Welcome to Eye on Franchising, where we bring you the latest insights on franchising trends and opportunities. In this episode, Lance Graulich introduces Ion Franchising, a platform that helps individuals find the perfect franchise opportunity for free. Join us as we feature Neighborhood Kids, an early childhood education franchise that is making waves in the industry. We sit down with the founder of Neighborhood Kids, Frank Toral, and the franchise development manager, Chloe Lee, to discuss their mission and vision for the franchise. You'll hear about Frank's inspiring journey from law to early childhood education, and how investing in a franchise like Neighborhood Kids can provide both financial success and purpose for franchise owners. We also dive into the franchise owner selection process and the unique approach of utilizing empty churches to cut down costs and time associated with starting a franchise. The podcast highlights the success of a childcare franchising business that focuses on teaching foundational family values to children from various religious and non-religious backgrounds. Join us for an insightful discussion on the challenges and changes in early childhood education, particularly in regards to technology and curriculum, and learn about marketing strategies for franchising businesses in this sector. Overall, this episode emphasizes the importance of purpose-driven marketing and making a generational impact through franchising. Don't miss out on this valuable episode of Eye on Franchising. - Introduction of Ion Franchising platform - Feature of Neighborhood Kids early childhood education franchise - Interview with founder and franchise development manager - Importance of investing in a franchise - Journey of starting a church and acquiring preschools - Franchise owner selection process - Unique approach to franchise ownership - Success of childcare franchising business - Partnering with churches to run schools - Importance of directors with early childhood education knowledge - Challenges and changes in early childhood education - Marketing strategies for franchising business - Emphasis on purpose-driven marketing - Call to action for prospective franchise owners and pastors. KEY POINTS [0:0:8] Discover the perfect franchise opportunity for your investment goals with Ion Franchising's free assessment, featuring over 650 incredible available franchises! [0:0:47] courageously stepped away from a successful legal career to boldly pursue his divinely-inspired calling to lead a ministry, discovering true purpose in his volunteer work. [0:7:28] Amidst the COVID pandemic, ambitious spirit and innovative marketing strategies enabled him to not only maintain, but exponentially grow his business, offering couples a chance to build wealth and find purpose through franchising. [0:8:14] Despite coming from a modest background, Speaker 3 was an inspiring trailblazer who devotedly worked her way through college and accomplished a remarkable feat - becoming the first in her family to purchase a car with her own hard-earned money. [0:10:48] Through this innovative franchise model, entrepreneurs can take advantage of existing church properties and quickly launch their business without the hassle of costly loans or lengthy ramp-up times. [0:13:19] The rigorous franchise selection process, featuring financial and institutional franchise experience review, psychological assessment, and unanimous agreement among the leadership team, ensures only the most qualified candidates are chosen. [0:33:59] At our early childhood education center, we focus on developing our students' emotional intelligence and faith-based values, providing them with the foundation for a successful future. [0:37:19] By leveraging the power of social media, educational systems can dramatically increase their reach and engagement, ultimately leading to greater success in promoting learning and knowledge. [0:38:29] Our commitment to promoting from within has enabled us to foster a strong sense of community among our staff, with many of our recent college graduates and young adults demonstrating incredible potential and receiving CDA certifications in Early Childhood Education or Bachelor's Degrees in Education. [0:39:11] Despite the devastating economic impacts of the pandemic, the schools in this neighborhood managed to generate an astonishing $1 million+ in annual revenue to meet the demanding childcare needs of the community’s children. Have you heard the news? We are officially on YouTube. Come check out a few videos have have and give me a follow! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwoAdrkPZmveJt5AQRDk8WA --- Lance Graulich Franchise Consulting Services from ION Franchising Eye On Franchising
Welcome to Eye on Franchising, where we bring you the latest insights on franchising trends and opportunities. In this episode, Lance Graulich introduces Ion Franchising, a platform that helps individuals find the perfect franchise opportunity for free. Join us as we feature Neighborhood Kids, an early childhood education franchise that is making waves in the industry. We sit down with the founder of Neighborhood Kids, Frank Toral, and the franchise development manager, Chloe Lee, to discuss their mission and vision for the franchise.
You'll hear about Frank's inspiring journey from law to early childhood education, and how investing in a franchise like Neighborhood Kids can provide both financial success and purpose for franchise owners.
We also dive into the franchise owner selection process and the unique approach of utilizing empty churches to cut down costs and time associated with starting a franchise. The podcast highlights the success of a childcare franchising business that focuses on teaching foundational family values to children from various religious and non-religious backgrounds.
Join us for an insightful discussion on the challenges and changes in early childhood education, particularly in regards to technology and curriculum, and learn about marketing strategies for franchising businesses in this sector.
Overall, this episode emphasizes the importance of purpose-driven marketing and making a generational impact through franchising.
