Building Kidz with Vineeta Bhandari: Combining Academics and Performing Arts with aim to reach One Million children through a Network of Nonprofit entities, Franchisee-led & Corporate Schools

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 (08:43.324)
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 Codaspodi and today’s guest is Vanita Bhandari, founder, CEO, and CMO of Building Kids Worldwide, where she upholds a collaborative culture among franchisees, staff, and schools. Building Kids is a franchised early

Childhood Education Center with a presence in multiple states. Their vision is to leverage a global presence of preschools and nonprofit partnerships so they can provide a world-class early childhood education for one million children. They believe that performing arts are an essential part of this process as it provides substantial enrichment and the facilitation of social, emotional, cognitive, and motor development. Now before starting,

in the early childhood education space. Vanita gained tremendous experience at reputable companies such as Sun Microsystems, Levi Strauss, and Murdoch & Associates. She combines those experiences with her BA in finance, MBA in marketing, and her graduate certification in early childhood education as she leads building kids’ growth. She’s not all business though, as she stays attuned to the needs of children and parents and focuses heavily

on the curriculum enhancements, ongoing training of her team, and she remains active in corporate social responsibility. Their website is buildingkidsschool.com, where kids is spelled with a Z instead of an S. So buildingkidsschool.com. Now, 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 in extra cash flow by implementing one of our programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. Now, back to our guest today, the CEO of Building Kids School, Vanita Bhandari. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Vineeta (11:03.812)
Thank you so much, Anthony, for having me on your podcast and your company.

Anthony Codispoti (11:09.628)
Absolutely. So, Benita, you started out in corporate America with a number of really notable companies. How did you find your way to the childcare industry?

Vineeta (11:21.454)
Very good question. I am actually proud to say that God put me on this path. It was an unfortunate situation. My daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was three years old. And at that time I was working with Murdoch and Associated as a consultant going to different high tech industry companies and ensuring that the financial systems were set appropriately.

Given that my daughter was diagnosed with a chronic disease where she needed constant attention, I chose to quit my most favorite job and tried to be home with her. Soon I realized within the first three months that it wasn’t really beneficial for my daughter just to be around me and for me who had always had stimulation and worked and had a career to be home with her.

So my mind started to churn and I’m like, what can I do where I could have a happy medium where she’s also around her age group and I’m also feeling like I’m making a difference in her life and other people’s life. And that’s when the idea incepted of opening a preschool. It was a long journey as far as intensity. I had to quickly open because my daughter Sabrina

Anthony Codispoti (12:29.374)
you

Vineeta (12:50.998)
wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the services or benefit from it for too many years because then she would go to elementary school. So I rushed into getting my education because I had zero idea about how to run a preschool. I didn’t understand child psychology. So that’s why my first goal was to fully understand what does it really take? How do I understand the child’s mindset?

By the way, I gained a lot of personal benefit from doing that because parenting became a lot more easier and better for me. So I got my certification in early childhood education. As I was doing that, I was starting to look for different places and found out that it’s not the easiest thing in this world to find a location that Department of Social Service would approve. So long story short,

finally found a very small location in Pacifica, California and opened the first school for 30 children. So that was my main reason of shifting gears from corporate world to going into the preschool industry was because my daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and I wanted to spend time with her, quality time, and yet make sure that we were still doing something for the community to help the rest of the children.

Anthony Codispoti (14:17.266)
So how long from idea to first opening your doors did that take?

Vineeta (14:22.436)
I would say a total of about seven months.

Anthony Codispoti (14:27.272)
Wow, that’s fast. I mean, you had to get your certification and you’re looking for locations and setting up the business plan and the corporate structure and hiring people and getting the facility set up and renovated for all this. mean, seven months is pretty fast turnaround.

Vineeta (14:28.546)
Yeah.

Vineeta (14:44.63)
It was a lot of work, I’ll be honest. I used to drive around pretty much eight to 10 hours a day looking for locations. I went through brokers. I went online to look for different commercial spaces that were available. Worked with Department of Social Services to get their idea, tap onto their knowledge base, and to help me expedite the process. So I got all the information that was needed to identify a location that licensing would approve.

because we are governed by the Department of Social Services and they have a lot of regulations that we need to comply with. And so working in parallel with trying to get my education, understanding the industry, finding a location, equipping it, it all happened in about seven months because I know my daughter was at the school for about a year and a half after. So she then graduated to leave for elementary education.

to another school and so she was with me for about a good 18 months.

Anthony Codispoti (15:49.508)
Help us better understand what your corporate background was and how those skill sets may have been helpful in you starting building kids.

