Starting a Montessori School begins with hiring the right mix of professionals. Montessori teaching methods are proven and effective, but a Montessori school is also a business. You have to have the right professionals to ensure that your school will have a long and successful life instead becoming a statistical business norm and closing in the first five years.

1. Be Honest About Your Own Strengths and Weaknesses. By being candid with yourself, you identify the spaces where you need help. For example, you may be brilliant but not particularly assertive so you look for a more assertive director, administrator or attorney.
2. Hire the Right Attorney. The most common mistake in this area is hiring an attorney because you know them. They’re a friend or you have a mutual friend or you go to church with them. There’s nothing wrong with working with an attorney that you already know, but make sure the attorney is well versed in the areas you need like lease negotiation, employment law, real estate acquisitions…etc.
3. Hire a Good CPA. If you’re going to make money, you need to be able to account for it and protect it from inappropriate taxes. A good CPA will save your money from taxes, and those savings compounded over years in business can determine the decade in which you retire.
4. Hire a GREAT Director. If you’re not going to be the director / administrator of the school, then this position will be the most important operational staffing decision you’ll make. Great directors can make a school, bad directors can bankrupt one. Beyond the normal Montessori certifications, look for directors who have genuine belief in Montessori. You want the kind of director that will be loyal to the ideology. This type of director is not only driven for your school, but she is also far less likely to jump ship to go to another type of school.
5. Engage Multiple Bankers. If you’re going to borrow money, you need to have one reliable banker for knowledge and insight and another 15 or so to make sure the first banker is giving you the best terms possible when you borrow. Failing to provide a competitive environment for your banker(s) can be extremely expensive to you. A difference of a quarter percentage point on a million dollar loan over 20 years costs you and extra $34,793. The U.S. has a lot of banks. It’s a competitive business. There’s no reason not to use them correctly.
6. Use Real Estate Transaction Professionals. If you’re buying property (land and / or buildings) and you’re not experienced in transactional work, get professional help to ensure that you won’t miss important factors in the transaction. Help can come in the form of your CPA, a real estate attorney and/or an experienced broker.
7. Hire an Internet Marketing Consultant. In today’s environment, you must have an internet presence. The good news is that social media allows you to leverage your advertising dollar more than ever before. Make sure your marketing person is a talented SEO (search engine optimization) person. Have them explain how the process works. Don’t settle for a list of the results the consultant says he can produce. For good examples to share with your SEO person, see many tested, successful marketing options like videos, blogs, newsletters…etc. at https://bfsinc.net/.
8. Hire a Dependable IT Professional. You will have computers. You will need an IT professional. Starting out, it’s better if this person is not part of your staff as some of the information exposed during the work may be sensitive.
9. Use a Professional Payroll Company. If you’re starting out with a tight budget, it can be tempting to think about doing your own payroll taxes. There are several good payroll companies. None of the major companies should have any problem managing your payroll. They’re not terribly expensive, and they are worth every penny.
10. Hire Teachers. If you’ve come this far, you probably already know what kind of teachers you want to hire. Hire the best teachers you can afford within a reasonable payroll budget, and don’t be afraid to dismiss and replace one if you pick the wrong one. It’s much better to remove a problem teacher from the school before they infect the others.

The early education industry is a great industry. It provides significant financial returns for doing genuinely important and rewarding work.

All the best,

Brad Barnett
President, BFS^®
Don’t settle for less than a proven early education company—Talk with BFS^® for the Expertise and Individual Attention you deserve.

The post Starting a Professional Montessori School appeared first on BFS®.

Relationships are at the core of any successful childcare center, preschool, Montessori, special needs or private elementary school. This includes the interaction you have with parents, teachers, children and your vendors. Engaging the members of each of these four groups will help to ensure that your center or school is more successful.

Today, we’ll focus on engaging parents.  From the first time a parent encounters one of your advertisements from print to a recommendation from someone else who knows your school to an exit interview when they leave your school, you are engaging that parent with your point of contact. As we work in a competitive environment, it’s important to make every contact as beneficial and possible.

