Business Reflections Podcast Episode #29 - Owning and Expanding a Storefront with IDEA Lab Kids - Ballantyne

Episode Transcript

Meredith Matics: Welcome to Business Reflections with your host Meredith Matics, and we are here to reflect on the business topics that are affecting you today and how you can better run your business.  

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Today, I have Tanisha Chea, Owner and Director of Marketing at Idea Lab Kids in Ballantyne, North Carolina. Welcome Tanisha.  

Tanisha Chea: Hi, thank you!  

Meredith Matics: Well, Tanisha, I was wondering if you could start off by telling us a little bit more about what led you and inspire you to get in your current role or in this line of work.  

Tanisha Chea: Sure. Gosh, well, I just recently left corporate America after 15 years and yes. And I'd say in the past two years, I have been just trying to figure out what was my pivot out of corporate America. I wanted to do something that would allow me to spend time with my children. I have three-year-old twin boys, and I went on a Google search one late night and ended up in a rabbit hole of franchises that I could do that allowed me to spend time with my kids.  

I found Idea Lab Kids and it was perfect because my husband is an educator of 20 years. He was a principal for 12 years in K8. This was like a perfect combination of my strengths, which are business and marketing, and then his strengths as an educator. 

We serve kids ages four to 14. I just knew that this eventually was something where I could bring my kids to work and they could be getting enrichment out of it and learn all of the STEAM concepts that we teach there. And then I'd also get to spend time with them and we would be building a legacy and, and creating a business for our family and for them. 

Meredith Matics: Wow. You did mention real fast STEAM concepts... 

Tanisha Chea: Oh yeah. 

Meredith Matics: ... now I'm familiar with STEM, what's STEAM?  

Tanisha Chea: So STEAM is STEM plus arts. We teach all of the classic STEM kind of extracurriculars like robotics, coding, engineering, science, other forms of technology, engineering. 

But then we also teach the arts component of it. We teach visual arts, we teach culinary arts, we teach entrepreneurship, which we consider an arts program. 

Meredith Matics: Well, that's really cool. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your experience running an actual brick and mortar storefront? 

I feel like lately everybody's been like, I run this internet business, but I like talking to those of you that have a real brick and mortar. What's that been like?  

Tanisha Chea: Well, I mean, it's been quite the education. I previously had an online business. This is my first opportunity to have a brick and mortar business. We learned so much going through the process of finding a location, working with a commercial real estate broker, doing everything from submitting our letter of intent, which is kind of your first contract opportunity with the landlord telling them kind of what you're agreeing to. Signing a lease, finding a contractor, a general contractor, getting permits from the city, breaking ground. 

Just the whole nine, like getting one of those big lighted signs that go on in front of your building. It is exciting, but also ridiculously expensive. Those are so expensive.  

Meredith Matics: They're ridiculously expensive, but they're a critical part of a brick and mortar. So this kind of fits with owning a storefront.  What you do is very in-person and it sounds like it needs to obviously have a storefront. Talk to me a little bit about the benefits of owning a storefront and what that feels like for you. 

Tanisha Chea: It's a huge sense of pride of ownership. And until we found a cleaning crew, which was, gosh, only, probably within the last three months, my husband and I would alternate who would be cleaning, but as much as cleaning is not my favorite thing to do and probably not the best use of my time. 

I also didn't really mind it because I cleaned it the way I wanted it cleaned. I knew that it was clean and tidy for our kids to come in and use, and that parents would be really happy with it.  Just like little things like that -  it's like a huge source of pride of ownership. 

We both take care of it as if it's our own home. I love having a brick and mortar location because I also feel like it gives me multiple opportunities to engage with the families. Not only do we have the kids coming to our location, we are also engaging like moms, for instance. 

A lot of our moms are like, our kids love this place and we love you guys. Like, can we have a craft night? I'm like starting craft nights with our moms. It's great because so many of our families referred other families so many of our families know each other. It's just been a really great place for us to build community and for us to really build what we call our Idea Lab Family.  

Meredith Matics: What was the most unexpected thing about having a brick and mortar for you?  

Tanisha Chea: Goodness. I guess it kind of still goes back to costs like there's so many things you just don't even think about. Like if anything goes wrong inside plumbing, anything, HVAC, it's your responsibility. 

It's things that you know, but when they happen you're sideswiped by him. But let me think about what was something unexpected? Because I think I probably expected the cost. It's just not like a fun part. Gosh, I don't think there was anything truly unexpected to be quite honest.  

We have great neighbors. We're flanked by like some incredible businesses, huge brands. We try to be like good partners and good neighbors and find ways to engage with them.  I guess would be surprising kind of in that same vein is that even though we are flanked by a lot of brand names. It's not like mom and pop stores that are in our shopping center. There's still a huge sense of community. And like, trying to be just like friends with your neighbor and know that we're all kind of in this for the long haul. And so let's just like be good to each other and look out for each other in business and I'll do for you and you do for me. 