Vineeta (15:58.884)
And I’m again very glad that you asked that because when I was trying to switch my career, my family was not in favor because you are a professional, you have done marketing and finance and you’re going to early childhood education. That just doesn’t seem like it makes any sense. And I said, it doesn’t make sense from professional perspective. It makes a lot of sense from a personal perspective. I want to make sure I’m there for my daughter. So what I did at the corporate world,

It really helped me. I didn’t think so in the beginning, to be honest, because it was a whole new industry. But as I was doing my first school, I realized having that business sense, having that financial understanding of a P &L, knowing how to look at different reports was really helpful for me to run the school cost effectively. And today,

After all these years, our company promises, or I wouldn’t use the word promise, that that’s actually incorrect. We show in our FDD that our profitability is about 25 % to 30 % versus 15 % average in this industry. Reason for that is because over the years, I use my financial experience to

Anthony Codispoti (17:18.388)
Wow, that’s substantial.

Vineeta (17:25.93)
optimize our cost to ensure that we were spending in the right areas for the right reasons and ensuring that, for example, payroll is our biggest cost. How do you optimize the staff schedule? And that came from my experience being a manager at Sun Microsystem where I had a team of eight people and

We used to have our team come in at different times to be able to support our customers based on where the equipment was. So having that knowledge really helped me optimize our payroll dollars and therefore increase the profitability. So knowing financial systems was really helpful for me to ensure that we were reaching the optimization. Not only that, having that marketing knowledge was amazing because I was able to advertise.

and market to generate leads to come as parents to our school effectively. And that really helped because we were fully enrolled in the first school in probably two and a half months. It was a smaller site of 36 children, but in two and a half months to be able to enroll 36 children was a big deal for me. And then those parents who wanted to bring their kids to our school were asking for, is there another site where we can bring our children to? Because there was a huge wait list.

Anthony Codispoti (18:40.532)
Yeah.

Vineeta (18:49.688)
which is what prompted me to open the second site. And then as a independent owner or a entrepreneur, I was able to open 11 sites that I managed by myself with the help of some regional directors and so on and so forth. A great team of people. I’ve always been very blessed with excellent individuals who have really been very supportive and helped me through this journey. So.

Anthony Codispoti (18:50.579)
Mm.

Anthony Codispoti (19:06.676)
Wow.

Vineeta (19:17.698)
I feel like my background from corporate world really helped me with marketing, finance, customer service, learning how to understand different personalities, working with them accordingly. And that was very critical in my journey to be where we are today.

Anthony Codispoti (19:36.124)
That is a powerful suite of experiences to draw from. I had the pleasure to talk to the founders of many childcare centers. And the beginning part of your story is somewhat similar to what I’ve heard from several other owners where they had a personal situation where they started the childcare center because they had a child that they wanted to be around and they wanted something to do and something to build. But where your story is a little bit.

special, a little bit unique is in the corporate experience that you brought to the table. Not only did you have finance experience, which has helped you to really optimize the operations and the profit margins of the business, but that marketing side of things is incredibly powerful as well. Like you said, as you open a new center within a couple of months to be completely full is amazing. how quickly was it that you opened that second facility?

Vineeta (20:32.964)
We opened the second site in about a year and three months. We acquired another site, so was already operational and they wanted to get out of the business and that actually became our business model to acquire versus to start Grounds Up. Today, we are not just acquiring, we also offer the opportunity for our franchisees to do Grounds Up, but that’s a lot longer process versus

Anthony Codispoti (20:37.958)
Okay. And then what was the time?

Vineeta (21:02.052)
acquisitions. And for all the ones that I did, they were all acquisitions and there were people who were trying to get out of the system because either they were retiring or had a personal challenge, whatever the reasons were. And I thought that was the best way to go about expansion because it was a lot shorter timeframe. And there were certain challenges that when you open from grounds up versus when you acquire

those challenges are lot easier to deal with.

Anthony Codispoti (21:34.702)
You’ve got some infrastructure there. You’ve got a building, you’ve got a staff, you’ve got some processes that you may come in and change, and you’ve also got clientele. So yeah, it’s a big Lego.

Vineeta (21:42.304)
Exactly. So we just would take over and rebrand it to the Lincoln.

Anthony Codispoti (21:47.538)
Yeah. And so you ended up, you opened your first one, you acquired 10. So you got to 11 that you were managing by yourself with a good team. That’s quite an undertaking. mean, you went from startup mode to within a few years, you’ve got several locations that you’re operating. You know, having talked to lot of business founders, not a lot of people sort of make that transition from startup mode to being able

to be more of a manager in growth mode. And I think, again, this is probably where your corporate experience became really helpful because you had worked in these big corporate environments. So getting to scale and sort of putting those layers and that extra infrastructure in place that’s necessary to support a bigger company was probably second nature to you.

Vineeta (22:39.342)
Yeah, it definitely helped. I must say that.

Anthony Codispoti (22:44.958)
So, okay, so you’ve got 11 centers, and then at what point did you decide to move into the franchise model?