1. Internet Presence—For many early education companies, this one is limited to a website, and many times these websites are created, launched and forgotten. Your website gives you the opportunity to provide parents with the best and most up-to-date information about your center or school and its activities. It gives you the chance to show parents that you are better and more knowledgeable that your competition. Review and improve your website at least every 90 days. It may only be small changes in the beginning, but getting in the habit will lead you to learn more and make bigger improvements as you move forward.
2. Social Media Platforms—Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube are all useful platforms.  If you aren’t familiar with these tools, visit https://bfsinc.net/use-social-media-improve-childcare-company-school/ to learn more.
3. Staff—Every staff member from your director and teachers to your cook and maintenance person can be a walking ambassador for your company.  Who knows more than these people about the way “their” center or school performs.  Everyone spends money on advertising.  If you choose to incentivize your staff for bringing more parents in the door, you have the opportunity to increase your enrollment and reward your staff…creating greater staff loyalty as a byproduct.  While it may not be typical for you, advertising expense paid to staff can certainly be more beneficial for you than the money you spend with vendors.
4. Vendors—Most people don’t think of most of their vendors as sources of new business, but your vendors very likely interact with many parents in your local area.  These people are highly rated and often overlooked resources.  These relationships can set up as barter relationships (they send parents to you and you send clients to them) or you can choose to pay them for each new referral that stays enrolled for X period of time.
5. Print Media—While print media is used less in the age of the internet and social media connectivity, it is still an important factor for getting the initial attention of parents and for keeping parents informed once they have become clients.  There is still a place for print media, but it can be very helpful to you if you remember that most anything you’ve ever done in print, can be done digitally faster and cheaper.
6. The Exit Interview—If you conduct exit interviews with your staff or parents, you have the opportunity to learn how you can better connect with parents.  Many people will share information in an exit interview that they won’t share in the middle of a relationship.  This is a great way to discover new options.
7. Local Elementary Schools—There are few things better than teachers from local schools that will recommend your center or school to a parent.  These contact points can send elementary age children to you as well as their younger siblings.
8. Open House—An open house for local parents to view your center or school and meet your teachers is always fun and not terribly expensive for the opportunity to be face to face with potential clients.

These proven tools can greatly improve your early education company.  Their effective use can also provide you with a cumulative effect as more parents who become clients means more parents to refer additional parents.

The post Connecting With Parents In Your Early Education Company appeared first on BFS®.

When Henry Ford created the first Model T automobile, he was asked about the input he received from other people.  His answer was…’If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.’  The car like refrigeration, antibiotics, the computer and the smart phone changed the way our society works.  People weren’t prepared for the change, but change happened anyway.  Like the many people who continued to ride horses as a means of transportation, it’s not wrong but ultimately you’ll find that others are passing you by.

One of today’s automobiles is the smart phone.  Most of us have a smart phone, but we don’t use it to its full advantage.  Here are some uses for your smart phone that will help to keep others from passing you by.  You can…

1. Review the daily enrollment breakdown when your director sends it to you.
2. Check on your parent connections on any of the social media platforms you use for your company.
3. Check and answer your email.
4. Text with your directors and other employees.
5. Surf the internet to find answers you need during the rush of your day.
6. Take pictures of things that need to be done and send them to the people who need to do get them done.
7. Make notes for yourself so your checklists are always with you…also saves on rewriting lists that are reused.
8. Review and update your calendar.
9. Access your bank accounts.
10. Use these devices to have live conversations with other people while not being tethered to a land line.

All of these items can help you to move through your day faster and more productively.

The post Embracing Technology In Your Early Education Company appeared first on BFS®.

Pinterest is a social media platform that allows you to create virtual boards and pin items on the boards. People spend more time on Pinterest that any other social media platform with the exception of Facebook so it’s a great marketing platform. It is also a great way to build brand loyalty by engaging and educating your parents. You can download the Pinterest app to your smartphone or tablet in addition to using it on your computer. If you want to set up an account, go to www.business.pinterest.com.

Once you set up an account, you will want to create a few boards. For example, you could create a board for crafts, a board with pictures of your teachers, a board with pictures of your school, a board with pictures of your events like graduation, recitals or fieldtrips. You could also set up a board for parents with topics such as potty training or other basic parenting skills.

The goal is to demonstrate that you are a reliable, knowledgeable resource for anyone interested in interacting with your company. Make sure that anything you post provides real value to parents, teachers, vendors or prospects. Keep in mind that Pinterest is a public platform, so be careful to avoid posting anything that could be a danger or a violation of privacy.

