Creating a New Model for Early Childhood Education with Justin Strongoli

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 (06:17.733)
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 Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Justin Strongly, founder of Ribbon Hall Child Development Center, a nonprofit preschool in Cuyahoga falls, Ohio, founded by three experienced kindergarten teachers who apply the most current developmentally appropriate practices.

to facilitate your child’s successful transition from preschool to kindergarten. Ribbon Hall recognizes and supports your child’s emerging learning style, which will foster a can-do attitude and a willingness to take risks. Their caring, insightful teachers use a variety of strategies, methods, materials, and management tools to ensure that differences in learning styles are honored so that every child can master the skills necessary to reach their full potential. Now, before we get into all that good stuff,

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Now back to our guest today, the founder of Ribbon Hall Child Development Center, Justin Strongly. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Justin Strongoli (07:52.701)
Yes, always, always. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Anthony Codispoti (07:56.045)
All right, so Justin, let’s start back at the beginning. How did you find your way into early childhood education?

Justin Strongoli (08:03.403)
That’s a great question. That’s a great question. So I grew up in it. My grandma was a kindergarten teacher. She retired a kindergarten teacher. My mom was a kindergarten teacher. She retired a kindergarten teacher. My uncle was a kindergarten teacher. He retired a kindergarten teacher. And I can keep going on, but we’ll stop there. I eventually became a kindergarten teacher. You know, all throughout my life, I would go to their classrooms and see, you know, everything they were doing and then…

at home while they had the TV on but in front of them they had a ton of work to do and just real old school kind of stuff. Not a lot of what we call black line masters, copy machine stuff. This is real authentic kindergarten stuff before you had all those cool machines to kind of make things simpler but it looks better in a certain way so I guess you can answer that question by saying I just grew up in it.

Anthony Codispoti (08:57.987)
Okay. And so how did you eventually find yourself to wanting to start your own center?

Justin Strongoli (09:03.21)
that’s a great question. So basically I’ve always had an entrepreneurial kind of spirit. and the man, if you really want to talk about all the businesses I’ve started before a learning center, I believe there’s like five and they all failed. I dropped out of college at one point. I was done to be a world famous, record producer. I was done on make music and meet beats and

Anthony Codispoti (09:22.407)
Okay.

Justin Strongoli (09:33.042)
you know, and do all that, and I still do in my spare time. It’s good to have a creative outlook. But yeah, so then I started some other things too, and none of them really made it. Went back to school, became a teacher after I graduated from Kent. I had a degree in early childhood education, became a teacher. And then I was kind of…

Just sitting around one day with my mom and my uncle both who were retired at that time and we kind of looking at all the stuff that they kept my grandma kept all of her stuff my uncle kept all of his my mom kept all of hers and I remember just thinking like man like You know you don’t start Oil business when you’re sitting on a diamond mind or you’re something like that and I like wow we have all this

you know, all these diamonds here, like kept the best of the best stuff over 30 years. And we had enough stuff. They’re very frugal. We had enough stuff to start a school. And believe it or not, even after these eight years, we are still not even through all of their construction paper that they kept, all the recycled paper that they kept, not even close. Keep on, you know, collecting more as we go forward. But…

It was quite a story, quite a long journey to get to where I am now.

Anthony Codispoti (10:59.751)
So this is interesting, Justin, because somebody who had had that many missteps in trying to start a business might have gotten discouraged and just thrown in the towel. You’re going to be a record producer. That was the only one we mentioned, but it sounds like there were a few others that you had some passion for, some zeal for. You got into them and they didn’t pan out the way that you wanted. And it sounds like at least for a little bit, you’re like, all right, I got to try something else. I’m going to go back to school.

Justin Strongoli (11:08.605)
Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (11:17.554)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (11:28.091)
teaching thing is in my blood, I’m gonna get my license and I’m gonna go be a kindergarten teacher. But that entrepreneurial spirit never left, right? That was still there, it still bubbling under the surface and I loved how you put it. What did you say? You don’t start an oil business if you’re sitting on an oil mine. Like, yeah, thank you, thank you. And so you’re like, wait a minute, this education thing’s in my blood. You know, my mom, my grandma, my uncle, sounds like other.

Justin Strongoli (11:44.622)
Right, or diamond mind, yeah, but yeah, that’s it.

Anthony Codispoti (11:57.915)
People in your lineage, they were kindergarten teachers. And they had all these materials and these supplies. You’re like, what am I thinking? If I want to start a business, early childhood education. OK, so you have the idea. What’s the first step to get started?

Justin Strongoli (12:08.776)
That’s right.

Justin Strongoli (12:13.608)
Great question. So the very first step was how I just want to thank my uncle. I want to thank everybody, but I got to thank my uncle for this next one. Donald Strongly, Golden Apple winner multiple years in a row for Hudson, kindergarten, even mere phenomenal teacher, phenomenal. Anyways, gave me a loan of $10,000.

Anthony Codispoti (12:25.19)
What’s your uncle’s name?

Okay.

Justin Strongoli (12:43.644)
That’s number one. That’s that was luck. I did not have that. I would have had to teach for a little bit longer to get that. That’s the first thing. So and then I was able to operate a type B center, which means you only are allowed to have six children in a home. And he let me operate it there for free. So I had no utilities, no bills, nothing.

Anthony Codispoti (13:11.942)
Wow.

Justin Strongoli (13:12.392)
He let me operate it there for free. He wanted to see me succeed. So we took that $10,000 and we completely renovated the outdoor space. That was going to be our niche. So we had two acres of land. And I’m telling you, Anthony, this place you would have to see it to believe it. had tunnels that go underneath the ground. come back out the other side. We had three unique different playground areas, not your typical playground areas.

