Beyond the Classroom: Howard Wu’s Fight for Preschool Rights | Daycare & Early Childhood Education Series

Intro  

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti (01:21.454)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotispodi and today’s guest is Howard Wu, co -owner of Aspen Leaf Preschool, a daycare and early childhood education center with four locations in San Diego, California. They pride themselves on much better student teacher ratios and focus on something called

Continuity of care which we’ll hear more about their classrooms are designed to promote Cooperative play and exploration in a calm home -like environment where children feel comfortable and safe They’re given access to a variety of learning centers where they build play pretend investigate science themes make art or read We’ll hear more about why they put such a big emphasis on play -based learning and positive discipline And before we get into all that good stuff today’s episode is brought to you by my company

Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year to their bottom line by implementing one of our proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefitsagency .com. Now, back to our guest today, the co -owner, co -founder,

of Aspen Leaf Preschool Howard. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Howard Wu (02:54.237)
Happy to be here. Good morning, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (02:56.078)
So tell us a little bit about the journey of getting to starting a daycare. We talked a little bit about this in the pre -interview offline. I want people to hear, it’s kind of an interesting path.

Howard Wu (03:07.165)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, so to kind of fast forward a bit, basically, I was in law school. I mean, that was kind of my path, right. And when I was in law school about a month before I graduated, I was set up on a blind date with my now wife, Bridget. She was teaching preschool at the time. We quickly moved out to San Diego together. I was starting at a big firm. She was teaching preschool out here and.

pretty quickly it just became clear that she was the world’s greatest preschool teacher. And it was just one of those things where, you know, you sort of say, hey, you should own your own school. You’re really good at this, right? And those conversations just became more serious. And pretty quickly, we just decided, yeah, let’s do it. And so we looked around, we found our first location, just signed the lease on it.

tried to open and it was one of those things where, you know, we were pretty naive, didn’t realize how hard or expensive it would be. And I think if we’d known, we probably wouldn’t have tried. But once that lease was signed and we were locked in for five years, then it was really just, you know, the only way is forward, right? So every problem that came up, we just had to solve. And it just felt like there was no choice. And that first location, you know, we got it open, successful.

And then a few years later, open our second location and that was a real trial. But to answer your question, you know, how did I go from lawyer to preschool owner? I never would have expected for myself, but it was just because, you know, I happened to marry the world’s greatest preschool teacher.

Anthony Codispoti (04:43.116)
And how many years had Bridget been a preschool teacher before you opened up your first location?

Howard Wu (04:49.885)
Yeah, well, so a good number of years, but it actually goes back to her being the second of 12 kids. So she had been sort of raising kids and effects and she was, you know, four or five. And I think that’s where just a lot of instinct and kind of her natural abilities and natural empathy and just her personality kind of came out where even as a young kid, right, she was making

teeth brushing time fun for her little siblings, right? She’d set up a little store like in the bathroom with the different toothpaste they could choose. And so it was just, you know, so that experience I think for her, it’s not just about being a teacher, but it really runs deep to just being around and working with children and interacting with them and understanding kids from a really young age.

Anthony Codispoti (05:38.476)
And then, so how long was she actually in a center before? So she had, because a decade. Okay.

Howard Wu (05:41.821)
That’s at least a decade or more. I mean, she got her first job, you know, pretty young, 18 or 19 or whatever the legal age is, right? At a Bright Horizons large center. And so that’s where she kind of, yeah, that’s where she got her first preschool experience.

Anthony Codispoti (06:03.563)
And that’s certainly helpful that she had that experience with so many younger siblings and being nurturing and caring and making learning fun for them. Then to go and have 10 years working in a formal daycare center where she got to see how things were run. Right? She got to understand the structure and see like, okay, here’s how they onboard, you know, here’s how they do the paperwork. And so she had a lot of really practical knowledge to pull from when you guys decided to open your first center.

Howard Wu (06:32.797)
Yeah, that’s right. And she had a great mentor when she first started, right? The more senior teacher in the classroom where she started. And that was the big thing is working in a school, just learning classroom management, right? Because obviously the kind of structure of a classroom is very different from just being around kids in your home or with family. But I think, yeah, the biggest thing is there are a lot of kind of positive and negative experiences over her career as a teacher.

And so when we decided to create Aspen Leaf, I mean, she created a school where she would want to work as a teacher, right? Where, like, I can remember how heartbreaking it was for her. I mean, she would, you know, it was really hard when basically the school would take one of her students away from her, not in a malicious way, but a lot of schools are set up where, hey, this is the two -year -old classroom, this is the three -year -old classroom. And there are a lot of places where, you know, on the kid’s birthday, they turn three, you know, they just move them right over. And there’s…

seems like there’s not enough thought given to how that affects the kid, right? I mean, they’ve made those connections with their classmates and with their teachers. And that transition can be hard, but it can also be hard on the teacher who really forms these connections. And so Aspenleaf, again, was a place where she would want to work, where the teachers are given ownership of their classroom and the relationships with the kids and the families, but also where the school is kind of supporting them. Like I remember

early on when we were dating, she said she wasn’t available one Saturday because she had to go paint her classroom. And I was like, you have to like that’s part of your job. They make you paint the classroom. She said, no, I just want a different color. And I said, are they paying you? And she said, no, but they’re giving me the paint. You know, I mean, that was the kind of teacher she was where she was always just thinking about her kids and what she wanted to do for them. And, yeah, she just really wanted to take ownership of that classroom space. And so we look for teachers who were kind of cut from that same cloth.

Anthony Codispoti (08:29.578)
I think part of what you were just describing a moment ago Howard is this idea of the continuity of care and how that was a really important component of what you guys wanted to build into Aspen Leaf and the student experience there.

Howard Wu (08:43.997)
Yeah, exactly. So continuity of care. I mean, we’re not, you know, we didn’t originate it, but it’s pretty uncommon. But basically, you know, right. So we have a nine year old and a five year old. Our five year old is, you know, in a month is going to start kindergarten. But so to take our five year old, for example, you know, he started at Aspen Leaf when he was an infant. And well, for complicated licensing reasons, I don’t have to go into it. Basically, from when he was really young, you know, he had these two teachers in his class and.

That group, those teachers and those students have stayed together for five years, from kind of being babies all the way up to going to kindergarten. And they’ve moved physically to classrooms, but that group has stayed together. And obviously, teachers will leave, they’ll move away. So it’s not always perfect. But what we’re striving for is for a group of kids to stay with the same teachers throughout their entire experience.

in the preschool and that has really allowed them to form these really tight bonds and get to know each other and just grow and develop and when it works, it’s really magical.

Anthony Codispoti (09:51.562)
That’s fascinating. When I first saw continuity of care mentioned on your website, I assumed that that meant that just the students stayed together and kind of like in a traditional elementary school, you know, they all move from first grade to second grade, but it’s a new teacher each year. And what you’re saying is no, those students all stay together and they stay with the same teachers, assuming there is a staff turnover in that position. Is that right?