An easy way to learn how to use Pinterest is to go to YouTube and watch a couple of videos. Type “how to use Pinterest” in the search bar on YouTube and you will find many resources that will teach you how to use Pinterest correctly. Also, go to Google and do a search on “Pinterest childcare” or “Pinterest early education company” to find how others in our industry are setting up their Pinterest accounts.

It is a great branding tool for your business as it gives you a way to give everyone an inside look at what you are doing in your company and your community. Pinterest is just one more, free tool that could give you an edge over your competition.

The post Using Pinterest To Improve Your Early Education Company appeared first on BFS®.

OK, you’re on your way. You want to expand and do everything bigger and better, and that’s great, but do it the right way.

When you consider expansion, make sure you have the basics in order before you start investing your time and money. Here are the basics.

1. SOPs–If you don’t have a well-organized set of SOPs (standard operating procedures), then you need to start here. These SOPs are important for the operation of your current locations as well as future locations. You may think that you’ve got it covered without a good set of SOPs, but when you see the difference in your company with SOPs, you’ll understand why they are so important.

2. How To Expand–You’ll need to decide how you want to expand. Do you want to build new facilities? Do you want to buy operating centers or schools? Do you want to buy your competition? Do you want to buy struggling centers for less money and fix them? Do you want to buy schools at the top of their game? Do you want to diversify the demographic you currently serve? Do you want to diversify so you aren’t so dependent upon a large employer in your area? Every question is important.

3. Business Plan—Have a well-organized business plan for yourself and for the bankers, investment bankers, private equity firms who will likely fund your expansion.

4. Financing—Get pre-qualified for the financing you’ll need. It’s not difficult if you work with people who know what they’re doing. Try to avoid the resident 12 year-old banker sitting at the lobby desk. He’s probably a good, smart kid, but you need experience—not someone who is filling out an application for you. If you have questions about the cost, options and availability of financing, see many helpful articles at https://bfsinc.net/category/buying-a-childcare-company-or-school/

5. Labor Market—Know your labor market. Finding good teachers and directors is always a challenge. Make sure you have access to these people especially if you are considering building facilities from the ground up.

6. Economic Changes: When everything is going well, it is very easy to feel like everything will continue to go well. Make sure you are measured and deliberate in your expansion plans. Make sure you can make the necessary adjustments if your expansion gets caught by an economic downturn. It’s not difficult to do when you plan ahead. It can be very difficult to do when you’re caught by surprise.

7. Professional Help—Engage your CPA, attorney and other necessary professionals in your planning process. Determine if your CPA and attorney have experience in these matters. A good team is better than a good leader alone.

The post Expanding Your Early Education Company appeared first on BFS®.

When parents visit your childcare center, preschool, Montessori school or private elementary, they want to be confident that the teachers in your center or school are providing an interesting learning environment.  For a parent, leaving their child at “school” is far better than leaving their child at a “care” facility.  It gives meaning and purpose to the child’s time with you.

That’s one of the reasons why it is important to choose or create a curriculum that you and your teachers can present confidently.  Whether you’re using Creative Curriculum, Teddy Care, Reggio Emilia, Montessori or any number of other choices, you must believe in your choice.  If you don’t, if your teachers don’t, parents will notice the lack of commitment.

Once you have made a commitment to your curriculum, it’s important that you communicate the unique backgrounds, teaching styles, experience, and education levels of your teachers.  With today’s instant access to information, parents will do more than run a search on your center or school.  Parents will run a search on most anyone that can affect their child’s day.   Because their child may spend more conscious hours with you and your teachers than with his or her parent(s), it is understandable that the parent will checkout everything about you and your teachers.

Here are a few things you can do to make sure parents find the information they need to know about your teachers.

1)   Provide information about each of your teachers on your website. Keep it around 350 – 400 words per teacher.  Be sure to avoid sharing any private information.

2)   Have an open house and introduce all the teachers to your visiting parents.  A face to face meeting preceded or followed by the parent’s visit to your website where teachers’ pictures and bios are on display will help parents become more comfortable with your teachers faster.

3)   Make sure your teachers can talk about themselves and their work.  Have your teachers write their own bios for the website.  This activity will help teachers organize their thoughts about themselves and appears more polished when talking with parents.

Just doing these three things can make a huge difference in how your center is perceived. Your teachers play a key role in the marketing of your childcare center or school.  Make sure parents see the reason you hired them.