Vineeta (22:51.492)
So one of the parents who I knew from when he was a six year old kid and I met this kid through my friends, he was now an adult and he brought his kid to our school. Fortunately he fell in love with what we did and said, I would like to support, help, consult if you want to grow, I am there for you.

And I thought that was a kind of a great idea because I wanted to go into companies and apartment complexes. And I felt like I was limited with my time. So I kind of had that conversation with him to see if we could grow with his support. Just then another individual talked to me about this business sounds really fulfilling because you’re making a difference in children’s life.

And so between those two individuals, both happened to be engineers with big companies. Both of them are now partners. And one of them is Sanjay Gahani, who worked for Xilinx for many years. And he joined hands along with Sangeet Karamjandani, who was also an engineer and worked for NVIDIA at the point. And so the three of us got together and we said, have big dreams. How do we get there?

And just by opening centers ourselves may not be the best route because our vision was to help 1 million children. How do we do that? We wanted octopus arms. How do we get the octopus arms was that’s when the idea triggered that how about if we became a franchise or and there are these individuals who might be really, really helpful.

and they will have their attention and focus because it’s their own business versus hiring people. In order for them to be successful, think that kind of the idea triggered really well in all of our minds. And in 2014, I believe we started the process. 2015, we became a franchisor. And we really think that was a great move because we’ve been able to support many more children.

Vineeta (25:11.748)
through these different individuals who are also equally passionate about helping young children, especially because these are the formative years. They’re a lot more important than the college years. That’s what research is saying because that’s when the brain development happens. A major part of brain development happens those early five years. And so we feel pretty good about the fact that we became a franchisor for those reasons. And today we have

Anthony Codispoti (25:22.451)
Yeah.

Vineeta (25:40.996)
50 plus operational sites and about 20 plus more to open. We have great teams here to help us accomplish those goals.

Anthony Codispoti (25:54.012)
That’s amazing. So you mentioned about the same time you were having the franchise conversations that you were interested in going into companies and apartment buildings. Did I hear that right?

Vineeta (26:03.234)
That was the original thought. But when we decided to become a franchise or we realized that the companies to get into companies was really tough. You have to go to HR and HR without having to talk to the management. The process was really long. Worse is us marketing to individuals who wanted to open where they were located within their own demographics. And they understood those really well.

Anthony Codispoti (26:05.95)
Okay.

Vineeta (26:32.612)
And so we realized that it might not be a bad idea to go ahead and start opening in different areas versus in companies. The thought was if you open in a company that you already have parents coming there for work, convenient for them and so on and so forth. But to get through that door was very bureaucratic. So we realized very quickly that that would be a hard process to go about doing. Now we are in.

Recently, we signed an engagement where we are in an apartment complex, and there’s one in Florida that we’re pursuing. going into apartment complexes or developments is a lot easier, and that’s what we are shooting.

Anthony Codispoti (27:15.988)
And has one of those locations opened yet in an apartment building?

Vineeta (27:19.322)
The one in Hayward, California will be opening in November.

Anthony Codispoti (27:24.372)
Okay, I’ll be really interested to hear how that goes. I mean, how convenient for parents on their way to work, here you go, and on their way home from work, you know, it could not be more convenient. It’s not the least little bit out of their way, right? So you have a goal of helping one million children. That’s a pretty audacious goal, Vanita. Where does the drive for that come from?

Vineeta (27:48.856)
that drive came from there is a lot of less fortunate children around the globe. And how do we help them? Do we help them academically, giving them food, shelter, whatever else that we can do? So we wanted to touch the lives of the million children. And that came from the fact that I come from India and I came here at a very early age, but

As I was growing up, I saw lot of poverty and felt like, can I give back? I moved to the United States when I was 16 years old. And those memories were still pretty strong when I saw children on the streets or in the slum, not having the basics, not having food to eat or roof over their head. And those thoughts were very fresh in my mind. And I thought, how can we support them? What else can we do?

So part of Building Kids Worldwide, we have an entity within Building Kids Worldwide. Not only we reach the children through our franchisees, through our corporate schools and give them the academic exposure or performing arts exposure, which is an integral part of our system. We also have a nonprofit organization within our company that helps children around the globe. We have free schools in Africa as well as in India.

and different initiatives within those countries. And we do a lot of scholarships within the United States. We have lots of initiatives such as the toy drive to touch the lives of children, such as a warm coat drive, victims of natural calamities. Recently, there was a big hurricane that hit Florida. So we send clothing, we send funds, we send medical supplies to these children so that they can be feeling healthy again.

feeling like they have the roof over their heads because their home got totally demolished. So, things of that nature, those are the routes that we take to reach to many, many more children across the globe.

Anthony Codispoti (29:57.444)
That’s terrific. Vinita, I’m curious to hear a little bit more about specifically what you’re able to do for the kids in Africa and especially India where a lot of this inspiration first came from. Are you establishing schools for them? Are there, I don’t know, food drives? Kind of paint a picture for me a little bit.