Howard Wu (10:15.773)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. You know, with all those kind of assumptions and sort of real life caveats. Yeah, you know, that is what we strive for is for that pod, those teachers and those students to all stay together as a group throughout their entire preschool experience.

Anthony Codispoti (10:34.634)
And why do you think that is such an uncommon approach in preschool and daycares?

Howard Wu (10:39.933)
Well, it’s logistically difficult. Well, actually, you know, this actually gets to something that I’ve not understood about kind of other preschools or the industry or the model in general. And I think what sets us apart a bit with Bridget having had the experience of being a teacher and the background. And, you know, we’re very teacher focused, right? Because the teachers are the school. Is there a lot of things that we do that feel obvious?

Because this is one of those things where everyone’s interests are aligned, right? Like if you have a good team who feel supported, the kids have a good experience, the kids have a good experience, the families are happy. You know, and so things like continuity of care, just kind of protecting the teachers, making them feel supported, all of it helps the classrooms and the business, right? There’s no tension.

so I actually don’t know why, more schools don’t do, for example, cognitive care. but I, I do know from experience that a lot of schools actually aren’t owned by teachers, right? and I think there are just these like models that just seem easier, right? You’ve got a classroom, this is the teacher in the classroom, different licensing reasons. And so you kind of shuttle the kids. And, and so I think, in that respect, we’re a little different where we were really focused on.

building a great school kind of from how that would look as a teacher.

Anthony Codispoti (12:14.634)
Do you think it has anything to do with how a lot of daycare centers will have different student teacher ratios at different age groups? And is that something that is employed in your organization as well?

Howard Wu (12:28.029)
So, well, we have different ratios. I mean, number one, you know, we’re licensed by the state, and so there are state mandated ratios, and these are minimums, right? And so if you go into any preschool infant classroom in California, you have to see at least a four to one ratio of infants to teachers, right? So if you walk into…

an infant classroom and there are five infants with one teacher, well, they’re out of ratio, so they’re not following the regulation. But then again, across any state, once you go into the toddler classroom, that state mandated ratio is six to one. And then you get into preschool, which is kind of two years old and up, and then the state minimum ratio is 12 to one. So everyone’s operating with the same kind of ratios. And then ours,

you know, as a practical matter, our ratios are lower, right? Like for example, our five year olds, you know, most of our preschool classrooms have around 10 or 11 kids with two teachers. These are the preschool classrooms. So we’re kind of around five to one when the state minimum is 12 to one. But it’s that doesn’t prevent us from doing cognitive care, right? What happens is our infant class is small and when they move into the toddler classroom, well, that opens up a couple more spots. We just enroll a couple more kids. And then when they go up into the preschool classroom,

A couple more spots open up, so we can enroll a couple more kids again. Yeah, so I’m not sure why continuity of care isn’t kind of more prevalent across the industry.

Anthony Codispoti (14:01.194)
Talk to me more about the curriculum and your overall approach to childcare and early childhood education.

Howard Wu (14:11.165)
Yeah, so well, as a general matter, our main focus is on social and emotional development. And so, you know, just to give a quick example, if you walk into an Aspenleaf classroom, say, you know, a toddler classroom, right, these kids are kind of preverbal, but beginning to, you know, well, they’re always beginning to understand, but you know, so toddler classroom, if you see two, you know, 18 month olds get into some small dispute, right, one,

is playing with some blocks. Another one takes a block and that causes the first child to cry. You’ll often, you know, you’ll hear a teacher get down on their level and just narrate for the kids what’s happened, right? Jack, I see you’re upset because you were playing with the blocks and then Adam took a block and that didn’t feel good. Adam, do you see Jack is crying? Right. And so at that age, it’s giving it’s giving them the words and just kind of, again, narrating what’s happening.

And then a little bit older, that continues, but once they’re verbal, you give them the words, right? So it’s the same thing. I see you’re upset because Adam took your block. Jack, you can say, Adam, I was playing with that. Right? And then you help the kids say, Adam, I was playing with that. And then you turn to Adam and say, Adam, look, Jack is saying that he was playing with that. Right? And so then, but then again, you continue. And as they get older, you get into problem solving and it’s the same situation.

The same thing happens, except now you say, I see we have a problem. What are some solutions that we can think of? And then the teacher guides them. And then, long story short, once they get to five years old, they’re about to go up to kindergarten. The most amazing thing is when you look over at a couple of kids who are playing and a problem arises and you hear one of the kids say, they say, what happened? I was playing with that. We need to find a solution. And so that’s really our focus.

So in terms of curriculum, what we utilize is what’s called emergent curriculum. So to contrast, if you go into some schools and you say, hey, can you show me your curriculum for the year? They could pull out a calendar and they could say, next week we’re doing leaves, the week after that we’re gonna do boats, the week after that we’re doing sea animals or whatever it is. Our curriculum is emergent, which means it’s not set, but it emerges based on what the kids are interested in. And the example I always go to is when,

Howard Wu (16:35.933)
Bridget was teaching, she had a group of kids playing in the block area and she got down on their level and said, can you tell me about what you’re building? And one of the kids said, rocket ships. And so you ask the questions, the preschool teacher questions like, like where does a rocket ship go? Like, what does the rocket ship do? And they didn’t really know, but there was, you know, and so from the kid’s perspective over the next few days, all of a sudden the classroom becomes filled with, you know, now there’s some books about space, right? The sensory bin has.

some different kind of space and astronaut related things in it. And so again, the curriculum kind of emerges. And so you sort of naturally fall into this unit about space until, you know, the kids interest kind of naturally wanes. And in that way, you help build the kids love of learning. And like, they begin to associate school with like, just this place where when they’re interested in something, they show up and…

That interest is just explored, right? And so, yeah, it becomes a really, again, just magical, like, engaging place for the kids. Exactly.

Anthony Codispoti (17:39.082)
learning through play, learning through what they’re interested in.

Howard Wu (17:44.541)
Yeah, and it takes, again, it takes teachers who are cut from a certain cloth, right, because there are no worksheets, and this is a question we often get from families, like, you know, how are they gonna learn their numbers and letters? And we talk first about how actually the kids who succeed in elementary school and beyond are not necessarily, there’s basically no association between reading and counting early and.

you know, academic success in elementary school, but there is a strong correlation between emotional and social maturity and that success because, you know, kids will learn how to read and count and do all those things, but a kid who goes into elementary school being able to identify their feelings, being able to tell people like how they’re feeling, you know, to like set boundaries and say, I need space or I didn’t like that, you know, that kid’s really set up to succeed.

Just sort of in the context of school and so we start with that But then we also go on but the kids do learn sort of the more academic things, but it’s built through play, right? And so for example, you might have sorting activities where again with the space thing You know, there are a bunch of little tiny like space related toys, but maybe they have to sort it by color right there there’s given these like different bins and You know the books that they’re

reading or about space and so that gets them more into read, you know, the kids are reading more because these are books that they’ve already shown interest in the topic. And so again, it takes teachers cut from a certain cloth because they have to be really creative and mindful and thinking ahead in terms of how to build all these things in sort of as you’re moving along.