Don't miss out on this valuable episode of Eye on Franchising.
- Introduction of Ion Franchising platform
- Feature of Neighborhood Kids early childhood education franchise
- Interview with founder and franchise development manager
- Importance of investing in a franchise
- Journey of starting a church and acquiring preschools
- Franchise owner selection process
- Unique approach to franchise ownership
- Success of childcare franchising business
- Partnering with churches to run schools
- Importance of directors with early childhood education knowledge
- Challenges and changes in early childhood education
- Marketing strategies for franchising business
- Emphasis on purpose-driven marketing
- Call to action for prospective franchise owners and pastors.
KEY POINTS
[0:0:8] Discover the perfect franchise opportunity for your investment goals with Ion Franchising's free assessment, featuring over 650 incredible available franchises!
[0:0:47] courageously stepped away from a successful legal career to boldly pursue his divinely-inspired calling to lead a ministry, discovering true purpose in his volunteer work.
[0:7:28] Amidst the COVID pandemic, ambitious spirit and innovative marketing strategies enabled him to not only maintain, but exponentially grow his business, offering couples a chance to build wealth and find purpose through franchising.
[0:8:14] Despite coming from a modest background, Speaker 3 was an inspiring trailblazer who devotedly worked her way through college and accomplished a remarkable feat - becoming the first in her family to purchase a car with her own hard-earned money.
[0:10:48] Through this innovative franchise model, entrepreneurs can take advantage of existing church properties and quickly launch their business without the hassle of costly loans or lengthy ramp-up times.
[0:13:19] The rigorous franchise selection process, featuring financial and institutional franchise experience review, psychological assessment, and unanimous agreement among the leadership team, ensures only the most qualified candidates are chosen.
[0:33:59] At our early childhood education center, we focus on developing our students' emotional intelligence and faith-based values, providing them with the foundation for a successful future.
[0:37:19] By leveraging the power of social media, educational systems can dramatically increase their reach and engagement, ultimately leading to greater success in promoting learning and knowledge.
[0:38:29] Our commitment to promoting from within has enabled us to foster a strong sense of community among our staff, with many of our recent college graduates and young adults demonstrating incredible potential and receiving CDA certifications in Early Childhood Education or Bachelor's Degrees in Education.
[0:39:11] Despite the devastating economic impacts of the pandemic, the schools in this neighborhood managed to generate an astonishing $1 million+ in annual revenue to meet the demanding childcare needs of the community’s children.
Have you heard the news? We are officially on YouTube. Come check out a few videos have have and give me a follow!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwoAdrkPZmveJt5AQRDk8WA
---
Franchise Consulting Services from ION Franchising
Lance 00:00:00
Lance 00:00:02 Welcome to Eyeon Franchising. Are you looking for business opportunities? Well, you are in the right place. We represent over 650 franchises and business opportunities. We will help you find your perfect franchise for free. We even have a free assessment on our website that will help us determine what the best businesses for you based on your investment level mindset, skill set, and life experiences. This is Ion Franchising, where we share our vision for your franchise future. I'm your host, Lance Growler. Each week we will speak to fascinating folks from the world of franchising, franchisors and founders, franchise funders and franchisees. Are you looking to find your perfect franchise? Or perhaps you are an independent business owner looking to grow and scale your business by setting up a franchise. Either way, our team can help you, Ion Franchising, where you will learn the A to Z's of franchise. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another fabulous episode of Ion Franchising. You know me. I think you know me. I hope you know me. Lance Graulich, your host. So today it seems like kids and pets. The last couple of months, people are saying we're in a recession, we're going into a recession. Who knows what a recession is even defined as these days. But kids and pets, we're always going to take care of. So today, an amazing early childhood education franchise. They have five corporate locations.
Lance 00:01:37 Five.
Lance 00:01:38 I love when franchisors invest in corporate locations. He's a recovering lawyer. 30 years as a lawyer, if you can believe that. And really, he had a higher calling. So I want to welcome to the show frank To.
Lance 00:01:53 Thank you, Lance. An honor to be here today on your podcast. I know a lot of people tune in. So, I will do my best to answer, your questions today.
Lance 00:02:04 Spoken like a true attorney. So, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. And, also to welcome to the show Ms. Chloe Lee, the franchise development manager for Neighborhood Kids. Welcome.
Chloe 00:02:19 Thank you, Lance. Pleasure to be here.
Lance 00:02:21 Awesome. Yeah. I didn't think I even said the name yet. So, Neighborhood Kids is the franchise we're going to talk about today. Let's start with the way, back segment of the show. I call it the way back or the past. Let's, frankly start with you. What got you into law and where did the transition become this higher calling? I'm going to do something different and it ended up with this amazing early childhood education franchise.