Vineeta (30:16.036)
So starting with Africa, we have two schools there and they provide education. We provide clothing. We provide medical supplies and food. Recently we engaged with them in providing transportation because when I was talking to the people that run the centers over there, I was told that the girls who were walking to the school

six out of 10 girls were raped on their way to school. And that truly was heartbreaking. And so we have now engaged with them in providing transportation as well. For India, we have three different initiatives. One is exactly the same like what I told you for Africa. We also provide transportation to children who going to be, who do get.

picked up from slum areas and they’re brought to the school. Parents are just so busy with bringing food to their table that they don’t even know that these kids were picked up and taken to school. So during COVID, it was interesting that we were doing long distance learning and we were sharing curriculum over the phone. The parents who were home also learned basic ABC because these were uneducated parents.

And that just brings a huge smile on my face because we never anticipated something as such, right? We never anticipated that it’s going to help the parents as well. But I’m very touched by the fact that the long distance learning really helped parents, not only the children. those sites provide education, materials, clothing, medical supplies and transportation.

Anthony Codispoti (31:44.359)
Yeah.

Vineeta (32:10.328)
The second initiative we have is for disabled children of all ages. We started this program called The Beginning, which is Aaramb in Hindi. And they take the younger children also who have disabilities where we have teachers who are qualified and working with special needs children. And we provide them the environment.

we provide them the tools that are beneficial for them to learn and grow from those tools. So for example, certain children learn really well with musical instruments because it calms them down. So children who have autism or ADHD, those are the things that help them deal with their day-to-day challenges.

Anthony Codispoti (32:53.128)
Hmm.

Vineeta (33:02.584)
And then some of them are physically disabled where they need wheelchairs and such equipment. We provide funding for that as well. And the third initiative that we have is for, I’m very proud to say that I met this lady a couple years back who herself was sexually assaulted by a gang when she was 15. And she came out in the open and said, I’m going to help

these other women be vocal about it and not hide behind closed doors. So she started this big movement. And right now, as we speak, she has a big institute in Hyderabad where she has got a lot of government support. And they basically rescue sexually trafficked children across the globe and provide them shelter and food and clothing and all that.

what we do as Building Futures, we provide the counseling support. So we have got medical professionals at that institute that consult with these children who have been mentally affected by such incidents in their life and to get them to feel normal, to bring them to normalcy. So we provide that sort of counseling for those children and we…

cover all those costs. So those are the different initiatives we have across the globe and locally, like I said earlier, we do different drives to touch the lives of many other children, as well as do scholarship programs for parents who cannot afford to send their kids to our schools because there is a tuition to it and some parents can afford it and the others can’t. The ones who qualify for our scholarships, we provide them free education only because we feel

Every child has a right to get the best education and get the best environment.

Anthony Codispoti (35:04.251)
Amen.

Anthony Codispoti (35:08.936)
That’s all really tremendous, Vinita. How are you funding all of this?

Vineeta (35:13.26)
We donate 25 % of our profits to building futures. So Building Kids Worldwide has the profits and 25 % of our profits go to building futures. And building futures funds are used to fund all these initiatives that we have been working on for the last seven years.

Anthony Codispoti (35:33.542)
Wow, that’s a series of tremendous stories there. All the work that you’re doing in all these different places, the way that you’re helping so many different kids, and then the way that it’s all being funded are from the profits of your for-profit childcare centers. And this, and fundraisers as well. You take some outside funding. you don’t do any fundraisers. This is all from internal profits. And so this is another reason why.

Vineeta (35:48.706)
Yeah, we don’t do any fundraisers. No, no, we don’t do.

Anthony Codispoti (36:03.22)
your finance background is extremely valuable by being able to increase from the industry standard of 15 % to about 25 % profit margin that gives you the space to then be super generous with those extra profits and be able to help these kids around the globe.

Vineeta (36:14.628)
in

Vineeta (36:21.474)
Our biggest reward is we feel so privileged to be able to do that. It is for us that we do it because we feel really good about it. We are privileged to be able to help those children.

Anthony Codispoti (36:21.98)
So.

Anthony Codispoti (36:33.076)
Yeah, I mean, just hearing the stories lights up my heart. So I have to imagine as being the one responsible for all of this, it’s just got to make you glow inside.

Vineeta (36:44.238)
to see the happiness of these children because I visit these initiatives frequently. And when I go see these children and the smile on their face and the way they talk, children who are really shy, who couldn’t even speak are now singing, dancing, doing math, writing sentences. It’s just the biggest joy that one can have.

Anthony Codispoti (37:07.134)
No, that’s terrific. So going back to the franchise opportunity for a moment, obviously your franchisees are getting the benefits of all the fine tuning that you’ve been able to do to the business model over the years that allows the profit margins of the centers to be higher than what is typical in the industry. What else about the opportunity is attractive to your franchisees?