We had a really long red road all like a maze intertwined and they can ride their bikes We have these willow whips that are huge like probably 12 feet and you connect them at the top and our arch shows a living tunnel I mean we had a huge pebble pit. I mean the list goes on and on we had a hobbit house enchanted forest pebble path troll bridge

Anthony Codispoti (14:08.839)
Can I come? Can I bring my kids? This sounds like a good time.

Justin Strongoli (14:12.129)
Everyone wants to, know, and absolutely, absolutely.

Anthony Codispoti (14:17.767)
So you got the $10,000 loan from your uncle. You got access to a facility where you didn’t have to pay rent, didn’t have to pay utilities. You put that money into completely overhauling the outdoors into this, sounds like an amazing fun space. And so then how did you get your first students? How did you put the word out there?

Justin Strongoli (14:31.088)
Yes.

Justin Strongoli (14:37.586)
Great question. So it was my friend’s kid. That was my first one. know, was just me and my mom out there putting the word out, talking to people. My uncle put the word out because he was really well known in Hudson for being a great teacher. And even today, we got a student. now, understand, this was a tight B home, so you only allowed six children. Okay, so there were…

Anthony Codispoti (15:04.657)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Strongoli (15:06.884)
Several years there. We only had one child Six six in the morning to like six at night so it was It was grueling and daunting. I mean you need a certain amount of children for your for your lesson to work for your activities be fun So it definitely started out more like babysitting And I wanted to expand out of the

Anthony Codispoti (15:10.707)
wow, okay.

Justin Strongoli (15:37.176)
basement we were in my uncle’s basement I wanted to expand out of the basement and actually get a license a center and that was an area of contention between You know me and my mom and my uncle I wanted to do that I wanted to expand they wanted to keep it mom and pop just six children And I was trying to tell them that you know like I just graduated You know like I actually I want to start a family. You know they’re at the end of their careers. They’re done. They’re retired

You know, it didn’t the money didn’t really mean and money isn’t everything you want to be the best But you got to be realistic to I want to eventually, you know move out of my mom’s house I want to eventually You know have a family of my own a wife, you know a kid. Thank God I have that now But you know, wanted all those things so I actually had to expand they didn’t want to so actually Actually went back to school

and became a police officer. So I went to school for five months, something I could do real quick. And I knew I wanted to go private as a police officer, so I worked in a hospital. I didn’t want to be on the streets running and gunning. That didn’t fit my personality. So I wanted to just be in a hospital to where, you know, you’re just working with people, talking with people, helping people through any sort of crisis intervention. I’m good at

talking to people down or off a ledge so to speak and I got a lot of compliments a lot of people try to give me tips and money I never took it but I was just really goes to show like how much people appreciate you just giving them an extra 10-15 minutes to talk they just want to vent you know I learned all that by working with children there’s a lot of parallels when you are learning the such psychology of a child’s brain with someone who’s going through crisis intervention

Sometimes they’re acting out. They just want to be heard. They just want to express themselves. They’re out of control They don’t have control over anything So you have to be the one that’s in control and and help them kind of and guide them through You know their thought process to where they can come up with the answer by themselves and want to hear anyone else give them the answers They want to come up with the answer so I go on and on about that. We can have a separate podcast about that So I actually left and you know, I’ve got something I could work second shift, you know

Anthony Codispoti (17:57.339)
you

Justin Strongoli (18:02.213)
That was the big reason to you know as a teacher. I wouldn’t be able to do both But as a police officer I was able to work second shift so I woke up at 7 a.m. Went to the type B home in the basement work till about 230 drove up to Cleveland Hospital Work till about midnight Came back home woke up at 7 o’clock in the morning and then with the police officer schedule You know you work on weekends, too. So

Anthony Codispoti (18:06.587)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (18:22.32)
Wow.

Anthony Codispoti (18:30.277)
Mmm.

Justin Strongoli (18:30.309)
There was only two days off I had a for a while and eventually just was like, okay, I think I’m just going to expand now into, by the way, this was in the middle of COVID. Let me just say all that. So it was eight years. So I graduated college in 2013. Got a while, I was a substitute for years before I could finally get a foot in the door as a kindergarten teacher.

Anthony Codispoti (18:43.939)
jeez.

Justin Strongoli (19:00.515)
Then was doing the type B home with one child for about eight years. We eventually got to the point, year seven, that so many people were trying to come in there because they just saw the quality work that we were doing. were teaching our toddlers all the letter sounds, and I kid you not, they knew all their letter sounds. And then the parents got wind of that, and they’re like, wow, my older child’s in first grade. He doesn’t know his letter sound. And they were literally on the spot testing, what does sound make?

And our toddlers knew. And the older children who didn’t have us did not know. And so they got to see that we were actually doing quality work. We weren’t just babysitting. We were doing quality work. I know I’m long-winded. But I just wanted to kind of give you the rundown of how that worked.

Anthony Codispoti (19:46.319)
Yeah, I want to go into some of this a little bit because I mean, you’re telling me you had one child for what you say, seven years.

Justin Strongoli (19:48.708)
Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (19:53.251)
Well, no, we had one child for multiple years. And then we’d have two or three. And then, you know, they aged out. And then, you know, someone moves or, you know, they, hey, we’re going to get a nanny or their grandma or something like that. So it fluctuates. Even now, it fluctuates like crazy. But yes, we had one child for multiple years.

Anthony Codispoti (20:12.102)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (20:15.973)
And so, mean, that’s lean. I mean, financially, that’s really lean. You cannot pay yourself. Fortunately, you didn’t have a lot of bills, but yeah.

Justin Strongoli (20:20.773)
No, no, no, I lived at home. I just moved out. I’m 36.

Anthony Codispoti (20:29.243)
Was there any point during these early years where you were like, man, this isn’t working, throwing the towel? Yeah. What got you through that?

Justin Strongoli (20:33.891)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did.

Gosh, that’s a great question.

That’s a really great question. Support. That’s tough.