Lance 00:02:50 thank you, Lance. Since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a lawyer. I'm a first generation Cuban American. So everybody was born in Cuba. Parents came over, uh, in the late 50s early 60s. The whole family came over, moved to Chicago. We moved to Miami, in the early 70s.
Lance 00:03:09 Wait. Chicago. White Socks or, let's see, red Sox. Which one?
Lance 00:03:15 The only color I remember in Chicago is white, white snow.
Lance 00:03:18 All right. Got it.
Lance 00:03:20 I remember that. That's about it. We left when I was about seven years old. I, remember shoveling snow out of the highway, but I would say White Sox and the Bulls got it. But, we came over to Miami. That was my dream to become an attorney. We're a working class family. My mom and dad held, two jobs, and, I was able to go to college. The first one in my family to finish on time. Graduated from university, of Florida in Gainesville a long time ago. I won't date myself, but, it was a while ago, and I went to law school soon after that, right here in South Florida. And my dream came true. I was able to become a lawyer, and I founded my own law firm. For 20 years, we served families all across the state of Florida. Had a great team. And then something changed. My heart changed. I started volunteering in my local church. It was a big church in Fort Lauderdale. I saw this big guy, six foot five, tattoos. I think he even had an earring. And I'm like, I can't believe I'm in church listening to this guy. He started talking. Lance and he talked about moving your life from success to significance. And when he said that, it grabbed me, piqued my interest. Like, what does that mean? I was doing pretty good in the law firm. But then I understood that God had a purpose and a plan for my life. I was in. I started volunteering. I started going on leadership trips. He was a big leadership guy. John Maxwell all these different leadership, experts that we were exposed to as a team. I joined the church, as a volunteer, as part of their executive leadership team. The church had about 10,000 members, so, pretty good sized team. a lot of capacity on that team. I was not paid, so I did this for free. Can you imagine that? A lawyer does something for free.
Lance 00:05:03 What's the matter with you?
Lance 00:05:05 It was my pro bono, contribution. But really, I love to be there. And here's the dynamic. The more time I spent hanging out at the church, Lance, the less time I wanted to be in my law firm, because I found purpose in that in a way that I couldn't find. Even though I was getting paid really well, I found purpose. And so, 2016, I felt really a calling to full time ministry. So I sold the practice, I sold everything. We moved to Palm Beach County, which is just north of us, just north of where I had the law firm in Fort Lauderdale.
Lance 00:05:38 What did you do with your snow shovel?
Lance 00:05:40 I ditched that. I ditched that. I figured we wouldn't have to use it for a while, even though it's, like, one degree colder in Palm Beach County. So we moved to Palm Beach County to start a church. What? Yeah, we started a church. I took my life savings and we started a nondenominational church here in Wellington, Florida, where I'm speaking to you from. Did that for two and a half years. We acquired two, preschools in 2019 as a way of growing the church. And what I didn't anticipate was that COVID would come, we would have to shut down the church. And I was left with two schools. So I'm like, okay, I went from 250 students, my wife and I, to 13 students. And I'm like, man, the church closes, and now I'm down to 13 students. And we have no money left. We're in. All in. But I realized something, Lance. I realized that God hadn't brought us this far to drop us. And I believe that. I didn't know what the plan was, but I wasn't going to step back.
Lance 00:06:43 This was just a test.
Lance 00:06:45 Yeah. And that's what it felt like, and really a test of faith. And so what we did is we put our foot on the gas. We hired a top shelf digital marketing firm in Fort Lauderdale, and they grew our schools, Lance. And by the end of 2020, we were on a waiting list. That following summer, we doubled in size. We had another two schools inside of some really great established, grown to two more campuses. And the future looks bright, but it required a step of faith, sort of. God met us where we were. So we're excited, poised, I think, for not only success, but here it is again for significance. So what we want to do, Lance, is we want to give people the same opportunity that was given to us as new, owners of a business and now franchise. And that's why we went into Franchising, is we want to give couples an opportunity not only to build wealth, but to have purpose in the process.
Lance 00:07:41 Love it. Well, let's, throw it over to Chloe for a moment. So, Ms. Chloe, you are like, a franchise professional?
Chloe 00:07:50 I mean, I wouldn't say a professional yet, but it will be in the future.
Lance 00:07:56 Awesome. So, Chloe, where did you grow up?
Chloe 00:07:59 So, I grew up in Stewart, Florida. It's about 45 minutes north of here. I grew up there my whole life. Came from super low income family. Mom was a single mom working three jobs. So I was always helping with her, with my brother, in any way I could. So I put myself through college on my own, bought my first car on my own, . One of the first to graduate college in the family.
Lance 00:08:25 Awesome. So what got you into Franchising? When most people hear about franchising because they know McDonald's, everybody knows it. Whether you're eating their burgers and things, whatever, having a shake, everybody knows McDonald's. Is that your first experience with franchising?
