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• 0:00:08 Kris Murray: Welcome to Child Care Rockstar Radio. I am your host, Kris Murray. Child care leaders around the globe are breaking through challenges, leading the way in innovation, testing new best practices and impacting children and families in a much more powerful and positive way than ever before. Each week, join me for interviews with early childhood leaders and experts that will leave you inspired to become the the next Child Care Rockstar.
• 0:00:34 Kris Murray: Now, let’s go. This is Child Care Rockstar Radio, episode 213 featuring Jamie Hartman and Trainual. Hey folks, welcome back. It’s Kris here in the podcasting host seat at Child Care Rockstar Radio and I am thrilled to welcome you back. Today I’m speaking with Jami Hartmann. She is a VP of Marketing at Trainual and we learn a lot about getting your operational stuff together. In this episode are all the folks on your team in alignment and rowing your boat in the same direction.
• 0:01:16 Kris Murray: And as you scale to multiple locations, this can become more and more of a challenge, which may seem obvious, but what’s not obvious is getting help in the software lane and best practices to get everybody excited about helping share. What are the policies and procedures that they’re doing? What are the SOPs, standard operating procedures and how are they doing things to make things better in your schools? How are they delivering customer excellence for the families and children?
• 0:01:52 Kris Murray: So if you can light your team up around this topic, which is oftentimes not that sexy of a topic, not that exciting of a topic or practice in your schools, it’s the game changer because today’s parents are not going to put up with messy operations in their preschool or childcare center. They’re just not. They’re expecting more. And so you’ve got to be better in this area. And that’s where Jami, my guest today, comes in. She shares all sorts of trends, best practices and things that you can do as a director or owner to improve your operational consistency and fill in the gaps where things may be broken.
• 0:02:39 Kris Murray: In today’s episode, we are going to talk also about AI and how Trainual is using AI agents or assistance to shortcut your work around, getting all of your processes documented and doing your training and onboarding. So using AI is definitely the way to go in today’s world. And we talk about how this system can help you find, train and retain your best team members and shut that revolving door of teachers, because having the ease of operations and getting people excited around this topic is going to really help you with your retention.
• 0:03:22 Kris Murray: So do you have your stuff together? Listen to this episode, make some notes and grade yourself on how you’re doing and we will like to help you go from a C to an A. Also coming up on the podcast in future episodes, I’m very excited. Just got home from the Child Care Success Summit in Atlanta 2025, and we had the best time. You’re going to learn a lot more about what went on and meet your rock star winner for the coming year, Ashanti Ordone. I actually interviewed her right before we left for Atlanta and then she won. She won the Childcare Rockstar contest. So you’re gonna meet here, here in the next episode of the podcast. And then I’m interviewing Vance Morris, who I haven’t spoken to in almost seven years.
• 0:04:13 Kris Murray: He is at he is in a company that is a Disney expertise and coaching company. And he takes all the Disney secrets around operations and puts them into a training course for leaders and owners to give them the underground secrets and ways of how Disney delivers excellent service. So we’re going to talk about that on the podcast coming up. Very excited to revisit Life with Vance, Mr. Disney. And then after that, I’m going to do a solo episode. And I’m very excited to share with you that at the summit I launched my new book and it’s my journey, my story.
• 0:05:00 Kris Murray: It’s called the Antidote to Fear. Here it is. If you’re watching this on YouTube and you can pick it up on Amazon, I’m very excited to share my journey, my personal story of entrepreneurship. And I finally got it down into a book. And so I’m sharing with you 10 different strategies for how to deal with fear that may come up. As an entrepreneur, leader, mom, dad, human. As a human, we all face these fears. And so very excited to help you live your best life and become more free and fall back in love with your business again and your life.
• 0:05:41 Kris Murray: So that is my book that just came out. I just launched it last week at the summit. And I’m going to be doing an episode all about a deep dive into those antidotes to fear and how you can use them and apply them today in your business and your life. So looking forward to that one as well. That’ll be in early December. So that’s a sneak peek of things to come. So don’t go anywhere. Stay right with me.
• 0:06:06 Kris Murray: Thank you for giving me the time and listening and watching the show. I really appreciate you. And let’s get right to it and learn more about Jamie Hartman and her story. But before we do that, I have to tell you that this episode is brought to you in Part by Trainual, running your childcare center shouldn’t feel like a full time game of telephone, that you’re constantly reinventing the wheel, babysitting your staff instead of leading your business, and a never ending onboarding cycle.
