How She Built a Childcare Empire From the Ground Up
Law of Attraction SECRETS
Kiana Saunders, a childcare entrepreneur and influencer, shares her journey of building a multi-facility childcare empire from the ground up.
Key takeaways
- Believing in yourself is essential when starting a business, especially when facing skepticism from others.
- The hardest part of entrepreneurship isn't the idea—it's maintaining quality staff and staying competitive.
Main topics
- Entrepreneurship in childcare
- Building a business from scratch
Notable quotes
You don't need their opinion. I'm not doing it for them—I'm doing it for the masses, for the children, to save lives.
Don't judge a book by its cover. The minute she speaks, they turn around and realize she's educated and smart.
Conclusion
Kiana Saunders' journey exemplifies how passion, persistence, and self-trust can
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) Hey guys, welcome back to the Law of Attraction Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Natasha Graziano. Today on the show, we have Kiana Saunders, childcare expert, entrepreneur. founder, inspiration. She is so awesome. Today, we're going to dive into all things around entrepreneurship, around women building businesses, about believing in yourself, about everybody that you need to leave behind so you can get ahead, about having a breakthrough from your breakdown, how to go forward in life and take over whatever it is you're doing and be the best at who you are, collaboration and so much more. If you want to learn about a childcare expert and All the things that come with that, children and wonderful things for our beautiful futures with them and legacy. This is a beautiful episode for you. Welcome to the show, Kiana Sanders. So nice to have you here, girl. Thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. Of course. Okay, so what made you get into childcare? Like you're an expert in this, you're an influencer in this, but what made you take that leap of faith and go into this? Speaker 1 (1:01) So I got into childcare when I was about... 14, 15 years old because my grandmother was an in-home provider. Children were always at my home. They never went home. And my grandmother used to watch children after hours because not everybody works a nine to five or a traditional hour. So she did tend to a lot of single moms. So I wound up growing up in child care and the children just always being there. So I took a love for children, especially babies. So that's what made me get into child care, just being around them all the time. The love that I had for watching little babies and then started babysitting everyone's family members' children, neighbors' children. So just took a liking to it. Speaker 2 (1:45) That's so beautiful. I love that. I think there's something for everyone. And what's so beautiful is seeing women who just follow their heart. And you're a mother yourself. Yes, Speaker 1 (1:56) I am. So you Speaker 2 (1:56) have the actual experience, which is so great. What made you believe that you could build something this big, though? Speaker 1 (2:04) Well, originally when I started. I just was saying, well, I'm going to open a 24-hour child care facility because there were no 24-hour child care facilities that I knew of. And I knew that it was needed. And after being in the car business, and that's a whole nother story, but after having multiple businesses and just taking a leap of faith, I opened my first facility in 2014. And when I opened the facility, I was like, all right. I can do this. You know, I can expand. I can have several facilities because I grew so fast. I didn't think that, you know, that I would be full to capacity so soon. And so I just started looking for other opportunities. So in 2018, I had my second child care facility, which was only four years later, which was which is on a college campus. And then. Three years later, I had my third facility. So it just kept going on and on and on. So I was like, I'm just going to expand and, you know, try to create this wonderful brand and hopefully franchise one day. So I saw the vision and just decided to go for it. Speaker 2 (3:14) What was the hardest moment in building your business? Oh, my Speaker 1 (3:17) gosh. That's a great question. The hardest moment was just being able to acquire the staff and keep up with my competitors. Because sometimes when you start in a business, it's hard to find quality staff and good staff and be able to match salaries, especially with your competitors that have been in the business for maybe 100 years, 50 years or a lot of the corporate. corporate or franchise child care facilities. So just being able to have loyal staff and hopefully them believe in the Sandbridge vision, my vision. So I think that's the hardest part. Speaker 2 (3:58) Did you ever want to quit? Speaker 1 (4:00) Yes. Every day. Speaker 2 (4:03) I still want to quit, girl. Every Speaker 1 (4:05) day. Every day, because you always want to face challenges, whether it's staffing issues or, you know, whether it's, you know, issues, outside issues or it's so many, so many challenges in child care that you go through dealing with parents, dealing with teachers, dealing with students. You have some children that might have, you know, IEPs or behavior issues or just challenges. So it can it can be overbearing sometimes. You Speaker 2 (4:34) know what? Sometimes it feels like the life is against us. It feels like the world is coming in on us. It feels like people are telling you you're never going to do it. Speaker 1 (4:41) Yes. Speaker 2 (4:42) And it's when we go against those voices, it's when we say, no, I'm not going to listen to the noise. I'm not going to listen to the chaos. I'm not going to listen to the people who are trying to put me down because I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it for the masses. I'm doing it for the children. I'm doing it to save lives. I'm doing it to impact people. And we start to realize I don't need your opinion. And when you stop needing the value, validation of somebody who is underqualified in the fucking first place to be giving you advice you saw oh Speaker 1 (5:12) the haters are real the haters are definitely real i do want to say this even yes yes um i will say that um you have a lot of people that don't think that you deserve it or you deserve to be in a position that you're in. People don't know my story and don't know how hard I worked and they just judge you based off of your character or how you look or how you dress or... you know, whatever it was. It could be from high school, you know, it could be from college, you know, stuff. Oh, I remember when she was like this. Oh, I remember when she was like that, you know. They always want to talk about your past, you know, things that have happened in your past. It's never, oh, you know, oh my gosh, look at her now, you know, look at the positivity, look at the impact she's making. Look what she's doing for the community, you know. She's fierce, you know. Oh, maybe, you know, maybe we can learn from her, you know, because I am an advocate of entrepreneurship. Like my goal is to be able to help other women, you know, go through the journey of opening childcare facilities or offering workshop classes or whatever I can do to, to help them start their business. Right. So people don't look at those things. They just, it's, it's always the negative things that they look at. So I definitely, definitely get a lot of, a lot of hate. a lot of hate, not a lot of support. And it's okay because it used to be times that I used to be upset or I used to worry about what people think or I would cry or I would, you know, try to make friends. Like that was my biggest issue, like trying to make friends or trying to be accepted. But I had to get to a point where I had to just focus on me and focus on Kiana and what's best for Kiana. I feel like, you know, what God has for me is for me. And, you know, if it's my time, well, not if, it is my time. I'll say that. Let's change that. It is my time. And I just feel like that, you know, I just have to stay focused and just really have faith and kind of keep the background noise out of it. I Speaker 2 (7:16) agree. And when you said earlier, you know, people want to focus on who you were then. Let me tell you, we're not the same people that we were. Five years ago, let alone yesterday. I feel bad for the people that don't get the opportunity to know me today. Yes. Speaker 1 (7:31) The Speaker 2 (7:31) people that don't. No, this version of me. But they're stuck on the past. But stay there. Because I have no problem with cutting off people who I have things in common with from my past. Because I'm trying to be around people who I have things in common with with my future. That's where you want to be. You want to be in that alignment where you can be around people who are like, you're doing shit together. You're building together. I know I could sit at lunch with you. We'd be like, entrepreneurship. What are we doing? You know what I mean? People would have a business built by the end of lunch. Because we're those kind of women. We're f***ing. fearless and it doesn't matter what we look like you know as soon as i go on stage you know how many people look at some of the things that