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All It's Quacked Up to Be
All It's Quacked Up to Be
Childcare Marketing Secrets with Helppli: How to Fill Spots, Build Your Brand, and Grow Locally
Ready to throw out the cookie-cutter advice and supercharge your childcare marketing strategy? In this powerhouse episode, Sierra from LineLeader sits down with Jeromie from Helppli — a true marketing heavyweight with deep roots in the childcare industry.
Jeromie Hill is a former pro basketball player turned entrepreneur and marketing specialist. After playing NCAA Division I basketball in Texas and professionally for the Sydney Kings in Australia’s NBL, he transitioned into business, earning a Bachelor’s in Marketing and a Master’s in Business.
With over 10 years of experience in digital marketing, Jeromie has driven growth for leading childcare brands across Australia.
In 2024, he launched Helppli, a full-service digital marketing and development agency. Now operating in both Australia and the USA, Helppli has grown rapidly, with over 15 full-time team members and more than 30 active clients. The agency offers end-to-end services, from web and app development to SEO and digital advertising.
Jeromie has done it all: working in-house at leading childcare brands and now advising providers across the globe on how to fill classrooms, grow smarter, and build unshakable local brands. His insights don’t come from theory — they come from real-world results.
You’ll learn:
1) How to choose a childcare location that actually sets you up for full occupancy
2) Why acting hyper-local is your key marketing advantage
3) How to build a brand that families remember and refer
4) And why getting "back to basics" is the secret to long-term success
These aren’t your everyday marketing tips. These are proven strategies that shift the trajectory of your business.
Whether you're just starting or scaling up, you won't want to miss this one.
Want more from Jeromie or Helppli?
Chat with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeromie-hill/
Request a consultation: https://helppli.com/childcare-marketing/
I know a little bit about your background and you've got kind of an interesting one, so I'd love if you could kind of share more about your history and how you got into childcare and marketing specifically.
Jeromie Hill:Yeah, I mean that's an interesting question. My original background is actually a sporting background. So I was a professional basketball player. So I played college basketball in the United States, in in Texas, and then played professionally in Sydney in Australia for a couple of years. So, yeah, just sort of happened naturally. I think it just sort of fell into my lap. You know, playing in Sydney it was a great place, you know big city, lots of opportunity, quite a few sponsors happened to own child care and you know, just sort of naturally evolved.
Jeromie Hill:You know, after my sporting career you're looking to find that next step in that next step of what you're going to do. And you know, fortunately I had a. You know I went to college, I got my master's degree, I had that sort of business background. So I know I wanted to get into business. But what industry? I was unsure and sort of just met the right people that had that background in childcare and opportunities came up and yeah, ever since then it's just, it's just been 100% all in on childcare.
Jeromie Hill:And you know I've never looked back. I've got a three-year-old of my own now and so I know the importance of childcare and making sure they have the right, the right start before the age of five and all the importance of that. I also have an appreciation for the industry, especially educators and child cares. Yes, they're underpaid, but all the work that they do it really goes unrecognized. So the more I spend time in the industry, the more I have a love for it and appreciation of it. A lot of people work in this industry not for money. They do it for a passion and I think it's much the same for us.
Sierra Cruz:Yeah, well, and one thing that's kind of interesting, I think, about your background is you didn't go immediately into childcare marketing agency but you worked in-house for a childcare operator. Is that right?
Jeromie Hill:Yeah, like I said, it just sort of all happened naturally. Like the first step was working for the YMCA. Actually, you know there was a combination of before and after school care as well, as they had gyms as well, and you know it's just a good introduction. And then I had an opportunity to go over and work for a company called Mindchamps. That was a Singapore-based company who was moving to Australia. It was a really good opportunity. And then worked with a big group in Australia called Little Zacks and then also help them launch a childcare tech platform.
Jeromie Hill:It's kind of like the Uber of childcare in Australia, connecting educators and centers. So if you need casual staff, just like Uber, you'll put in your request, it'll ping everybody in a 20-kilometer radius or 15-mile radius for your audience and, yeah, it automatically fills shifts. And so we were able to work with that for the first three years and get it to 30 million in revenue really quickly. So I had a lot of success working in childcare, childcare marketing as a marketing manager, as a CMO, and then working in childcare tech so really diverse background. And then I actually moved recently from Sydney to Austin, texas, and with that change came a lot of opportunity, actually A lot of clients I was sort of consulting for on the side and working with, and it was like, okay, well, you know the clients aren't the issue.
Jeromie Hill:You know I'm using so many other external agencies to get the work done and it just made a lot of sense to just start my own. And so again, it just it's all happened naturally and made total sense. Yeah, now we run Helply. You know we're a full service agency that works not just on marketing, but we also have an enrollments team in the childcare space. We also have a development team. We build websites. So we've got a pretty big team now and we're growing across Australia and the United States.
Sierra Cruz:That's great. Well, I know you're familiar with this, but we recently released the 2025 EC benchmark report, both a version in the US and in Australia. A big trend that we've been seeing, among several large trends, is that growth and expansion specifically expanding into new locations, new centers are top priorities for a lot of operators this year. Have you seen that with your clients so far?
Jeromie Hill:Yeah, I mean ever since COVID has been rapid expansion, I think, more so during, you know, 2019, to sort of 21,. You know a lot of stimulus and whatnot and a lot of people rushed into opening childcare centres and it's created a bit of oversaturation. To be honest, a lot of centres have sort of had a bit of hard time recently. You know, I kind of feel like we're in a peak and trough scenario. We're in the trough at the moment.
Jeromie Hill:So I know a lot of operators are struggling, but I know a lot of operators are looking to expand, and so I think it's changed a lot from let's just take whatever center is sort of available to let's be really strategic. Let's make sure we open the right center, because having children to fill the center is the most important thing. So I actually work with quite a few centers to help them select sites as well. The game them has really changed. It's not about just finding sites. They'll they'll turn down a lot more in order to find the right one, and so I think everyone wants to expand, not necessarily quickly, but more making sure that they make the right, right moves yeah, I love that you you talk about strategically trying to find the right location, because I think that it can be something.
Sierra Cruz:Maybe that's overlooked when people are just kind of looking to grow at all costs. Maybe they aren't necessarily doing all that due diligence behind the scenes to really make sure it's going to be a success. So how do you recommend your clients choose that right location, like, what are the qualities they should be looking for in a given area to determine if it's the right spot for them?