• 0:06:34 Kris Murray: If this sounds familiar, that’s where Trainual comes in. It’s the all in one operations platform that keeps your center running smoothly without the chaos and also lets you go away from your schools, go on vacation, or go to a conference and not worry. With Trainual, it’s easier than ever to document, organize and train your staff. Learn more and start streamlining@trainual.com that’s T R A I N U A L And be sure to mention Child care success or the child Care Rockstar Radio podcast when you talk to them.
• 0:07:09 Kris Murray: So thank you so much again for tuning in and let’s get right to it. Without any further ado, meet Jamie Hartman and let’s go. Welcome back, folks. I’m excited to introduce you to my friend, Jamie Hartman with Trainual. Jamie, how are you today?
• 0:07:31 Jami Hartmann: Doing so good. Chris, how are you?
• 0:07:33 Kris Murray: Doing fantastic. So what is your role at Trainual?
• 0:07:37 Jami Hartmann: I have the honor of being the VP of Marketing at Trainual. So I oversee all of our campaigns, our ads, events, social, you name it.
• 0:07:46 Kris Murray: Cool. And where are you sitting right now? Where are you located?
• 0:07:50 Jami Hartmann: I am in Orange County, California. So it’s not a bad place to live, I have to say. We, we recently relocated from Arizona, so we’re Arizona people living in Southern California right now.
• 0:08:02 Kris Murray: Okay. Well, it looks beautiful where you are.
• 0:08:04 Jami Hartmann: It’s very nice.
• 0:08:05 Kris Murray: Yes. You’re digging it. That’s good.
• 0:08:08 Jami Hartmann: Yeah.
• 0:08:09 Kris Murray: So are you working remotely? Is your team mostly remote?
• 0:08:12 Jami Hartmann: At Tranial, so we have about 60% of our staff is local to Phoenix. During the pandemic, we started hiring all over the country. I was local to Phoenix and have since moved. But Overall it’s about 60% are local to Phoenix. And it depends team by team, which is kind of interesting. So some teams are only local, some are only remote, and some are hybrid. Marketing is one of those examples that we have people all over the country.
• 0:08:39 Kris Murray: Right, Cool.
• 0:08:40 Jami Hartmann: Yeah.
• 0:08:42 Kris Murray: So tell us about how you serve the early childhood industry. Tell us more about Trainual.
• 0:08:48 Jami Hartmann: Yeah. So Trainual is an all in one employee training platform. And so at the core of what we do is really about alignment. And so, yes, you can onboard and train your staff. Yes, you can create accountability by seeing if they’ve gone through the content. Everything’s searchable. Like, all of that is true. It’s a very Efficient and scalable way to scale your company. But it’s really about alignment. So does everybody know the mission and vision? Does everyone truly understand the core customers and the families that they serve?
• 0:09:22 Jami Hartmann: Do they understand all the rules and regulations? Like, things change all of the time. And it’s. It’s a tool. It’s like a digital version of your childcare center. Think of it like that.
• 0:09:31 Kris Murray: Cool. So is everyone who’s on your boat rowing in the same direction?
• 0:09:37 Jami Hartmann: Correct? Yes, essentially. And yeah, and I’ll just say, like, as. As a parent, you can tell when. When a center is not. Like, there are just things that you’re seeing. You’re like, that’s strange. Or why is that happening? Or that was different last week. Or that was different with this, you know all of this.
• 0:09:55 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:09:56 Jami Hartmann: It is very tangible to the families.
• 0:10:01 Kris Murray: The inconsistency or consistency in operations based on how your staff knows the playbook that I feel like is the cornerstone for going towards great customer service and giving parents that exceptional experience. It’s very difficult to do that if you aren’t all on the same page together.
• 0:10:23 Jami Hartmann: Yeah, it’s. It’s genuinely almost impossible, right, to like, that’s those like having that as table stakes then for adding locations and creating scalability because you want to replicate that, like, exceptional experience that your are happening having, and then that just creates more flywheel. Mm.
• 0:10:43 Kris Murray: Cool. So tell us a little bit more about Jamie. How. What are some highlights of your professional journey and how did you land at Trainual?
• 0:10:53 Jami Hartmann: So I have always been on the creative side of work. That’s always what excited me. I went to undergrad business school, where everybody was doing finance and going to Wall street, and I just wasn’t that interested. I also just wasn’t great at it. So, you know, if I had a creative class, a marketing class, anything that required projects, working with people, thinking outside the box, standing out is really where I always excelled.
• 0:11:22 Jami Hartmann: So I started in music and entertainment, so worked for Viacom, went to school on the east coast, so lived in New York City every summer. And so I got to work with some incredible brands and after that moved back home to Arizona, worked for some consulting companies, commercial real estate, but again, always on the marketing side and actually so train you all at the time. So I’ve been with the company for almost 60 years now, and the company is not that old. So I’ve been. I’ve been with the company for.