We just kind of take care of each other.  

Meredith Matics: Well, that's a good surprise. I have an office and everything, but I don't have I would say a storefront, right. Cause I don't have a product that I sell like that. 

And when I go to little shopping centers, there's like a Ralph's and there's like a TJ Maxx, and I don't think of any of those stores talking to each other, being in like a community within that center. But I think that's a good point to bring up that even within that small community, you know who owns what, and you can go to each other.  

Tanisha Chea: Yep. Absolutely.  

Meredith Matics: So I know that your business is actually growing and looking to expand a little bit, so talk to us about how you got in this awesome position of being able to grow.  

Tanisha Chea: Well, it's crazy because we opened in the beginning of a pandemic. We opened in June of last year. The pandemic started in March, which is actually when we signed our lease. We were so nervous about what that would entail for us as a business. Because we had a business model and it was very much predicated on having a full summer camp, getting parents energized about your business so that they would come back for after school in the fall, and like none of that happened.  

We really made the smart decision to pivot the business model a hundred percent and transitioned to a daytime business, where we would be an evening business before, and support remote learning during the day.  

We've been able to serve so many families that we are in a really good position to be thinking about our next location, because we have been able to serve so many families even during this time. I'd say the other kind of just like nuts and bolts of it is,  we aren't paying ourselves yet, so we are not really taking a salary yet, so we're reinvesting in the business and that's okay for now. 

And that's what our plan has always been.  By reinvesting in the business, not just in terms of like leaving money in the business, but reinvesting in ways to grow the programming and grow the offers that we can give to our families, we've grown for our enrollment. Like I said earlier, we have families referring other families because their children are having such a great experience or the parents are really pleased with the outcomes that their children are seeing. We just been very blessed with the decisions that we've made that are coming to fruition and the way that our families have responded and supported us.  

Meredith Matics: That sounds awesome. When you're expanding in a business, can you talk to me a little bit about the logistics that you have to go through? Like, for example, how do you know when to hire somebody? Like, do you hire early and have them ready to go for your new location? 

Tanisha Chea: Well, I can tell you the first thing for person that we definitely need to hire before we opened a second location is a manager for our first location or a manager for the second location. I think it just depends. 

And my husband manages the day to day business now. If we open a second location, he needs to be more of a strategic regional leader versus just managing one location. We definitely need to find a great management candidate, which I would want to hire that person now, because I would want that person to know our processes, know how we treat our families, know how we handle our business on a day-to-day basis and handle the books and things like that. We are actually in the process of trying to find a manager now who can help us manage this first location train, and then we can figure out whether that person stays in this location or moves to the second location. 

I can tell you when we were hiring for our first location, even before we opened, we were hiring people. Since it was the beginning of the pandemic, we were teaching some virtual lessons out of our home while our construction was going on. People were all into the zoom classes and everything for their kids. 

We would have our teachers log into those classes so they could see how we were teaching the classes, what my husband's style is, what he expected out of our teachers. I'm a firm believer that you should hire early and train. You also get a sense of if people are going to stay or not. 

So, you know, I feel like if you hire late and you just bring them in, working with children in an educational capacity is not easy work. We want somebody to see what the workload is like, and see what our level of expectation is.  

Meredith Matics: Are there any other logistical things that you have to think about when expanding that maybe I haven't thought of or maybe one of our listeners hasn't thought of that they're thinking of expanding?  

Tanisha Chea: I would say that just because you have one location doesn't mean the financials is going to work the same way for the second location. 

You definitely need to think through the logistics of where. You need to think about location that you're not going to cannibalize your own self with your second location. You need to think through what if the second location doesn't produce the same revenue as the first location, maybe you need to look at a lower rent sort of situation. And I think people is the biggest factor about like who you're hiring and when, and how many people. Are you going to share people between locations? Is that something that you plan on doing?  

And then for us, our curriculum scales very easily. What you do at one location you can do at the other location. In terms of our quote unquote inventory, we don't really have to worry about scaling our inventory because it's it's curriculum.  Just thinking through, are you going to share things between the two locations - people, hard resources, supplies, cannibalizing your own customer base.  

Meredith Matics: Well, those make a lot of sense. Can you tell me a little bit about how marketing changes when you expand a business?  

Tanisha Chea: Oh sure. We are really leaning heavily right now in trying to make our online reviews as robust as possible. I feel like from a marketing perspective, when you're expanding your business, you want to figure out how to get the people in the new location, as excited as possible about what's coming their way. Unless they've experienced a class with us or workshop, then the online reviews and what people have to say is uber important. And so for me, I'm trying to make sure that we are creating a great online presence for parents to find and be excited about and feel like they can trust what they're reading enough for them to call us and inquire. 