Chloe 00:08:41 definitely was either that or Chickfila. I think I'm more of a Chickfila fan.
Lance 00:08:47 Got it. So how did you fall into Franchising career?
Chloe 00:08:52 my college experience is quite something. I first started as like, a biochem major, thinking I wanted to be this great pharmaceutical doctor. And those dreams just kind of pushed aside. I wasn't really loving it as much anymore, and I just wanted something more, something more bubbly, something more fun in the field. So I went into education because I've always had a calling for kids. I did that for a while and I was actually doing a business minor. And I just loved the business world and everything about it. And I actually met one of the professors there at the university. His name is, john Hayes. He's actually the president of the Titus Center of Franchising. And I spoke with him for a little bit and I joined one of the classes and fell in love with Franchising. It's crazy, because even before college, I always dreamed of maybe operating my own franchise one day or just doing work in the field before I even knew what actually Franchising was. So I took some of his classes and graduated with the concentration and met Frank and just overwhelmed.
Lance 00:10:08 Love it. Love it when a plan comes together. So Frank, there's five corporate locations right now. There's another two in development, two franchises in development. Those are the first two franchises, is that correct? Yes. Awesome. And where are those going to be?
Lance 00:10:27 I think those will be in Palm Beach County because those are where the franchise owners are from. But they're willing to travel. They're willing to go to Miami, to Fort Lauderdale. One of them said, hey, we love Orlando, which is one of our markets, initial markets. If you have something in Orlando, we'd love to go there.
Lance 00:10:42 Got it. So let's talk a little bit about your franchise selection process, Frank, when you and, Olivia, right? Yes. When you guys started this, your initial vision based on yours, I mean, obviously, every franchise or wants to find, because you've been successful, they want to find franchisees like you that share your vision. I mean, what does that look like? What are the first two franchisees, as an example, doing for a living now that it caught their eye? Neighborhood, kids is for me.
Lance 00:11:14 Well, the first franchise owners that we have were former parents of a, student that attended neighborhood kids. And they're entrepreneurs. They have a small business and they're really good at what they do. They do well. But the husband wanted more. He's like, Man, I want to make an impact in the world that's multigenerational. I want to leave my mark in the world that's more than just making money. I want to impact kids. And, I know that if I impact kids, that I'll have that multigenerational impact. So they're small business owners. the other couple, their background is law, medicine, pharmaceuticals, and education. So it's two families that came together to whom we awarded the second franchises. They were all friends in college. Like, hey, we want to own a business. We love the faith based preschool concept we're in.
Lance 00:12:01 Got it. Now how big are these schools, square footage wise? how many classrooms? What's kind of that range?
Lance 00:12:08 I would say it's 140 students. our franchise disclosure document lists that it's minimum of 100. But as we're seeing, we really want our franchise owners to do well financially. I mean, yes, it's a purpose driven business, but I want them to succeed. I want them to do well financially. So what we are doing is we're amending our FDD to include that the average, uh, square footage is going to be at least 8000 sqft. Which will give them an opportunity to have a school of at least 100 and 150 students, which by any measure is considered a large preschool.
Lance 00:12:42 That's awesome. And the franchise selection process, when you guys are talking to people, who are you really? Well, let's talk about the actual process. There's obviously a first call, is that with Chloe?
Lance 00:12:53 Uhactually, our leadership team consists of in addition to Chloe, we have Mecca Johnson, who was the former Executive Director of National Training and Development for the Primrose schools.
Lance 00:13:04 Nice.
Lance 00:13:05 So she did that for 20 years, she was part of that team that helped them grow from 50 to 350. And my hats off, the Primrose, I think they are the pre eminent, brand in the space. And so Mecca brings all of that institutional franchise experience to us. And she helped us institute a franchise owner selection process, which includes being on FranConnect. And they have a process by which you can, u financially vet your franchise owners. You can vet them based upon your vision and values. And then there's, um, out of Australia. It's called nathan profiler. So Nathan Profiler is like a psychological assessment that determines fit, what are their leadership gaps, what are their strengths. And so we take all that together and we decided up front, we've got three people on our leadership team that we would have to come to a consensus unanimity when it comes to selection of a franchise owners. So if somebody checked all the boxes and Mecca or Donna or other, uh, franchise leader, uh, our CFO said, you know what, I don't think they're a fit. We're going to defer to that in honor of what we initially agreed to, that unless all of us agree, we will not proceed with a franchise owner. So we're pretty highly selective. And I think that that's good.
