From Silicon Valley to Early Education: Sanjay Gehani’s Journey of Impact

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 (00:00.112)
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 Codaspote, and today’s guest is Sanjay Gahani, managing partner, CFO, and CRO of Building Kids Worldwide.

They are a franchised early childhood education center with a presence in multiple states. Their vision is to touch the lives of 1 million children through a network of preschools and their nonprofit organizations building futures worldwide. 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. Their website is buildingkidsschool.com and kids is spelled with a Z.

buildingkidsschool.com. Now, before starting in the early childhood education space, Sanjay held a broad range of management positions at Xilinx Inc, where he was responsible for partnerships that influenced $700 million lifetime revenue for the company. Well, hear about how Sanjay won a landslide victory for Foster City, City Council, and how that led to him becoming the first mayor of Indian descent in the city. He was born in Chile.

raised in California and speaks four languages. He holds a bachelor’s in electrical engineering and an MBA in marketing and leading organizations. 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 cashflow by implementing one of our proprietary programs.

Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. Now, back to our guest today, the CFO of Building Kids School, Sun J. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Sanjay (02:11.757)
Thanks for the opportunity Anthony. It’s good to see you.

Anthony Codispoti (02:15.064)
So before we get started on your story, I wanted to mention for the listeners that we previously had your business partner on the show, Vanita Bhandari. And after listening to this episode, I highly recommend everybody go and check out Vanita’s episode because you’ll hear her story and I’m sure a little bit of a different perspective on some of the topics that we’ll cover here today with Sanjay. Okay, so Sanjay, you started out in corporate America. You had a pretty long and successful career with a company called Xilix, a semiconductor company. Is that right?

Sanjay (02:45.178)
Yeah, FPGAs, reprogramable chips at the time,

Anthony Codispoti (02:48.44)
Okay, so how did you find your way from a tech-heavy industry into the childcare space?

Sanjay (02:55.279)
Wow, I had a son. My wife gave birth to our baby boy in October of 2012. I took some time off of work. when I went back to work, I found myself in Munich. I used to travel to Europe and Asia about 17 weeks out of the year at that time. And I was taking a walk after a long day of meetings. And I remember thinking about how my parents used to be.

at my little league games and how they used to support me all the time, like in basketball, baseball, soccer, everything I was playing and in school and just, they were just always there for me. And that’s how I wanted to be for my son. I wanted to be there for him as well. But if I continued down the path that I was on, I wouldn’t have an opportunity to be there for about half of his life. And so I had that in mind and I came back, came back to work basically.

because what was on the forefront of my mind was paying my bills and providing for the family. so I had a conversation with my wife in about May of 2013, which was started out with us talking about preschools. And it ended with me saying, Hey, so isn’t this like, you know, really good time for us to start looking at preschools? And she said, yeah, you know, we should start, but it’s really tough to get into a good preschool. And I said, cool. So is that something you want to take on? And she gave me a kiss on my cheek and said,

Do you mind if you take this on? Because I haven’t slept for four hours straight since this kid’s been born. So I was like, win. And so I visited a few schools and then I visited a few more and I started bidding them. I went to like six or eight schools and I said, no way would I ever. I would if I had to and I absolutely want to. And any school that I absolutely wanted to put my son into had an 18 month wait list.

Anthony Codispoti (04:45.048)
Hmm.

Sanjay (04:48.817)
And so I started thinking about the difficult decisions that parents were making on a Friday visiting a school because on Monday they had to go to work and they needed to do something to ensure their child was in a safe and nurturing environment. So with that in mind, I actually just expanded my viewpoint and said, decide I’m going to just look at a few more schools, just kind of study the industry. And I ended up going to 50 different preschools and just try to test out my theory. And I kind of took it on because I had a little bit of time before I had to make a decision for my son.

know, fortunately for me, someone who’s known me since I was six years old, Vanita Bandari, had preschools. So I said, well, how can I go look at preschools and not go to hers? Because I’ve heard so many great things about building kids. And I went into that building kids school and I just fell in love with everything that they were doing. I mean, they children singing and dancing and smiling and the teachers were super professional. Staff was incredibly professional.

The vibe with the energy was fantastic. And I said, I put my son on the wait list, obviously 18 month wait list at that time. It was June of 2013 and Vanita happened to be in her office. And so I got a chance to sit down with her and I used to call her Vanita auntie because she’s a family friend. She’s known me since I was six years old, very close friend of my parents. And growing up in my home, all of our parents’ friends were called auntie and uncle. And so…

Now she said, now we’re doing business together, you gotta stop calling me auntie, so I don’t. But I sat down with her and we had a conversation and she said, you you’ve got five schools, six schools, like you’re making good money doing this for sure and you’re helping children. This is awesome. Like what’s the plan? And she said, I wanna touch the lives of 1 million children in my lifetime. And I was like, wow, that’s worth putting your time behind. I started looking at the numbers and I was like, what’s the plan to grow?

And she’s like, don’t have time to focus on that. I’m focused on quality operations. want to ensure a world-class experience for every child that comes in through our doors. And I was like, okay, great. Can I help you? Because I really want to be a part of this. I’m super inspired by what you’re doing. I know this feels right, sounds right. And I was what I would call a wantrepreneur. I wanted to do something. I’d have the courage to walk out of my career to do what an entrepreneur really does.

Anthony Codispoti (07:03.6)
Yeah.

Sanjay (07:10.406)
which I believe is spend a few years like most people won’t so you can spend the rest of your life like most people can. And I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready for that. But this is Colin. And so said, please let me be a part of it. And so we talked about it. And she’s like, look, I don’t need your money, but I could use your help. So you can invest with me, learn about this industry. And by the time your son starts here, if you don’t come on board, I’m returning your money with a little interest, just so it doesn’t cost you anything, but you’re not keeping an equity stake.

Anthony Codispoti (07:16.581)
Hmm.

Sanjay (07:39.922)
in our company or anything that we do together, unless you come on board full-time as a partner. Gave her a big hug, thanked her for the opportunity. Took it on as a project as I kept my day job and we almost doubled our footprint over the next 14 months. Sangeet, my other business partner, who is Vanita’s nephew, this is truly a family business. He was thinking along the same lines and he came from high tech and…

And so he was investing as well and he left his career. left my, I told my boss and in July of 2014, I said, Hey, look, you know, this is what I’ve been doing, you know, since, you know, the last year or so. And I think, you know, this is something I’m going to have to do later this year. So here’s my 90 day notice. But I think I got to do it. And he’s one, he’s actually one of my best friends. He gave me his full support. And I left and I started, we started in November.

