
He was a little bit aggressive with his friends in the
46:56
classroom. He wouldn't listen.
46:58
He wanted to do his own thing. And so when that happens, we
47:01
have to meet with the parents and we have to talk about, you
47:04
know, how's your home life, what's going on?
47:06
How can we develop a plan to help this child be more
47:09
successful? And in this particular case, the
47:12
parent was a school principal. So she had, you know, pretty
47:15
much almost a doctorate in education and her child was a
47:19
had a lot of issues. And so we sat down with her in
47:23
our office and we talked about, you know, basically what was
47:26
going on was that this principal was, you know, gone all the time
47:30
because she had to, she had a very demanding job.
47:33
So she wouldn't be home a lot at night because they had a lot of
47:36
meetings. And so the son was so to make up
47:39
for it, what she would do is she would buy her child everything
47:42
that they wanted or she would never say no to the child
47:46
because she felt guilty that she wasn't there all the time.
47:49
So she sat in our office and she cried and she cried and she
47:53
said, you know, I'm creating the devil child that I'm dealing
47:58
with now. And my, and she realized it.
48:00
And it was that moment of realization of like, OK, even if
48:04
you can't be there physically all the time, your child needs
48:07
boundaries. And when you create bounding
48:09
boundaries, your child feels safe, secure and cared for.
48:13
And that's what people don't understand when they're not able
48:16
to actually create those boundaries is that, you know,
48:19
that's what children need. It makes them feel like they're
48:22
cared for. It makes them feel like they can
48:24
lean on you because you're going to watch out for them.
48:27
So that started a very great process with her family and the
48:31
young child is that we started to develop these systems to help
48:35
him succeed. And, and he still had the same
48:38
amount of energy, but he learned a lot.
48:40
And we had that partnership with the family at home to, to work
48:43
together to, to make a better environment for him.
48:46
And he did great. He excelled.
48:48
What a neat story. Thanks for sharing that.
48:51
Crystal, shifting gears a little bit to more of the business side
48:54
of things, you know is business owners, business leaders, you
48:57
know, one of the things that's important for us to keep an eye
49:00
on is that bottom line, right? And you know, how how can we
49:03
make sure that there's a, a healthy profit level there for
49:06
us? And that could be driven in two
49:08
different ways. It can be, you know, boosting
49:09
sales or it could be, you know, decreasing expenses.
49:13
I'm curious to hear from you maybe some creative or different
49:16
things that you've tried to pull either one or both of those
49:20
levers. Yeah.
49:21
So I think it's always been hard.
49:23
I mean, definitely for us, we have a, we have a formula we
49:26
call it where we have to have a certain amount of children and a
49:29
certain amount of center to be able to have that center be
49:33
profitable. So, you know, we have our
49:35
rubrics that we create to demonstrate, you know, what it
49:38
is that we need to be at and we try to follow that as much as
49:42
possible. I mean, during COVID that was
49:44
impossible. However, right now we say, OK,
49:46
well in this school we have to make sure we have at least 80%
49:50
enrollment, otherwise our expenses don't work out.
49:53
It's rarely really challenging in a service business because
49:56
80% of your budget goes to salaries and wages.
50:00
And so it can be extremely challenging.
50:03
Like how do you really give, especially in the Bay Area where
50:07
it's really expensive to live, you know, wages that they can
50:10
live on and at the same time stay profitable.
50:13
It's something that we deal with on a daily basis.
50:17
I'd say there's always more to be done, but it's really
50:21
challenging. I mean, definitely like a
50:22
service business and that, and that's what I told my partner
50:25
too. I said that's why sometimes we
50:27
reach a glass ceiling where we can't pay more and then people
50:30
may leave. And that's just the reality of
50:32
this type of frontline job. So it's always a challenge.
50:38
One of the things that we do is we definitely keep costs low as
50:41
much as possible. We tried to do most of the work
50:44
ourselves. We're very much into recycling.
50:47
I mean, you think it wouldn't make a big impact, but actually
50:50
we recycle everything. So everything, you know, when we
50:53
do projects and we do, you know, we do a big end of the year
50:56
graduation play and every single item in there is recycled.
51:00
We do a huge Expo every year where we invite all the families
51:03
to see what's been created and, and some of the teachers
51:06
transform the entire classroom into like a solar system or a
51:10
jungle. And all of that has to be done
51:13
with recycled materials. And so all that has an impact.
51:17
So, so we do talk about keeping costs low, but we also try to
51:21
reward, you know, people when we have more, you know, more money.
51:24
And we haven't seen that in a while.
51:27
But I think we're finally at the point where now we're starting
51:29
to be back to our normal profitability, which has been
51:32
20%. You know, and I think this is
51:35
something important for people who are listening, who, you
51:39
know, haven't been in the daycare space themselves, but
51:42
have had kids in that environment.