Lance 00:14:21 That's awesome. Yeah, it's good to be, picky. I tell people all the time, as a franchise broker myself, it's a two
Lance 00:14:29 Our first lead came to us and said, hey, I have the cash, I don't need a loan. I can do it right now. And he was a great guy, but not a good fit. So I had to walk away from somebody that didn't need a loan, was ready to go, and I'm
Lance 00:14:47 I love that quote. He was a great guy, but not a good fit. And it takes a man of integrity to admit and to say that and to not allow them in the brand because a lot of new franchiseors are happy to make an exception, bend the rules or the standards or whatever it might be, and usually it doesn't work out so well. Yeah, so that's awesome. So within that process, do you guys have some sort of discovery day or meet the Team day? Are people required to come to Florida and tour some of the locations before?
Lance 00:15:25 Yes, we'd like them to. So speaking of locations, our model is very unique, Lance. We have our two original buildings that we started with in 2019. We have the property and we own the buildings, but our expansion model is inside of churches. So we are awarding franchises. The number one factor, I think, in franchising as a whole, but specifically in early childhood education, is finding space. We believe we've unlocked that because there are thousands of churches in America that are sitting empty Monday through Friday. Some great churches, all kinds of denominations, they're reaching their community and on Sundays they're packed, but , on Mondays they're empty. And so we've discovered a way to plug in our franchise owners inside of established churches which are already in great communities.
Lance 00:16:18 That's awesome.
Lance 00:16:19 And it eliminates a multimillion dollar SBA loan and our time in the market will get them in within twelve to 18 months.
Lance 00:16:26 This is absolute genius. It really is. I had no idea I was making the assumption that this was just brick and mortar and to take advantage of that real estate, not only is it the loan, it's the ramp up time. Because as somebody signs, you might already have relationships in that county or city or state and your reputation will proceed itself long term, that you're going to have churches reaching out to you left and right.
Lance 00:16:54 Yeah, it's funny you say that because we just got back from the IFA Conference, our first one in Vegas, my wife's like, what are you doing? I said, M, I'm going to Vegas. And she didn't attend. But we really refined the vision there, Lance. And we decided, Chloe, MEK and Don and I are our team. We decided, you know what, we're going to focus on the churches. We're going to focus on great churches with great organizations that have a great reputation and we're going to get them on board first. And then we can afford to match to pair preselected and vetted franchise owners with those churches in their communities. And that's starting to work out really well.
Lance 00:17:32 Yeah, I mean, that's fabulous. There are some restaurant franchises over the years. Bigger ones like IHOP that used to buy the land or the building, build out the restaurant, operate it as a corporate location, then sell it, turnkey to a franchisee. There you go. They knew that they didn't have to wait for a loan. They already had money.
Lance 00:17:57 I, love that. I didn't know that.
Lance 00:18:01 Turnkey it as quick as you can. It helps your own development. And I'm, loving this. This is fabulous stuff. So let's talk about your secret sauce with the kids and what you're doing. Obviously faith based. Now, when you mentioned churches and you mentioned all denominations, so it doesn't matter who comes to you as long as they share your vision. Faith is that specific yet broad word, depending on the denomination. As long as they share your values, yes.
Lance 00:18:36 When I say faith based, it's a Christian worldview, but within that, there are 200 mainline denominations in America that fall within that. I have families that are Hindu, I have families that are Jewish. I have families that from all different spectrums that are agnostic, that may not go to a religious service. But guess what, Lance man, they want their kids exposed to foundational family values. They want their kids exposed to love, hope, and faith and honoring your neighbor and loving your neighbor, which is our number one value. Love your neighbor as yourself. There's such an incredible hunger and thirst by moms and Dads for that. It's really been incredible to witness that.
Lance 00:19:22 Yeah, no, that sounds absolutely phenomenal. So let's talk about the startup costs. For those listening that aren't aware, we talk about the franchise disclosure document. Often franchising is regulated by the federal government, federal Trade Commission, specifically, 23 items in the franchise disclosure document for anybody that's franchising. And,so in your case, the item seven in the startup phase, obviously, if you're building a brick and mortar school, like you said, about 8000 sqft, it's going to cost you some money. What was the average for your corporate locations?
Lance 00:20:05 We started with two locations. It was, $5.3 million for those two locations. And those weren't brand new. I mean, those schools had been there 30 and 45 years respectively. So that's a lot of money. If you were to build an 8000 square foot building on, let's say, half an acre today, you're spending 4 million plus minimum, probably closer to five to six once you factor in the land and the interest on the construction and all that. So our model is completely different than that. Our minimum initial investment, the range, it's about 125,000. Our franchise fee is 70,000, which is competitive with most major brands. What is not competitive in a good way is the total investment, 400 to 800. Look at any other brands and I invite those watching to look at the other brands. FDDs, I mean, there are two, three, four, $5 million. We're at $400 to $800,000 all in. And the variability of four to 800 really comes down to, does the church have a playground? No, that's 150 grand. So you could get in for just over $400,000 and have a business that produces over a million dollars a year.