In November of 2014, Vanita, Sangeetha and I sat down and touched the lives of one million children. How are going to do it? That’s how I got into preschools.

Anthony Codispoti (08:46.308)
This is a great story. So I’ve got a few things I want to impact. first one is your comment about, I decided to go look at 50 daycares. Now this is not normal behavior, even for a parent who is hyper concerned about their child and wants the best for them. So when you made the decision to go and look at 50 daycares, five zero, not 15, five zero, 50 daycares.

Sanjay (08:57.172)
Ha

Sanjay (09:09.929)
Yep. Yes. Nope. Yep. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (09:14.052)
Was it already in the back of your mind that this was a business venture for you? You had an idea here or did that not sprout until you sat down with Benita?

Sanjay (09:23.573)
No, it didn’t sprout. I didn’t really fully sprout until I sat down with Vanita, but looking at my behavior before, maybe subconsciously something was pulling me towards it. And looking at 50 schools wasn’t the way a normal parent would because it wasn’t really for my son that I kept saying no and then was looking for a yes. At one point, it was really more about studying the market, scanning the environment, really thinking about it from a business perspective. Is there opportunity here?

testing out my hypotheses that parents are making really difficult decisions and putting their children in substandard environments, not because they want to, but because they have to, because there is no other opportunity for them. And so I got attracted to that and just really wanted to understand what I was feeling and thinking, could I actually prove it? And so that’s kind of what drove me for the 50.

Anthony Codispoti (10:17.146)
That makes sense. You were approaching it from a business perspective. A parent looks at a few, five, maybe 10, maybe. A business person looks at 50, because I really want to understand the full landscape of the market. OK, so you went into building kids. You saw what Vanita was doing. You fell in love with it. What specifically did you fall in love with? What did you see there that you weren’t seeing at the other 49 daycares that you checked?

Sanjay (10:22.965)
That’s right. Maybe.

Sanjay (10:29.782)
No.

Sanjay (10:45.942)
No, you know, and to be fair, Anthony, I mean, there are a lot of phenomenal preschools and daycare centers that I went into that had similar aspects of professionalism, of care for the children. Absolutely, they were there. But I think seeing how naturally children are attracted to music, dance, theater, the mimicking of adults and other children to help them adjust to the world around them.

And seeing that in play with the teachers and with the other children and how the children were collaborating, to me, I just saw a wealth of life experiences, like things that, you know, working well with others towards a common goal, gaining this confidence about performing, you know, in front of other children and adults. Just kind of seeing that really resonated with me just, and maybe because

of the sports I played growing up and where you do that in front of people watching, that I kind of connected with that. And so this is just a different way of it. But I think it’s also things that you can’t really replicate in an operations manual, the culture, the spirit of the people that are there, how they’re working together, the team that she formed, the team that she formed over and over again. Like she was, then once I learned more about it, she was replicating this culture.

And that’s we actually try to do as a franchisor. We tell all of our franchisees, you’re not gonna just be able to follow the operations manual and be extremely successful. Our most successful franchisees really pour their spirit and their soul into the culture of the campus. So that way parents can feel it when they walk in. So that was something that I definitely felt. it was the people too.

Anthony Codispoti (12:34.894)
And so it sounds like you were also really attracted to this idea of touching the lives of 1 million kids worldwide. mean, everybody gets out of bed because they want to paycheck or, know, as a business owner, you want to grow your business. want to, it has to be profitable. You want to make money. But I have to imagine what a cool underlying current to really get you out of bed on those days where things seem tough and aren’t going super smooth to have this sort of.

Sanjay (12:41.178)
Totally. Totally.

Anthony Codispoti (13:02.488)
North Star, this guiding star to say, here’s our bigger purpose beyond the money.

Sanjay (13:08.086)
without a doubt, Anthony. I it almost like she shook my focus. you know, the things I was thinking about and that I really, you know, felt were important with regards to the time that I spent away from the family. I I always describe myself as a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a friend, now a small business owner, former public servant. But even when I was a son, a brother, husband, father, friend,

corporate American, the time I spent away from the family was focused on a certain thing. And when she said that, it almost replaced it. It just was like, why am I doing this? Yes, I need to provide for the family. But if I could replace that need or that or replace it with another source, wouldn’t I be much happier doing this? And what and what I’ve learned Anthony’s whether you touch the life of one child or a million.

I, that energy is bottomless. I can always tap back into it and feel great about what we’re doing here. The numbers are arbitrary. Yes, it sounds great. Yes, it’s something that we’re shooting for. It’s, you know, it’s visionary. But even if we fell 900,000 short of that number or 990,000 short of that number, helping one child see for the first time, helping a child hear for the first time, helping an orphan and abandoned child.

or helping a child with juvenile diabetes for the money we dedicate there. These are things that Venita was thinking. And she shared those and I internalized them and Sangeet internalized them, but this really came from Venita. I always do have a deep appreciation for her for that because yeah, it absolutely became a North Star for what I wanted to get done.

Anthony Codispoti (14:57.734)
So talk a little bit more about what the plan is to be able to touch so many lives. You mentioned helping children with vision loss, helping children with diabetes. So is it giving to certain charities? How do you guys sort of think about achieving that 1 million?

Sanjay (15:14.551)
No, absolutely. It’s not just a piece of it. The nonprofit arm Building Futures Worldwide, a 501c3 that Vanita started, is a piece of that touching the lives of 1 million children. And within that piece, we work with the different charities that, like you said, Anthony, that kind of focus on these different initiatives. And then we provide the funds. Vanita actually is deeply involved in overseeing

the deployment of those funds, as well as the children that are benefiting from those efforts. And that’s one piece. The other piece of it is our company-owned campuses. Vanita, Suneetha and I are partners in eight campuses. We’re helping children and families every day. And then the third piece is franchising. As a franchisor, we’re always looking to welcome in amazing people that want to leave a legacy in their community for their family by helping children.

develop in a world-class environment and also generate generational wealth for their families and live in that quadrant, we’re looking for those amazing people to join our franchise family and grow with us. So through the franchising work that we do, we’re able to expand further than just the corporate locations that we.