Anthony Codispoti (19:29.125)
Let’s take a step back to the beginning for a moment, Howard. When you were first starting, I’m curious, how did you get the capital to start this? Was it self -funded? Did you take some outside investment?

Howard Wu (19:41.533)
Self -funded, so like I mentioned, when we moved out, I started working, I graduated law school, so I was starting, I was working at a large firm, making good money, especially for that, for being 25, right? And so we saved up a bit. Frankly, we didn’t save up enough. Like I said, if we had known how hard and expensive it was gonna be, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. And…

But, you know, and so we borrowed a little bit of money from my parents, but not too much. You know, I mean, I think, you know, we went in, I think we’d saved up 30 or $40 ,000, which just seemed like a huge pot of money for us. You know, like this is a huge pile, but, you know, at the time, I mean, now it sounds super cheap, but, you know, the place we found to rent is, you know, $4 ,500 a month or something like that. And then we’re getting supplies and just paying rent while we were building it out and.

painting and doing all those things, that money kind of dwindled quickly. And then this was not, there was this strange, I mean, now I can just complain about the licensing agency for a while, but there was this strange thing where when we were getting licensed in California, you’re required to send them a budget. And it was weird because it was fairly paternalistic, right? You’re just licensing us, right? You’re just ensuring that we meet minimum standards of health and safety.

there’s all this paperwork, so we send it off. And then you have to give them permission to look in your bank account. And it’s like, well, why? And they said, well, we want to see that you can survive for at least three months. But the amount of money they wanted to see in the bank account was basically three times the expenses in this budget. And for us, we didn’t have that money. I mean, it was a huge amount of money. And I tried to explain to them, well, if the goal is that you want us to be able to stay alive for three months, this is not the number you’re looking for, because this budget assumes we’re full.

Right, like fully enrolled, which means we’ve got all these teachers we’re hiring. But I told them on day one, we’re not hiring seven teachers when we have zero kids, right? We’re going to do that work ourselves. So you shouldn’t include this in the number. Really. It’s the biggest, it’s the biggest portion, and we’re just not going to be spending that, you know, if we’re not full. And if we’re full, that means we’re making money. And so we’re definitely surviving, right? But they just, it’s not even like.

Anthony Codispoti (21:49.731)
and labor is a huge portion of your operating expense and so

Howard Wu (22:04.861)
I would have accepted it if the employee had just said, you know what, I hear you, but this is what I’m told. I don’t make the rules. I just got to go through my checklist. Fair enough. But they didn’t even accept the logic of the point that I was trying to make. They weren’t even conceding that I had a point. They were just like, you’re just wrong. But it was this weird thing where, OK, so we don’t have the money.

So what you’re going to deny us a license because we don’t have the money, but we’re locked into this lease. We’ve already bought all the furniture. We’ve already painted this place. So you’re going to deny us a license so we can’t operate. So you’re just going to drive us into personal bankruptcy because we didn’t have enough money to show you this like arbitrary amount. Apparently, yes. And so, you know, so basically what we were, you know, fortunately, like, you know, my family is not wealthy, but, you know, they were in a position to at least where they could.

send us some cash for like literally three days, where I just called her. So I could show that, yeah, exactly, exactly. So I explained the situation and my family was, they was like, okay, yeah, we can send you whatever it was, like 90 ,000, $100 ,000 to just hold onto for three days. Again, we’re not spending it. And then, so, yeah, so we wired it in. So the number was there, the agency…

Anthony Codispoti (23:03.619)
just so you could show the bank account a snapshot of it in time.

Howard Wu (23:28.029)
took a look, they were like, okay, and then I just sent it back.

Anthony Codispoti (23:33.443)
you got to game the system, right? You got to know the game to play. And so from the early days, you were still continuing to practice law as the center was open. Were you actively involved in the operations of it or did that fall mostly on Bridget?

Howard Wu (23:35.165)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Howard Wu (23:50.365)
I was, I’ve always been actively involved in sort of the back end aspects of it. Right. so from the beginning, you know, you know, payroll receipts, bookkeeping, I learned WordPress, like set up the website. I learned a bit of SEO to figure out, you know, the Google maps listings and. You know, all, all that kind of stuff. but yeah, I don’t have a single, you know, ECE early childhood education credit to my name. So like I can’t.

you know, teach, Bridget’s always been the heart and soul of the school, of the program, right? So when you’re talking about curriculum, basically anything, you know, the actual experience for the kids has always been Bridget. But any of that kind of like background architecture, right? Like, you know, I found our insurance broker, the workers, all of that kind of stuff, I’ve always kind of handled or helped with. And so in that sense, we make a really good team.

Anthony Codispoti (24:46.531)
Yeah, you handle a lot more of the back office, the admin, maybe a little bit more like the business side of things. Yeah. And you’ve already touched on this a little bit, and I’m kind of curious to explore this a bit more. Sort of the difficulties in those first months of opening this first center.

Howard Wu (24:52.413)
Yeah, exactly.

Anthony Codispoti (25:07.139)
Like if we had known how hard it was going to be, we probably wouldn’t have done it. Tell me about some of those difficulties, those hardships that you guys came across that you weren’t expecting.

Howard Wu (25:17.917)
Yeah, well, so actually, I mean, those first months were, I would say, about as hard as we expected, right? I mean, Bridget was teaching and the director went, so when we open, when we formally open, right, like we can have kids here that we can care for. On day one, we had three kids enrolled, right? So Bridget was the teacher. She was the director of the location. She was also going out and buying all the supplies, right? The snack supplies, the furniture.

we were doing everything and she was marketing, right? She, she, we had printed out flyers and posters and she was going around to coffee shops and she was, she was working really hard. but that all I think was what we expected going in. and because it’s a good school, but I mean, primarily because there’s just not nearly enough childcare in San Diego, like a lot of places, you know, we filled up pretty quickly. and.

You know, it’s hard to like explain, but it’s folks who own businesses. It’s just hard. You know, it’s just constant. You’re thinking about it seven days a week. All the, all the problems are your problems, right? If a problem doesn’t get solved, you have, you know, there, there are these problems that come up where it’s just either you solve it or the business is going to die. And so you feel like you have no choice. And so it’s hard to kind of convey just the

constancy of it all, right? And it’s one of those things where, you know, we hired teachers, right, as we needed them. But Bridget especially would get to a point where she would just hit kind of a boiling point. Or not, that doesn’t sound right. She wasn’t angry, but you know, just the point where like, we can’t, I can’t sustain this too much, right? Yeah. And so having to let things go and delegate, I mean, you know, these are sort of the classic small business owner

Anthony Codispoti (27:05.763)
It’s just too much. Overwhelmed.