Lance 00:21:22 I was just going to say. And based on your history and based on your item 19 in your franchise disclosure document, before you know it, you're going to, be doing a million and a half. Right now you're over a million two. Yes.
Lance 00:21:36 And that's based upon, when we disclose that on our item 19, that was based on 2020 numbers of our corporate schools. Yeah. We've had two tuition raises since then and the size of the school. Chloe is sitting in our largest, uh, school right now of 150 students. And she can attest we're busy. And we're busy because families need exceptional child care.
Lance 00:22:02 Frank I'm not sure if it,, settled in with everybody. Like, it just hit me. 2020 was the worst year for so many businesses because of the Pandemic. So if you're producing those types of numbers in 2020, that's pretty incredible. I look forward to your new numbers coming out soon, right?
Lance 00:22:19 Yes, sir.
Lance 00:22:20 Yeah, perfect. So, Chloe, when you got involved in this first time working in early education yes. what is really your role in this process? What are you doing for neighborhood kids? And,talk a little bit about that.
Chloe 00:22:37 Yeah, so right now I am working with churches and pastors and kind of just really working along Frank, Mecca and Donna, just being a sponge and soaking up all the information I possibly can from them and just learning from them. And they're kind of just really influencing me on what my role is going to be right now. We are currently getting a church list together in the state of Florida. So we're working all the way from South Florida up to Tallahassee. Orlando the panhandle. So I've just really been getting kind of a church list together for ideal candidates and, um, church locations for us. So we've been just working on that, kind of figuring out our models of how we are going to do this and reaching out to the pastors and churches. So that's just really been my key role right now, getting things ready because we're going to be taking off pretty fast soon.
Lance 00:23:34 Love it. That sounds awesome. So, Frank, the target right now is where? I mean, obviously you have a concentration in South Florida. Chloe is talking about Northern Florida and what have you. Is it to fill up Florida first or just bust out across the country?
Lance 00:23:52 Well, ideally it would be to grow concentrically from Palm Beach County. But we are authorized to sell franchises in South Carolina, Texas, and Georgia. Now here's a quiz for you, Lance. What did Texas, South Carolina, and Georgia have in common? And Florida?
Lance 00:24:11 And Florida. Let's see. Barbecue.
Lance 00:24:14 Very close.
Chloe 00:24:15 Yes.
Lance 00:24:16 That's like a religion churches. There are more churches in those states, especially Texas, Georgia, and Florida, that are sitting empty. And we would love to partner with those churches and pair high capacity franchise owners to run multimillion dollar schools inside of those churches.
Lance 00:24:35 Yeah, I could only imagine the marketing effort here. Uh, this is fun, because once you've attracted those churches, it's easy to then attract the franchisees. And you have this, and the marketing just follows because one of the best word of mouth marketing scenarios, like when I played soccer as a kid, all it took was all the kids were talking, oh, mom signed me up for soccer. And then all the kids tell each other. It's the same type of thing here with families. It spreads like wildfire. There's a new early childhood education center, franchise, et
Lance 00:25:13 This is going to be amazing. It's called neighborhood kids. this is super exciting. So let me ask you, who runs this school? Let's talk about from a structure. If you were a franchisee of the first location in Dallas, Texas, what do you need as a franchisee? You mentioned the investment. Is that a, school director built into that? Because in most cases, most of your franchisees are not going to be teachers or come from education, I'm going to guess.
Lance 00:25:44 Yeah, and that's such a great question. You don't have to have experience in early childhood education. My wife and I had zero, and yet we succeeded. And the reason we succeeded is because we had great people in place, great directors. So you hit it right on the head, Lance. I mean, having a director is a key indispensable component of not just opening a school, but thriving inside of that school. We provide some very extensive training when it comes to, um, directors and owners. So we'll provide we have a 200 point, uh, checklist to open a school. Training is almost 200 hours. So it's a lot of training on operating a school. But we really want to encourage our owner operators to hire a great director. We have a very unusual model in our corporate schools. Two directors per location. It may not be the most financially advantageous, but I'll tell you what, you're able to support those teachers, pay more attention to the kids, and service the families at a level at which you couldn't do if you were just one.
Lance 00:26:47 Yeah, no, that sounds great. You just started talking about training. So, uh, let's lay that out a little bit more specifically. When somebody becomes a franchisee. You got a couple there. Have they gone through training yet? They're probably still looking for a building, I think.
Lance 00:27:03 Yeah. Orientation. So we put them through an initial orientation. We require, if it's a spouse, at least one of them, to have their Florida director's credentials. So we require them to be a director. The bank did the same thing for my wife, Olivia and I before they would approve us on the loan. So we felt, hey, let's get some skin in the game. Let's get some basic foundational knowledge of early childhood education. So we require them to do that. And then we put them through a fairly extensive process. Two weeks. And part of that is visiting our campuses, watching how it works. And so it's real time feedback in a real environment, not some antiseptic corporate location. We want to make them feel part of what's happening in the life of the schools as part of the training.