Jeromie Hill:Yeah, I mean fortunately in the child care industry we still have a lot of mom and pop. You know, I think in Australia it's like almost 50% have less than 20 sites. That's good for the industry. It's good that you can also have someone who's been somewhat successful be able to open up their own center. But also a lot of people will rush into making decisions because it is so hard to find a good site and a lot of people will start from the premise of it doesn't matter where I open it, it'll fill right, like there's children everywhere.
Jeromie Hill:But that's just not the case and we see so many operators get stuck in finding a site first and then thinking that it should just automatically fill. And they come to us for marketing support and we go in and have a look at the numbers and say you have this many available approved locations for child care and you have this many children most children don't tend five days a week so you actually don't have enough supply for your demand. And once we actually crunch the numbers and take it through, sometimes it's like the best case scenario is 60, 70, 80%, and that's if things go well. And so it's a real big dose of reality for a lot of operators when you tell them that, because everyone assumes you can just fill, but if you're full then your competitors around you are very empty, so it just creates an ultra competitive environment. So we do like it when we have people looking for sites with us before they even purchase a center. That way we can help guide them. The things that we're looking for is making sure we find a good ratio we call the child ratio between the number of children and the available child care places in that catchment, and so the ratio that we're looking for is anything between 2.4 and above pretty much anything above 2.4. We can fill to 100, the higher the better. Obviously, like if you have a center that's in the threes, like you can, you can open. You can open your center and fill within the first you know, four to six months. So that's why site selection is so important, because if you truly want to fill your center and fill within the first, you know four to six months. So that's why site selection is so important, because if you truly want to fill your center and be successful, you have to get that right. And then, obviously, the normal site selection things come into it, such, as you know future growth in the area.
Jeromie Hill:Location, specific accessibility you know you're on a major highway, or is there a major highway separating you? There's literally been a scenario scenario where we've had a centre on a really busy road and we've taken all of their children's home addresses and we've created a heat map and 95% of the children were on one side of the highway and only a handful of the others, because just to cross that highway would take 10, 15 minutes, and so for a lot of families, convenience is everything they need to be able to drop their kid off in five to 10 minutes. I'm a parent myself and I know that's the truth. If you have to travel that little bit further, you might be looking for care closer to you. Yeah, site selection is very important.
Sierra Cruz:Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned you know the ratio to look for. Can you break that down a little bit more in terms of you know so how many children?
Jeromie Hill:I guess in a given area should there be in comparison to providers. Yeah, so it differentiates a bit between the US and Australia, but I use Australia as an example because they have the government CCS and it really opens up your eyes to what those numbers look like. So, for example, if you have, say you know 200 children and 100 places in the area and you're trying to fill that center, first of all it sounds great. You've got 200 children, 100 places, shouldn't you just? Shouldn't it just fill? Well, we know, we know that most children only attend between 2.5 to 2.8 days per week. That depends on the socioeconomic status.
Jeromie Hill:Lower income areas actually attend care more than higher income areas. So, based on you know the earnings, we can kind of predict your children are only going to those children are going to attend two and a half days a week. So you actually do need 200 children to fill those 100 places. In addition to that, not 100 of children attend care. And so in australia, ccs data that actually shows you how many children in the total population are attending care and it's around 64% that are actually taking or pulling from government subsidy. So again, you've got 200, you've divided that by two to fill in 100 places, but then you've only got 60% of those children actually attending care. So really that centre won't fill up to 100, 100%. So they're gonna fill up to 64, 65, maybe slightly higher if you pull in children from just outside the catchment, and then maybe slightly higher again if you're better than your competition yeah, so yeah, yeah, so it's just.
Jeromie Hill:it's just important to really understand the numbers before selecting a site, because I've seen it too many times People get into a lot of trouble.
Sierra Cruz:Yeah, I love that approach. I think that that's definitely kind of a more methodical way to go about it and I know we definitely have some customers at LineLeader who are probably thinking about it in that way, but I feel like there's a lot that probably aren't. So I think that that's a really great approach. As I'm sure you're aware as a parent of a young child yourself, it's becoming increasingly important to young parents to kind of shop local and like kind of be a part of their own community. So you know, for maybe a larger child care organization that has locations across a state or across multiple states, how do you kind of make sure that their marketing feels really curated and personal to the specific community their center is in?
Jeromie Hill:Yeah, I mean it's just so important, right, like as a child care. You are an integral part of the community, families attending your care every single day, putting trust in you. There's just no other option but to be and embed yourself in that local community and I think a lot of centers really do that well and just educators in general do that well. You know they get the local fire brigade in, they partner with local businesses and and on the flip side, a lot of local businesses or community groups want to work with you with child care centers. So it's actually a really easy thing to do.
Jeromie Hill:But if you can get in that corporate trap and just think you know someone else is going to do it, that's not always the best approach. You know, working with Zax was, you know, 40, 50 centres. We always made sure that we had that local area marketing presence, especially from the beginning when you're opening new centres. Making sure you're partnering with local groups sporting clubs the local cafe is a goldmine for young mums Making those strategic partnerships from the get-go and strengthening them, especially if you're doing well, if your centre's full. That's when you should really be doubling down sponsoring and just embedding yourself in that local community, because the more you give, the more you'll get.
Sierra Cruz:Absolutely yeah. A mistake that we often see centers make is that they're full so they assume they can take their focus off of marketing. But we find that that's when you should double down and reinvest those resources so that you can grow that wait list and maintain that full occupancy.
Jeromie Hill:Easily. You fall into the fall trap and just um and just you know, take it easy. But it only takes one mega center to open up next door and it's the new shiny thing and people will flock to it. I've seen it many, many times. The new shiny center is a fresh start. They'll come in and undercut you on price because they know what your prices are in order to fill, and the only thing you have that will protect you is your trust within the community. So if you fall, if you're in a privileged position to to be there many operators are not so if you are, that's when you really should be okay. Well, like, let's find a way to strengthen the relationship with the community, make sure that we have a great looking center, invest, reinvest those earnings and when things like that do happen, you will be rock solid can you, um, maybe share an example of kind of like a hyper local marketing campaign that you've done for a client that you feel like was really impactful for them?