Howard Wu (27:16.58)
problems we went through. So those first few months were about as hard as we expected. You just expect that hustle. But it’s also fresh. And so I think the hardest thing is a year or two, a few years later, when a lot of those grinds are still just grinding, to just be able to sustain that, keep it going, is hard.

Anthony Codispoti (27:40.963)
Was there any point in those first couple of years where you guys seriously considered just throwing in the towel? Like, that’s too much. You saw that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. There was enough joy in some of that day to day that kept you going.

Howard Wu (27:46.013)
No, never, never.

Howard Wu (27:56.381)
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, number one, we were, you know, we had signed a lease, right? And, and we had signed personal guarantees on that. So there was really no choice. And I think that has really been the theme of the business, frankly, is that at every stage, we’ve just faced these inflection points where there’s no choice. We just have to keep going. We just have to like, either fix this problem. We have to find the money. We have to

in our second location, which we can talk about, which was really the crusher for me. You know, there’s just, you just don’t have a choice. Like you have to fix this, you have to succeed, you have to push forward, you have to move, you just have to keep it going. And that, you know, from where I’m sitting today, I can look back and appreciate those things, right? Because it’s given me just a lot of, I don’t know, grit and, you know, confidence and the ability to persevere.

But in the moment, man, those things are tough. So, but no, we’ve never, quitting was just never an option.

Anthony Codispoti (29:05.507)
So, and I hear you, when the first location was there, a big part of the reason that quitting wasn’t an option is you had this five year lease that you’d personally guaranteed. There was no out, we’re gonna make this work. At what point did the first location feel successful enough that you guys were like, let’s replicate this, let’s open up a second one?

Howard Wu (29:30.301)
Yeah, so our first location opened October 1st, 2012. We signed the lease on the second location, if I recall it, January 2015, which was actually the same month that our first son was born. So I think within a year, a year and a half of opening the first location, we felt like we had kind of our

our feet under ourselves, right? Like it was a good, it was a great preschool. You know, the family’s really happy. Like we, you know, you could just walk in and it was just this happy place, right? I mean, you get, you have all the normal problems. It’s, you know, it’s a hard business to own, right? Like kids are predictable, but unpredictable, right? They’re unpredictable in predictable ways. It’s a low paid workforce. It’s expensive for the families.

You know, it’s brick and mortar, like all those challenges, but you’d walk into the preschool or the kids would leave and like you could just see their development. And if you talk to good preschool teachers, they all of them will tell you that’s why they do it. Right. Like the impact they’re having on the kids, it’s because they’re so young and growing so fast. It’s so. A parent, it’s so visceral, you know, like you just the I can remember, you know, Bridget, some of the teachers would have this song when they’re cleaning up the classroom, right? Clean up, clean up everybody, everywhere clean.

And then, you know, they’re doing it and the kids are non -vert, you know, the two year olds, they’re just kind of, but then when you see a two and a half, three year old just like cleaning up their little station and you see them singing to themselves, clean up, clean up, you know, it just warms your heart, right? Like you are having an impact. You know, you’re making a difference and you know, the number of parents who would come to not just Bridget, but you know, their kids’ teachers, right? And just say, I don’t know how you do it, you know, or they have a story about their kids at home and it’s, you know, they pick something up at school.

Anthony Codispoti (31:09.923)
You’re making a difference.

Howard Wu (31:25.661)
that impact, you know, that, and it’s just very real and it’s very immediate because of how quickly the kids are developing. And so yeah, there’s, it’s the hardest, best thing we’ve ever done, right? Because even from the beginning, like that impact, it was clearly a special place.

Anthony Codispoti (31:43.39)
And so pretty early on, we got our arms around this. This is a great preschool. We want to open up a second location. It talked me through how that unfolded them.

Howard Wu (31:55.005)
Yeah, I mean, this story, you know, we could spend hours on it. But again, like we had not lost a lot of that naivety that got us into the first location where we were like, yeah, we could do this, you know? So the first location, it still is in an old house here in San Diego. And we kind of retrofitted it and did things, but structurally, it is what it is, right? We didn’t move.

Yeah, you know, we just like the living room, the dining room, these are classrooms now, right? The second location, Bridget wanted to open a second location that was a little bit bigger so that we could have infants and toddlers. And she would say the main reason was because, you know, we were married at that point, we were planning on having a family. She wanted to send her.

Like she wouldn’t trust anyone else to care for her babies, right? Like she wanted to be in charge of where our kids were going to school. And so we were thinking about it, planning it. Long story short, we found a location that was great, which is where our second location currently is, but they wouldn’t lease it to us. They leased it to, because it’s this commercial building. It was an old laundromat.

right in a neighborhood called North Park, but it’s not in this commercial corridor. Like it’s just this weird kind of thing where it’s right on this corner and across the street is like a little convenience store, liquor store and flower shop. But those are the only two commercial businesses like within several blocks and it’s all homes around. So you’ve got this perfect commercial space, but right, but it feels very residential, right? It’s got this big parking lot, which we did turn into a playground. So it was just this like,

impossible location. So we really wanted it, but the landlords leased it to a spot that was going to turn it into like a little microbrewery restaurant or something. We heard that they, it became clear that they were not going to be able to get a liquor license. And so they like pulled out and the landlord, you know, kind of came back to us or we, I can’t remember how it happened, but basically like on the second go around, they agreed to lease it to us.

Howard Wu (34:14.205)
This spot, when we moved in, like I said, it was a former laundromat. But when we moved in, it was four walls, barely a roof, and nothing. So at the end of the day, like, we, you know, every pipe and tube and wire and floorboard and second to drywall and light in that place, we installed, right? So this was a huge, kind of like,

Anthony Codispoti (34:41.308)
It’s a big project.

Howard Wu (34:42.045)
Construction project. It’s a huge. Yeah. I mean the building’s pretty small 2700 square feet just a rectangle one floor Right, but like we did not appreciate how huge this project was gonna be To like be a little sort of I don’t know vague For legal reasons I can’t get into Some of the

problems we had with the folks we hired to kind of design and engineer the place. But I will say, you know, I got a crash course in, yeah, basically just construct commercial construction, right? Everything from design and planning to permitting, right? Mechanical, electrical, plumbing, roofing, all of that.

And I also, the biggest lesson I took from that point was I had to learn the hard way about vetting people you hire and how dangerous of a combination overconfidence and under -competence is. Like that’s a really dangerous combination in a person. But, you know, to kind of,

We thought it was going to, we thought within nine months of signing the lease, we’d be able to be open. you know, it was almost two years. yeah. And, you know, there was like, you know, we negotiated some TI reimbursement, right. Tenant improvement reimbursement and like, there was some stuff there, but the process was so long and so expensive, that I can, you know, we got an SBA loan. you know, we also learned that, you know, after, yeah, that well,

Sorry, opening up this memory box is bringing out a lot of different stories, but I can remember the day when I did that cash transfer from your credit card, our personal credit card, right? I just transferred $25 ,000 of cash from one of our credit cards into the business account in order to make payroll at the first location that was still going on.