Anthony Codispoti (20:46.501)
Because I mean, that’s tough. That’s tough. I mean, it’s one thing to have one kid for the first month, the first six months, the first year. But I mean, you’re telling me for multiple years, you you’re at one, maybe two, maybe three, you know, you want to grow, you want to outgrow this six person facility that you’re in. And man, you’re just not getting close to that. Like it has to be really hard. Like what got you through some of these really hard days?

Justin Strongoli (20:59.235)
Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (21:12.161)
Yeah, yeah, it’s hard to pinpoint what got me through it stubbornness You know Relentlessness you got to have grit, you know, like my uncle was talking to me and like my other uncle who was an engineer and I Remember what this is back when I was kindergarten teaching and I started a business with him. It didn’t work out You’ll never hear of it, but we started a business. So this is during when I was teaching I started another one

Anthony Codispoti (21:17.253)
Yeah. Mmm.

it.

Justin Strongoli (21:41.509)
Before I quit teaching and started Ribbon Hall But he was like me, know what your generation just really lacks I was like what and I’m not gonna lie with a young guy like man. How do people do this for 30 years? I’m waking up at 5 in the morning. I’m driving up to Cleveland I don’t get home till 4 and then as a teacher anyone knows the life of a teacher you have to do Tuesday’s work on Monday night you have to do

Wednesday’s work on Tuesday night. You have to do Thursday’s work on Wednesday night. And so you’re always working Non-stop is completely It’s completely under compensated but we can get to that later And I was like how do people do this for 30 years? He told me a story about my grandpa get back from I think GM and he said, know when grandpa got back understand with the early 1900s My grandpa grandpa got back from work

I’m sorry. No, this was the mid-1900s. Yeah, he already did World War two Yeah, so about 1945 1950 whatever so when he got back from work All it was was getting him ready to go back to work the next day He would come back to work like this like done there everyone giving massages people giving water food and he had to do that year after year that’s how it was and I have a ton of stories he would tell me just

Anthony Codispoti (22:55.43)
Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (23:08.706)
It was back then and so, you know, I grew up hearing those stories and I remember my uncle telling me that your generation does not have grit and That kind of put a trigger in me a little bit too or flip the switch out like you know what like yeah Like I remember all those stories my grandpa told me I saw my mom as a single parent do all this stuff and here I am You know, yeah, I got I’m suffering right now, but Let’s just do it. Let’s just do it

Anthony Codispoti (23:37.583)
Yeah. I think what you touched on there is something interesting. It’s sort of this idea of connecting with who or where you’ve come from, right? Being able to tie back to your grandfather, who had that grit, had that deterrent, like it was all about work. He would go to work every day, come home exhausted, and just get his body and his mind ready to do the same thing again the next day. And when you hear that you’re like,

wait a minute, that’s my blood, that’s in my genes. If he did it, I can do it, I’m gonna step up. So tell me how you were eventually able to kind of punch through, how you were able to outgrow that six person center and do what you wanted to do.

Justin Strongoli (24:14.05)
I love it.

Justin Strongoli (24:22.785)
That’s a great question, man, you have to get over your fear You have to get over your fear like I literally had You know two people who I admire look up to way better at teaching than I am just trying to keep it where it was I Kind of acquiesce to that and I find I’ll just keep it a side hustle. I’ll go back to school I work second shift and what whatever yada yada yada What eventually made

me I guess get over it was the fact that I had a second source of income. Now I was a police officer. I was willing to sign a lease that said, Hey, I’m going to be stuck here. This is the seeds or not. I’m paying this lease. I like forget it. Isn’t this now or never. And this was during COVID. So lo and behold, one of the places we went and looked at, because we teetered on the idea.

Anthony Codispoti (24:58.31)
Hmm.

Justin Strongoli (25:20.897)
And I was close to convincing them we would go look at places like see we could do this place and then I would kind of check it out at the last moment too, you know, they would kind of, you know, get in my head a little bit like if it doesn’t work and you only got one child right now, how are you going to get 80? How are you going to get 100? How? Like we just didn’t see the leap. But anyways, one of the places we went and checked out is where we’re at now. And we looked in the windows and we saw that they were already like, you know,

Anthony Codispoti (25:39.759)
Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (25:49.505)
desk and lockers and you know children’s artwork up like my gosh this would have been perfect. I was already taken up. Come to find out it was the YMCA was there for about 20 years but they moved out during COVID. Schools were shutting down during COVID.

Anthony Codispoti (26:08.869)
Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (26:10.593)
I said this is my opportunity. Understand I’ve been learning a lot about just recognizing opportunity from all that. Like even though, you know, I started my first business at 18 and Rippon Hall didn’t really work until, you know, mid-30s. I had a business every year of my life that I was legally allowed to have a business. From 18 all the way up to 30.

And pass that and so I’ve been learning, you know, I never started at zero with my next business I started right here at five and then that failed and I didn’t start at zero again I started five again and I started seven then seven the nine and just keep starting so when I started ribbon haul my final one Which is kind of a technicality. I’ll get in I’ll get to that in a moment I Started I believe at probably like 30 a level 30 level 40

with understanding of how to do things. I had everything up and running in like, I think a couple hours, how fast I was able just to do everything. Website was going, but everything was layered instead of just doing one thing at a time at such a, you know, synthesized understanding of how to do everything. I had everything going at the same time. And it is a lot of examples of that too. But just having that second source of income gave me the confidence.

To go ahead and sign that lease and do what we had to do

Anthony Codispoti (27:39.675)
What was the timing? You said it was during COVID, but what year was it?

Justin Strongoli (27:42.881)
This was like 20, maybe 2021. What was COVID, 2020? Thank you. Yeah, yeah. That.

Anthony Codispoti (27:49.191)
Okay, COVID started in 2020. So right, a lot of the schools shut down, which is what opened the door for you to be able to have access to this facility.