Anthony Codispoti (16:33.104)
And so the 5013C, the nonprofit, where does the funding come?

Sanjay (16:38.059)
It comes from the profits of the franchising business. So we take building kids worldwide. Yes. No.

Anthony Codispoti (16:42.374)
completely and totally. No other outside funding sources? Wow. Please continue.

Sanjay (16:49.166)
Yeah, yeah, and we dedicate, yeah, we take 25 % of our profits from building kids worldwide and we route it right to building futures worldwide.

Anthony Codispoti (16:57.104)
Wow.

Anthony Codispoti (17:01.146)
That’s significant. That’s really putting your money where your heart is.

Sanjay (17:02.681)
Yeah, no, was a, Yeah, yeah, and Vanita is the real reason for that. Absolutely, it was her idea and it was an incredible idea and I’m grateful that she brought it to life and I’m grateful that we’re all breathing life into it.

Anthony Codispoti (17:19.802)
That’s awesome. I feel that energy. Now something else you said, you doubled the footprint and the first 14 months that you were taking this on as a side project. Did I hear that right?

Sanjay (17:30.401)
We did through the investments and Vanita’s leadership and guidance because Sangeet and I didn’t have the experience in early childhood education. She was our mentor, right? So she, she, yes. Yeah. She gave us the upper nail. Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (17:39.942)
Collectively, the three of you as a team doubled the footprint in 14 months. Yes, let’s give credit in the appropriate places here. So it’s all three of you together. It’s still a rather impressive feat. What did you say? She was at five locations before, so now she’s at 10? Okay.

Sanjay (17:56.461)
Well, so video and I’ll have this discussion. She says there were a few more. I recall five, she’ll say seven, but we ended up. And so that’s why I always stick with the number that I recall, but, we ended up with 10 in 14 months. So from my, from my perspective and on, and candidly that wasn’t some Keith and I bring in opportunities to the table. was Vanita teaching us on how to identify opportunities, finding some opportunities.

Anthony Codispoti (18:02.79)
Okay. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti (18:09.327)
Okay.

Sanjay (18:23.146)
us doing some of the legwork on those opportunities to learn about how to assess a preschool, getting some of those skills and building that in and then working with her so that we could invest alongside with her and then expand our footprint.

Anthony Codispoti (18:38.296)
Okay, so did she already have these places picked out? Because I mean to go from whether it’s five or seven to three new locations in 14 months, that sounds pretty fast. You’ve got to identify a location, you’ve got to do some kind of a build out, you’ve got to do your marketing, you’ve got to get you know it’s staffed etc. That seems like a pretty quick time.

Sanjay (18:55.812)
Yeah, yeah. So a lot of those locations were not new starts. And that’s part of our flexible business model that still exists today. Acquisition and conversion of private preschools. So we acquired schools that were already operational that had staff, and we assessed them before acquisition about how building kids and our model would enhance the experience of the children that were there without changing it too much that parents that were attracted to that school from the beginning.

Anthony Codispoti (19:03.002)
Okay.

Sanjay (19:24.591)
would see in benefit from us coming in and enhancing the experience and not directly changing it too much. And so we found that, so those opportunities came up and then we were able to move on those pretty quickly and expand our footprint.

Anthony Codispoti (19:38.544)
So let’s say I’m a parent, I’m looking for a daycare in one of the areas where we can find a building kids, either corporate owned or franchise location. What am I gonna notice that is maybe different or special about the experience for my child?

Sanjay (19:53.596)
Well, there’s a lot. If you were to walk into a building kids campus, let’s take, for example, you’ve got infants all the way up until five years old on the campus. Now all franchisees have flexibility to provide services for infants and toddlers and after schoolers up until sixth grade, but all of our campuses provide services ages two through five. Let’s say you’re gonna walk into this campus. And as you walk into the campus,

You know, what you would first experience if you were to walk into the infant room is there’s music being played. The children are, that as they start sitting up, that there’s activities where they’re purposely grabbing for something, building that hand-eye coordination. The music’s being played because it accelerates neurological development. So we want to bring that in early. As the children start sitting up and eating on their own, there’s specific tables that you’ll see these

you know, amazing young children in which they’re reaching out and they’re grabbing little pieces of food and they’re eating it. Again, accelerating that development, that motor skill development, both fine and gross. Now, as the children start moving around a little bit more and walking and balancing, you would walk into a classroom and you’d see them dancing to different types of music. Not only are they learning about different types of cultures and different types of music,

and hearing that and processing that in different types of beats. But they’re also gaining a lot of skills in just being able to balance better as they’re dancing to these different types of music. So we’re generating some more gross motor skill development. Let’s start holding things and being able to hold a pencil or being able to hold a paintbrush, we start introducing the fine arts.

it strengthens their fingers, it strengthens the hand-eye coordination connection, know, all that starts happening. Now, as that’s happening, as they’re starting to develop, there is a developmentally appropriate curriculum that’s being deployed in this incredibly engaging space for our children that they don’t know about. And it is scaffolded throughout the time that they’re with us.

Sanjay (22:10.546)
So it kind of builds on itself. But then there’s this integration of a few different things that you won’t see anywhere else. Music, dance, theater, it’s not just something that’s done around circle time. Two music classes, two dance classes, theater class, all of our children are learning Spanish. But it’s not just that. Our children are getting up on stage and they’re performing Broadway style productions at two and a half years old, right? So what are they getting, right?

Anthony Codispoti (22:35.216)
Hehehehehe

Sanjay (22:40.287)
besides being one of the cutest things you’ll ever see. These children get up on stage and my son’s first experience was, it lasted about 45 seconds. Saw my parents, my wife and I in the front row, ran off stage crying. He was like two and a half years old, sat in my lap, felt very comfortable and ended with him and his mom, my wife running up on stage and finishing up the dance at the end of it. Six months later, he was singing his own solo. So what are they getting, right?

Anthony Codispoti (23:07.393)
All right.