Howard Wu (37:06.269)
you know, and what is that at like, you know, 35, 40 % interest, right? Whatever, whatever those are. and we were just tapped out, you know, we had started with the kind of very legitimate SBA loan that we thought would be enough. And then we kind of got, went into the more dodgy kind of business loans, all to just keep the construction going to keep operating. You know, we were, you know, liquidated our retirement savings, which wasn’t a lot at that point, but I was still working at the big firm, you know,

at the firm, liquidated all of our savings for a few years. Separately, I had been really into churning credit card points. I was doing the miles and points things. There were just people who do that. And so through that process, I just amassed $180 ,000 of personal credit, all in the service of getting us free flights and free hotels and things. And we ended up maxing out pretty much all of that.

Like we were just totally underwater. I think like rationally, you know, somebody like just a cold account looking at the numbers. I’m confident would have just looked at these at everything at an earlier stage and just said, you’ve got to pull the plug. Like you just got to abandon this. You have to declare personal bankruptcy. Like you’re done. You know, you can’t keep digging this hole deeper. but we just felt like we didn’t have a choice. I mean, it was never, it was never even an option, but there were some really dark days.

And the darkest was…

Anthony Codispoti (38:34.939)
I mean, what you’re describing is incredibly stressful. Yeah, go ahead, Robert.

Howard Wu (38:39.101)
Yeah, unbelievable. Yeah, I mean, this was, you know, to to be candid, I can remember in August of 2016. I mean, at this point, things are done. We like we had scraped and clawed and we had it like this building was built. It had it was furnished. It was painted. There was kids furniture. There were toys there. Right. Like we were trying to get licensed and we were trying to get through our final kind of things with the city.

And we tried to set up the final city inspection and they came out or they didn’t come out. They said, hey, you’ve got all these special inspections still in the plans that haven’t been cleared. I was like, what does that mean? They’re like, well, they’re, you know, you got to check these off. And I talked about that contractor and the contractor said, yeah, these are here, but they don’t relate to anything. Like, for example, they were like, look, they’re requiring a special inspection for welding and a special inspection just for context is when you hire an inspector to come out and like.

watch you do the thing that needs to be inspected, right? So there was a special inspection on the plans for welding, where when something’s welded, you’re supposed to hire this person to come out, watch you weld, and say, okay, you’ve welded this correctly, I’m gonna sign off on this. The contractor walked me through the plans, and he said, there’s not a single weld in this entire place. And so, I went down to the city, at this point, I was running the plans on my own, just sitting, pulling the numbers, sitting there for hours, and…

For that one, for example, I was just desperate. I was like, please, just look at these plants. There’s not a well to this place. And so I found a guy who was finally willing to listen to me at the city. And he went through and he cleared ones that like, okay, yeah, this is fair. Yeah, I don’t know why this is here. But there was a special inspection for concrete and we poured a lot of concrete. And there was a very real chance as I was sitting here that he was gonna tell me.

I cannot sign off on these plans. You cannot get this project approved unless you rip out the flooring and the walls and you jackhammer the concrete, like in the foundation, and repour it with a special inspector. And at this point, like I said, we were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, personally in the business. And I just begged. And we were dealing with this. And I can tell you, those months…

Howard Wu (41:03.741)
when all this kind of was going on, you know, I had what, I spent a lot of time talking with my therapist, I started therapy at the time, and I was like, I’m not having suicidal thoughts, I don’t think, but I’m thinking about the idea of suicide, just the concept, you know? And she said, well, this is the difference between suicidal ideation and suicidal thoughts, right? We didn’t have a gun, right? A suicidal thought is when you think,

hey, I’ve got this extension cord in my garage and I could tie it to this thing. It never got to that point. But I was thinking about, yeah, if this doesn’t work, what am I gonna do? And that was really hard. But there’s a happy, obviously, we’ve got, now it’s 2024, we didn’t have to rip out everything. Basically, I found…

Anthony Codispoti (41:47.193)
Yeah.

Howard Wu (42:01.181)
a guy who was just willing to listen and work with me at the city. And at the end of the day, we had to cut open two relatively small sections of walls, hire a special inspector to watch us kind of reinstall a few lag screws. He signed off on it and we were able to open. But that, I mean, we had…

weeks if not days of runway left in terms of just being able to like meet payroll at the other location because again we’re still paying rent on this place you know and it was expensive yeah we were just tapped out

Anthony Codispoti (42:39.289)
Howard, I appreciate you opening up and sharing that because clearly that brought up a lot of old experiences, a lot of old emotions there, very raw. And these are things that people don’t often hear or know about, right? They see the beautiful daycare centers. If people go to your website, they can see these gorgeous facilities. And they’re like, these guys must be rolling in cash.

Howard’s he’s an attorney. I’m sure he’s sitting on a whole boatload of money things just come easy to him and to hear You know this real struggle that you guys went through almost went belly up like a lot of personal strife the therapy that you’ve gone through to come through the other side I really appreciate you opening up about that, you know, and I’m curious, you know So you guys went from one location to two locations now you’re at four locations and as you go through that kind of growth it really changes

the way that the founders are involved with the business, right? You know, when you’re a small location, your wife, Bridget, she’s the teacher, she’s the director, she’s everything. Now you’re at a second locate, now you’re at four locations. A lot of times you end up being more removed from the things that, especially for Bridget, that she, you know, was really good at and really enjoys. I’m kind of curious to hear both of you, how your roles have changed as you’ve gone through that growth.

Howard Wu (43:35.133)
Absolutely.

Howard Wu (43:57.373)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know Bridget would tell you she hates her job right now. You know, she like the thing that she loved was teaching. Like she she wishes she wishes she could be a teacher at Aspen Leaf because it was again, making those like having her kids. Right. That was that’s what she loves. The.

You know, we love Asim and Leif. I don’t want to say she hates her job, but you know, now it’s a lot of admin. Exactly, she lost the parts that she loved about teaching, and that’s been really hard. And so yeah, so you know, we’ve grown and had to delegate, right? So like in addition to the teachers for the classrooms, each location has a director, right? We now have an enrollment coordinator who…

Anthony Codispoti (44:26.52)
She’s not doing the parts of it that she used to love. Yeah.

Howard Wu (44:48.189)
because that was another thing where for years she was doing all enrollment and so that meant reaching out to families on the wait list and communicating with them, giving them tours, emailing back and forth, kind of talking about all that kind of stuff. And so that’s been a big thing is just learning to delegate. For me, my role hasn’t necessarily changed. I think the responsibilities have stayed consistent for me, right? But even there,

I’ve also had to learn kind of the beauty of delegation and just finding efficient systems and processes. Like in the early days when we, at Hillcrest when we had at most kind of like six employees, it was really easy from quick and easy for me to do payroll. We immediately got a payroll service, but I would just get their time sheets, I would just tabulate their times, enter it in and it was fine.

you know, once we got to 50, you know, we had kind of gone to the, you know, the T sheets, right? Like, but I was still having to like tabulate things and figure out little discrepancies. So it took me a surprisingly long time to just realize like, I should just teach each director how to like calculate payroll for their location. Right. And so now they can send me hours and I can now I’m just now it’s just data entry. Right. And so.

