Day Care DNA

CHAPTER 5: FINDING YOUR NICHE Circumstances not on my side It was 2008 at the height of the “Great Recession.” Here I was opening a daycare. Who opens a daycare in the middle of a recession? See the hand going up over in the corner it’s mine. I remember a member of the church I pastored telling me it would make more sense for me to fix the holes in the parking lot than open a daycare center. Many people felt that person’s comment was a valid one. At the time there were approximately 15 daycares open all within 5 minutes from my location. There was a church with a huge building located across the street that had a daycare and a gymnasium! Yes, a full fledge gymnasium that was awesome at the time. Now keep in mind all I had to operate was an 8000-sq. ft. building compared to a 20,000 plus sq. ft. buildings across the street. To make matters worse in my favor I didn’t even have a playground. To this day that center doesn’t have a playground. All the odds said this would be another new business failure. According to businessknowhow.com 50% of all new businesses fail in the first year. 95% fail within the first 5 years. It looked like this daycare was going to end up in the new business graveyard. At least that was the vantage point of everyone except me. It’s not arrogance it’s confidence I remember someone remarked to me “All these daycares have the best of everything and you don’t even have a playground or a bus.” I replied “They don’t have everything.” The gentleman asked “What are they missing?” I said “They don’t have me!” The gentleman laughed and said “That’s very arrogant of you.” I stated “It’s not arrogance it’s confidence.” What this gentleman didn’t know was my story. He didn’t know I had been on my own since I was 16 due to my father committing suicide. He didn’t know I had been homeless. He didn’t know I had started a church literally under a tree. He didn’t know my story. This was nothing compared to the things I’d been through in my life but another opportunity. Notice I said “Opportunity” not problem. I believe every “problem as it were” is nothing but an opportunity to grow. Once you solve that problem it’s never a problem again it’s now an answer. What’s in your house The gentleman was right to a degree. Seemingly every daycare had more resources than me. I didn’t have a playground. I didn’t have a bus. To make matters worse I was broke. Cost estimates by my architect were way off and the little surplus money I had disappeared quicker than a woman in a David Copperfield show in Las Vegas. Some of you are probably thinking why didn’t I build a playground. I had a portion of our property behind the back-parking lot cleared for a playground. Unbeknown to me at the time a playground must be adjacent to the building. So, I spent the money to clear the land but couldn’t put in a playground. Based on how I had my traffic flow I didn’t see at the time where I could locate the playground adjacent to the building. Another tidbit of information that makes this book well worth the price you paid. Despite being out resourced now I was determined not to be beaten. Catch this truth – if you have a strong enough desire nothing I repeat nothing can stop you. You may be thinking “Aaron a lack of resources was stopping you.” No as Tony Robbins said in one of his Business Mastery Summits “A lack of resources is never the problem. The problem is you not being resourceful enough to find the resources.” This being the case the first thing I asked myself was “What’s in my house?” In other words, what resources do I have at my disposal. When I took inventory, I realized the best resource I had above my competition was my desire to exceed my parents’ expectations. This realization opened a new question. Can I beat my competition at their game? The answer was no. Can’t win the game then be a game changer I realistically looked at how the game was being played and the number of participants and realized I can’t beat them playing per their rules. The good thing is I realized this after I had already started competing. I am such a competitor there was no way I would give up since I had already started. If I had this mindset prior to me starting you probably wouldn’t be reading this book because I would not have even entered the game. I started evaluating what was my clientele’s biggest problem. The answer was so close in front of me that it could have slapped my face. Very few of my parents had dependable transportation. While most daycares took children to school and picked them up from school nobody was picking up from home and taking back home. Further nobody did it for free! Daycares were charging as much as much as $40.00 per week for van/bus service to and from school. Now parents in the area had enough of a hard time paying the $4-10 dollars’ co-pay per child per week. Adding an additional $40.00 for many was killing them financially. What if I offered free transportation to and from home? Until this point I was using my car as transportation to drop kids off and pick them up from school. To pull this, off that means I would have to make an investment in a van. 3 problems jumped up immediately in my face. First, I was broke. Second, my credit was maxed out. Third, I didn’t have enough kids to fill a van up.