Lance 00:27:46 Love it. And the training, you said did you say 200 hours?
Lance 00:27:51 It's about 140 hours. But in reality, when they spend time at the schools, it pushes it closer to 200. And that includes also the training and education to be a director.
Lance 00:28:04 although my mom and my wife, everybody was teachers, or school principals, I should know this, but early childhood education is defined from what ages?
Lance 00:28:14 In your case, in our case, it's infants to four year olds.
Lance 00:28:18 Oh, infants, too. Okay.
Lance 00:28:20 Ten weeks. One of my favorite things to do, Lance, is to walk into one of our infant rooms at one of our locations and see young adults that love kids and have a calling, and they're rocking these little babies. And there's no greater feeling than watching a mom or a dad that's in a hurry jumping in his car, going to work, knowing that his little girl, his little baby girl, is being taken care of, and he's able to peek in, and someone is loving on his little girl. Just born and mom's working. And so, for us, that's a huge win that we can partner with parents in that way. A lot of preschool programs don't have those young ages, but I think that's the time when working parents need us the most.
Lance 00:29:01 Yeah, absolutely. So, you're helping me deliver, my questions here, because you fell into another piece. So we talked about the directors needing two directors. That works more efficiently. How about the staff? Everybody in the world is having problems hiring people, and usually well, it seems when you're hiring for, uh, pets or kids, seems to be, uh, a little bit easier at times. So who are you looking for to take care of this ten month old baby and other classes? And what's the age range? what is the certification? do they have to be teachers, or how does that work?
Lance 00:29:41 Don't have to be teachers. We would like them to have a certificate in Early Childhood Education in the state of Florida. It's called the CDA. A child development associate. We love people that go to college for it. Someone with a bachelor's degree in education. We love that because it shows a commitment to we're doing. And so, typically during COVID teachers had been there for 10, 15, 20 years. A lot of them retired from the professional together, which left a vacuum.
Lance 00:30:07 But.
Lance 00:30:08 A lot of young adults in college, recent college graduates coming to us. That's an opportunity, but it's also a challenge because you have to train them, and some of these young adults need some help. They just got their first car and just, got their first apartment, and I got to sign that lease. And what does that mean? I'm getting engaged. And so it's really helping them develop as professionals, as adults, too. And it's also training them about classroom management, how to do that well. And one of the ways that we try and retain them, Lance, is we want to promote from within. I would much rather hire or promote someone to an assistant director position or a director position that starts out, let's say, for example, in the infant room, and we just did that. We had a young lady that was in the infant room six years. And I said, hey, are you going to school? She goes, yeah. And I said, well, how much longer do you graduate? She goes, oh, I have two classes. I'm like, two classes? I said, I'll pay for that. So she got her bachelor's in education. She got out of the infant room, became an assistant director, and about a month ago, we promoted her. And now she's leading the center by herself as the lead center director. And that she's just such a wonderful example of how we try to create, to answer your question, genuine community within the schools. And I think that's how we try and attract, retain, and develop our educators.
Lance 00:31:31 That's awesome. So she's been with you how long?
Lance 00:31:34 She's only been with us for about a year and a half.
Lance 00:31:38 Okay.
Lance 00:31:39 But she had been in a previous, uprogram for six years in the infant room.
Lance 00:31:44 But you and Olivia, when you bought the first location, when was that?
Lance 00:31:49 October 2019.
Lance 00:31:51 Yeah, 2019. Okay. You've been doing it long enough, that's for sure, to become, uh, experts in this already. For sure. Yeah.
Lance 00:31:59 I don't know if I'd call us experts. I mean, good people make you look good.
Lance 00:32:03 Well, it's hard to be an expert working with kids, because everything is always changing. When TikTok came about, I think everybody thought they had it figured out before that right, exactly. Now the rules have changed. Yes.
Lance 00:32:16 And that's interesting because our teachers, we have an application that engages the parents with what's going on in the classroom, and sometimes it's challenging. Hey, put your phone down, because they're on their phone taking pictures of the kids, sending them to mom and dad that are asking for it. But that's a whole new world where you have to have a device in the room and then pay attention to the child at the same time.
Lance 00:32:38 Yeah. I also have to ask sort of a curriculum type question. I know this is early childhood education, but you see it on all the news channels these days, or most uh, about how parents aren't always having a say in their kids education. How do you and Livia and your entire brain trust decide how you're going to because you have options as to how to do this. You are already committed to the fact that your heart told you to follow your passion and do a faith based, uh, business. But how does that work? How does that change? If you have to change things, how does that change also within a franchise system?