Yeah, it’s just for me, same responsibilities, but things have just kind of grown. And then over time, in the beginning, we didn’t offer health insurance. That was very uncommon just across the field, right? Like in 2012, if you went to any preschool, almost none of them would offer health insurance, for example. But a few years later, we wanted to do it and it was becoming more common in order to kind of recruit. So I had to learn kind of about that. I had some experience.

going through a few brokers until we found one who really worked. So, you know, things have, as you grow, you know, you kind of add things on like that, but my role hasn’t changed too much.

Anthony Codispoti (46:52.44)
You actually touch on something I usually like to ask a question around this, you know, retaining recruiting good staff nowadays with labor shortage is really difficult. You guys have been able to introduce health insurance recently as a way to help with that. I’m curious some other things that you’ve tried which have worked.

Howard Wu (47:13.501)
This is the biggest problem, not just for us, but for preschools in general. It is a tragedy, it is a travesty that preschool teachers across the United States, like in this country, are basically the lowest paid profession. We’ve set up our…

education system in a really strange way, you know, K through 12. I mean, with all the problems and issues that, you know, folks go into about public school systems, it is a public system, right?

And those teachers are underpaid, but preschool teachers are underpaid even compared to their elementary school counterparts because it’s basically entirely private, you know, and this is not kind of by design. It’s just like we’ve just fallen into this situation where four years it has been too expensive for families. Teachers are underpaid and preschools barely make money. I mean, this is a really low margin, zero growth, high fixed cost business. And so.

Right now, even though there are only half the number of childcare spots in our county, in San Diego County, that the county needs, 75 % of schools either break even or lose money. And because it’s just too expensive to run. So you’re getting these childcare deserts where just the cost of opening a school and operating at the minimum ratios, what you’d have to charge for that, the families in those neighborhoods just can’t afford.

But to get back to the recruiting, cost of living in San Diego is a huge problem. A decade ago, we had a lot of teachers who lived pretty close to the schools. And just over time, as the cost of living has increased.

Howard Wu (49:08.957)
people who wanna be preschool teachers just haven’t been able to afford to live in this city. We lose most of our teachers to just moving, either moving farther out of San Diego or states, different states entirely, right? Texas, Colorado, back home or whatever. And so that’s been a huge challenge overall for the field, especially in this area. For us specifically, how do we attract and retain the best teachers?

What we strive for is to create, again, we’ve always been teacher focused, right? Bridget’s a teacher. This goes back to just the heart of Aspenleaf, which is like, we are a preschool by teachers for teachers. Obviously for the kids, but like, you know, again, the teachers are the school. And so I think, you know, we have had and have a reputation among teachers in the area where if you want to do this job,

There’s no better place to do it than Aspen Leaf. You know, the small class size is just the support, right? And I don’t know what rating this podcast is, but we, you know, we’re a place where the shit rolls uphill with us, right? If, if parents are being difficult, if they’re being unreasonable, you know, Bridger and I will meet with them and, and, you know, we’re really communicative, like we’ll work it out. But at the end of the day, we’ll tell you, you know what? This isn’t a good fit.

You gotta go. We have our teachers’ backs. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, this is another thing. We do not expel kids. I mean, there are schools where if a kid is just, I don’t know, they’re not difficult, but there’s some challenging behaviors. There are a lot of schools that just say, we’re not gonna deal with this. But for us and for Bridget,

Anthony Codispoti (50:43.544)
So you’ll actually fire families. You’ll tell parents, thank you, but no thank you.

Howard Wu (51:06.301)
those are the kids she’s always loved the most. She’ll say, those are the kids who need us. The families we have expelled almost 100 % has been because of parent misbehavior. Where it’s clear it’s not the right fit for the parents. And so…

Anthony Codispoti (51:28.312)
And so employees know that you’ve got their back. That they’re not going to have to put up with abusive parents.

Howard Wu (51:31.197)
Yeah, and –

Yeah, and a lot of teachers who have worked at a lot of different schools, that’s what they tell us. And we’ve heard a lot of stories of times where the school kind of threw them under the bus or undermined them with the parents. And their feeling was, well, because the parents are the ones paying the money. But again, this is one of those things where I don’t understand it because it is better for the staff, better for the school, better for the business.

if you protect your teachers, you know, right? Because if they’re happier, you’re gonna lose that one family, but you’re gonna create a culture where the teachers feel supported and wanna stay, and that’s happier for the kids, right? And like, so then the families who are there are happier, and you know, they spread the gospel like in their neighborhood, and you know, you’re getting all that inbound, you know, you just build a good reputation. And so that’s something I’ve never understood.

Anthony Codispoti (52:33.372)
What’s the future of Aspen Leaf, Howard? Where do you see it going from here?

Howard Wu (52:38.748)
well, I mean.

Howard Wu (52:44.061)
We want it to keep being Aspenleaf. We’ve had, culture is just so hard, right? And it’s always self -reinforcing positively or negatively. When things have been good, when we’ve had a team with chemistry, you get fewer call -outs, right? Like they’re supporting each other. But we’ve had times with, we’ve hired, we’ve been.

We’ve had folks who should have fired sooner. We’ve had kind of bad chemistry. And so it’s a con, like it’s, this is not a business that you can ever walk away from. It never gets automated. It’s just too many people and it’s too hard. And so the future of Ask Belief is we just keep working hard to like keep the standards up, to keep the experience going. Cause it’s a good preschool. We just want to, we want to just keep owning good preschools. But.

Anthony Codispoti (53:33.208)
You guys have built a good model and you want to keep doing what you’re doing.

Howard Wu (53:36.733)
Yeah, but there are macro challenges that I don’t know, like that we can’t solve. You know, like I said, there’s no public support for us. Like we don’t get any taxpayer money. And so, for example, Hillcrest 10 years ago or 12 years ago, we had 29 spots, right? That’s our license. We can have 29 kids per day. Today, same building.

Our license is still 29 kids, right? It’s based on the square footage. And so that location cannot grow. It’s just, it’s a building. But in that time, right, teacher compensation has more than tripled, right? Rent has more than doubled. The cost of all supplies has increased, right? Milk and crackers and all those things. And so we’ve had to increase tuition, you know?

Again, 12 years ago, it was about a thousand bucks a month to send your cadastral leaf. In September, same age, it’s gonna be over 2 ,500 bucks a month. Because again, for that location, for example, we need tuition from 29 families to support all of this. And at some point, wages are gonna keep going up, all these things are gonna keep going up.