Jeromie Hill:hyper local. I mean, obviously we will run, like you know, your google and your facebook ads, but we we'll also provide strategic support on what else our clients can do on a local level. One initiative that was really cool recently was a partnership with a local coffee shop, and every Monday morning between 10 and 11.30, the childcare center would sponsor free coffee for mom and bub. And so that was really good because it built a really strong relationship with the local coffee shop, which was already a really trusted part of the community. Everyone that lives locally goes there. Strengthen that relationship with the coffee shop, who obviously referred business to us throughout that relationship. But then, because it's doing something for for goodwill, parents, you know, automatically know that you're there, because part of that deal was come and have a coffee, bring a bub, enjoy, and here's just a business card saying who's paying for it and they get to know okay, wow, child Care Center's doing this for me. They'll take note that you're there.
Jeromie Hill:When it comes time for them to enroll or look for care, I think you might be front of mind. We've seen that work quite well and the good thing about that is, once you've done something like that and not expected anything in return, you're able to post on mothers groups and community groups and actually post your branding and get your name out there. They won't take it down because you're giving something of value to the community. It's a great way for for-profits to embed themselves and I've even seen centers do that and in addition, they'll run a Baby and Me program at the center, not for enrolled families, but for families that are with newborns, they're currently on mat leave and they're looking for mother's groups or they're looking for activities to do with their child, especially early on.
Jeromie Hill:As a mom, you're very lonely, so it's good to get out and network and those mothers groups or those baby and me groups have been truly successful. It's going down to grassroots right. So you're getting local families that have just had a child who will eventually need care come and interact with your center, your educators and your families by the time they're ready to enroll. You are the default option, they're used to going there, they trust you, the child's comfortable in the center, comfortable with the educators. So yeah, I mean that's sort of an example of a hyperlocal, grassroots campaign and I've seen that work very well.
Sierra Cruz:I really like that there's, you know, a lot of marketing nowadays really has to be tied back to results and the return on investment, and it's very focused on, you know, lead generation or generating new contacts, and so, I think, making sure that educators aren't losing sight of the importance of building their brand as well.
Sierra Cruz:And you know the investment that that can require, but also the goodwill that it can definitely generate for them, like you mentioned. You know, I think that's a really great recommendation and I feel like it's a good area for childcare centers to focus on more.
Jeromie Hill:Yeah, and I think that's a misconception when it comes to marketing is everyone assumes marketing is 100% lead generation, but really there's two forms of marketing. One is to generate leads. The other one is purely to establish a brand. You know, you'll see massive companies, luxury brands. They're not doing any lead generation, they're doing purely brand because if they're wanted, if people know them, then naturally they're going to go and buy them, right? It's the same for any local business. You know, yes, you need your lead generations and to find care, which is kind of the pool but also you need a really good brand presence and for people to know that you're there. So it is good to have a mix. I would say like brand can be 10, 15%, but it's still a very important part, and then the rest can go into sort of lead generation.
Sierra Cruz:Yeah, absolutely Well. And another big theme in the benchmark report was all around scaling, and how do you kind of take what's working at one location, repackage it, use it in another location that maybe you're newly opening or just trying to reach that full occupancy threshold? What, from your perspective, are kind of some best practices on building a scalable marketing and enrollment strategy that someone could use at multiple locations?
Jeromie Hill:yeah, I think that's the fortunate thing with child care. It is quite scalable. What works in one market almost always works in the other market. You don't need to reinvent the wheel as you go into new locations. Yes, you've got to adapt to the local community, but for the most part you can create templates, processes and systems. And you can create templates, processes and systems and you can reuse and repurpose those for new centers. So Line Leader being a very useful tool to help with that.
Jeromie Hill:You know you can set up drip sequences, nurture campaigns for one center, duplicate that over to the next center and then just localize. That's a very easy way to scale, same with the business rules and having everything sort of tailored to that new center. You can set up templates for campaigns. You can rerun marketing initiatives, like if you're running sort of a you know an open house event at one center. Well, you've got everything that you need. You can pretty much duplicate that over to the next event.
Jeromie Hill:So childcare is good from that point of view. I mean we literally, with Little little zacks, we scale from 15 to 40 centers in a very short period, opening one new center per month. So you know that is a heavy lift, but because of the process and systems are all there, from not just marketing but from the whole operational side, on how to open up a center, how to purchase the uh, the furniture, the resources, who's going to unpack it, who's going to put it together, making sure the electricity is done. The list goes on and on. But it's all the same, it's all predictable, and once you have that plan, you can then scale quite comfortably.
Sierra Cruz:I think documentation is something that any business, especially when they're in the growth stage, really needs to prioritize. I think it's something that's often kind of overlooked defining what are the steps and like what is my standard operating procedure of things that I need to check off and get in line before I can grow to that next stage. So I think that's a good call out in terms of kind of like having a list that you can then take and duplicate at new locations.
Jeromie Hill:I mean, we have some clients come on that have like four or five centers and they're not using line leader. They're using, you know, leads coming into their emails or spreadsheets to capture leads from Facebook, or not even doing that. And you know, I'm like the first thing I'd say is how did you do that? How did you scale to four or five centers without having the proper tools in place? It's scary, and sure enough they've scaled, but they're not full, they're not efficient, they're wasting leads. This is why it's so important to have tools like Line Leader or other tools to support to make sure that you're not losing any of those leads. They're very expensive. Google can be up to a hundred bucks a lead, Facebook up to 50 bucks a lead and you need to convert those. So you know you lose one lead that goes missing or just not responded to in a timely manner. You know that's a hundred bucks out the door and so it's. If you're spending on marketing, it's super efficient to have the right tools and system systems in place to make sure that you're not having any drop off whatsoever. All of those leads are coming into one central location, one bucket, and are being managed appropriately, contacting leads within the first hour. The sooner you contact the lead, the higher your conversion rate is going to be. If you've got multiple centers, outsource your enrollments. Use somebody like HelpBly, or get somebody in your own team to centralize it, because their one job is just going to be a lead comes in, they're going to contact them straight away. That's all going to help with conversions.
Jeromie Hill:Unfortunately, a center director is wearing a lot of hats. They're, you know, making sure their children don't kill themselves. The educators aren't in fights and just managing the center from a day-to-day point of view. They're also the social media manager. They're also, you know, doing all the compliance. It is impossible to expect them to also contact leads in a timely manner. It's just not going to happen and you're going to have wastage. I understand small operators one to two services. They just don't have a choice. Well, they do. They can use someone like Helply. It is a little bit more expensive than, obviously, going it alone, but almost always you will get that return on investment because you're going to convert at a higher rate. You're not going to lose leads. And so, yeah, I would say that if you are serious about scaling, you have to have a tool like Line Leader to capture the leads, to nurture them, to convert them, and you have to take enrollments very serious.