Justin Strongoli (27:58.689)
And I got so many things for cheap. like got these chairs. I remember we looked at the chairs eight years ago. They’re like $250 for one of these nice blue chairs that you see in schools. I got like 80 chairs for $250. I got these desks at talk that maybe like $700. I got like eight of them for $700. I got projectors. got screens. got

Anthony Codispoti (28:16.208)
Wow.

Justin Strongoli (28:27.457)
So much stuff for pennies on the dollar. I got these thousand dollar lunch tables for $15 from these schools shutting down. I got my uncle’s trailer Boom just started going places and just ate selling this Contacting people and so I was able to get all their stuff for super cheap People look at the stuff that we have now. They’re my god, how many? Hundreds of thousands and we did invest a lot. I’ll get to how

eventually got a grant in a little bit but But they’re look at all of our stuff and it doesn’t make sense how I got from where I was to where we’re at I know that that’s what they think when they when I give them a tour like there’s no way that you’re able to do this in a year But then I tell them like hey man schools were shutting down. I got this stuff for pennies on the dollar I just start pointing out how much this stuff was And so yeah

Anthony Codispoti (29:21.457)
So the day that you open your doors at this new facility, Justin, how many kids did you have?

Justin Strongoli (29:26.305)
That’s a great question. So here’s what happened. OK, so as I said earlier that we started to get a lot of attention because of the quality of work that we were doing. And so we eventually had a list over six, even though we were only legally about to have six. So we had probably, I would say, about 12 students. And we opened the door and we had 12 of them in there.

Anthony Codispoti (29:51.079)
So you 12 to start. But how did you get from under 6 to 12 so quickly? You were having

Justin Strongoli (29:56.801)
That’s a great question. So you have to have a wait list. So once you have like six of them, you’re at capacity and people start to inquire and get in there, you know, and that’s word of mouth is the main thing. I’m really good at advertising. My first business, that’s when I got good at that. I was actually selling out tickets for 600 people, but that’s neither here or there. So I got good at advertising and that’s when I really found out the best thing to do is just to be the best.

and the word will get out. And so that’s just kind of what got me through those eight years too. Like just keep on doing good work and eventually, you know, if we build it, they will come.

Anthony Codispoti (30:37.477)
And so what was your capacity at this new facility? How many students could you?

Justin Strongoli (30:42.239)
Our capacity is 171 students. I’ll never allow it to get that way because once again, and I still, like the money would be awesome. Like, wow, like we could do so much with that stuff. but at the same time, you have to have a fine line, good balance. And we want quality. I don’t want it to be a place where you’re just warehousing children. I don’t like that look. In fact, we have a.

whole screening process to even get into Ribbon Hall now so it’s not even just like open enrollment you just sign the papers you’re in there’s a formal observation that really makes sure that we’re a good fit for each other that you know we actually you’re within our scope of ability and so we can get into that later too but yeah so 171 we’re never gonna allow to get like

Anthony Codispoti (31:33.146)
How many do you have now and how many do you want?

Justin Strongoli (31:35.006)
Great question. Great question. So we have approximately 80 it fluctuates We just lost a big chunk because of kindergarten, you know, happens every year. That’s the one thing about having a center You’re gonna lose a good amount every year because of kids And so I would feel comfortable based upon what we’re doing now in our screening process to have probably a hundred It really all depends on just making sure we can maintain the quality. That’s just my biggest

Anthony Codispoti (31:43.732)
Mm.

Anthony Codispoti (31:49.617)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Strongoli (32:05.182)
motivating factors. I want to make sure that we maintain the quality.

Anthony Codispoti (32:11.131)
So tell us how you got the grant that helped you do some things there.

Justin Strongoli (32:14.088)
That’s a great question. when, and we have gotten a couple grants. so centers were, as I said, they’re shutting down. Schools were shutting down. Centers were shutting down. This is when we were coming up. And so there were a lot of grants available to help you kind of like to help centers weather the storm, you know? And so yeah, we got a lot of grants able to make our place

even more spectacular. I’ll send you some pictures. But we have a whole, if you ever been to like a children’s museum, it has like the big dramatic play homes. We have dramatic play homes. We have a big spaceship. Children actually go into the spaceship that’s in our NASA room, our science technology room. Dramatic play is a huge part in children’s development. It helps with so many things. I’m even gonna get into it. But.

We have a 3d printer Not a gimmicky 3d printer. This is the real deal 3d printer This place we made it Awesome. This place, you know, I wish I was a kid

Anthony Codispoti (33:26.823)
Yeah, I’m just at your website now for people who are interested, ribbonhall.com. So it’s W R I B B E N H A L L dot com. And you’re in Cuyahoga falls, Ohio, which is Northeast Ohio. And what you mentioned, you’ve got a screening process now, Justin, what what do you look for? What what do you think is a good fit for for ribbon?

Justin Strongoli (33:54.275)
Great question. It boils down to one thing. Does your child need intensive or severe behavioral intervention? If they need intensive behavioral intervention, then we’re not the best equipped for that. Our scope of ability is with a typical developmental brain when it comes to behavior. And also safety has to do with that too.

You know you hear stories all the time about children who ran away from their daycare They found him down the road. He’s fine. He was I read those stories all the time. Give me a heart attack every time Yeah, he went to Walmart and yada yada. He’s at a playground down the street playing or you know all those kind of things you’ll God forbid but Man, just so those kind of things too We want to make sure that we’re the best fit for each other and that we can keep your child safe, too If your child is constantly running away

that Ribbon Hall is not the best place.

Anthony Codispoti (34:54.983)
So what’s a typical day look like for one of your students? Maybe kind of describe the curriculum.

Justin Strongoli (34:59.857)
That’s a great question. And so it varies based upon our age group. So we have a two toddler program. We have two preschool programs. We have two pre-K programs. We just opened up our second pre-K program this school year at the early September this month. And so what the day looks like. Okay, so you arrive at eight and then you’re in one of your classrooms.