Vineeta (37:31.652)
Sure, great question. We offer a very flexible model. And when I say we offer a flexible model, that means that if someone wants to open a small site of 30 to 40 children, it requires much lower investment versus someone who wants to open a larger center, which may require a much higher level of investment. Besides that, we…

are not set on having a building that looks amazing. We believe in providing an environment, be it a world-class facility or be a small church. But within that church or a world-class facility, what we believe is important, the education that we provide, the exposure that the children get, and how are they getting that exposure.

So going a step further, providing that flexible model and opportunities to all different kinds of people, whether they’re engineers, doctors, architects, we have have franchisees who come from all different walks of life. So it’s not that, someone needs to have educational background. They could be an engineer. They could be an IT professional. They could be a doctor. So

Point being, you can come from any background, you can open any size of school, you can be in a world-class facility or a church or a small commercial site. Our model offers opportunities for everybody. And it’s not that unlike some of the other competitors, which is great that they have that business model, who require a minimum $1.5 million investment. So our model doesn’t…

Anthony Codispoti (39:26.834)
you

Vineeta (39:28.706)
require any such dollar amount. Of course, there’s a minimum because you need to have invest certain amount of money to open a small site. But we offer that flexibility. Not only that, I feel like the differentiators that we have in our system are really what makes our franchisees successful. And the differentiators or the approach that we have towards providing education is very unique.

And I can get more in detail if you want me to, but I hope I answered your question.

Anthony Codispoti (40:03.876)
You did, but yeah, I would like to hear about how your approach to education is unique.

Vineeta (40:08.462)
So we integrate performing arts into our academics because we believe children learn best from singing, dancing, having a playful environment. So instead of teaching them ABC just like normally, we will teach them musical. We will have music classes in their routine. We have dance classes in their daily routine. We have theater classes in their daily routine. So

Anthony Codispoti (40:13.684)
Mm-hmm.

Vineeta (40:36.668)
Not only that they get specific education in all three disciplines of performing arts on a routine basis, but our customized curriculum is stitched in with performing arts because it’s in our DNA. And that’s very unique. Along with that, our environment has learning through life experience. Now someone might ask, what is learning through life experience? Basically, we have structures in our environment that are based on different concepts.

These concepts are chosen by the franchisee. We have many different concepts. So for example, one of the concept is emergency services. And in that concept, we have a fire station, we have a hospital, we may have a police station. What we are trying to do is teaching these children in case there’s a new medical emergency, in case there is a fire, how do you deal with that?

And what we do is we give them exposure to it. We teach them all about it and then we wrap it up with a show. So they become characters of a fire department. They become a cop and we have vehicles for like a fire truck, big life-size vehicles with all the bells and whistles. So they have the fire horn and things that children would love to engage in. So they get to feel, what does it feel like a fireman?

And they say, when I grow up, I want to be a fire marshal or I want to be a fireman. I want to help people or I want to be a doctor. I want to be a nurse. So it kind of channels their life goals as well as give them the exposure and learn about those things that are very important in one’s life. So create an environment where there are these life structures, children go in and if they want to be a doctor, they have a set of scope in there. They have a table in a chair.

Children pretend to be patient, doctor, nurses, and so on and so forth. And it’s playful, but yet it’s increasing their vocabulary. They are getting the confidence to be a certain character. And then after they’ve learned about that theme and that concept of emergency services, we wrap it up, like I said, with a show. Performing arts gets integrated in their day-to-day learning, along with learning through life experience in an academic environment, if I can put it all together.

Vineeta (42:59.222)
So, go ahead.

Anthony Codispoti (43:00.112)
So does sort of incorporating the performing arts in all of this help encode those lessons in the students’ brains in maybe a different and more permanent way?

Vineeta (43:15.646)
Yes, absolutely. It definitely does impact in a permanent way for very long time, for lifelong basically. So the approach of teaching is very different. The approach of teaching is playful in a manner that really develops them cognitively and hits a side of the brain that otherwise wouldn’t be tapped on. Because exclusive performing arts basically says that the neurons that weren’t there before that may not develop

Anthony Codispoti (43:16.466)
or more lasting way.

Vineeta (43:44.484)
if you’re not giving exposure to performing arts will develop if you do. And once that’s developed, all the neurons are developed, the research says that chances of them finishing college are much stronger. Chances of them becoming a doctor or engineer are much stronger. So that’s why we have the integration of performing arts and learning to life experience throughout their daily routines. And they get exposure to a lot more than just learning ABC one, two, threes.

Anthony Codispoti (44:15.516)
And on the surface, seems really smart to me because, you know, little kids in particular have trouble sitting still and sort of learning in a more, I don’t know, controlled and traditional environment. And if you have them up and moving around and interacting and participating, it seems like that’s a great way to sort of put their, you know, mind and body wiggles to a good purpose.