• 0:11:52 Jami Hartmann: For much of its history.
• 0:11:53 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:11:54 Jami Hartmann: And when Trainual was first getting started, we had just raised our series A and we were hiring and so I had talked to Sasha who’s our VP of people operations, and we first started talking. I was like, sasha, just so you know, I’m, I’m six months pregnant right now, so. And I thought that was going to be it, right? Maybe, maybe, you know, a different time. And even from my perspective, like joining us, a startup, pregnant, like with child, it’s like, it’s a risky move.
• 0:12:27 Kris Murray: Yes.
• 0:12:29 Jami Hartmann: And I think though, you know, we talk a lot about like red flags, but like green flags is tranial was still wanting to hire me, still like did hire me. And so I was, I think, the fourth marketing hire. And you know, we’re, the company has obviously grown significantly since we’ve gone through so much more rounds of funding the pandemic. You know, there’s, I feel like there’s just been so much that has changed and it’s been really incredible to see the growth of the company and all of these different changes. And I think at, at the core of, of that growth is that we genuinely care about our customers and like, our success is dependent on our customer success.
• 0:13:20 Jami Hartmann: And so like, if they are scaling and they are growing and they are bringing in more revenue because they have more alignment and they can replicate that across other locations, like, that is what creates a great customer for us. And so it’s just been a really crazy ride and especially being a new mom through all of it.
• 0:13:41 Kris Murray: Right, so you are the mother of one child.
• 0:13:44 Jami Hartmann: So I have two.
• 0:13:45 Kris Murray: Okay.
• 0:13:45 Jami Hartmann: Yeah. Yes. So I have a three and a five year old boy.
• 0:13:50 Kris Murray: Okay.
• 0:13:51 Jami Hartmann: So there are times where I’m like, I. And they’re like boys, boy crazy boys. Like, I’m like, sometimes I’m, I’m like, I don’t know what is going on right now. Like you guys literally going crazy. But it’s. So, yeah, we, you know, we’re just in the phase of, I would say, you know, almost getting out of it. You know, people are like, oh, you’re in it right now. And it’s like for a long time I’m like, yeah, I’m, I’m in it. And so I, I, I do feel a big obligation, I think, to future moms, like at Tranial or anywhere that, you know, I’m very honest when people are like, hey, how’s it going?
• 0:14:31 Jami Hartmann: And you know, instead of being like, oh, great, awesome, I’ve got it all together. And you know, all of that, I’m like, no, like, it’s a madhouse over here. I’ve been through war before. Even sitting down on zoom. But like I’m here, like let’s do it right. But I think that’s, that’s one of the things like being the first person going on maternity leave at train UAL and helping to impact that like our policy and all of those things. Like I take it with such responsibility.
• 0:14:58 Jami Hartmann: But yeah, it’s. I think we’re. My littlest one just got potty trained. So like you know, packing the diaper bag now I’m like, this is easy, right? Easy. Just need snacks and water, right? Yeah.
• 0:15:10 Kris Murray: That’s great. That’s a big milestone. I remember that moment. So congrats on that. Yeah. With potty training, my. It was always like, well give a reward. So my son was able to be incentivized with blueberries and my daughter wanted nothing to do with anything healthy and wanted M and M’s as her incentive. So, you know, each child is different. Not so I gave in to the candy thing but. And I totally get where you’re at with the insanity but you know, it’s kind of just like love it now because everybody tells you who’s an older mom probably or older dad.
• 0:15:49 Kris Murray: It does go so fast. And so thanks for sharing that. What are your child’s names?
• 0:15:54 Jami Hartmann: Theo and Henry.
• 0:15:56 Kris Murray: Aw, that’s so cute.
• 0:15:57 Jami Hartmann: I love both of them there. That’s such a good point about like I. I can’t tell you how many times we get stopped with our boys of parents just being like, you know, almost tears in their eyes. They’re like hold on to these days. And it’s like from where we’re like sometimes when like things are really going crazy with the boys, my husband will look over at me and be like, just cherish these days.
• 0:16:18 Kris Murray: Exactly.
• 0:16:19 Jami Hartmann: I’m a joke. But if there is something like I was thinking about that. That’s just like such a perspective that parents of older kids have. And it’s like there’s something there of like how do you tap into the, you know, knowing that this is so temporary in the long scheme of things.
• 0:16:36 Kris Murray: Yes. So my favorite moment thinking back that’s like etched in my brain forever and you’ll have these is when my 6 now is probably 5 year old son woke up his little sister who was probably two and a half at the time on Christmas morning and I look up the stairs and they both have their onesies on jammies, their Christmas onesies. And he’s holding her hand and they’re walking down the stairs together.