51:43
Because as a parent, I've certainly heard other parents
51:46
talk about, man, why is daycare so expensive?
51:49
It's so expensive. It's so expensive.
51:51
But having talked with, you know, on, on my side, having had
51:54
conversations with a lot of daycare owners even before
51:58
COVID, but much worse coming out of COVID where labor costs have
52:03
gone up significantly, the, the margins just aren't there.
52:07
You know, it's been, it's been really lean living.
52:10
And I think that's what a lot of people don't understand is, you
52:13
know, how the economics of that work out.
52:15
Like these daycare centers, they're providing an incredibly
52:19
valuable service, right? They're allowing us to be here,
52:22
you know, doing our jobs and, and having good Peace of Mind
52:25
knowing that our, our children are in good hands.
52:27
So it's in providing an incredible service and it's
52:30
doing it, it actually, you know, it feels like a lot of money.
52:33
But all things considered, it's, it's a, it's a pretty good deal
52:37
for us. Yeah, absolutely.
52:39
I mean, it's, it's extremely challenging.
52:41
Wages went up, rents went up, you know, the cost of goods went
52:44
up. So everything has been extremely
52:47
challenging. You know, our goal has always
52:48
been to keep it affordable for working families as much as
52:51
possible. So we're not the highest, you
52:53
know, you know, charging preschool at all in any way.
52:56
But unfortunately, one of the things that that's happening in
52:59
California right now is that the Department of Education has
53:02
decided to absorb all four year olds into the school system.
53:06
And So what they've done is they're, you know, dismantling
53:09
the private childcare industry because they're taking all the
53:12
four year olds that we would have normally had into the
53:14
school system into these TK programs.
53:17
Our TK program is just, if just as effective, if not better than
53:21
what's out there in the school districts.
53:23
However, this this school districts, Department of
53:27
Education decided to really, I think it was a financial need.
53:31
They wanted to bring more people into the Department of
53:33
Education, into the school districts.
53:35
And so they started this TK and they're starting to make the age
53:40
younger and younger. There's talk about including
53:42
three-year olds into the school districts, which is devastating.
53:46
Private providers. I mean, we were already coming
53:48
out of COVID in a bad situation. Now you're taking all the four
53:52
year olds that would have normally been in your program
53:55
and then you're considering expanding it to even more to
53:58
three-year olds. So what we realized is that, you
54:02
know, we need to plan for the future and say, hey, maybe we
54:05
can't be in cities like Oakland. Maybe we have to go to the most
54:09
affluent cities in California to be able to provide our program
54:12
where people will be able to pay, you know, pay for it
54:16
because we don't want to fold as a company.
54:19
But we are definitely seeing that.
54:20
We're seeing that we don't have the four year olds that we used
54:23
to have. And so, you know, not a lot of
54:26
people in California are talking about this, but it is going to
54:28
have devastating effects on the immigrant work population.
54:32
A lot of them work in childcare. It's also going to have
54:35
devastating impacts on all the smaller providers that provide,
54:39
you know, care out of their home.
54:41
So it more to come on that, but it's something that we're
54:44
dealing with right now. I've got a few questions I want
54:48
to unpack on that crystal, so correct me if I'm wrong, but a
54:52
difference between these programs would be that the state
54:54
version is probably only a few hours a day, while yours is all
54:59
day. Yeah, exactly.
55:00
So that's one of the things that the parents, so they're making
55:03
that hard decision right now. Do I send my kid to tight TK or
55:06
do I keep them here? And they say, well, I'm going to
55:09
opt for the TK because I don't have to pay for it.
55:12
However, I don't know what to do about after school.
55:14
Can you please open an after school program?
55:17
And we've done that in the past where we'll have an after school
55:19
program, but it's honestly just too challenging for us.
55:23
You know, why are we going to do a whole another program where
55:26
people only work part time when nobody wants to work part time?
55:29
So it is a huge need right now. There's a a vacuum for after
55:34
school programs for that exact reason, that these programs only
55:37
run four to five hours a day. Do you think there's more infant
55:43
care in your future as this transition unfolds?
55:46
I do. I do think that that's where you
55:49
kind of have to expand to. However, we have that huge
55:52
impediment of needing fire sprinklers in buildings that are
55:55
old and that that can cost over $200,000.
55:58
So unfortunately it's not, it's not an easy fix, but we, we do
56:03
consider, you know, as we move out to more affluent areas,
56:06
we're going to have to get buildings with fire sprinklers
56:08
because we can't care for those children under 2 without that.
56:12
And it's a really, really high cost.