Vineeta (44:36.94)
Yeah, they’re young. They’re very little, right? How to keep them engaged, how to make sure they’re having fun. All that is important. So when I was customizing this whole program, there were things that my daughter was exposed to when or not exposed to that she did in her preschool before we opened our own that I did not like particularly. And that was TV time. They would put on a TV and children would sit there and watch TV.

or they would have three hours of outside play. To me, a child needs lot more than that and they can grow to be more educated and better individuals if given exposure to other things besides watching TV and playing outside.

Anthony Codispoti (45:25.14)
I want to go back to something you were saying about the flexible model for the franchisees and that, you know, you don’t have to have a specific background. You don’t have to be a doctor or a teacher. What are the characteristics or the qualities that you’re looking for in a franchisee? What makes somebody a good fit for you and vice versa?

Vineeta (45:45.828)
First and foremost, we are looking for someone who has got business acumen. So they can come from any walk of life, but if they are able to understand how does a business work, if they have basic knowledge of what needs to be done, that is the marketing effort, that’s the customer service aspect. So when we do the calls with our potential franchisees,

Those are some of the things that we’re looking for. And outside of that, we don’t want people to come in just for money. Like this business offers great rewards financially. But if that’s the only purpose, that’s not what we’re looking for. We would want them to be passionate about what they’re doing. We want them to know that they’re making a difference in children’s life by being in this business. And if they’re passionate, then they’ll do a great job.

If they’re doing it just for money, then their heart is not into it. And for us, that’s really important.

Anthony Codispoti (46:49.96)
Vanita, what are some of the most common concerns that you see parents have when starting their kids in a new school like yours? And what can you tell them to help put their mind at ease?

Vineeta (47:00.516)
The common concern that when I was running the centers was safety. And parents really want to ensure the facilities say the staff that’s there is going to be nurturing and caring and so on and so forth. So the one thing that I realized from the get go was we need to make sure we have keypad access that nobody can just walk in the door. We have emergency access to.

the hospital or to the fire department and so on so forth. If there’s an intruder, what do you do? How do you lock the door? So we have got double door entries in most of our schools. So basically safety to me was one of the bigger concerns along with the fact that a lot of parents talk like me. What are you going to be doing with my child throughout the day? I do not want to leave them in your.

Anthony Codispoti (47:52.649)
Mm.

Vineeta (47:55.438)
the school if you’re just offering babysitting facility because I can bring a nanny at home. The environment has to be very nurturing, cognitively developmental, as well as safe. So our schools basically focus on a lot of those things that initially I realized parents would like to have me as a parent wanted for my kids. I’ve been given a lot of exposure to performing arts. used to do lots of Shakespeare plays, both my kids.

went to schools that also provided performing arts. And I realized that that’s something that parents really love about our schools. So having that environment where the kids are getting exposure to not just academics, not just playtime, other aspects of what will make their child learn for life and be successful was another thing that parents are concerned about. So that’s how we have developed our program. We have evolved from where we are to where we are today.

not just from expansion and number of units, but how our program continues to enhance the services that we provide.

Anthony Codispoti (49:04.904)
Benita, I’m curious, how is California’s shift to making transitional kindergarten part of the public school system affecting how you approach business in the state of California?

Vineeta (49:17.508)
And I’m glad you asked that because that’s been a challenge for the past two years now, and it’s continuing to be a challenge. So there’s a few things that we are doing. We are converting some of our schools from being highly focused on preschool to also providing infant toddler care. And that’s working well financially. But given my

personal passion about education and other things along with education. We are planning to add enrichment services to our sites with current who currently have a fixed cost. So not adding anything to their existing expense line items, but utilizing their space and offering enrichment services such as tutoring.

such as art classes, performing arts classes and the like to deal with this challenge of UBK. Not only that, we are actually grouping together a lot of preschools and filing a petition to see if, you know, Governor Newsom is going to think about changing some of these policies that are set in there. We are hopeful and I think the next election is going to be very telling as well.

Anthony Codispoti (50:43.774)
How would you propose changing the policies? This is really interesting.

Vineeta (50:48.142)
We are going to be working with a bunch of schools to file the petition and see if the government would… So some of the other states have the government contribute to the private schools and say, don’t have enough space. We are going to use your space and do the funding to you so you can house all the children that would have gone to the public school, but because we are limited in space, then we will use your space.

Or they would just continue the subsidized care that most states have. And that is there are entities within each state that provide funds to schools where we can provide the education and the care to the less fortunate children and who don’t have the means to bring their kids to our school. And those are the ones that go to public school, but they will continue to provide the subsidy support.