Sierra Cruz:There's a saying about you know how much money are you leaving on the table, or how much revenue are you leaving on the table, and I think that's something that more and more providers are starting to realize how much revenue they actually could be missing out on, because either a lead isn't being followed up with at all because it was written down on a sticky note, or they're followed up with but they're followed up with, like a week later and the parents already moved on to another center, scheduled a tour, maybe even done a tour with another center at that point. So you know, 15 years ago, when Lion Leader or Child Care Serum at the time was founded, we actually worked with some of our very first clients in both the US and Australia to kind of build out that centralized enrollment team model and it's become increasingly popular, I think, in recent years for that reason, because directors aren't, you know, natural born salespeople. They really are educators and they're passionate't you know, natural born salespeople. They really are educators and they're passionate about, you know, working with the existing families already in their location, not necessarily marketing and selling to new ones.
Sierra Cruz:So yeah, I definitely believe in the importance of having a, even if it's just one enrollment specialist. We've had clients that have 10 locations. They have one enrollment specialist and that person actually did all the lead, follow up, tour booking and then they actually conducted all the tours on site. They actually drove to the locations and did the tours themselves and just having that kind of like dedicated rep really, really makes an impact. Can you share a little bit about kind of how you've seen centralized enrollment teams play a part in your clients growth and how they maybe even got started with that model after you know transitioning from kind of a decentralized enrollment model to a centralized one?
Jeromie Hill:yeah, I mean it's. It's incredibly important and I mean for a lot of our clients that are looking to sort of go to a centralized model. It is probably the easiest sell I have to make, because we just go through the numbers, we we work backwards. The first thing we're looking at is lost opportunity. Your sensors are sitting at 80, 70%. Your profit is mostly in that last 10%. Once you take into consideration the empty spaces, it's like an airplane. Why would you want to fly an airplane empty? That's why they overbook them. It's the same for childcare. You want to find that last 15, 10. That's where most of the profit sits. And so, as soon as you do the numbers, I'm like okay, what is that worth? Um, as a lost opportunity, it's in the hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, depending on the size of the center and the number of centers. I worked with one client I won't say who it is, but they had 15 locations and we did the loss opportunity and there was over four million dollars. That was just sitting on the sidelines and it quite instantly becomes okay, well, how much you're willing to invest to get some of that? Four million, and it's not a lot of money up front that you have to invest. Having that centralized enrollments team is instantly going to make sure you don't lose leads. It's going to improve your conversion rate from lead to a complete. You can even try that yourself. You can keep it as is and you can track it using MindLeader's conversion success. Then you can move to a centralized model and then measure it again and I promise you you'll have a massive increase and then your lead to a complete to enrolled status. That's very important as well, and your centralized enrollments team is going to help with that. They're going to follow up, they're going to make sure the the enrollment forms are complete, bonds are paid, booking orientations, and so you know the value is in that centralized enrollments team. You know I always had my centralized enrollments team be the highest paid and be on heavy commission. Ultimately, if they're going to work a little bit harder, make an extra few phone calls, be a little bit more persuasive. That's good for the child care and if you honestly believe that you have the best service to offer by letting children go or families go to another service, you're doing them a disservice, right? They should be with you. Letting children go or families go to another service, you're doing them a disservice right. They should be with you. If you truly believe that, then having a centralized enrollments team is so important and persuading those families to come and enroll with you.
Jeromie Hill:Probably some key numbers that would be good to know we look at. We look at many numbers obviously to evaluate, but always comes down to four key numbers the number of leads you can produce per center, the conversion percentage from lead to to a complete, the conversion centers from to a complete to enrolled and your churn rate. If your churn rate is low, it's going to be much easier to fill the bucket because you don't have a hole in it. If you can convert, obviously more tours and and and more enrollments, you're going to grow. If your tours are converting and your enrollments are converting and you don't have a hole in your bucket, then it should just be a matter of generating more leads. So a lot of people spend on marketing, generate more leads, more leads, more leads, but actually not improve their occupancy. Well, this is why it's important to have a tool like Line Leader to measure your conversions and also to know what your churn rate is in the center. Once you can get those numbers, it becomes a really simple game.
Jeromie Hill:Am I having our families happy. Are they staying in the service? If they are cool operationally, we're great. Are we getting enough tour conversions? If not, why not? Are we not? You know we're not greeting families on arrival, are we not? You know we're not acknowledging. Are we not greeting families on arrival? Are we not acknowledging them throughout the center? Is it something to do with the tour? How can we improve? Is it the follow-up Like? Look at all those things.
Jeromie Hill:And the benchmark that I tell most services is you need to be achieving 60% or above to have growth. Same from lead to tour. You need to be 60% or above. Ultimately I don't know, I don't have time to tour three centres as a parent. I might do one or two, and so if we can't convert at 60% or above, that means that we're not the best service in the area. They're going elsewhere. So that's why we use 60%.
Jeromie Hill:If you can convert tour complete to enrol at 60% and lead to tour complete at 60% and you're not losing families, we just want to be generating more leads. And then the final, final, maybe bonus number we look at is staff happiness, because if your staff are happy, your families are happy, your children are happy and if you have a happy service, if you're operationally good, marketing is just like throwing fuel on the fire You're already going to be full. If you have a happy service, if you're operationally good, marketing is just like throwing fuel on the fire You're already going to be full. If you don't do any marketing, if you're just operationally good and you have enough children in the local area, marketing is just going to fill you so much quicker.
Sierra Cruz:When we talk about kind of like where you're going to reach profitability as a center, like what threshold do you need to be at? Our internal research that we've done over the years has always pointed to you need to be at at least 75% occupancy in your center and at 75% you're really just kind of breaking even. You're not even making a profit at that point. So you really have to be in the 80s 90s to kind of realize any of the return on your investment. Unfortunately, last year we found in our benchmark report that 68% of centers were under 70% occupancy throughout 2024. So do you have kind of any advice? Obviously, mitigating churn, looking at where parents may be falling out and why they're leaving the center, is super critical. But when we talk about if they've got a really great service but they still can't reach that full occupancy assuming they're in a good market as well what are the initial marketing strategies or tactics that they should be deploying maybe to reach that 80-90% threshold?