Sanjay (23:09.266)
they’re learning about collaborating with their friends towards a common goal through the rehearsal process. And they’re getting a tremendous amount of confidence by performing in front of people that could be twice their size, right? That’s like you and I, Anthony, performing in front of 12 footers, right? You know, mean, it’s so, so they’re getting that. that’s happening. In addition to that, thanks to Venita’s ingenuity, thanks to Venita’s innovation,

Anthony Codispoti (23:24.752)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Sanjay (23:36.127)
She’s also rolled out learning through life experiences, LTLE. This is something you won’t see in other schools. I’ll give you an example, right? There’s like 20 to 30 different of these models, but I’ll give you one example. One these examples is there’s a grocery store and it’s a setting, it’s a grocery store setting that children can walk into. Small one, like, you know, maybe like six feet by three feet type of setting, but it’s got space for one child to be the clerk.

and a child to walk in with instructions on picking out healthy foods, has a little bit of money in her hand. She walks in, makes intelligent decisions about foods that she should be eating, avoids all the bad ones, walks over to the clerk, says, I’d like to check out now, gives the clerk money. The clerk’s got to figure out how much to add up, how much to give back to her and change. She needs to know that I got the appropriate change back. At the meantime, she used to make some eye contact.

interact with the clerk, maybe ask them how their day is, things like that, talk to them a little bit, and then walk out. Very simple thing, and just one example of an entire curriculum that Vanita’s brought forth to all of our schools. You won’t see that. You won’t see that anywhere else. So as you’re going up, this is happening as you’re getting up to five years old. And now, as you’re getting older,

we backtrack in the academic expectations of the elementary schools that our children are going to be going into so that we exceed emotional, social, cognitive, linguistic, and physical development. But we also prepare them academically for elementary schools so their transition’s smoother. So these children are learning about math and science through music and dance, and these are things that you don’t normally see, and definitely don’t see in a daycare that doesn’t have any curriculum. You won’t see it there.

And then even if you elevate yourself to a preschool that have curriculum, or have curricula, you’re not gonna see this anywhere else. And I can say this with confidence, because we’re open in eight states now, and it’s not just California, we’re not seeing it anywhere that we’re playing.

Anthony Codispoti (25:42.296)
Yeah. Yeah. What you’re describing sounds really amazing. And you’re talking about that grocery store experience. I’m like, wait, did I lose focus? Is he talking about preschoolers? Because that seems like a whole lot to ask from them. But I think it’s great. Start young. And if you can sort of teach them those people skills and the math skills and making change and the eye contact and, you know, the chit chat, the conversation, it’s fantastic.

Sanjay (25:53.435)
Right?

Ha ha ha ha!

Sanjay (26:10.078)
No, thank you. Thank you, Anthony. And yeah, and it is. And that’s what’s really exciting, especially, you know, coming out of the pandemic, when we saw children that hadn’t engaged socially in a long time, you know, and you could see this huge gap and to be able to help them reacclimate to things that we feel are incredibly important in the development of a human being.

Yeah, was, these were things that were leveraged, that were helpful, that we saw in the children that were coming into building kids to kind of get them back on track.

Anthony Codispoti (26:52.112)
So for somebody who’s looking for perhaps a business opportunity, franchise opportunity, what would be attractive about the building kids opportunity to them?

Sanjay (26:56.618)
Mmm.

Sanjay (27:02.272)
Lowest investment just from a business side, lowest investment, highest margins of the industry. All of our schools are branded the same and none of them look the same. We’re open in churches, standalone building, retail center, converted home, business complex on the first floor. At the end of the year, we’re going to be opening an apartment complex on the first floor where they have some commercial space there. Our smallest campus is about 1500 square feet, 27 children.

Our largest campus is over 350 children. There’s a tremendous amount of flexibility in our business model. And not only the size of the school or where you open, but also in how you open. And if you want to buy a piece of dirt and build a world-class campus and build up some equity in a building while you’re building your business, go for it. On the other end of the spectrum, you want to buy a school that’s for sale and accelerate your ROI.

Anthony Codispoti (27:33.969)
my gosh.

Sanjay (27:58.526)
and transfer and convert it to building kids, go for it. In between, you can remodel a space that, as I shared with you earlier, whether it’s church, standalone building, retail center, all these different physical spaces, we can modify and customize the experience for children in various physical spaces. And what that allows for, Anthony, is the focus to be on the franchisee. In franchising, generally speaking, across our country,

It’s one type of model, one type of franchisee, and we’re gonna marry the two. And that’s it. We’re gonna keep doing that. And that’s incredibly beneficial for franchisors because you get things like average unit volume, you get an idea of how much you’re gonna make from each franchisee, and that’s great. But Vanita Sangeet and I made a commitment a long time ago that we’re gonna do business with people we love to break bread with. And those people that are a good cultural fit for us,

come with varying levels of investment capacity. So we’re not going to say no to somebody who doesn’t have a higher level of investment capacity just because they don’t have that. We’re going to say yes, so long as you can meet the minimum threshold. And that allows for a tremendous amount of flexibility in our model, which other franchisors cannot provide or have not provided in this industry.

Anthony Codispoti (29:24.117)
What geographies are you guys looking to expand into?

Sanjay (29:28.099)
Shoot, Texas, which we’ve just picked up our fifth franchisee, we just welcomed our fifth franchisee into our building kids family from Texas, Chicago, Arizona, Washington, Florida. These are some of the markets that, some of the areas that we feel we can definitely excel in.

We’ve been doing pretty well in California thus far, so we’ll continue to grow here. But yeah, these are some of the other states that we think might go.

Anthony Codispoti (30:05.242)
What is it about those markets that you find appealing?

Sanjay (30:09.154)
I think, you know, what we’re finding is the demand obviously is there. We’re not seeing a lot of schools that are coming up for sale, which we really like. We’d like to see that. What we’re also seeing is that there’s a tremendous amount of knowledge from the parent’s perspective about the value of early childhood education. So there’s less education for us to do about the importance of why you’re sending your child to a building kids.

There’s more, thank God you’re here type of mentality. There also are competitors are there. And I like that. There’s 900 daycares and preschools in the Bay area, within a 30 mile radius of where I’m speaking to you from. I love competition. so, well, yeah, exactly. Exactly. You have to continue to innovate and you have to continue to provide value.

Anthony Codispoti (30:45.68)
Mm.

Anthony Codispoti (30:55.834)
What do you love about it? Keeps you sharp.