56:15
One of the reasons why people don't open up childcare is
56:18
because you have to take a building and turn into an E
56:22
occupancy, which means full education occupancy and that
56:25
includes earthquake retrofit, fire, life and safety and then
56:30
egress. So, you know, not a lot of
56:32
people have all that money to, to make that huge leap into, you
56:36
know, turning a building into, into child care.
56:40
This new state program the the TK program we've been talking
56:44
about here, do you have any where are the funds coming for?
56:48
For this, it's funds coming out of the state budget directly to
56:51
the Department of Education. I think it's being pushed a lot
56:54
by the unions. I think union labor's been
56:56
trying to unionize childcare workers for years and they've
56:59
had a hard time doing it because most of them are independent
57:03
providers that are providing care out of their homes.
57:05
So why would they unionize? I think that they're one of the
57:08
huge proponents of it, the teachers union that really wants
57:11
to increase, you know, capacity and increase funding for the
57:14
district through through the state.
57:18
If correct me if I'm wrong, I mean California's had a huge
57:21
budget problem for a number of years it seems, I don't know a
57:25
bit unusual to undertake such a a big effort like this that
57:30
would increase the expenses even more.
57:32
Yeah, I think there's a thought that long term, long term, the
57:36
Department of Education will be able to receive more funding
57:38
from the state. I think that's kind of the
57:40
concept behind it, is that they'll be able to increase
57:42
their budget over time by caring for more children.
57:47
Anna, before I forget, because we promised the audience, what
57:52
are the first names of each of your children?
57:55
So my son is ZLZ i.e. L and they always say, well, how
57:59
do you say that? Is it Zeal?
58:00
No, just say the letter Z, the letter L Zeal.
58:03
He's 19. My 14 year old is the the reason
58:08
why I started the school. It was for her.
58:10
So that's Zaylee and then my baby girl who's 8 years old.
58:14
Her name is Ziana. So hence the reason why La
58:17
Placita technically should be Plac, but I changed it to AZ.
58:23
OK. And what's the affinity for Z?
58:26
How did that all start? I think it was just I wanted
58:29
names that I could say in both English and Spanish, but I also
58:31
like to be a little different, so I just like the letter.
58:36
I I've always said like when you've got like an X or AK or AZ
58:41
and a name, it feels like a little edgy, like a Little Rock
58:43
and roll. It's fun.
58:45
Yeah, I try to be. Yeah.
58:48
Crystal, are there any specific, maybe mentors or books,
58:52
particular learning experiences that help shape you or your
58:56
professional career? I can't.
58:59
I would say not necessarily books.
59:03
I'd say my experience in manufacturing was amazing to me.
59:07
I said the way I always recommend people approach when
59:11
they're starting businesses is to is the concept of systems,
59:14
like looking at systems, like how every time you start a
59:17
business, you should consider it as a new system that you're
59:20
creating. And so how can this system start
59:24
to walk on its own? You know, you have to think
59:26
about that at the very beginning of of your stages of creating
59:29
your business because you don't want to be a slave to your
59:32
project. You know, yes, you do need to
59:34
put that work in early on. But if you think about it as a
59:37
system that should walk on its own early on, then you can
59:41
really, really grow it to where, you know, we've we've grown
59:45
right now. And I do have to say that what I
59:48
prefer, and this is how I work with all the few people that do
59:52
advise us is I don't work with large firms.
59:56
I don't work with a large accounting firm.
59:57
I don't work with a large insurance company.
59:59
I work with one person that will call me on the phone and say,
1:00:02
Hey, Crystal, we need to renew your policy.
1:00:04
What do you think? So find those partners that will
1:00:08
know you by name, will answer their cell phone when you call
1:00:11
them and, and those become your partners.
1:00:15
And one of my, one of the greatest partners I have is a
1:00:18
financial advisor because it's based on your weaknesses.
1:00:21
Find your partners based on your weaknesses.
1:00:23
So if I'm not good with making giant Excel spreadsheets, one of
1:00:27
my partners going to be my financial advisor that makes
1:00:30
these awesome spreadsheets for me.
1:00:33
So mainly, mainly that's what I look at.
1:00:34
Those are the mentors that I've had people that I consider to be
1:00:38
extremely smart, sharp people that I can call at any time for
1:00:41
advice. And they've been, they've been
1:00:44
cheerleaders of mine as well. I mean, they've been constantly,
1:00:47
you know, checking in and seeing how we're doing and I can always
1:00:50
go back to them and say, Hey, what do you think about this or
1:00:52
what do you think about that? I mean, being ACEO is a very
1:00:56
lonely place. You know, when you when you're
1:00:58
making those huge decisions of we have to shut down, when
1:01:02
you're making the huge decision decision of should I rent this
1:01:05
new building, the implications of it, how much is it going to
1:01:08
cost me? Should I start this new school?