Jeromie Hill:Yeah, I mean definitely important to recognize what you just mentioned. Like you know, making sure that the service is operationally very good and has a competitive offering and making sure that there are enough children to fill. If those two things aren't right, then whatever you do from a marketing point of view is going to be a waste. Assuming those things are good, you probably are in a competitive environment. If you're sitting around 65 to 70 percent, that's when you've got to sort of change strategy a little bit. You can't just do the always on run google ads, facebook ads, couple of social posts and think the center is going to fill, because it's quite likely that your competitors are doing the same, if not more, and so when we're starting to get into those competitive environments, you've got everything happening in the bottom of the funnel. If you're going to compete in that space, you're not going to do that well because you're going to be paying top dollar for leads and if you're not converting at a very high clip, it's going to be very hard to fill. What you need to do is change the strategy and move up the funnel to the next rung, not to the top. Top would be like blog content, just things to get them to the website like e-books or something like that. More that middle of the funnel where, okay, they've probably had the child, they're probably in need for care in the next three to six months, maybe sooner. They're not quite looking for care yet, but it's in the back of their mind. There is a very big market in there. Childcares aren't necessarily going after that.
Jeromie Hill:We want to change our strategy to find ways to bring those families into our service. Give them an experience and show them how good you are before they're ready to buy. If you can do that successfully, you're going to have a much better opportunity of converting those leads within that three to six month timeline versus your competitors. So programs like baby and me I've seen like stay and play, where they'll come into the service again, it's a mother's group, but maybe it's for older children.
Jeromie Hill:If you're having trouble filling up, the older age group could be your open houses. It could be community events. It could be, um, you know, once a month on a saturday, you have a father son event, or you know. You know, for example, like I always go back to this every saturday, the first of the month, I go to home depot with with my son and we build stuff together. It's very high in the funnel for, and grassroots for, home depot, but you, you build incredible experiences and memories with your son at three years old all the way up until they're like 10, 11, 12.
Jeromie Hill:I'm pretty sure we're going to be lifetimers to home depot, right? I think you can apply the same to child care and find ways to get families in your services for for that, add value, build trust and let them see how good you are. They also get used to traveling to your service, so by the time that they're ready for care, you are the default option. As your question in a competitive environment, don't think the bottom of the funnel, think the middle of the funnel. It's a slower conversion time, but if you're playing the long game you're going to win more often, more into the future.
Sierra Cruz:Yeah, I like that. I think too like the funnel, shaped kind of like an inverted triangle, for a reason because the bottom of the funnel tends to be a much smaller pool of people and so the higher you go up in the funnel, the more people you're going to reach, and when they are ready to make that purchasing decision, you'll be top of mind. You're probably familiar with the stat I don't know if much of our audience is that roughly only 5% of buyers at any given time are ready to make a purchasing decision. I always recommend that people really think about how they're catering to the other 95% of people, that maybe in the past they've spent time, money, resources on the 5% and then, when the 95% is ready to buy, they're not. Or do you kind of chose another location that thought about them and catered to them sooner?
Jeromie Hill:Yeah, I mean, the one thing I tell everyone there's a lot of one things isn't there today, yeah, but I always say is there is no silver bullet in childcare. You know, the closest to it is maybe an open day day, but you're only going to get a small dent in your occupancy. You just obviously have to be operationally good that's, that's a non-negotiable these days and have solid google reviews, etc. But if you're in a slightly competitive environment, it's going to be the work that you do up front. You know running those, running those events. You know, in the upper funnel then nurturing them. They may come and do the event, but they're not going to be in care for another three to four months.
Jeromie Hill:How do you stay in touch and continue to engage them? What sort of content do you feed? How can you utilize something like Line Leader in order to automate that with a drip sequence or share really valuable content? I've seen some child care centers do this really well now, where they'll create hyper local content in order to continue to like, engage their, their families that are in wait list or have recently engaged in experience, and they'll share them content like um, you know, the top five local parks or the top five family-friendly restaurants in the immediate area. That's incredible content, because it's very likely that nobody's actually writing stuff like that. It doesn't take that long.
Jeromie Hill:Especially if you know ChatGPT, you know it can pretty much find you a very nice article based on your search terms or your own input, and you can produce content really quickly now. But as a parent like who lives in a local area, it's like okay, well, you know five things to do during this, this upcoming holiday break in the immediate area. Like who's not going to click and read that then they're engaging with you and your brand, you're building trust that that stuff's really good. It just it's a little bit more effort but it does go a long way and it doesn't need to be every day or every week where you're communicating If they're on the wait list. It could just be once a week or twice a month, as long as if you've got something to say, make sure it's important, make sure it's valuable, so that they continue to open up your email or your text messages, et cetera.
Sierra Cruz:I really like that suggestion. I think that's a great way a statewide or a national brand to also involve their center-based staff is. Here's some suggestions I got from ChatGPT. Now can you take a look and review and are these real suggestions that you would actually give to a family that asked? It kind of takes the effort off of the center staff and the director but still keeps them in the loop, so if a family comes in and asks about it or compliments it, they kind of know what's going on.
Jeromie Hill:That's a really important point. It's like a lot of especially marketing managers you know they're trying to wear so many hats and do so much volume Like, oh, how can I do this local content? Like I've got 30, 40 sentences? Well, you need to find other people to help you right. Like you know, we had this exact same scenario with social media. It's like how do we get content from the centres but still do the editing and branding and make it look really good? There are plenty of people in the service who are really good at TikTok or really good at taking film and photography. You know young female educators, they're all looking, they'd all like to make a little bit extra money or even just have the opportunity to to do another skill outside of looking looking after children. So there's a great uh, there's a great opportunity to have sort of a designated social media manager within the center or a designated content creator. You know there's plenty of people who would do it for for an extra little bit of money or just do it for the opportunity, um, and the recognition. So you know, find that person in the center, designate that title and give them the responsibility. They'll do a really good job.
Jeromie Hill:We have so many centers where we do their social media management and we create a like a whatsapp group and all we ask is the center to share. Anytime you have something good in the center, pop it into whatsapp. You have the fire truck, come, take some photos or video and send it to us via whatsapp. We'll pull that content, we'll edit it, we'll make it look really good and we'll post on your behalf with the content. You know, for an owner operator, they never touched it, but yet they've got a great content online. They just had somebody in the service sharing it and they had an external team like helply editing the content and posting. So you know, this is where processes and systems become super important. But you know, it's really not that hard to be able to create great content. You just have to trust your team.