Sanjay (31:07.171)
You have to continue to be a partner to parents and the development of their children. It gives us an opportunity to really prove to our parents that select us that they made a great decision in picking us. But I also, I like winning. And to be honest, like, you know, I just, like winning. And so, you know, that’s why I don’t like to compete with my family. Like I’d rather just compete with people I don’t know.

and you know and so i i i think it is a lot of positive reinforces that come with it when we when we lose i was looking at is not pretty to improve so you know learn about where we’re falling short test ourselves out you know things like that that’s what i like about

Anthony Codispoti (31:52.966)
So you’re competitive. You’ve mentioned participating in sports multiple times. What were your sports? Were you any good? Tell us about your career there.

Sanjay (32:01.956)
I think I was good. I was good to a degree. I played baseball, basketball, soccer was my off season sport for 12 years growing up from the age of five. I was an all league athlete in baseball and basketball in the men peninsula, the Bay area. I got a bunch of division two letters. I got recruited by the Dodgers, but decided to go to college instead. But even the Dodgers recruitment, it was more of a conversation. It wasn’t like you’re going to go pro. was going to go, I was going go to the minors. I was a pitcher for baseball.

Anthony Codispoti (32:21.296)
Wow.

Sanjay (32:32.382)
I was too skinny. I was 6’4″, but I wasn’t big enough to, and didn’t have enough of a quality jump shot to go above Division II in basketball. And my athletic career ended in Division II college where my fastball tapped out at 89 miles an hour. And, you know, in the late 1900s when I was playing, it was, it wasn’t good enough. And so…

Anthony Codispoti (33:00.282)
Yeah.

Sanjay (33:01.43)
But it taught me a lot. And, you other than being like probably one of the biggest challenges I ever went through in my life, that and maybe one or two other things that kind of happened to me. You know, that was one of the big ones, you know, just losing my identity at that age. Like I wasn’t mature enough to really handle it from people like interviewing me, being in the papers, being recognized for who I was, having to define me.

Anthony Codispoti (33:18.533)
No.

Sanjay (33:28.269)
you know, the people cheering for me, even though they were smaller numbers, it was still exciting for me to the silence of it all, to feeling like I kind of lost my identity a little bit was a pretty big challenge for me at that age. And I just took that competitive spirit and just applied it to my degree and then just applied it to my career and then just applied it to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. you know, and I can, you know, I’m still connected to that kid that I was, you know, and.

Anthony Codispoti (33:35.983)
Mmm.

Sanjay (33:58.235)
I just try to keep them alive.

Anthony Codispoti (34:00.582)
I want to touch on this a little bit more because you bring up something that I find really interesting and it’s something that I’ve gone through before. When I’ve exited a business venture in the past, my identity was very much attached to that business that I had started, that I had built, that people had come to know me for. Right. That’s, Anthony, he’s the guy that does that. And then when I exited the business, that wasn’t part of my identity anymore. And if I didn’t have something new to latch onto the next

business venture, in my case, it was very destabilizing. And it’s really hard for me to put it into words for people who haven’t experienced it before. But what you’re describing with the sports career sounds like almost the same thing. It’s, you know, this was your identity. This is what people identify. This is what you showed up in the papers for. People are cheering for you. And then all of sudden it goes away. And it’s like, who is Sanjay now? Sanjay used to be this guy.

Sanjay (34:54.457)
over.

Yeah!

Anthony Codispoti (34:58.916)
SunJay was a basketball player. SunJay was a baseball player. Now who’s SunJay? Yeah.

Sanjay (35:04.912)
Yeah, and I love that Anthony because, and I didn’t learn this in my 20s, but I think I picked it up in my 40s about being present and the importance of being present. How do you get there? And I think for me at least in my personal journey, and this is probably more philosophical and spiritual, but for me, it was more about who am I in here? Not what you see or your interpretation of me or,

Am I memorable or not to you based on what I’ve done? And that’s why even when people ask me, what do you do? I give them the answer of who I am. I’m a son, I’m a brother, I’m a husband, I’m a father. These are the things that matter to me the most. Even my relationship with my team here as a small business owner, knowing that people that come into work every day chose us, choose me, choose Vanita, choose Sangeet, choose their teammates.

I respect them so much for coming in and giving me 100%, 100 % of the time. That’s all I ask for. Just give me 100%, 100 % of the time. We’re all gonna make mistakes, but when you’re out of here, I promise you that I’ll give you 100%, 100 % of the time, meaning that I’m not gonna bother you. While you’re here, well, let’s do it. While you’re not, you’re not. Go be a mom, go be a dad, go be a brother, go be a sister, because those relationships are critically important. And I think…

These are all stepping stones for me, Anthony, like my failures and other things kind of corrected me into that maybe. And even some of my successes reinforced my internal belief that I arrived at in my early forties. But looking back on it, you know, I think I was, I felt like I’d lost, like you said, you know, when you vet, when you exited out of a successful business and you’re like, well that’s who I was. Who am I now? Right. And I think what I came to the realization is I’m still the same person.

I’m just doing something different.

Anthony Codispoti (37:03.024)
For you, who you are isn’t defined by what you do. It used to be, but you’ve made a transition to when people ask you what you do, you actually tell them who you are. I’m a son, I’m a brother, I’m a father. These are the roles that I play in personal relationships.

Sanjay (37:07.131)
Right. Yeah.

Sanjay (37:13.499)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. How I spend my time.

Sanjay (37:22.193)
how I choose to spend my time, how I choose to spend the present.

Anthony Codispoti (37:27.866)
So for a little while you chose to spend your time in politics. Tell me how that came about.

Sanjay (37:34.875)
there was a bully. So yeah, yeah, pretty much. I don’t know if he was always that way, but he just came across that way, unfortunately, with our community. And I’d come back, I’d moved back to the community that I was raised in, in Foster City in 2017. And my wife and I decided that we wanted to raise our son in the same village I was raised in.

Anthony Codispoti (37:37.528)
Okay, schoolyard bully, huh?

Sanjay (38:03.498)
So we came back and in June of 2018, was just, I was hanging out with a friend of mine and one of his wife’s friends came in and she was very, like she was crying. And I said, what happened here? She’s like, well, this council member just yelled at me. I was like, what’s a, what does a council member do? What exactly do they do that they’re yelling at you? And he’s like, well, you know, they make decisions for the city and

They want me to support one of their candidates. And said, I couldn’t. And so he yelled at me in front of a bunch of people. And I was like, wait, this is happening? Like where my mom hangs out, where my wife is, where my sister, what are we talking about? Like somebody who has been elected by us is abusing us. Like that doesn’t seem to add up. And so I started doing a little bit more homework. It kind of intrigued me, you know, about what was going on. And, and I started seeing some of that behavior.