What are some things you do to promote your teachers and school?

The post Promoting Your Teachers and Your School Through Curriculum and Confidence appeared first on BFS®.

Because, if you do it right, then you will take the time to write the newsletter one time per month, and each newsletter will work for you on-line 24 hours a day seven days a week for the next two to three years.  You’re not actually taking time.  You are leveraging and saving time.  You’re showing parents, your clients and future clients, that you are smarter, more dedicated and more deserving of their trust and their business.

The primary key is to be pertinent, helpful, honest and direct.  If your newsletters have these four attributes, you will stand out from the pack.  Anybody can write a pamphlet.  Anybody can set another advertisement adrift in a sea of noise.  Be different.  Don’t “write” a newsletter.  Talk to parents.  The newsletter is just the tool you use to do it.  Talk with them the way you wish people would talk with you.

Here’s how we start separating you from the crowd.   Use professional email marketing.  The email marketing I’m referring to involves using a professional email marketing company (Constant Contact is one example) that will not only provide you with the ability to communicate professionally, but also the metrics that will help you measure and determine if and how well your email marketing is working.

The metrics you want to track include opens, bounces, clicks, forwards, spam reports, and opt-outs.  A professional email marketing company will make this tracking process easy for you.  Remember, if it is truthful feedback, good or bad, then it can be helpful to you.

Here are a few tips for creating your first newsletter:

1)   Have someone else review your work before you publish it no matter how good you may be at writing.

2)   Use a professional email service provider like Constant Contact.  It may take a short time to get used to their system, but the system works.

3)   Create a professional looking template that carries the brand of your childcare center or school with consistency.

4)   Use your logo and other branding materials at the top of your newsletter so the recipients learn to recognize you quickly.

5)   Choose topics that are of genuine interest to parents.  Avoid picking topics simply because you find it easy to write about them.

6)   Keep your newsletter short and to the point.   It’s not poetry.  It’s information for making their life better in some way.

7)   Be consistent. Monthly is the most common frequency for sending an email newsletter.  Pick a day of the month (example:  the second Tuesday), and publish on that day every month.

8)   Use lots of images.  Content is the most important, but it’s useless if no one reads it.

9)   Create a permission based list and keep your list current. Your list is an incredibly valuable asset in your business. Collect email addresses so you can stay connected with the people who make your business possible to thriving.

If you do these nine things listed above, you will have success with email marketing and increase the chances that your childcare center, preschool, Montessori, special needs school or private elementary will grow and flourish.

Click Here to see more articles on growing your childcare, Montessori, special needs school, or preschool.

The post Why Should I Take The Time To Create A Monthly Newsletter For My Childcare Center or School? appeared first on BFS®.

A great strategy you can use to gain more exposure for your childcare, Montessori school, special needs school, preschool, or private elementary is to host an open house. This is a great community outreach strategy and allows you to connect one-on-one with your target audience. It allows you to showcase your center to prospective parents, introduce your educators, and get your other marketing materials into the right hands.

Prior to the event, put a lot of time into promoting your open house. Send direct mail pieces to your current clients, use email marketing, distribute flyers, press releases, and anything else that will help get the word out about your upcoming event.

It takes a lot of work to get parents’ attention in this noisy world. They are inundated with marketing materials and ads from every direction. Make sure you do enough marketing with the right marketing materials so you don’t get lost in the mix.

But being prepared is essential to making this work for you. Here are a few tips to help you be better prepared:

1. Greet your guests at the door and have some soft background music playing. This can add to the ambience of your center and produce a calming effect for the parents and their children.
2. Make sure you have something to keep the kids occupied so you can talk to the parents without so many interruptions.
3. Have a sign-in book or sheet. You want to collect their name, phone, and email address. The goal is simply to get enough information so you can start communicating with them on a regular basis.
4. Make sure your center is in top notch shape. Pay attention to the details. Make sure books are put in the shelf, learning materials put away, chairs in order, and check everything to make sure you are making the best presentation for your center. Details matter when it comes to attracting parents (and children) to your childcare center.
5. Have plenty of marketing materials available – business cards, brochures, flyers, etc.
6. Have some simple refreshments. Drinks, cookies, etc. will suffice.

If you just do the six things listed above, you will be in much better shape than a lot of your competitors who may be doing the same thing.