Sierra Cruz:Creating those brand ambassadors or you know whatever you call the people. I like content creator too. I think that that's definitely kind of a popular term and I think there's a lot of young people that would love to break into that kind of area with their career. So I feel like that's a there'd probably be. You know, if an organization were to open that up as like an application process, they'd probably get a lot of interested candidates from their center.
Jeromie Hill:I just feel lucky that I didn't grow up 10 years later. You have to be good looking. You have to be good at dancing. You have to be good looking, you have to be good at dancing, you have to be good at film and photography editing and be witty in your captions. It's so much work, but they're all very good at it, it's also a good resource for you to tap into.
Sierra Cruz:Well, we talked a little bit about unique offerings that drive interest, and you mentioned some of the kind of baby in me partnering with local businesses. Some other ones that we see often are like that date night care, the flexible drop-in or different kinds of family events. Are there any additional kind of events or programs that you've seen move the needle for people?
Jeromie Hill:I think it's just important to think outside the box. Like it all comes back to the one thing You're trying to get people into the center to experience something. The more you think outside the box, the better it becomes. Date night was a real hit.
Jeromie Hill:But also acknowledging the market that we're in, flexible care options are very important. If you're not full, it may be a wise choice. If you're full, probably don't offer it. But, like you know, I'm seeing this trend where it's like, especially now times are tough, you know, people are really holding onto their money closely. They're probably working from home. I personally know many families that have children and they're looking after the child at home, but they're both working full time, remotely. As a childcare center. You've just lost another 10, 15% of the potential occupancy because they're just trying to save money. They're you know, they're waiting it out, so to speak, until interest rates come down or there's clarity in the market, and so in times like that, you know, just providing a little bit of a flexibility for those sort of families and trying to engage them in different ways is a good option some of the marketing automation functionality within LineLeader that we really like to recommend to people are drip campaigns to kind of send those behavior-based communications that really engage with them at the right moment, right time.
Sierra Cruz:I imagine there's probably a few different ways that you are recommending your clients use those today. Can you share a little bit about how they're automating or, you know, nurturing families throughout the funnel?
Jeromie Hill:Yeah, we literally had this conversation yesterday and we were exploring the exact same what is the right way to sort of set up. It was a seven place service and you know they were doing everything right. They had the drip sequence. They're talking about the unique selling points. But they were throwing it in at the very beginning, as soon as that family came in as a new lead, and the feedback from families were okay, well, we're getting all of these business rules from line leader, you know, scheduling a tour, like reminders and things like that, plus we're getting these unique selling points.
Jeromie Hill:It was overwhelming for a lot of families and so it was like okay, well, we mean well, but they're already getting contacted with a phone call, they're getting reminder emails, text messages. It becomes a bombardment and actually scares people away. So where do we want to position that? Well, we've now moved the drip sequence into if you move into a wait list or you move into a lost opportunity a wait list or you move into a lost opportunity. So, you know, give your enrollments team a chance to. You know, just be human. I would say have that conversation.
Jeromie Hill:You know people are very wary of being sold to, especially when it comes to their children. They don't like it. Um, an organic approach is best. Okay, this is our service, this is who we are. We'd love to come you to come in for a tour. Just be genuine up front then, if it, then if you get to that point where they're just not ready to make a decision, or we want to continue to re-engage them, whether it's your blog posts that you're sending out once a month or it's you're utilizing Line Leader to have a drip sequence so for this particular group it worked out perfect because they already had the drip campaign. They just repositioned to where it triggers and the feedback was that it's a much smoother process. Now, up front, it's all about getting that tour booked and that human interaction for the families that aren't ready to make a decision or, you know, end up dropping off a ghosting we all know about that then they're just, they're getting the unique selling points in the drip sequence from there nice.
Sierra Cruz:Yeah, we see a lot of success with people using it for those kind of lost opportunities or to re-engage families and again just kind of be top of mind for them.
Jeromie Hill:Yeah, I'll just finish with like. In a highly competitive environment where it's gains of 1%, you know not ignoring your lost opportunity and re-engaging them. Although it seems like a lot of effort, with drip sequences and campaigns you can often recover 4% to 5%. You know, making sure that you have really good, positive google reviews. It's a bit of effort but again, if you've got the best reviews in the local area, you're gaining an extra one or two percent. You do all these things that they add up.
Jeromie Hill:I've seen a service with a ratio of 2.0 run the baby, you me programs run. Have the. Both the best reviews and the nurture sequence do the monthly edms, etc. They've maxed out and they've got up to like 90 percent, even though I thought both the best reviews and the nurture sequence do the monthly EDMs, et cetera. They've maxed out and they've got up to like 90%, even though I thought you know max occupancy is probably 80. So those 1% gains really add up. So it is important to not dismiss them and if you've got the resources and time, try and implement them.
Sierra Cruz:Well, there's so many different areas where an operator could kind of spend their time and put their marketing dollars today, Looking at organic search, paid search, maybe even paid social, when do you kind of feel that an operator should start, and I'm sure it varies, but you know what's kind of like a best practice of where to start which channel to begin with, especially for, you know, budget conscious operators. I think every industry is seeing cuts to marketing right now, but especially in childcare we've seen that among a lot of our clients as they're kind of trying to recoup some costs.
Jeromie Hill:Yeah, fortunately, I've had a lot of time around, a lot of data and had a lot of money to spend and choose where it goes, so I can tell you that probably between like 45 to 55% of all of your leads are going to come directly from Google, so that you need to have your always on and need to be running Google ads. Look, you can approach Google ads in a few different ways. You can be definitely going directly for sales ready through search terms, but if you're in a more competitive environment, you can run like performance max, where you just generate more traffic to your website. You can. You can start to utilize youtube and display ads for retargeting and remarketing. That's where we see most of the conversions come from and it does make a little bit of sense, right, like people need care. It's not like it's it's not a luxury item, it's like it's a necessity, and so they're going to be searching for it and you want to be there when they're searching. The next best is is facebook, you know, and instagram. This is local communities, this is where they come to share ideas, and so it's a really good place to be. You do have to get your creative right, your messaging right. Maybe run upper funnel campaigns, but, um, I would say anywhere between 25 to 30 percent or 35 percent of those of your leads will come through there. In fact, when things are really dry on the search side, your Facebook can actually be sort of your rescue club. It'll really be a great way to generate leads in the upper funnel. If you ever on an open house day, you you'll get 95 percent of your leads come through through meta. So there's 75%. So I don't your leaves a little bit more to come through referral, but a mouth I niche games. So you really need to think about if you're spending your marketing dollars. Yeah, are you gonna spend it? You're gonna spend it in a initiative where you might get a five to ten percent of that which is off, often quite expensive.
