Libsyn Directory

Episode 198 with Jessica Harris: Be The CEO of Your Life

Release Date: 04/08/2025

Episode 215 with Vance Morris — How Disney's Service Values Can WOW Your Customer

Child Care Rockstar Radio

Kris welcomes Vance Morris, former security guard turned Disney leader and successful entrepreneur, for a trip to the happiest place on earth — great customer service! Vance helps business owners get, serve, and keep clients for life through creating experiences and response-required marketing. He shares real-world strategies to delight customers, build community buzz, and drive word-of-mouth referrals. In this episode, Vance breaks down Disney’s hiring and training magic and the “why” behind it, how it transforms the customer experience, the role of linertainment, and how...

Episode 214 with Ashanti Ordone — Fixing a Broken Culture with Intentional Leadership

Child Care Rockstar Radio

Kris welcomes Ashanti Ordone, the Founder and CEO of Gifted & Talented Academy, and the 2025/26 Child Care Rock Star Award winner! They talk about expanding from a home daycare to three locations, transforming her school’s culture, and overcoming challenges in the early childhood education landscape. Ashanti shares her powerful story of building a thriving early learning center, detailing how she developed rock-solid core values and poured into her leadership team, implemented innovative leadership strategies, and turned her school’s culture into a model of excellence. Key...

Episode 213 with Jami Hartmann - Getting Your Operational “Stuff” Together!

Child Care Rockstar Radio

Want to stop the revolving door of teachers and create a rock-solid childcare team? Kris talks with Jami Hartmann from Trainual about how the right systems can transform your center’s operations. They dig into practical strategies for finding great staff, training them effectively, and keeping them motivated. Jami shares some great insights on getting your whole team aligned, creating smooth onboarding, and using technology to make documentation easier. If you’re struggling with staff turnover and want to build a more consistent, high-performing center, this episode is packed with...

Episode 212 with Josh and Pamela Hernandez — Leveraging Word of Mouth Marketing for Fast Growth

Child Care Rockstar Radio

Kris welcomes Josh and Pamela Hernandez, owners of Montessori Kids Universe Stone Oak. The duo talks about their path into early childhood education and opening up MKU, tips for starting out with cash flow out of the gate, and enrollment strategies that worked for them. They also chat with Kris about using referral rewards, how they balance family and business, marketing tools that help them build trust and stand out in their community, the need for the industry to collaborate more, and how they keep their staff happy and inspired. Key Takeaways: [5:04] Joshua and Pamela talk...

Episode 211 with Jennifer House and Jenni Grawvunder — Chasing Cows and Building Dreams Into a 12-Center Empire

Child Care Rockstar Radio

Kris welcomes “The Jens”, aka Jennifer House (CEO) and Jenni Grawvunder (COO) of Children’s Choice Preschool, to share the remarkable story behind their 12-center child care empire in San Diego County. What started as a nonprofit program with 25 children has grown into a thriving operation serving nearly 1,300 kids across 11 centers (with a 12th on the way) and supported by a team of over 300 staff. From pet chickens to RV-based school openings, the Jens talk about blending practical business strategy with fun, managing both nonprofit and for-profit centers, building culture...

Episode 210 with Dominique Gill — When You Love Kids This Much, Success Comes Naturally

Child Care Rockstar Radio

Kris welcomes Dominique Gill, heart-centered leader and owner of Unique Kids Childcare in Nashville and Smyrna, Tennessee, to share her journey to multi-site child care leader. Dominique opens up about starting as a young mother seeking affordable child care, working in exchange for tuition, and eventually moving from home-based care to two thriving centers. Dominique built her program around love, family, and celebrating every child’s uniqueness. She discusses the challenges of opening during the pandemic, shifting into leadership, raising tuition for the first time, and creating a...

Episode 209 with Tea Shong and Trina Romanowski - A Family Affair! Tales of a Multi-Generational ECE Company

Child Care Rockstar Radio

Kris sits down with Tea Shong and Trina Romanowski, the powerhouse mother-daughter duo behind a thriving, multi-site early childhood business in Michigan. Winners of the Partnership of the Year Award at the Child Care Success Summit, Tea and Trina share how they scaled from an in-home daycare to three high-quality centers, all rooted in purpose and shared vision. They discuss navigating family dynamics, leading with clarity, embedding nature-based learning, and using creative systems like coaching calls and color-coded lanyards, to keep their team culture strong across every location. Key...