At some point, families just aren’t gonna be able to afford it. So in five years, I’m not sure what the preschool and childcare industry looks like. I mean, if you kind of Google it, people are talking about this cliff, this crisis. The business model is collapsing. There are already, as I said, places in San Diego, in the country, that are childcare deserts because you just can’t open one.

The families just can’t afford it. It just can’t exist despite the demand. So there’s gotta be some kind of change because this is unsustainable.

Anthony Codispoti (55:38.2)
I was going to say, is there a solution on the horizon? Is there a proposed fix, something that could happen?

Howard Wu (55:42.877)
No, and it well, you know, I mean, the proposed fix is very expensive, right? Like it’s got you’ve got like taxpayers, the government has to support it in the same way that we support elementary school education, right? Because the current kind of system of it’s just too patchy, right? There are some families who are eligible for subsidy, but they’re hard, they’re difficult. There’s a long wait list. It’s not nearly

widely enough available. Yeah, I mean, you gotta support these things publicly. We’re actually going somewhat backwards. In California, we’re doing an excellent thing, right? It’s called universal TK or universal pre -K, where basically the state is trying to add a grade below kindergarten, right, for four -year -olds. And this is, it’s a good thing.

The problem is they’re only funding it in the public schools. There were proposals. It’s called mixed delivery, right? We want every family with a four -year -old in California to be able to send their child to school either for free or low cost. So some people said, well, let’s create these classrooms in the public schools. Let’s also fund private preschools to be able to offer these spots at a discount or for free to those families. And that would be excellent.

But instead, they’re only funding in public schools. And now there are these problems where they don’t have enough teachers and enough classrooms. So we’re not offering them, so we’re not offering it to all families, right? So there’s still that shortage. But at the same time, it’s hollowed out enrollment for private preschools, because now you’re losing all your four year olds to the free program. And I’ve had a lot of discussions with families where they say, we love you guys. I mean, we would absolutely stay. But the difference between, you know,

$30 ,000 a year in free, that’s a huge difference. And I fully understand that. But even then, there’s a difference in quality. And so we’ve had families come back. But so anyway, there’s all these problems where we have seen this past year was hard because that demand for that four -year -old age range was just absolutely decimated. And so we’re having to evaluate, do we just not?

Anthony Codispoti (57:35.544)
That’s a big cost difference.

Howard Wu (58:03.869)
You know, so for this coming school year, we’re taking the four, what was kind of normally known as the four year old classroom and we’re doing it mixed age, right? And there are a lot of benefits to mixed age. But yeah, there were times where, you know, we had a classroom with like, you know, you could have 11 students in and we had, you know, three or four four year olds. And so we’re actually kind of going backwards in this where at least our state is actually.

making it harder for private preschools to stay open and a lot of closing because of what the state is doing to try to expand access, which is a laudable goal, which we support. But the way they’re doing it is just decimating the demand.

Anthony Codispoti (58:41.944)
yet seems like with the shortage of teachers in classrooms that they’re experiencing state -funded program that would make a lot of sense to involve the private sector

Howard Wu (58:48.541)
No, it makes perfect sense. Yeah. Yeah. Because family, you know, like families, there’s some great, there’s a lot of great preschools in California and the families would love to stay. Right. And it’s one of those things where, you know, okay, let’s subsidize those spots. So let’s create the TK programs in the public schools, which is a good thing. But we can’t meet the demand for all the families in California.

And so let’s also fund these spots in existing preschools that are already doing this. You know, you get a lot of families who are happy, want to stay. You know, the other side of this is that staff are also moving from preschools to the public schools, which has always happened, but now you’ve got this, you know, TK grades, so they can continue to work with four -year -olds. You know, they’re getting these signing bonuses. Again, depending on the school, like it could be a tough.

situation right, like we’ve had teachers who work with us for a long time, have always wanted to be elementary school teachers, so they go and do that, but then they come back, because they love the age, but working in public schools has its own challenges. But yeah, it’s just created a lot of problems, and the solution seems, it’s expensive, but it seems obvious, because everyone kind of benefits.

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:08.888)
Yeah, well, it’ll be interesting to follow. We’ve had other daycare owners on from California. We hear everybody’s talking about this same challenge. Some of them are, you know, they’re talking about scaling back the size of the business that or maybe they’re in a transition classrooms from, you know, that four year old classroom or that four year old age range to younger groups.

and maybe they’ll find some balance there, but yeah, there’s a lot of big things at play here that, like you said, are out of your control. I’m curious, just kind of shifting gears into something a little bit more lighthearted. What’s a fun fact that most people wouldn’t know about you, Howard?

Howard Wu (01:00:48.541)
The fact that gets most people to just kind of like do a double take is that there were several years in my when I was in college where I had I had dreadlocks

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:00.92)
Is that right? I’d love to see a picture that will post that with the show notes.

Howard Wu (01:01:02.461)
Yeah, no, I, yeah, I’ll have to find it. but yeah, I remember my freshman year, I went on spring break with Habitat for Humanity. and there was a girl on the trip who had dreadlocks and I, well, to be okay, to like, I mean, you know, you kind of asked me to be vulnerable. So number one, I did think that you look cool. and so then I was like, could, could I do that? And she was like, sure. So I, I just grew it out and she did it, you know, beeswax and, and, you know, for a lot, like, yeah, for years when I was at Penn State, like.

I would meet people and they’d be like, I’ve seen you around campus. Like you’re the Asian with dreads, right? I mean, you know, this is like 50 ,000 people. But I was like, I was that guy. And so, yeah, that’s something people just can’t believe. Like, you know, my hair does, it’s just, it’s, you know, it’s Asian, wiry, straight. So I’ll have to find that photo. But honestly, I think like, go ahead.

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:52.344)
That was your viz –

I was going to say that was your visual calling card. I’m going to guess it probably encouraged you to keep the dreadlocks a little bit longer than maybe you might have because people are like, I recognize you. You’re the Asian with dreads. It’s a fun combo.

Howard Wu (01:02:04.893)
Yeah, well, that’s the thing is, is I think looking back, a lot of it was just kind of like insecurity and attention seeking, you know, like I think, you know, I’d always like when I was in high school, I had really horrible acne. I mean, that was like, honestly, one of the biggest challenges of my life, like just dealing with that. And like, you know, I grew up in Pittsburgh.

Anthony Codispoti (01:02:15.)
you

Howard Wu (01:02:27.901)
Like, you know, I was one of what, like four Asian kids in my school. Like it was just a very white area, great school. But like, you know, the barbers, they didn’t really know how to deal with Asian hair. So I always had terrible hair and I get made fun of. And so I was just really, you know, I was a confident, I was confident in the sense that like, I was sort of the class clown, right? Like I always loved being on a stage, but really insecure kind of one -on -one and with a lot of just kind of like, especially with girls and, you know, just my appearance and stuff.