The second thing I would say would be to create some excitement in that new location, in that new area, with the people that you're going to be serving. What I would do would be very similar to what we did when we launched this first location is I would go in there, probably do some pop-up classes in the area, even if we didn't have our location yet. 

And then of course, good old fashioned Facebook, Google ads, that sort of thing to just engage with consumers more digitally.  

Meredith Matics: What do you think are some ways that a business will know that it's time to expand?  

Tanisha Chea: Hm. We're ready because I feel like we get so many inquiries about our business and the availability of space and from parents. And then when they hear that we're in South Charlotte, they're like, Oh man, I'm in North Charlotte or I'm in central Charlotte. Charlotte is a growing city.  If you don't live in South Charlotte, you have no reason to come down here. We've just been kind of listening and seeing where all the inquiries are coming from.  

I'd say the other way that we knew we were ready to expand is financials and just kind of looking at how are business is growing and knowing that there could be ways for us to be more impactful on the Charlotte market as a whole, if we had more than one location. It felt like we could get more marketing bang for our buck as opposed to just like focusing on one location or we could have inter-location events and be more event driven and not just so class driven. I have this dream of having like a STEAM Olympics and I think it'd be awesome to be able to include kids from all over the city. Those are just some of the ways we were thinking about it.  

Meredith Matics: Do you have any resources or recommendations for a small business or a small business owner who's looking to expand their business? 

Tanisha Chea: One of the biggest things when people are looking to expand their business is finances, and our corporate office works really closely with the SBA. Getting in touch with your local SBA office to just understand more about financing and figuring out what options are available to you. Score is a great free local resource and I think it's like in almost every city and they can help you build out your business plan if you need that to figure out if you are ready to expand. 

Whoever you choose to be your accountant is also a great resource to help you think through logistics of can you financially expand. I know they all center around finances, but I feel like that's the number one question when people are looking to expand, like how are we going to afford another location? 

Meredith Matics: Yeah. I think that's a totally natural question that should be asked because if you're sitting there with a loss every year, do you have enough income because you do bring up a really good point when you were saying cannibalizing your own clientele.  

That's a big issue. Think about like we have Starbucks is like on every single floor and  the goal is, is like when one Starbucks is like got lines out the door, maybe it makes sense to have another one, a block away. 

But if they're both empty all the time, why would you want to put another one in there? Because if you have one that already is poorly performing, or even just moderately performing, you don't want to take half their business.  

Tanisha Chea: Right.  

Meredith Matics: It makes perfect sense to have to analyze that.  

Tanisha Chea: Our locations would be a good, the closest one would be another 20 minutes and then the furthest one would be like 45 minutes. When you're dealing with times of the day that the kids would be coming to us, which would be before and after work. Parents are not going to pass their place of business, pass their homes, drive in the opposite direction. So being where parents are either headed or coming from, from home or going to and from work is ideal.  

Meredith Matics: So as we close up, what is one piece of advice that you have received that you would want to share with another small business owner? 

Tanisha Chea: I would say a piece of advice that I received as a small business owner, but I just think it's good advice in general is to celebrate the wins big and small. Often times I feel like, especially as like business owners, when you're in business for yourself, so many things can go wrong and do go wrong or blow up, or don't go exactly how you expected it to go. 

I feel like when you have a win, even if it's small, you should celebrate that and then figure out how to make that happen again. So for instance, like if something goes really well with an email campaign that I'm doing, and I get a lot of conversion on my email that I sent out. I'm going to go back and look at that email and go, okay, what was special about this one versus one I've sent out before? 

Even though it may seem like a small thing, like an email campaign, it's a way for me to connect with my families and my consumers. I want to figure out how to do that better and better every single time but I am going to celebrate the fact that maybe I got 45% open rate this time, where last time I only got 30% open rate. Celebrate the small wins, but figure out how to make them repeatable.  

Meredith Matics: I like that. Where can our listeners find you and your company on social media?  

Tanisha Chea: Oh, sure. On Instagram, we are at IdeaLabKids_Ballantyne.  So that's IdeaLabKids_Ballantyne, B-A-L-L-A-N-T-Y-N-E. 

And then Idea Lab Kids dot Ballantyne on Facebook. Our website is Ballantyne.IdeaLabKids.  

Meredith Matics: Wonderful. Thank you so much Tanisha for coming on and talking to me a little bit about expanding businesses and I really hoping that you guys have this jump coming up soon and do well. 

Tanisha Chea: Thank you. I'll keep you posted. I appreciate you having me on.  

Meredith Matics: All right. 

Business Reflections Closing: Please note that these are thoughts and opinions alone. For tax advice, please see your CPA or tax advisor, tax professional for business advice and legal entities. Please see your local business, lawyer, or attorney for advice. And if you'd like to reach out to us for any topics or questions about. Any subject, any episode you can reach us podcast@maticsbilling.com. That's podcast@maticsbilling.com.    

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