And I started thinking about the culture that our city staff was probably subjected to by a few elected officials in which what this staff’s trying to do is create an exceptional quality of life for all of us in this community. And instead they’re dealing with these types of behaviors from elected officials. And I said, wouldn’t it be great if the community just stood up and said, no, we don’t know. We’re going to.

We’re gonna have transparent, respectful, and independent representation. We may not agree on everything, but we’re gonna have that as our culture. So I thought about it and kind of forgot about it. And then the elections came up and I was just, I was on Facebook or something and someone had put this post up, hey, we’re looking for really good candidates because we really need to change our, for city council.

Anthony Codispoti (39:57.242)
And this was candidates for what? city council at this point. Okay.

Sanjay (40:00.905)
Yeah, for city council, just local governance. There’s five council members that drive the policy for the city. And I saw that and I remember sitting there and I don’t know how long I was sitting on my bed for when I saw that, but I almost like it took whatever time it took to see the next four years. And I was like, okay, like I want to do this. And my parents were outside, my wife was outside and it took me like two minutes to walk up to them and say, this is what I want to do. What do you think?

And my sister, well, so my parents were like, dude, you sound like you’ve already made the decision. I’m like, I literally just thought about this like three minutes ago. Like, I’m just telling you, this is how I feel though. They’re like, no, we know you. It sounds like you’ve already made a decision. We totally support you. And my wife’s like, can you handle this and building kids and everything? Cause it was a part-time thing. So we talked a little bit through that and I was like, well, I’m gonna have to talk to Vanita and Sangeet and ask for their support. But yeah, you’re absolutely right. And you talk to them and.

My son was like, yeah, go for it. Yeah, this could be awesome. And my sister’s like, you’re born for this. So I was like, okay. I came in, I talked to Vanita and Sengeeth and they said, dude, absolutely. You gotta do it. We’ll support you. We’ll pick up the slack. We’ll work with you. Just go do it, go do it. And so I got this tremendous amount of support. I filled out my paperwork two days before it was due. And I put my feet up on my desk going, man, I got like two months before this election.

This is plenty of time and everyone here has got like short term memory. You know, I just got to come through in the next, you know, four weeks before the election, make a big splash and I’ll be good to go. That was on a Thursday, the following Monday, all my, all my competitive competing candidates signs were out throughout the city. And I was like, I’m hosed. It’s over. Like I’ve got a platform. I don’t have anything. No one knew me. None of this stuff, blah, blah.

Anthony Codispoti (41:46.416)
Okay.

Sanjay (41:54.417)
Long story short, because of the grace of many amazing people and because of the support of this incredible community, I got elected, I say we because I really believe it’s more, it was this entire organization that was formed. But I got elected with the most votes in the history of Foss City elections up until that time. And it doesn’t happen. My father had tears in his eyes the night of the election. It was like tonight.

the night of the election, just in 2018. And just like tonight, and I sat at my election party and my father gave me a hug and he was, you know, as a son of an immigrant and he was like, man, I can’t believe you, you went out and you tried this and I’m so proud of you, but I just don’t want you to get, know, just, if it doesn’t work out, just don’t get disappointed. Just don’t get disappointed if it doesn’t work out. You’re going up against, you know, planning commissioners and people that do this for a living and all this stuff.

guys like you it just doesn’t necessarily work out if you come out of the know from the side and we’ll try again yeah totally always always been there behind me and always put his arm around me and so and my mom’s like now this is happening that was it

Anthony Codispoti (42:55.373)
Dad’s trying to protect you. He’s trying to protect you. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (43:08.09)
So essentially, you got to connect the dots for us though. Two months out, you didn’t have anything. You didn’t have a platform. Everybody’s signs are in the yards. They’re light years ahead of where you were. How did you not only close the gap to win, but close the gap to win by a landslide? What were those in between points? What happened? How did people get to know you? How did you get out there?

Sanjay (43:27.948)
I think it stems from authenticity. think that was a source of it. That was a source of my energy that I’m going to walk out and tell my community that I was raised in this community and I don’t stand for this type of behavior. And yes, we’re going to deal with all these different issues that I had identified. I had to go out and do the homework. So, mean, a lot of sleepless nights for the first two and a half weeks studying years of council meetings to really get just get

get comfortable with what political situation we’re in, move away from the emotional one about the culture and changing all of that. Let’s get the foundational policies down, right? And so then I could supplement that with the appropriate energy level that, know, if you stand with me, we’re gonna change this whole thing. This is how we’re do it. And by the way, this is the platform that I stand on. So if that resonates with you, I’m your guy. You know, and you’re gonna have to trust me that I’ve never done this before, but I got what it takes to get it done.

And so that trust was there and I was raised in this community. And so, you know, there were people’s doors that I knocked on where, you know, I got hugs and a lot of support and said, dude, you know, yes, we’ve been, this is a breath of fresh air. And I think it was a matter of timing also, but more importantly, there were people that came out and said, I’m going to stand with you and I’m going to help you and I’m going to help us. And it wasn’t about me. It was about what we stood for.

and their trust that they were gonna put in me to go out there represent us. That’s what it was all about. And yeah, man, it just clicked.

Anthony Codispoti (45:04.262)
So how did you deliver the message? Are you on podcasts? Are you on the street corner? Are you organizing events? like, okay.

Sanjay (45:12.713)
knocking door to door on, we did a few videos that got seen by quite a few people in the community. We even did a video where my wife and I were actually talking at one point, people were defaming, we were like just putting weird stuff on my signs and destroying them and the people that didn’t want me to win. There was another group of people that were very much in favor of the same type of behavior because they were getting things done from there.

elected officials that they wanted to get done. They didn’t want to lose that power. And so they were doing things and my wife and I were having a conversation about playing fair. And she’s like, well, you know, we’ve got a bunch of friends here. Why don’t we just take out all their sides? You know, I was like, well, no, no, we can’t do what they’re doing. Right. And my son was in another room. And at the time, you know, he had just turned six and five, he was almost turning six and

And you remember coming in and going, hey, bubba, like, what’s going on? And why are they doing this to your signs? And I started talking about it. Long story short, we turned that into a video, a conversation with my son and I walking along one of the piers in Foster City, talking about the importance of playing fair, talking about the importance of standing up to this type of behavior and being held responsible for your own actions. That got seen by like 20,000 people in my community.