So I honestly, looking back, I think the dreadlocks thing was kind of like, well, let’s, you know, I’ve always hated my hair. I was gonna be fun of it. Like, let’s try something really extreme, right? And yeah, kind of get that attention as, you know, the Asian kid with dreads because it’s, yeah, I think just kind of digging deep is one of those things where like, if you’re the one drawing attention to yourself, then it’s not embarrassing when someone draws attention to you, you know? And so, yeah, I think it was a lot of…

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:24.536)
that you sort of take control of the narrative there a little bit.

Howard Wu (01:03:27.517)
No, exactly, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:30.264)
Howard, I just have one more question for you, but before I do it, I want to do two things. First of all, if you’re listening today and you like today’s content, please hit the subscribe, like or share button on your favorite podcast app. The second thing I want to do before I ask my last question is I want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. What would that be?

Howard Wu (01:03:48.093)
yeah, if they want to, I mean, email, I suppose, howard at aspenleafpreschool .com. Just feel free to get in touch. Also, if you’re a, we didn’t even talk about the COVID stuff, but since then, I’ve been helping a lot of preschool, basically we got in a scrap with the licensing agency and I held firm and.

Cause I didn’t, anyway, I didn’t think they had the legal authority to do what they were trying to do around masks. I mean, we were, we took COVID really seriously. but masking kids just didn’t make sense cause they couldn’t wear them when sleeping and eating. So we didn’t do it and they tried to get us in trouble. And I, cause I was a lawyer, this is where my background came into. I just, I was like, yeah, you, I was like, I’ve dug into this. You actually can’t, you don’t have the jurisdiction to enforce this. gone to a big scrap. we got sight, you know, anyway, it’s long story short, like

We did not go on Fox News, but like.

Tucker Carlson’s show ended up just talking about us, because we made the news about this stuff, about us fighting back. And we were like, well, we don’t want to be a bullet in the chamber for this culture war. But anyway, after that, we had a lot of preschools in California reach out to us and just say, hey, we’re rooting for you, sharing stories of times that licensing abused their authority. And again, I realized, there might not be another lawyer preschool owner in California.

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:10.797)
Howard Wu (01:05:12.061)
Right, and so for the last few years, I’ve been like helping preschools with licensing issues and legal issues, and I kind of put together a little kit to help preschools understand how to appeal citations because the agency gives you like a one page, like here are your appeal rights, but there are no instructions, no forms, people don’t know what to do with it. You can hire a lawyer for thousands of dollars, but it’s not worth it. There’s nothing kind of in between. So yeah, so if people, if,

preschool owners especially or administrators want to reach out.

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:42.733)
What a great service. I’m glad that we touched on this. Yeah. And again, mention your email address because I think that’s going to be super helpful to a lot of people.

Howard Wu (01:05:49.629)
Yeah, they can reach out at howard at aspenleafpreschool .com. But also for owners and administrators in California, if they go to appeal .californiacchildcarelicensing .com, this is where I put, like it’s a little digital download, right? I personally wrote like a guide on like, if I were sitting across from one of my directors, like, okay, if you get cited, here’s literally how you appeal a citation. Like, here’s how you do the research. Here’s how you make an argument.

Anthony Codispoti (01:06:15.201)
this is a free resource. Anybody can, okay.

Howard Wu (01:06:16.829)
It’s not free. I’m charged. I’m charging for it, but it’s like this again, like I’m trying to make like a just, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s like less than a hundred bucks. and then there are like templates and examples. Yeah. you know, like, there’s like a genuinely helpful resource to like, here’s how to do it. And here’s like some templates to put it together. you know, digital download. And so, yeah, because during that fight, I thought we were being treated unfairly. They said, no, we’re treating you just like every other preschool.

Anthony Codispoti (01:06:25.261)
very reasonable.

Howard Wu (01:06:45.149)
I was like, I don’t think that’s true. So I just dug into every single report and citation they issued across all of California from the beginning of COVID. And I like, you know, like this is where the big firm training like came into practice. Like I was willing to just grind and just like throw it into spreadsheets or just do hours and hours of analysis. And I could just, I statistically proved that they were treating us unfairly. And so I bought the domain, California childcare, licensing .com. And I wrote the whole story and I put the like data.

on that website and I just made it publicly available and I was, so yes, that’s why I own that domain. So.

Anthony Codispoti (01:07:21.805)
And what’s the subdomain, the full URL that somebody can go to to get that packet that you talked about? Appeals.

Howard Wu (01:07:26.877)
So actually, yeah, so actually if you just go to California childcare licensing .com, you can see kind of the backstory, but now, there’s a link right at the top that says, hey, I also have this kit, so if you want to appeal your own citations. So it’s all, you can go to the main domain and that’ll take you to the sub domain. But that was one of those other things where I would not, the only reason I know how to do WordPress and a little bit of coding and these kinds of things is from owning the business, right?

So like those skills, like I had no reason to learn that kind of stuff, but I’ve found it’s coming handy.

Anthony Codispoti (01:08:05.1)
That’s a terrific resource. I’m glad that we touched on that. Okay, so last question for you, Howard. Are there any specific mentors, books, or experiences that have helped you shape you or your professional career that you want to get mentioned to?

Howard Wu (01:08:19.037)
gosh, I saw this question I should have prepared a little better because there are a bunch. But well, books to start with. Yeah, for the men especially, there’s a book called No More Mr. Nice Guy, which at some points touches a little too close for comfort to like the like…

Anthony Codispoti (01:08:30.923)
Yeah, just give us a few.

Howard Wu (01:08:45.533)
kind of weird men’s rights movement. But for a lot of it is actually, like for me personally, was a real game changer. I think, I mean, personally and professionally, because it just kind of touched on some mindsets that I’ve had for years and years and years that were, that kind of were holding me back, right? In terms of like fear of failure and just being seen as not good enough and kind of led to a lot of procrastination.

And so in terms of just being able to like execute and run a business and work with people like that, that was a really important book for me where it just like really did kind of change my mindset and helped me with that. And then in terms of, also like Deep Work by Cal Newport, I mean, you know, like, you know, we read a lot, but that was a really important book in terms of like,

productivity now, you know, with this like the license appeal kit and a couple of businesses I’m trying to start like that has really been a game changer in terms of helping me just focus and delegate and just get a lot more done and just be productive. And then in terms of mentors, I’ll just give a shout out to Cal Golumbic from Penn State, Ken Fitzgerald and Bob Nyer who I worked with.

when I was still practicing law who were really supportive. Like they were, when I was practicing law with them, like they knew I owned the business and like, you know, kind of had a foot in both worlds and they were supportive. And so yeah, those are, there was a few folks who were important in my life.

Anthony Codispoti (01:10:29.035)
I appreciate you calling them out. We’ll make sure that we include their names and if we can find them links to them in the show notes. Howard, I want to be the first one for thank you for sharing both your time and your story today. I really appreciate it.

Howard Wu (01:10:42.205)
Yeah, I appreciate the invitation. It was enjoyable. The first podcasts have ever been on.

Anthony Codispoti (01:10:46.955)
You wouldn’t have guessed it. You’re a natural. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.