1:01:10
I mean, those are all things that I do in a silo pretty much
1:01:13
by myself. So it's a lonely place, but it's
1:01:17
a great place and it's a privilege to be there if you
1:01:20
started something new from from scratch.
1:01:23
That's terrific. Do you have any advice for
1:01:25
people who are listening? Like, man, I really could use,
1:01:28
you know, the kinds of advisors that Crystal is talking about.
1:01:31
You know, how might they go about finding that in their own
1:01:33
communities? So I I start out just with SBA.
1:01:37
So SBA brought me to my very first amazing partner that
1:01:40
helped me create a great business plan.
1:01:42
And this person had had businesses of their own.
1:01:45
So that was one. There's another, there's a lot
1:01:48
of nonprofit organizations that promote small business lending.
1:01:54
The one that I worked with was 2/1 was Main Street Launch here
1:01:57
in the Bay Area. They provided me a micro loan
1:02:00
and with that micro loan comes a lot of business advice and
1:02:04
business partnerships. After that I went to Pacific
1:02:08
Community Ventures, same thing. Most of those lenders, the micro
1:02:13
lenders, they have business resource advisors that you can
1:02:16
link up with directly. We were given one time a lawyer
1:02:21
from the Haas School of Business in Berkeley and she helped us
1:02:25
with a lot of corporate government governance things.
1:02:28
So I highly recommend go to your micro lenders and they will have
1:02:33
a huge amount of business development resources.
1:02:36
We've, we've gotten plenty from them, but I'm I know they're
1:02:39
available in every state. That's great advice, Crystal.
1:02:44
I have just one more question for you, but before I ask it, I
1:02:46
want to do 2 things. First, if you're listening today
1:02:49
and you like today's content, please hit the subscribe, like
1:02:51
or share button on your favorite podcast app.
1:02:54
Crystal, I also want to tell people what's the best way to
1:02:56
get in touch with you. So we're always available on
1:03:00
laplacitapreschool.com. We also have an Instagram.
1:03:05
It's La Placita. It's LAPLAZ because I love Z, of
1:03:09
course. It is.
1:03:10
Itapreschool.com we're on Instagram and then we also I'm
1:03:14
on LinkedIn as well, but you can just Google us.
1:03:17
La Placita preschool, you know, partners in in basically
1:03:23
immersion and childcare. And one of the things that that
1:03:27
I've been doing lately more has been really doing business
1:03:30
advice for a lot of different startups.
1:03:33
I'm able to explain to them the process of zoning and planning
1:03:38
department, which can kill any business.
1:03:40
So we do a lot of counseling for small micro businesses about how
1:03:45
to start a business and how to how to be successful at it.
1:03:48
But especially when it comes to buildings and infrastructure,
1:03:51
which can be so hard when you're actually getting a property and
1:03:55
getting it ready to run a business, there's things that
1:03:59
that you should know in advance that will prevent you from
1:04:02
losing tons and tons of money. Oh, that's terrific.
1:04:06
You're able to take a lot of that experience and expertise
1:04:09
that you've built up over the years and and share it with
1:04:11
others. That's, that's really great.
1:04:13
Last question for you, Crystal. I'm curious maybe aside from the
1:04:17
the TK transition that's taking place, how do you see your
1:04:21
industry evolving in the next five years?
1:04:23
What do you think are some of the big changes that are coming?
1:04:26
So I think some of the things that are going to happen is that
1:04:28
we are going to have to try to find buildings that will house
1:04:31
younger populations. So we're going to have to
1:04:33
really, you know, work on that need.
1:04:35
That's that's the infant need. There's a huge need there for
1:04:39
infant care and so I think a lot of us are going to find creative
1:04:42
ways to find spaces that will be amenable to caring for the
1:04:47
younger age group. We're also going to have to
1:04:51
continue, you know, luckily we're an immersion program, so
1:04:54
we have a special service that we provide, but people are going
1:04:59
to have to be more creative with the services that they provide.
1:05:01
So if it be opening an after school program to help the TK
1:05:05
program that's inevitably going to grow or if they want to
1:05:09
create, you know, space for younger children, then that's
1:05:12
something that I'm definitely if I oh, do open a new location,
1:05:15
I'm definitely looking for a building that would have what is
1:05:17
required from fire life and safety to be able to expand to
1:05:21
younger age groups. That's terrific, Crystal.
1:05:25
I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your
1:05:27
time and your story with us today.
1:05:29
I really appreciate it. Definitely.
1:05:31
Thank you. It's been a pleasure, Anthony.
1:05:32
Appreciate it very much. Thank you for telling our story.
1:05:35
You know, we're in a silo over here taking care of young
1:05:37
children, and it's great to be out there.
1:05:41
We we appreciate and and love what you're doing.
1:05:44
Thank you, folks. That's a wrap on another episode
1:05:47
of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us
1:05:49
today.