And now something that makes Ribbon Hall really unique is that you rotate from class to class. And so let’s say you go to your English language arts room, which is our writers’ workshop. You’re there for about two hours. Then you go ahead and you transfer with your same teacher to keep that bond, that rapport. You go into our NASA room I was mentioning earlier. That’s our science technology room. You’re there for two hours learning all about science and technology.

Then you go to our numbers and shapes room. That’s for mathematics and engineering. Then you go to our gallery room. That’s for fine arts. Then you go down to the motor room. That’s our gymnasium. Then you go to our Broadway room. That’s our dramatic playroom. Then you go to our adventure room. That’s our romper room. We have a lot of rooms, about eight rooms. And so this place, I remember we looked in the window and we’re like, man, it’s like someone’s already there. It was the Y.

Anthony Codispoti (36:10.215)
How many rooms do you have?

Justin Strongoli (36:22.461)
And so this place we remember thinking this is perfect. It had drinking fountains. It had Bathrooms it was actually designed to be a school building. That’s what this place was designed to be cool And so we were like this is perfect. And so that’s where we’re at now. So we Didn’t know how to design this place. We were like she would just be one room and I got a credit my mom for coming up with this idea. She had so much stuff that

it wouldn’t have even, it would just so much better to have, she had a million things of music, a million things with science, a million things with English language arts, a million things that had to do with math. And so it wouldn’t work, it would be the best to have one room with all that cool stuff, you know, and then you just go to that room, and then you go out of this room, then you go to that room. That makes our job especially difficult. You have to be a really, anyone who has been a teacher before,

Anthony Codispoti (37:09.137)
Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (37:21.115)
They know that one of the toughest things is transitions. They think that you can just say, okay, kid, we’re going in this room. come on. No, they don’t understand the transition is multiple steps. You need to clean up. That’s a clean up song. You need to go and sit. We’ll read a book while we sit. Then we need to have some sort of a methodical way to get you to the line. Then we have to have a way to help you calm down. Breathe your flower. Blow out your candle. Breathe your flower. Blow out your candle.

Anthony Codispoti (37:24.742)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (37:47.323)
This is

Justin Strongoli (37:50.501)
And then it’s just crazy.

Anthony Codispoti (37:50.673)
Do you think that these transitions and having sort of the different classrooms for the kids to go to, is it a benefit to them?

Justin Strongoli (38:01.425)
extremely of benefit. We’re now finally starting to get, when the children do their KRA, their kindergarten readiness assessment, we’re starting to have teachers come over to our spot and inquire like, so they told me that they went to Ribbon Hall, just how well our students are doing. Transitions are hard to do, by the time we get them to kindergarten, they’re experts. Our toddlers transition, our preschoolers transition, and our pre-K transition.

They transition less as toddlers and it builds upon the number of transitions for preschool and then builds upon it again for pre-K. But nevertheless, they are transitioning every day in multiple classes.

Anthony Codispoti (38:43.111)
Yeah, it’s interesting. I’ve talked to a lot of owners of childcare centers and I don’t think I’ve heard this kind of a layout before. And as a parent, my kids are a little bit older, they’re eight and 10, but they still have trouble transitioning. If we’re leaving the house and going somewhere or leaving that place and going somewhere else, those transitions are difficult. So doing that with preschoolers, that’s even, yeah, that’s a lot more work on you. And I’m going to assume that…

Justin Strongoli (38:48.869)
Nah. Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (38:56.449)
Yeah. All right.

Anthony Codispoti (39:10.843)
Like part of the thinking is like you’re trying to get those young minds to flex in a different way, to go through those difficult transitions. Is that part of the thought process?

Justin Strongoli (39:20.57)
100%. Children are, I remember when I was a student teaching up in Kent and I said, yeah, go with that. I said, throw it away in that trash can. It’s in closer proximity. I had already been reading books about how you want to use enriching language and don’t be afraid to kind of water things down with children. Like, I mean, don’t water things down with children. You want to actually give them those high vocabulary words.

Anthony Codispoti (39:46.224)
Mm.

Justin Strongoli (39:50.574)
a lot of different vocabulary words. And one of the others, this is my second year doing that, one of the other first years, one of her kind of like looked at me a little bit, and I’m glad that my mentor teacher caught that look, because you’re like, no, you do want to use enriching vocabulary like that. They’re not too young. That actually is helping them. And so you want to expose children to all those higher level thinking abilities and things like that.

Because guess what? They’re not too young for that. They can handle that. Their brains are sponges right now. They’re meant, they are meant to absorb new information and every time you’re giving them those kind of thing, you are helping new connections be formed that are later in life when they hear something that’s similar, it’s gonna be a faster pathway to where they can process it. So you’re laying the foundation, the groundwork in connecting. You want the most connections possible.

And then as they go forward in grade school and college and trade school, whatever they decide to do, any sort of training like that, they have a higher chance of being able to process that information because of all the pathways and the connections that you’ve laid down.

Anthony Codispoti (41:06.865)
Justin, what are some of the most common concerns that parents have when starting their kids at a new school like yours and what can you tell them to put their minds at ease?

Justin Strongoli (41:12.634)
Great question. So number one Is it safe? That’s the first thing is it safe our place is really really safe We have baby gates on the doors for toddlers and we have the little I Don’t know what to call it, but they go on the door handle the where you can’t open up the door Things like that We have when we go outside we have like those Arctic expedition they strap on to your

Anthony Codispoti (41:32.166)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Strongoli (41:42.58)
like a cable, everyone’s kind of strapped on to each other. Cleanliness, so it has to do with safety or they don’t be healthy. We get so many compliments on how clean our place is. We have a lot of faculty on hand. That’s one of the things that I’m really big on. We could survive on about half as many faculty at Ribbon Hall, but, and so our payroll is very high and nobody’s rolling in the dough.