All the best,

Brad Barnett
President, BFS^®
Don’t settle for less than a proven early education company—Talk with BFS^® for the Expertise and Individual Attention you deserve.

The post Hosting An Open House appeared first on BFS®.

Across the U.S., there are approximately 200,000 early education facilities including childcare centers, preschools, learning centers, day care centers, in-home centers, church-based centers………AND there are about 4,000 Montessori Schools. If you talk with anyone who believes in the teachings of Dr. Maria Montessori you will quickly understand that this person believes without reservation that Montessori is the greatest teaching / learning method ever devised. This desire to believe in an ideal, nearly universal educational learning method is understandable and especially important in light of the routinely dismal results being produced in most of our public school system.

The first and most important accomplishment of Montessori is that it recognizes the obvious—Children learn in different ways and at different speeds. This certainly shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone today or 100 years ago in the early years of Montessori learning. While much of our public school system operates like an assembly line, there are a handful of these very special places where children get a start that can be no less than the lottery ticket of early education. I am not suggesting that children can’t get a great education without Montessori; however, the child that enters elementary school with confidence and the enjoyment of learning will be miles ahead of the masses.

The second major accomplishment of Montessori is the creation of an environment that nurtures a child so that child has the greatest odds of success in school and in the world beyond school. While Montessori sets boundaries for children, it allows a child make conscious decisions about what will be learned. The child is driven by personal curiosity instead of the perfunctory rigors of repetition. Children become seekers of information instead of just the processors. When a child makes a mistake, he can review and learn from the mistake in an environment where mistakes aren’t wrong. Mistakes are just a very normal part of the learning process.

When a child enters the relatively large school classroom, there are many factors that interrupt the learning process. Many children without the necessary attention early in the education process will be lost to these distractions. Children can and do get through the entire public school system from first grade through high school graduation without ever reading an entire book and without learning to think all while receiving As and Bs. It happens. When a child learns how to learn instead of learning how to regurgitate memorized answers, everything becomes possible. The teaching methods, materials and environments utilized in the Montessori process are tools that teach children how to think and by extension how to become a better and more fulfilled human beings.

What are some things you like about Montessori?

The post Why Parents and Their Children Love Montessori appeared first on BFS®.

Twitter is the most misunderstood and underutilized platform of all the social media tools we have available to us. Everyone wonders what they could possibly do with Twitter that could benefit their childcare company. You can only use 280 characters or less, so there’s not much room for a long informative post…and who’s going to see it anyway?

Currently Twitter has over 300 million users and that number is growing stronger every day. It is very low cost marketing, so using this tool becomes profitable quickly. This tool is great for keeping parents engaged with your childcare centers by providing pertinent updates on your center. Ask you parents to follow your center on Twitter. They will be more connected to you, and your parents may re-tweet your information to other prospective parents.

Over 75% of people now use a smartphone to manage their daily lives. And even though you can use Twitter on your desktop, laptop, tablet, and other devices, it is an excellent mobile platform. You simply download the app to your smartphone, and you become more nimble in business practices.

Here are a four ways you can utilize Twitter in your childcare company:

1. Set up a private and a public account. The public account will be used for marketing. The private account will be used for protected messaging. Protected messaging would include communicating with parents, sending updates concerning your childcare to parents, etc.

2. It is estimated that Twitter is the #3 or #4 search engine. So take advantage of this technology to see what your competition is doing on Twitter. You can do local searches using hashtags. For example, #childcare[nameofyourcityortown] to search childcare centers in your area or #childcare[centername] to search for a specific childcare center. This will give you ideas on what you could be doing.

3. It’s important that you create a sense of community around your childcare company. Twitter can help you with this task. If you are providing updates, relevant educational content, and other useful information about your childcare company through an easy to access platform such as Twitter, you will likely see more involvement and engagement from your parents which could insure they stay with your childcare company and recommend you to others.

4. Parent’s sometimes post their desire for a good childcare center and may reach out to their followers on Facebook or Twitter to get references or referrals from other parents who are using a specific childcare center in their area. Remember, the key to marketing is to be in the consciousness of your prospective clients / parents when they are ready to act. If you are active online and using tools like Twitter to stay engaged with your audience, then you are more likely to reap the rewards for your hard work.

Make sure you connect with us on Twitter and we would like to hear how are you using Twitter in your childcare.

The post Using Twitter To Market Your Childcare Company appeared first on BFS®.