That’s one way of working with our local authorities to see if they can provide us support. Along with that, what I’ve noticed is a few of our franchisees have told us that children who left to go to public school are mostly coming back. And the reason they’re coming back is because the quality of care, the academic exposure, the safety is not there because

Anthony Codispoti (52:04.243)
Wow.

Vineeta (52:14.648)
The system is so different. So if you can imagine preschoolers who have bathrooms close to their room where they are now have to walk a whole hallway to get to the main bathroom. There’s so many accidents. So that’s one one thing along those lines is safety. When children are walking a huge hallway, they have a habit at this age to stray. They go in different directions. And in some cases I have.

heard where children walked away into the parking lot from the hallway. So the safety factor is a big concern. Then the qualifications of the staff, so the elementary school teachers are not qualified to be ECE teachers. So now they have teenagers watching these young children with no academic background to be around this age group. And they’re basically

After they go in the morning hours to the preschool, they are in an afterschool program that has no agenda, that has no curriculum, that does not give them any learning experience or fun experience that children thrive off of. So parents are not happy with the afterschool care because there’s teenagers providing the care. So those are the different challenges.

that the public school system is facing while they’re providing preschool care and doing the UPK. So it’s not where if 10 kids have left, all 10 came back, two of the 10 have come back. But I feel like in the long run, maybe we’ll have five or seven come back because more and more people are gonna be aware of the care that’s provided and the education that’s provided in public school is not the same as the private school.

Anthony Codispoti (53:51.177)
Yeah.

Vineeta (54:04.964)
And we do the young children, they’re not high schoolers where they have the habit of, you know, or elementary school children where they have the habit of going home and opening a book and making sure they’re learning. These are very young children and they’re very impressionable age. So given the safety, the nurturing, the academic exposure, which I feel and a lot of our franchisees feel and a lot of the parents are feeling, is not providing the same level as the private school or as…

know, other competitors and we are providing.

Anthony Codispoti (54:38.268)
Yeah. Yeah. Plus, now you’re layering in the enrichment services to make your private offering even more attractive than the public school offering. And the other thing I urge you touching upon there, Benita, is, you know, the difference between your staff versus, you know, some of the staff that’s available in the public school system. And, you know, having talked with lots of business owners, it’s still a pretty tight labor market. I’m curious.

What have you found some success with in terms of both recruiting and retaining good team members? How do you go about that?

Vineeta (55:15.64)
Yeah, great question again. How do we hire and how do we retain? So we have got ads running at different platforms. We also have word of mouth. We also offer referral bonuses and so on and so forth for people who come through the door. And if they don’t have the education background that they need for this particular industry, we actually fund their education.

So we send them to school and we pay for it. So there’s a lot of individuals who want to either switch fields and they may have a bachelor’s and they may be very well educated, but they want to work in this industry. we encourage them and we bring them on. And as they’re getting the training, they also get the education background, then they’re fully qualified to work with us. Besides that, we provide routine training.

Anthony Codispoti (55:46.899)
wow.

Vineeta (56:14.904)
We have in-service days a few times a year. And then as far as retention goes, we believe that building kids is a place where they feel they’re joining additional family members. We are their extended family. How we do that is because we care. We care about their personal life. We want to make sure they have a personal work-life balance. We give them a lot of days off.

whether it’s during Christmas time or summertime or holidays, we give them routine increases. And those increases are hefty. And then we want to give, I’ve learned this over the years and attended many seminars as to what keeps an employee happy. And the one thing I’ve learned is it’s not the money or it’s not the coffee that you buy them. It’s the performance appraisal that you do on a routine basis. So.

We make sure we do performance appraisals every six months and do high five boards that are words of appreciation for anything that they have done that is worth commendable. Besides all the other stuff that everybody does, is buy them food, have a nice environment, pay them for the medical, dental, 401k, all the benefits are there. So given that we follow the industry norms,

for all the benefits, holidays, the two weeks additional off that we give is also very well appreciated by our staff members and caring for them if they have a situation and they need a month off. We’re happy to give them that month off because they have a personal situation. So treating them like family members, I believe has really helped us sustain a lot of employees. And I say this with pride that

I have staff members here from day one, which is 2003, January is when we had open doors. And we have at least 25 % of the staff still there.

Anthony Codispoti (58:16.315)
wow.

Anthony Codispoti (58:21.414)
over 20 years ago.

Anthony Codispoti (58:28.596)
my gosh. That’s incredible. That’s not something you typically hear in most businesses, particularly in the childcare industry. So hats off to you.

Vineeta (58:32.676)
here.

Vineeta (58:36.844)
And I have people who come here and say, Benita, if you ever, ever sell this business, let me know what you’re going to do next, because I’m just following wherever you’re going. And I think that that’s such a blessing to have people want to continue their journey with us.

Anthony Codispoti (58:46.1)
you

Anthony Codispoti (58:50.728)
That’s quite a testimonial and endorsement there. Venita, what’s maybe a particular challenge, either personally or professionally, that you overcome and some of the lessons that you learned going through that?