And once again, it has to do with, you know, what do I want from Ribbon Hall? Do I want a lot of money or do I want to be the best? And so I had to make that choice and I want to be the best. And as as I have food and water and a roof over my head, I’m fine. I’ve lived eight years in a room. And so, yeah, I know how to live lean. I remember I moved to New York when I dropped out of college and tried to be a record producer. I lived off of $3 a day.

Anthony Codispoti (42:32.431)
You know how to live lean.

Justin Strongoli (42:43.192)
I lived off of $3 a day. All I ate all day was shrimp fried rice that I got from this Chinese place down the street, which was $3, but it was a lot. It was $3, and so I did that. And so I know how to do it. I slept in a car and would turn in the wintertime and have to turn it on every 30 minutes just to get heat. And so I know how to live lean, and I know how to grind it out. And so all I need is just food and water.

you know, in a shelter and I’m okay. And so what do I want? So I want Ribbett Hall to be the best. We have a lot of faculty. So we have our people constantly cleaning. They’re on breaks for an hour and then they go clean. Children are at a nap. One person’s washing a nap, another person cleaning. And so lot of things like that. The next concern that parents have is loved. Is my child loved? And this is the exact order it seems to go in. Safe, loved, and I’ll get to the third one.

Anthony Codispoti (43:37.82)
Mm.

Justin Strongoli (43:42.934)
That’s the last one. But is it, are they loved? And so you have to have obviously a love for children that work with children. That’s the obvious thing. You don’t, I love what my professor said. You don’t want to have patience when working with children. You want to have understanding. The reason why you don’t want to have patience is because patience runs out. You can eventually run out of patience, but you don’t run out of understanding. And so long as you’re aware of

developmentally where they’re at, this is what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to not want to do this right now. And I’m supposed to scaffold you up to the next level to where you learn that this is the appropriate behavior and what you do want to do to be a member of society. And then the last thing is learning. Safe, loved, and learning. And those seem to be the order that it goes into. Are they learning? So what do you guys learn? You just look on our walls and see the authentic artwork and

Children are reading and writing. We’ve had the top 90th percentile reader leave our school two years in a row per IHM’s kindergarten readiness assessment. So we got that part. That’s actually how we got all the children was by how much they were learning.

Anthony Codispoti (45:00.601)
Okay. So you mentioned you’ve got more staff than what you could get away with. How many folks are working there now?

Justin Strongoli (45:07.479)
We have, I would believe about 19 or 20. I’ll have to look at the exact numbers, but about 19 or 20 now. yeah, so we just want to be the best. And so having a lot of staff there is good for a lot of reasons. Number one, work-life balance. You have people who are happy. Number two, you’re not overworked. Number three, anything comes up, like, I have a child that, hey, they threw up, they got sick, or hey, they had an accident, or hey,

Anthony Codispoti (45:10.609)
Okay.

Anthony Codispoti (45:18.353)
Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (45:35.925)
Those kind of things happen. If anyone works in daycare, you already know that’s part of the game. And so now it’s not one teacher trying to manage that while trying to get to their class. No, we have walkie-talkies. Hey, I need some of that blah, Boom, one of our floaters comes over there, one of our teacher assistants. They help with all that. And so it really makes it a lot smoother.

Anthony Codispoti (45:45.691)
Eh.

Anthony Codispoti (46:01.191)
So you’ve mentioned several times that you want to be the best and that’s the decision that you’ve made. And the staff sounds like they’re a huge part of that, right? And that’s part of the reason why you quote unquote over staff. But we’re in a pretty lean labor market. It’s tough to find good folks. It’s tough to hold on to good folks. What are you guys doing to both find and retain good employees?

Justin Strongoli (46:05.632)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Strongoli (46:09.203)
Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (46:19.68)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Strongoli (46:25.078)
That’s an excellent question so when we got that grant Part of what you could use the funds war were for employee retention So I put an ad out $20 an hour That is That is a lot as a police officer. I made $20 and 50 cents an hour and

Anthony Codispoti (46:38.875)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (46:44.379)
which is a lot for Northeast Ohio, right?

Justin Strongoli (46:55.222)
risked my life. There was a guy who had a firearm at one point and he’s not trying to get into all that, but I risked my life for $20.50. And so I said, okay, I know that people, if I’m risking my life for $20.50, there are going to be some good people out there who are going to be working with children for $20. And so we got some excellent people, really excellent people. I treat all my people with respect. I listen to my people. And I’m not trying to toot my own horn here.

but all the time I get told that I’m the best boss I’ve ever had. And I’m not trying to toot my own horn and I don’t even, know, it’s whatever, it’s okay. It feels good on my call line. It feels great because I do. Yeah, yeah. I wanna be and I wanna be. I wanna be the best that they ever had because, know, like they deserve that. They’re the ones that are, you know, keeping the place really going and the ones who are

Anthony Codispoti (47:36.687)
It feels great. Toot your own horn. This is the place to do it, Justin. Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (47:54.026)
face to face with our students. And so you gotta treat them well. And I think the whole dynamic of everything is changing too. think that the older generation might understand that now a little bit too. But younger people, they have options. They have a lot of options, a lot of different ways, a lot of different savvy ways you can make money. So those people that you wanna hold on to. Now of course there’s some people that don’t have options and they might not be aware of the different things that they can do.

But the people who are good and who you do want to hold onto understand that they have options. And so you want to treat your people with respect. We have so many people, and I know a big thing is work-life balance. And so I think maybe out of all of the time off requests that I’ve had, I’ve maybe had to deny maybe, maybe two, maybe two or three time off requests. I love giving my people all the time off that they want to get.