Episode 208 with Rachel Supalla — Creating Leadership Magic In Her Ruby Slippers

Child Care Rockstar Radio

Kris is joined by longtime friend, business visionary, and rockstar early childhood leader Rachel Supalla. Rachel is the founder of Vision Tree, a TEDx speaker, and the author of The Playful Leader’s Toolkit, a book packed with wisdom on leading with joy, grounding, and energy. With 10 schools across Montana and Utah, Rachel shares how she’s scaled her business while embracing what she calls “ruby slipper leadership.” They talk about managing energy instead of time, why remote teams need tight leadership structures, and how playfulness is more than just dress-up — it’s a strategy...

Episode 207 with Gigi Schweikert — You Can’t Save Your Way to Success

Child Care Rockstar Radio

Kris welcomes Gigi Schweikert, CEO of Lightbridge Academy, to explore what it takes to lead at scale and stay grounded in the human side of early childhood education. With 85 centers across the U.S., Gigi shares how she thinks about quality, culture, and decision-making at the organizational level, and why trust is still the best metric. They discuss industry trends, mentorship, and the habits that help leaders grow. Gigi also reflects on what she’s learned after publishing 18 books, raising four children, embracing grandmotherhood, and showing up consistently for her team and community....

Episode 206 with Regina Miller - Leadership Lessons in Child Care

Child Care Rockstar Radio

Kris welcomes the joy-inducing and magnetic Regina Miller, a nationally recognized trainer, author, and owner of Trailblazers Academy in Wichita, Kansas. With nearly five decades in early childhood education and 35 years in leadership, Regina shares fantastic insight into what it really takes to lead a team, stay connected as an owner, and build lasting impact in your center. Regina shares some great takeaways from her new book Leadership Lessons, including how to hire smarter, mentor without ego, and avoid becoming an absentee owner. Kris and Regina also talk about how to stay...

More Episodes

Jessica Harris is the owner of Four Sisters Childcare in Linden, Utah — a thriving center named after her four daughters. Alongside her husband, she’s built a program that’s now serving 91 full-time equivalent students with a capacity of 86 and a waitlist. But her real work goes beyond enrollment.

In this episode, Jessica shares her journey from running a home daycare to leading a full-blown center, all while growing as a leader, navigating fear, and learning how to truly step into her power. She opens up about the deep personal habits that ground her, the way she teaches resilience to her staff, and how she learned to treat herself like the CEO of her own life with systems, policies, and boundaries.

She talks with Kris about how she rebuilt from burnout, found peace in structure, and created a culture where small daily wins add up to big growth.

Key Takeaways:

[2:58] Kris is heading to Bali to work on her leadership, mindset, and spiritual growth.

[7:02] Jessica and her husband run Four Sisters Childcare, named after their four daughters. The center started as an in-home program and now serves 91 FTE students with a waitlist.

[8:28] A push from Kris at a conference inspired Jessica to expand into a center — an idea that changed everything.

[11:42] Jessica was never someone who dreamed big, but learning to shift her mindset has helped her move from fear to confidence.

[16:59] The past year brought clarity: her center’s “why” is teaching resilience, not just to children, but to her staff.
[19:04] Personal growth, including spiritual habits and consistency, helped Jessica move through fear and burnout.

[22:02] Missing her daily practices for just two weeks during Summit reminded her how essential small habits are for inner peace.
[23:29] Jessica teaches her staff to create “personal policies and procedures” the same way a company would, down to details like where to leave a retainer at night.
[26:51] Her team resonated deeply with the message, and starting small helped them follow through on goals they’d struggled with for years.
[28:09] Jessica applies the CEO mindset to social media habits too: setting systems and supervision helps her stay accountable without cutting Instagram out entirely.
[30:46] Systems = success. Whether it’s the gym or your phone, adjusting your system helps you follow through.
[36:41] Just like sharing your brownies, it’s important to share your strengths and successes.
[38:17] Marketing strategy: strong Google Ads, Facebook, and Instagram stories, a busy road, rotating banners, and word-of-mouth from alumni families.
[41:56] Jessica and her husband pursued a second location but learned through the process that they needed a little more time to prepare.
[44:25] Not getting the building was a hard lesson in acceptance but also an opportunity for growth, reflection, and systems testing.

Quotes:

“Get comfortable being uncomfortable, and you’ll see the growth.” — Jessica [12:30]
“I have slowly been learning my passion and realizing that resilience, along with communication, is just huge. It’s huge.” — Jessica [19:05]
“We are our own CEOs, and we have to have policies and procedures for ourselves, and we have to follow them just like a company. If you don’t do that, it fails.” — Jessica [23:29]
“If you do what you say you’re going to do, then you have a higher level of deservingness, self-love, and value.” — Kris [27:50]
“When things either go my way or don’t go my way, it’s like, I’m not going to put power into wanting to claw at it and control it and need it and be in resistance to the fact that it’s not working. It’s just to be in acceptance and it’ll flow.” — Jessica [45:08]

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