Vineeta (59:05.272)
The professional challenge is that I work endlessly and I feel that that’s impacting definitely my health and my time for my family. My husband is amazing where he totally understands that if I don’t go home till eight, nine at night, he would never question, why are you late? Why is dinner not ready? So I feel blessed that that’s something that I don’t have to deal with.

But I know that it started to impact my health. My stress levels are really high. And how I deal with it is I try to schedule some retreats every now and then and try to get my walks in throughout the day. So those are the ways that I’ve learned to deal with my stress level and challenges that I’m facing. But other than that, I think it’s so rewarding in so many ways that

I feel like this is the life I always want to be in. I don’t want to shift, I don’t want to change. So yeah, I’m pretty content with my life and those challenges. I figured out ways to deal with it.

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:19.668)
Venita, what’s a fun fact most people wouldn’t know about you? Something interesting?

Vineeta (01:00:23.896)
what they don’t know about me or would like to know about

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:26.195)
Mm-hmm.

Either one.

Vineeta (01:00:31.286)
One fact that people may not know about me that I love flying. When I was growing up, I learned how to fly a plane. And I still wish that someday I’ll have the time to continue that hobby, I would call it now, in the future sometime.

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:36.199)
Okay.

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:51.378)
Manita, I just have one more question for you, but before I ask it, want to do two things. For those listening today, if you like today’s content, please hit the like, share, subscribe button on your favorite podcast.

Vineeta (01:01:00.236)
I’m not able to hear you clearly. I’m sorry, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:04.51)
That’s okay, I’ll try again. So I just have one more question for you, Vanita, but before I ask it, I wanna do two things. And for those listening today, if you like today’s content, please hit the like, share, or subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. I also wanna tell people the best way to get in touch with you, Vanita, what would that be?

Vineeta (01:01:24.863)
The best way to get in touch with me would be through my email.

And that is Venita at buildingkids.com.

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:35.22)
Terrific. Now, last question for you. I’m curat-

Vineeta (01:01:36.716)
And in that email, would be great if they could, in the subject matter, they could say podcast. Because we all get a lot of emails and I don’t want to feel like I’m ignoring anybody. I want to make sure that I have been able to answer if there’s anybody who wants any additional questions.

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:44.606)
There you go. Little context.

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:54.908)
There you go, folks. Anybody that wants to get in touch with Vanita, make sure you put podcasts in the subject line so she is sure to pay attention to it. She gets a lot of emails, very busy schedule, and so that’s a way for you to kind of float to the top. So last question for you, Vanita. I’m curious, what do you think are the big changes that are coming in your industry? How do you see things evolving in the next few years?

Vineeta (01:02:19.766)
Are you asking me if there’s challenges that I’m not sure if I follow?

Anthony Codispoti (01:02:24.372)
What big changes do you see coming in the child care industry?

Vineeta (01:02:31.144)
As far as, and you already talked about it, the UPK was the biggest change that we had to experience in the past 20 years. We went through a recession, like I said, or COVID, and we felt like we were standing strong. UPK definitely has had an impact, but the way I look at it is public schools are always around from elementary onwards. And yet there were private schools that were doing really well. People, lot of schools have wait lists.

for elementary, middle school and high schools because you know they are so good that parents want to send their kids to private schools. I feel that the change that we are going through now will actually be better for us because a lot of parents will realize that free is not always good. Free costs their child development.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:23.155)
Mm.

Vineeta (01:03:25.532)
And if the child is not going to develop, we’re impacting the future of our leaders, the future of our country. So this is a very young age and it’s a very impressionable age where I feel that this change of UBK will actually help us in a very positive manner because they will be able to see the difference between public school as well as private school. And private schools have always been there.

So I feel very confident that this particular change will not impact any other change I’ve not noticed in the 21 years that has been challenging for us to deal with. There was recession and during recession we had offered free care to parents who lost their jobs and stuff. And so that worked out really in our favor and parents came back wanting to, you know,

have more kids just so that they can bring it to our school. I have emails showing that, you know, one of the Farah fathers said, I had two of my kids go to school. I’m missing coming, bringing my kids to school. I want to have another child so I can just come back to building kids. I mean, it was something that I’ll never forget in my life. And so we have been able to deal with big challenges as such, market conditions, people losing their jobs, COVID.

Anthony Codispoti (01:04:26.536)
Hahaha.

Vineeta (01:04:51.51)
And we’re still standing strong, so I don’t see any change that will impact our industry in a big way or building kids as such.

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:03.068)
You’ve definitely shown some resiliency already. Vanita, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. really appreciate it.

Vineeta (01:05:03.812)
Thank

Vineeta (01:05:11.928)
Well, thank you so much, Anthony, for giving me the opportunity. I appreciate it,

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:17.224)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.