Because guess what? They come back recharged, reenergized, do output even more, better work for our students. And so, you know, we’re not robots. know, people are, and working with children, there’s a 24-7 job. Literally 24-7. You have to be on that entire day when you were working with children. There is no time you can take a mental break. Even as a police officer, I wasn’t on call for the whole shift.

There were plenty of times where I was just kind of waiting for something to happen. like, okay, just sitting there. So I turned my brain off a little bit. But when you’re working with children, you can never turn your brain off. So it’s mentally exhausting of a job to have. It truly is.

Anthony Codispoti (49:33.265)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (49:38.279)
Yeah. A question for you, Justin, about that grant. So the grant was, I’m going to assume it was one time funds. I mean, how do you, but how do you use that to continue to pay these really high wages?

Justin Strongoli (49:45.428)
This was one-time funds and.

Great, great question. Great question. So here’s why Ribbon Hall has the advantage. When I look at other places and I kind of will scout out the competition a little bit and I say, hey, I’m a parent, just inquiring about other centers and I want to see kind of how they do it or I’ll take a tour. I think my face is kind of gotten out there now, but so I got to have to always scout out the competition.

And so here’s and I figured out how we can win and so we have higher capacity That’s the first thing that we have that’s an advantage. We have higher capacity. So we’re able to sustain Because we have the capacity to hold more children and and that’s how That’s how we can go ahead and have an advantage

Anthony Codispoti (50:46.577)
But that grant has to have run out at some point, right? But you’re continuing to pay these higher wages and that’s just because you’ve got the extra capacity, you’ve got more students in there that gives you the cashflow to make that happen.

Justin Strongoli (50:49.076)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (50:55.402)
Yes.

All of that all of that and so we have more students to sustain all that I get paid peanuts My mom who works there gets paid peanuts. She’s retired and so we’re taking a cut on our end just to make sure that we can pay our people good and then also Something that’s really cool about ribbon Hall is Whether or not a parent is there. So let’s say that their child’s sick. Let’s say that

there’s an absence, they go on vacation, we’re closed down for vacation, we still have our tuition be owed. So whether or not we’re open, closed, whatever, we have our tuition be owed. And that was really that decision I made, because it was not like that when we had our type B home. It was you show up this day, you pay $32 for a whole day. And so…

Anthony Codispoti (51:53.35)
Hmm.

Justin Strongoli (51:55.766)
That was really a big leap that we had to do and we ended up not losing anybody when I said hey We’re gonna move over to our new building and this is our gonna be our new policy I understand if you know you want to leave this is word one changing it up on you But this don’t be our new policy. So now this allows us to know what we’re getting in Every month we’re able to make moves now every month

Anthony Codispoti (52:22.171)
Those stabilized revenues are really important for any business, particularly for a small one. Justin, I’m going to switch gears on you a little bit and ask you to maybe go into a little bit of detail on a particular challenge that you had to overcome, either personally or professionally, and some of the lessons that you learned coming out the other side.

Justin Strongoli (52:27.552)
Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (52:42.397)
so many challenges.

Anthony Codispoti (52:45.317)
I know we’ve already touched on some of them. If you wanted to pick one of those and go a little bit deeper on it, that’d be fine. Or we can do a different one.

Justin Strongoli (52:46.963)
Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (52:52.207)
Yeah, I’m trying to think of one that I haven’t given you already.

Justin Strongoli (53:01.235)
Okay, well, okay, okay, so when we moved into our place and understand now I told you earlier that I was able to start at label a level 30 and then go like that and when I kept on starting a new business I never started at zero. I always started up higher, but there eventually got a point to where I was at zero again

because I had never gotten this far. I had never managed that amount of money, even though was not that much. You understand my business is made like peanuts. I never had to do things with zoning or anything like that. So a challenge that came up was that we were not zoned appropriately. That was a big challenge. How we overcame that was just doing a lot of research.

and understand we could be grandfathered in and so stuff like that. You just got to do a lot of research and not give up. As I said earlier, I’ve had a business since I was 18 years old every year of my life. And every one I kept on thinking this is going to be the one, this is going to be the one. I gave it everything and I remember always telling myself, hey, it’s possible if I give up on a Tuesday, if I would have tried on that Wednesday, that next day, that would have been the day that something big happened.

And so that really got me through a lot of things. But then I would listen to other people on Facebook, business gurus, and sometimes they’re like, hey, you got to know when to give up and when to start something new. And so that kind of changed my mind a little bit. Like, you know what? Yeah. And then Elon Musk talked about something that, it should be kind of, if something’s going to really work, it should be almost kind of easy at first. And so when we built that place, was a

We had a lot of children going into about 12, which was a lot for me. I did years for one. And so to me, I was like, okay, this is definitely a leg up. But a big challenge we had was the zoning. We were not zoned appropriately, emailing people, figuring everything out. And I thought we were dead in the water. I’m like, my gosh, we’re gonna have to move back over here again. I just signed this lease. I mean, this was, it was a big, it may not sound like that big of a moment, but this was, I remember my heart.

Anthony Codispoti (55:14.394)
Hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (55:24.561)
Big deal.

Justin Strongoli (55:25.811)
dropped because here I am a police officer slash business owner not sleeping and I put everything I had and I was living so low for years and years and years on end and I finally thought this was the one that’s gonna make it and everything was going great. I’m this is it. I’m gonna be able to grow here. And then,

Yeah, you’re not zoned appropriately. Sorry, you guys gotta leave.

Anthony Codispoti (55:58.181)
So how’d you fix the zoning issue?

Justin Strongoli (55:59.554)
It was, emailed people, figured out, okay, but like how is the why here? That was the first thing that, that was the first thing that got me like, no, that doesn’t make sense. And so if I would have just took that at, we’re not zone appropriate, just gave up, I wouldn’t be here. And so I did not. And so you do have to have that little bit of grit and that stubbornness too. And it just took research, just Google searching, Google, talking to people. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (56:04.997)
Right, that’s what I was thinking.