Jeromie Hill:Anyway, I've see this one all the time and I cringe so hard. Well, two of them. One is doctor's offices on the TV. Great for the doctor, not so good for your childcare. They're expensive and they don't work. The second one is like mail postage. You know I don't know any millennial that's ever checked a letterbox. You know I have one. I think I don't have any millennial that's ever checked a letterbox. You know I have one. I think I don't have the way the key is for it. You know everything's digital, so you know, anytime I hear the word, can you organize a mailbox drop? I just cringe.
Jeromie Hill:I've literally run a campaign to 45,000 houses with a QR code and had two scans. Let's just say the return on investment was really bad. So you know where are you going to spend your money. Let's be real. Digital is where it's at Google Facebook. If I took that $15,000 that I spent on the postage campaign and put it in Google, I could have got 150 leads. Big difference. So, yeah, google, yeah, google facebook. And then making sure that you're, you know somewhat in the local community. Sometimes you can, especially about open days or free public events. You can put on hanging banners within the community. The council might have a designated, designated space for that. That's good. You know you've got local car traffic. Um, seeing a signage or seeing an event that sort of stuff is like. It's a small investment and you're probably going to get a lot of eyes on the brand. You know I would do that.
Sierra Cruz:Well, kind of last question here for you about the benchmark report. So the report showed that a lot of again parents of young children today, which are primarily kind of millennial and Gen Z families, are expecting very quick and highly personalized responses. You know they want to feel like it's coming from an actual person at the center. How do you recommend centers with multiple locations meet those expectations without adding more to their staff's plate?
Jeromie Hill:Yeah, I mean this is just where you have to have the centralized depository for your leads, something like a line leader, let's your leads, something like a line leader. Let's not call something like a line leader, it is line leader. There's no software that's comparable in the market, you know, to be able to have full marketing functionality. You can have that personalization you know you can have at first name in in your, in your text messages, at first name in your emails. You can easily personalize your responses, Line leader and knowing when a call is coming in, especially if it's the second touch point and they're already in your CRM.
Jeromie Hill:It's hi, rebecca, thanks for calling back in. And you already know the next step. And it's a much more personalized experience, which ultimately, you build rapport, you build trust, you get more enrollments and using line leader to do that is a no-brainer. It is a minimal investment where you're guaranteed to get the returns. So you know, if you're on the fence about using LineLeader, I can tell you from firsthand experience that don't think twice. You have to be using LineLeader to manage your leads because you just can't afford to have the wastage and you need to improve your conversions.
Jeromie Hill:It's that simple well, thank you, I agree, but it's great to hear that from people you know out in the uh the field every day no, I mean, I genuinely, I'm genuinely saying this like, uh, you know, long before we were ever in touch and in the very early days, I tried many softwares utilizing spreadsheets or even, you know, sales pipelines like pipe drive and just trying to come up with the right system to manage it. Just having line leader, just be able to customize that pipeline and build out your business rules and sales funnels and, you know, complete the entire customer journey. There isn't a comparable product in the market. It does, does not exist, first and foremost. And to be able to have that reporting, especially as a marketing manager or someone reporting to a board or other investors, you want to be able to pull reports that show you exactly how you're performing.
Jeromie Hill:And it's incredible, even the big guys are not reporting on the right data. They're not looking at churn, they're not looking at lead conversion or tour conversion it data. They're not looking at churn, they're not looking at lead conversion or tour conversion. It's absolutely insane. Our industry is way behind from that point of view. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it and you have to have this tool in order to, in order to actually know what's happening your business and as soon as you get that, those numbers in the dashboard, multiple centers. You can run a traffic light system and it's very instant, you know okay, well, it's not a lead generation issue, it's not a conversion issue. We're just we're not retaining families. We'll go and ask the families why that is and quite often it will come back to cleanliness of the service, or you know educators are disengaged or the resourcing's not there. Those are really fixable things. Your data will tell you that.
Sierra Cruz:Yeah, would you say that? That's you know, kind of understanding. The funnel is the most important area where you think that operators could be using data to drive decisions, or are there other areas you think they should be leveraging data as well?
Jeromie Hill:I mean to me, having that centralized dashboard with those key numbers tells you the full story, or at least where to look. I mean, when we consult with big groups, we basically spend a lot of time just building the dashboard. You know, with 40 centers having all the numbers in a traffic light system, it tells you a very clear story. Like I just mentioned, if you've got everything lighting up green except you've got a high churn rate, there's a hole in your bucket, your occupancy is not going up and you now know where to look, then it's just a matter of going. Well, let's answer the question why is there a churn? Well, the best person asked is the ones that just left your center and they'll tell you what happened. They'll tell you why they left and quite quickly you can take that data and you can start to make actionable improvements. Also, having that data allows you to identify issues way before they snowball and you have a 30%, 40% drop-off.
Jeromie Hill:I've seen that happen many, many times over and over again. An issue snowballs and it's never dealt with effectively and all of a sudden management's like oh my God, we've lost 30% of the center, it's going to take years to recover. You've got reputation damage just because we went across the numbers. If we'd seen a 5% drop early on, it would have rang pretty big alarm bells and then we could have taken actionable steps to fix it. And quite often, if they can see that your families are seeing that they're being heard and and those things are fixed, they go from being skeptical to promoters. They'll actually help you grow. So, yeah, having that data is the most important and I would get that right before engaging anyone in marketing.
Sierra Cruz:So, as we look ahead to kind of the rest of the year, what trends or shifts do you foresee happening in childcare, marketing or enrollment, or are there any trends or shifts that you might be excited about?