Lance 00:33:24 Well, when it comes to curriculum, we understand that parents are interested in education, and they're interested in their kids learning, values, being part of a community, that emotional maturity. And with every age group, we push them, challenge them in a good way. We're not asking them to take the SATS at four years old, but as they move from room to room, an infant goes to a one year old room, and then the one year old room goes to a two, and okay, grabbing a pencil and those things and phonics and learning to speak and learning to write. And so we're moving them along the continuum. And when it comes to curriculum, it's a combination of not only education, but it's a combination of a faith based curriculum. And we take the two of those knowing that their exposure to God will probably be the only exposure that they get until they get to make that decision as adults on their own. So it really is, for us, a tremendous responsibility and an honor to partner with parents because they trust us. Someone said, hey, chickfila sells sandwiches. He said, Frank, you sell trust. And I'm like I love it. And he actually said, chickfila sells culture and we sell trust. But I love that.
Lance 00:34:40 Yeah, that's phenomenal. probably the last subject in this conversation is about marketing. And I touched on it, throwing my opinion out there, because there's a stickiness, there's an excitement, there's a passion for so much of what we talked about already today. And it's easy to get people's attention because when you hear about other sort of daycares or early childhood education, look, I guess it's everybody's personal preference. I'm sure there's some great ones out there. Yes. it's pretty amazing what you're talking about. But in your marketing, how does that play out? How have you used it? How are you going to use what you've learned about marketing thus far for your franchisees? What are those best practices?
Lance 00:35:27 I think the best practices are we heard chloe and I heard, along with our team, uh, we were listening to I think the CEO of McDonald's was talking he was talking about intellectual curiosity. He's like, as you're here at this conference, keep your eyes open and learn. And we really had an opportunity to refine our vision. And so it's not only taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves with churches that don't have space, but Lance, there's churches that don't want to be in the preschool business anymore. I mean, they have their congregation and they don't want to run it anymore. The school that we just took over in Delray Beach, Florida, same thing. They've been running that school for 70 years. And the pastor was like, man, I don't want to do this anymore. It's a drain. And there's been a mission drift, and I'm trying to run the church and the school and hiring people and Frank, can you do it? And I said, yeah, we can, because it's all we do.
Lance 00:36:24 It's, a big commitment to do it right, as you know. Yeah.
Lance 00:36:28 So I think when it comes to marketing, it's understanding that we have to have our eyes on prospective franchise owners that are purpose driven and want to make that generational impact. Then we have to look at churches that don't have space, that want us to operate in there, and then churches that are operating schools that want someone else to do it at a higher level so they don't have to. When we look at marketing our brand, we're really looking at it through the lens of not only the prospective franchise owner, but their partners, their ministry partners. And those will be the churches that will fill up the schools talking about marketing. They won't have to do much if they plug into a great church and they've got thousands of people coming there's. Your enrollment, what's your marketing budget? Not much.
Lance 00:37:18 Yeah, I love it. Well, in social media, there's a lot of easier ways to reach out to people and show people what you're doing in a way to, uh, communicate. I'm sure you'll have a TikTok video sometime, right? Yeah.
Lance 00:37:32 We're going to let Chloe do that.
Lance 00:37:36 Final words of wisdom for today. Chloe we'll go. Chloe first. And Frank, you can wrap it up for us.
Chloe 00:37:42 Watch out for neighborhood kids. TikTok.
Lance 00:37:47 I love it. Go ahead.
Chloe 00:37:51 We're on the move, and we're excited to just do this mission driven, faith based education system all across America. And we hope that if you are watching today, that you take this next step in your life. And if you're a pastor watching out there, we hope that you are just encouraged and that we could help you with your church and just be successful altogether. So thank you again, Lance, for having us, and it was a pleasure.
Lance 00:38:19 Thank you, Chloe. All right, Frank. Final thoughts. Words of wisdom from you, Mr. Founder.
Lance 00:38:25 Two words. I'll end with what I started with, Lance. Success and significance. If there's a prospective franchise owner that wants to succeed in a brand that is just getting its foothold in this country, that wants to add significance to their path, we're it because we think that we can bring both of those into the lives of not only the franchise owners, but their families, their communities, their churches, and ultimately this nation. So we think we're part of something really transformative here that I think that will be very attractive to your audience and future franchise owners, all across this country.
Lance 00:39:06 Love it. Thank you so much, Frank and Chloe, for being here. That is a wrap. Neighborhood kids, faith based franchise, early childhood education. Now, you know, reach out. any questions? Anyone? Take care, guys.
Chloe 00:39:22 Thank you.
Lance 00:39:23 Thank you very much for listening today. Please, like, follow and subscribe. This is Lance Graulich. Until next time.