So it started resonating that, you know, he’s got a family, like he’s here with us. This is what Sanjay stands for. And, you know, by the grace of God, hard work, good luck. We ended up getting that council member recalled. The other council members that were along the same team eventually lost elections in subsequent years. have, yeah, it was crazy. It was a crazy time. I went through.

When I was in four years in council, we had seven city managers, which is like seven CEOs of your company. We had a change at the city attorneys, two chiefs of police, two fire chiefs, two public works directors, two park and rec directors. mean, it was just a revolving door. Then we threw in the pandemic, the fires in California. It was incredibly insane. It was insane. Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (47:20.614)
It’s a lot of turnover.

Anthony Codispoti (47:29.466)
What a hectic time for you to be there. And at some point you were mayor. Am I right?

Sanjay (47:34.454)
Yeah, yeah. was so in foster city, we get elected to city council and selected by our peers or vice mayor and mayor. And so I was honored by my, by my colleagues on council to be, I was a council member my first year vice mayor, my second year mayor, my third year, and then a council member my fourth year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We rotate. Yeah. We just, it’s, called a weak mayor. So there’s no

Anthony Codispoti (47:54.854)
Okay, so they’re one year terms at mayor. Is that how it works? Yeah.

Sanjay (48:02.256)
There’s no power to, from the mayor’s position where my vote counts as much as the council members or I can veto things, nothing like that. Everyone’s got the same power. I just run the meetings and I’m the face of the community and outside events. And I speak on behalf of the council to our community at events in our community.

Anthony Codispoti (48:25.414)
And so you had a four year term there on council. One of them was as vice mayor, one is mayor. Your term was up and you decided, okay, I’ve done my public duty and I’m going to go back to full time at building kids. Any thought of getting back into politics at a different level or?

Sanjay (48:28.602)
Yeah? Yeah?

Sanjay (48:43.299)
Well, in all fairness, I got tremendous support from Bonita and Sagit to continue if I wanted to. But I wanted to, instead of being a little bit of something for the rest of the world, I wanted to be the world for a few. And so I wanted to be a dad. And what I found during that time was I gave my son exposure to what it meant to be a part of the community. I made him

Anthony Codispoti (49:01.862)
Hmm.

Sanjay (49:10.547)
he could feel through me and my efforts and energies and just what we were talking about. became, he actually studied like everyone’s campaign. Like he just fell in love with like everything we were doing. And so he became a part of it. And so I felt like even though I was dedicating this time away from him, he was getting exposed to what it meant to be a part of something bigger. And so I felt that was justified, but the time is limited for me to spend time with my child. And, and by the time it was,

Anthony Codispoti (49:34.811)
Yeah.

Sanjay (49:39.761)
you know, that time it was 2022, he had just turned 10. I wanted to go back to being dad, coach. I wanted to coach Little League, you know, coaches basketball teams. And so that was really the drive and force where I said, no, this one term’s enough for now. I want to take all that time that I spent on serving my community. And I want to take that back. And I want to be a dad. I want to spend more time with my wife, with my parents, so getting older. I want that now.

and then kind of see how things go. The accountability, the responsibility, the public trust, incredibly attractive to me. Being held accountable to behave a certain way, to represent our community, it was such an honor. I would definitely, I’d want to do it again, but I think a few things have to settle up first. Things have to just take care of a few things first and then.

maybe dedicate myself again.

Anthony Codispoti (50:40.688)
So Sunjay, as we talked about in the pre-interview, I always like to ask a question about a particular challenge, either personally or professionally, that you’ve gone through, what that was like and lessons that you learned coming through the other side. And we did talk about the challenge of sort of losing your sports career early on, but I wanted to give you a chance in case there was something else that you wanted to give voice to.

Sanjay (51:03.901)
Sure, I mean, I’ve two quick ones, if that’s all right. One’s in corporate America and one was when I was on city council. I had every opportunity for growth when I joined Xilinx. In August 23rd of 1999, when I started my career there, within a year, they gave me a chance to write an article or write a part of our operations manual.

Anthony Codispoti (51:06.053)
Sure.

Absolutely.

Sanjay (51:31.346)
for a device that we were working on, Gigabit Transceivers, that got published. When that got published, I got a chance to go to Tokyo, be out there for a year, work with Fujitsu, NEC and Sony, come back in the sales, marketing, business development, operations, pricing. And the whole idea behind that was to give me exposure to all aspects of the business so could be an effective executive. had executive level relationships and I lost them all.

in 2009 and I was in middle of my MBA and I went from someone who was going to be a leader in the organization to one person speaking up for me and me keeping a job. And that was incredibly humbling. That was incredibly humbling because I really thought I was going to be a very young executive at Xilinx. you know, I felt like they gave me every chance to succeed and I was executing and delivering.

And when there was complete turnover of the entire executive staff, I lost all those relationships and I had a big bullseye on my back from people whose jobs I’d taken. People had competed against me and were still in the organization and weren’t very thrilled that I got the opportunities I got. And so, I bit my lip and just put myself back to work and whatever job that I got,

I worked hard at that and I put my faith that something will come around and if not, I’ll finish my MBA and I’ll get a job somewhere else. But I was very fortunate that a gentleman came around by the name of Dave Tokich and he came in as a senior director of partnerships. And not only did I fall in love with his energy and the way he carried himself and the human being that he is, but I fell in love with the way he.

the way he was doing his work and the work that he was doing. And so I remember talking to him in 2009, mid 2009, I just said, hey, Dave, I got my job that I’m doing, but if there’s anything that I can do to help you or the organization just on the side, just, you know, if you give me an opportunity to prove to you that I can do it and give me an opportunity to learn, I’d appreciate it. He gave me a few projects and then came up to me about six months after that and said, hey, you know, you want a shot?

Sanjay (53:57.917)
come on over and that kind of breathed, it was a breath of fresh air for my career again and I was able to move forward. And I guess what I learned from that is, even when times get tough, to just really lock down and just hug the people that you love and kind of just remember that your strength can come from within and there’s a lot. if you have people that love you, just cherish that because the rest of it’s extremely fragile.