Anthony Codispoti (56:26.609)
So you eventually found out that the zoning was actually okay. You just got bad information.

Justin Strongoli (56:29.507)
Well, we found out that you’re allowed to be, yeah, I got bad information. Yeah. And so, yeah, you just got to, you got to do a lot of research on things like that too.

Anthony Codispoti (56:40.743)
You’ve mentioned your uncle and your mother. I’m curious, any other specific mentors or maybe books or podcasts, other sources of education and inspiration that have been helpful to you?

Justin Strongoli (56:54.769)
That’s a great question. A lot on just listening to people like Warren Buffett speak, Elon Musk, Obama, like a lot of people like that, just hearing him speak and like Obama said when he was working in Chicago, he wasn’t trying to get into politics or really wasn’t worried about making money off of anything. He was just trying to be the best and doing and help the people that he could.

And so that really kind of flipped a switch to me too. It’s like, man, I gotta change my whole thing here. I just wanna be like awesome at something and listen to Mark Cuban, Shark Tank is really good. All those kinds of things like that. Every little thing that you can watch. And the best thing I would say is just jump into the water and try to start something. Don’t be stupid about it.

be smart about it, at the same time you learn most human beings are you know we learn by doing and so you just got to do it.

Anthony Codispoti (58:01.403)
Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot to be said for careful thinking and planning and doing your research, but I think what you’re touching on is that a lot of people get stuck in sort of the analysis phase. Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (58:12.388)
They get paralyzed by that. It’s like, and because my, my gosh, say, my uncle was like that. He’s super smart, the smartest man I ever known. But the thing about him is he’ll try to solve year seven problems on year zero. If I had been thinking like, yeah, how are we gonna do this, how are we gonna do that? Then I would have never done anything because you have to have enough confidence in yourself that when those year seven problems come,

That you’ll be able to overcome them right now focus on year zero problems That’s where you’re at focus on those ones and then when year one comes focus on those year one problems And just keep on going like that and then you’re fall sometimes you’re going back down to zero I’ve done it for about 12 years and so it does happen But so long as you’re smart about it and really believe in what you’re doing and you start to recognize opportunity Then

you’ll be better equipped to make it in the future.

Anthony Codispoti (59:15.717)
Yeah, I like that. Justin, what’s a fun or interesting fact most people wouldn’t know about you?

Justin Strongoli (59:21.532)
I kind of mentioned it earlier like I love to make music and so I love to play piano That was my that’s my instrument ever had a lesson, but I can just really play Yeah, I can’t read notes, but I can play and you know, like to make do beats and Me and my wife make music and we we made some children’s books and now We’re gonna finish our children’s books

Anthony Codispoti (59:34.086)
All self taught.

Justin Strongoli (59:50.618)
We’re not finishing them, but get done with our first couple series at the end of this year. And then next year start making children’s music. And this is not for like profit or anything. This is just, you know, a creative, you know, yeah, just something for fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:03.121)
Just something for fun. Create an outlet, I like it. Justin, I’ve got one more question for you, but before I ask it, I wanna do two things. 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, Justin, what would that be?

Justin Strongoli (01:00:21.104)
Yeah, that’s a great question. our phone number, that’s the best way. We can call and we text. So our phone number, 330-310-8664. And that is the best way to get ahold of us. Once again, you can email us, get ahold of us on our Facebook website, all that kind of stuff. But we found people really like just being able to have it on their phone, to text. So that is the best way.

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:48.965)
That’s great. Yeah, the phone number that is here on your website, that’s the one people can actually text with you as well. So that we’ll say it again. It’s 330-310-8664. People love to text now. That’s so much easier than a phone call. So yeah. So last question for you, Justin. I’m curious, how do you see the early childhood education space evolving in the next few years? What do you think the big changes are that

Justin Strongoli (01:00:54.17)
Cool.

Justin Strongoli (01:01:00.452)
Yeah, yeah, that’s what I say.

Justin Strongoli (01:01:15.784)
that’s a great question. I’ve thought about that and I just want to say the first thing that came to my mind and that is that eventually it will have to where only the high quality ones will be around. And here’s why I think that. I think that toddler preschool and pre-K programs are going to be free for families.

Schools are going to start offering them for free. You’re already starting to see it happen. quite frankly, it should be. That’s the truth. Because it’s tough, man. We’re everyone getting squeezed on all sides. I think everyone’s feeling it. I know I am. Our businesses, I know our parents are. That’s why I do not raise rates on parents. I’ve heard a million people say I’m the only one that doesn’t do that. I refuse.

the raise rates on parents. And so I think everyone’s getting squeezed. So anyways, I think that there’s gonna be a big federal law that will eventually, or mandate whatever, how you wanna put it, that’s gonna make it, or a lot of funding that’s gonna make it to where schools will be able to expand and offer those kind of things for free. So therefore, a couple of things are gonna happen. Number one, those lower level daycares that are just daycares.

are not going to exist anymore because you’re not going to go to that lower level daycare if you can get one for free. However, you always have private schools that are just a notch ahead in terms of quality and education and a lot of other areas that are going to exist and be able to thrive. And that’s where Ribbon Hall is really going to get its niche. That’s one thing. Also charter schools are going to be even more prevalent than what they are now.

And so that’s what I believe. I believe that in the next couple years, you’re going to see schools offer free preschool, pre-K, and toddler programs. Lower levels will disappear. High quality ones will continue to thrive.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:27.195)
And like you said, Ribbon Hall is well positioned to be one of those higher level private schools if this does come to pass. Well, Justin, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Justin Strongoli (01:03:30.766)
Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Strongoli (01:03:41.732)
Thank you, Anthony. Thank you so much for reaching out and having me on this show. can’t wait to check it out.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:49.201)
All right, folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.