Jeromie Hill:Yeah, look, I think it's actually a switch to just going back to basics. I think, you know, we've sort of been in a bit of a trough. There's a lot of uncertainty in the market, you know, occupancy is a little bit harder to get. You know it's easy to get educators now than it was a couple years ago. People have tried throwing money at the issue and, you know, trying to market their way out of it, but realizing that, you know it actually didn't get the results that they were hoping for, and so I do see a shift in going back to basics. Yes, we must have a good, always on campaign and make sure we're in the key channels and we're running additional initiatives and things like that, but not being crazy about it and just spending, you know, insane amounts of money. It's actually redirecting some of those funds into improving the operation and making sure that you have the right. You know you have the right tools and systems in place, making sure that you know the center is presented well. You know, sandblasted the concrete to the entrance, you've got the flower beds. You know things presented well, like just going back to basics. You know, if the operation's good again, your service will naturally fill, because parents will talk and promote and look. Parents never want to take responsibility for picking a bad service, and so they'll always reach out for referrals and recommendations. I see a big shift going back to just basics and running a really good service training their educators, investing in their team, making a great place to work, making a great place to come for their children and ultimately they'll start to see growth anyway and then they'll start to add fuel and fire with more marketing.
Jeromie Hill:People are wanting to spend less time on those, on those initiatives, and so they're setting up more automations. We see online tour bookings increasing rapidly. Five years ago I was always on the fence about it. I always had lead forms because I wanted my enrollments team to have those conversations because I felt like they would convert better. But now it's shifted. People, especially millennials, are just so used to online bookings they don't really want to talk to somebody.
Jeromie Hill:Using the Line Leader online booking tool has made it a lot easier, but treating those as if they were a brand new lead and not booked in a tour is the most important thing. So you see that come into Line Leader, they're booked a tour great. But let's also have that human contact contact. Let's also make sure we're using business automation rules and making sure that the center director is reaching out before the tour, the day before to you know. Tell them they decided to see them. Is there anything that they really want to know about the center so they can prepare accordingly? Let them know where to park and how to get there. You know, utilizing line leader and how to get there, utilizing Mind Leader and setting up those tasks and reminders and business rules just automates that whole process and so owners and operators can start to get out of the day-to-day grind and actually go back to basics and spend more time with just making happy families and not making happy families, but looking after families, making them happy and same with their educators and service. I think that's great.
Sierra Cruz:Looking after families, making them happy and same with their educators and service, I think that's great. Well, what kind of operators?
Jeromie Hill:or centers are really the best fit for Helpley's services. Yeah, great, I mean we have anywhere between one to 20 services. We're best built for small to medium businesses and that's because we have a hybrid model with a team in Australia, the US, and we have an office in Sri Lanka as well, so we're able to offer really competitive pricing and a service that is actually tailored to the childcare industry. I mean, when we started Helply and got our pricing for the service, we actually reverse engineered it. So we looked at the revenue that a childcare centre would make. We looked at how much that they would spend on marketing and how much that they could afford to be spending on management. We looked at how much most are actually spending with agency and we saw that we could offer the same service actually a better service, to be honest or about 40 to 50 percent less with our model. That allowed childcare centers to get the management fee in a healthy amount, like in a fee that they're comfortable in paying, instead of like something where we'll give it six months. We know we really can't afford this and we will drop off. You know ours is sustainable. They can just add it as a part of their P&L and away. They go Instantly. They get a better return on investment because they've saved money on the management fee. They can direct those funds directly into running a campaign or improving the service and so just by switching to us, they they're automatically going to get a better return on investment. But they're also going to get our expertise having worked with many, many centers over many, many years. Our strategies we're going to help them skip all of the guessing and go straight to the stuff that works.
Jeromie Hill:I'm not saying it's going to absolutely work. We need to look at many factors, such as are there enough children? Such as is the service quality there? Are we the best value in in the local area? Those sort of things, the reputation of the center. If we can overcome all that, you know marketing will work and and you know we'll help we'll help all our centers grow. We've got a 90% retention rate. People stay with us for a reason, and I like to think it's a partnership. Before we take you on, it's sort of a qualification. We know that you have plenty of upside and we're going to help you get there, and then we're going to help you grow to second, third, fourth, fifth, however many services you want to grow to. We'll be there to support.
Sierra Cruz:Know is tailor custom fit solutions and almost acting as a strategic partner, I mean, and helping them choose the right locations to expand in and kind of even improving their you know curbside appeal and the services themselves. I think that's really makes you a great value add. For any operator that's maybe feeling a little bit stretched thin and kind of like they don't necessarily know operator that's maybe feeling a little bit stretched thin and kind of like they don't necessarily know they maybe need that set of outside eyes to come in and really kind of advise them.
Jeromie Hill:And I'll finish with you know, like most agencies it's we'll run your Google and Facebook ads. Well, that's all good and well, but if your entire brain is not speaking the same language, it actually feels quite disjointed. So you really need your third-party websites to be matching the look and feel of your website. You need your website to be ranking well from an SEO point of view. You need your Google and Facebook ads to match your social media organics, and so we actually provide a service that's an all-inclusive, so you basically have a full marketing team as if you were a big provider, except you're just tapping into our team.
Jeromie Hill:So you know, every onboarding starts with an seo audit, starts with a website audit. We'll share that with the clients and go this is what we want to improve on. This is how you're going to rank on google. We'll go and implement that on behalf of the client. We'll also obviously work on their google and facebook. If they add on social media, then we'll also do the same there, and it's so painless for providers because it's like well, I don't have to now choose between do I upgrade my SEO or invest in digital ads. You can have it both. So that's where we're positioned, and agencies. It's good to find someone that's good at one niche. I think most agencies are actually starting to do that. Now we have two. We have sports background, so I have a lot of clients that are in sport, and then we also have a lot in the childcare space. So better to partner with somebody that knows what they're doing versus an agency that's just guessing.
Sierra Cruz:Yeah, absolutely Well. Where can our listeners go to learn more?
Jeromie Hill:connect with you and your team yep, um, so we're pretty much an open book. Like you can visit helpfullycom and it's h-e-p-p-l-i I think we've got the logo up here helpfully, um and you can visit our website and get in touch there. Otherwise, you can just reach me through LinkedIn. I am a real human. You can see my experience in the childcare industry via my LinkedIn and reach out through there. I'm always very active in LinkedIn so you can message me and have just a general chat. We're trying to provide a genuine service. There's no marketing tricks, and I think that's why we've had so much success.
Sierra Cruz:Well, I really appreciate your time today and I'm going to put your information in show notes in the description below for anyone who's interested in reaching out. But thank you so much. This was really, really informative. I feel like I learned a lot and I love all the data and the numbers that you bring and the kind of strategic mindset that you bring to the industry.