So that was one lesson that I learned from that. That was a pretty tough time in my life. The other one was, you know, when I picked a fight with this bully and I thought, I, you know, that was on council and I won the election. I walked in like, hey man, this fight’s over. Like I won, this is over. And it wasn’t. And they tried to, they as in him and my perception, this is my perception only.

him and a few others try to take me out and the sense of destroy my credibility within the community. And they stated that I try to do some shady dealings and behind, you know, behind outside of the public eye and that I’d violated certain rules and regulations. They tried to get me removed from council. during that period of time, I had to

learn a very important lesson because, I have my friends tell me this, I have thin skin. So for me, if someone insulted me or my family, like there had to be something else that I had to do to overcome that by insulting them or whatnot growing up. And what this taught me as a council member, you can’t do that. So I had to learn, I had to keep my mouth shut for seven months.

Anthony Codispoti (55:51.738)
That’s not easy. When your integrity is being attacked, that’s not easy.

Sanjay (55:53.013)
It was brutal.

and my mom had to see it in the papers. And it was just, it was, was, was tough. It was painful. It was hurtful. It was painful. was frustrating. I exercised more. I just took it out. tried to, I always try to tear negative stuff into positive. I always try to do that. And so I try to like just keep pushing, pushing, pushing. And but, you know, fortunately, I think by

by putting my faith in those that put their faith in me and working with them and working with the community and working with, continuing doing the work of the community, I was able to work with organizations that recalled that council member and kind of broke apart that entire triumvirate and destroyed that. And then we were able to introduce an amazing culture at City Hall that was…

much more about support, about autonomy, accountability, way less about being yelled at for making mistakes and things like that and just being abused, which was incredibly rewarding because we were able to give back to the people that give our community so much from city.

Anthony Codispoti (57:12.87)
So let me see if I understand what happened here at a high level, Sanjay. You won the election. So now you’re a council member, but some of the remaining council members is probably as well as the one that you had just ousted. They’re coming after you. Okay. Well, but you won the election. Weren’t you replacing somebody then?

Sanjay (57:25.621)
But we didn’t house anybody there yet.

yes i would have some of those that are not there there was one person that was stepping up actually two people and there are a bunch of people running for the seat so the the three people that the team that they formed was based upon the results the election they picked up one had to add and then there are two others so they were out of five they were controlling the council and one of them was the bully

Anthony Codispoti (57:34.488)
Okay. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti (57:52.102)
Okay, so the people that were remaining, one of them is a bully, he comes after you, he starts making up some stuff, he’s saying some really bad things, he’s stuff written about you in the papers. This is hard to see. There’s probably a part of you that wants to swing back. You want to protect yourself, you want to defend yourself, but you came up with a different plan. You’re like, hey, there’s a process to get this guy recalled. I’m going to go through that process. Let’s just take the poison.

Sanjay (57:58.25)
Yep. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (58:21.794)
out of the council. Let’s just remove it altogether. That’s a bigger project than just snapping back at him, but the end result is way more positive. Did I understand all of that correctly?

Sanjay (58:36.086)
100 % right. And then it was a commitment to serve without regard for award. I said, I’m sitting there in this seat based on the trust that my friends and neighbors have put in me, and I’m going to serve without regard for award and put them first. And that’s easy to say when things are going well, but you find out what your values are when you get challenged. And when I got challenged, that’s what I committed to as opposed to my own feelings.

Anthony Codispoti (59:06.392)
Serve without regard for reward. That’s how you approached your public service. I like that. I’m to put it on a t-shirt.

Sanjay (59:12.086)
Yes, sir.

Sanjay (59:16.151)
I’m glad you’re keeping me on my path. Thank you for that compliment

Anthony Codispoti (59:22.028)
Absolutely. Sanjay, I just have one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. You’ve got an infectious energy. Maybe people are looking at, you know, they want to get you back into public service. Maybe they’re interested in the franchise opportunity. What’s the best way for people to connect?

Sanjay (59:30.914)
Thank you.

Sanjay (59:40.405)
The best way is just to reach out on buildingkids.com. Just set share your information with us. Just go to buildingkids.com. That’s kids with a Z. And if you submit, if you want to reach out to me, you can reach out to me there. You can send me an email, sonjgsanjayg at buildingkids with a Z.com. me an email. Happy to connect. I love meeting great people, Anthony.

You know, you’ve got great energy. I can’t thank you enough for giving me an opportunity to share our story and what we’re doing here on your platform. And congratulations on all of your success.

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:22.178)
I appreciate all those kind words and the honor has truly been mine, son Jay. So last question I have for you is, I kind of want your perspective on where you see the childcare industry going in the next couple of years. What do you see the big changes are there?

Sanjay (01:00:42.71)
Nationally, I think it’s a bit more, it’s gonna be interesting because we’ve had this conversation before, a decade ago, two decades ago, how a lack of affordable childcare or high quality childcare has not only implications on children and their development because they do develop better. we’ve got tremendous amount of studies that children are exposed to great programs at a very young age.

have better outcomes, but the impact it has on women in the workforce. Because we even saw this in the pandemic, the impact on women was completely unfair compared to us with regards to access to jobs, having to stay home with the children, things like that. So we’ve had this conversation before and we’re at that cusp again. So it’s very difficult. There’s a lot of fog in that crystal ball when you talk about where

nationally, we’re headed from a childcare perspective. But if you take a look at some of the messaging that’s been coming out with regards of it being a dialogue or at least a policy topic about the importance of affordable, high quality childcare, not just affordable childcare, but really, really driving that. You know, I think I think we’re having the right conversations. I think the deployment of that leaves a lot to be desired.

We’re seeing that whether it be in California and other states. It’s, know, some states are doing it right. Some states are not, you know. And so I think that we need to continue to have that conversation with our elected officials, educate them on the implications of the decisions that they’re making and keep the focus on children and families. And I think, you know, if we do a good job, if we actually do a good job of

creating opportunities for children to be exposed to exceptional world-class environments consistently between the ages of infancy and five, I think we’ll do a tremendous service to our country. The results will come, you know, 15, 17 years later, you’ll see great things from these children, not just because of the preschool that they went to, but partially because of the preschool that they went to.

Anthony Codispoti (01:02:52.559)
Love it.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:05.092)
love it. Sanjay, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Sanjay (01:03:11.966)
Thank you Anthony, thanks for the opportunity.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:14.522)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.