• 0:17:06 Jami Hartmann: Gosh, that gets me.
• 0:17:07 Kris Murray: Yeah. On Christmas morning. So you’ll have Those moments, there’s ones in the backyard of them playing. And just those memories, you’ll never forget them.
• 0:17:16 Jami Hartmann: Yeah. And how old are your kids now?
• 0:17:18 Kris Murray: They are 23 and 20. Wow. Yep. So Theo and Henry, I love that. And so tell us something about you that not that many people know about you personally.
• 0:17:31 Jami Hartmann: So I think this is a good, fun fact. But if I’ve ever done a fun fact with anyone, you will have heard this. But my typical fun fact is that When I was 15, I was on Wheel of Fortune. Like, the actual show.
• 0:17:46 Kris Murray: No way.
• 0:17:47 Jami Hartmann: Yes. It was teen best friends week, and my grandparents are really into Wheel of Fortune, and they were doing auditions, and they’re like, you. You girls should go do it. And so, you know, we couldn’t even drive at the time. I think we had driven to the interview.
• 0:18:05 Kris Murray: Cool.
• 0:18:06 Jami Hartmann: Yeah, it was just a fun experience. We actually didn’t. We were winning the whole time. So we had, like, money. And then we landed on. It was like a 50. 50 shot at. I think it was $50,000. And we took it and over the thing, and it was like, went bankrupt.
• 0:18:27 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:18:28 Jami Hartmann: And yeah. So I could say I lost a lot of money on Wheel of Fortune, especially at the time. You know, that’s like, we could have. We would have made it. Right. You don’t have to work anymore. That kind of money when you’re there.
• 0:18:42 Kris Murray: Yeah.
• 0:18:43 Jami Hartmann: But that was. That was a good lesson in risk taking, I would say.
• 0:18:47 Kris Murray: Yeah.
• 0:18:47 Jami Hartmann: I’m not sure if I would do it, like, if I would make that same decision, but how often do you have that. Those chances? So that.
• 0:18:54 Kris Murray: Right. Love it. That’s very, very fun. I’m actually. My fun fact is I am very good at that game. And every time I play. Yeah. Every time I play with people, they’re like, you should audition for the show. So I don’t know. Now that Ryan. Now that Ryan Seacrest is hosting, maybe I will, because I’m a Ryan fan.
• 0:19:12 Jami Hartmann: I will support you.
• 0:19:14 Kris Murray: Okay, cool. But so tell us a little bit about at Trainual, what you guys are seeing. It sounds like your ideal client sweet spot is probably someone that owns between three and 10 centers or maybe more. I don’t know if you have an ideal avatar of the. And you have small ones, too. I’m sure that are in growth mode.
• 0:19:36 Jami Hartmann: Totally. Yeah.
• 0:19:38 Kris Murray: Yeah, go ahead.
• 0:19:39 Jami Hartmann: So we have. It depends. I would say the sort of. The bare minimum that we find, like, the very low end of not even with child care centers, but just any customer at renewal is at least 10 employees. Once you have more than 10 employees. That’s when things start to get a little bit more complicated. And as you grow from there, you have, you have leaders, you have departments, you have people that are owning specific areas of the business that are then working with other people under them. And that’s where sort of like alignment starts to, to break if you’re not intentional about it.
• 0:20:16 Jami Hartmann: And I would say like, on average, if you have over 25 employees, you need a tool like trainual, right? And then as you grow, you have multi locations. Franchises are great examples of like industries or subsets of industries of that really, really need and value Trainual because they are trying to replicate like what is working across many places. But again, it doesn’t. Like we have tons of customers that just have one location.
• 0:20:46 Jami Hartmann: But maybe they’re hiring, they have seasonal employees, turnover is really high. Processes are constantly changing. Maybe there’s a regulatory aspect or they need compliance as well. That’s typically our, our, our avatar.
• 0:21:00 Kris Murray: Mm. So let’s take an example of somebody that’s listening to this podcast. Might have an operations manual that is out of date or maybe it’s not even completed because that’s always a pain point for our childcare owners. And then they might have all of their onboarding and training videos in folders on Google Drive because that’s as far as they’ve taken it. So tell us a little bit about when you meet a child care client. And this could serve other niches and verticals as well.
• 0:21:34 Kris Murray: Where are they at now? Like what’s the gap and where do you take them from? Like maybe moving off of Google Drive into something that’s more sophisticated, which is trainual. Just talk a little bit about that shift or what? Well, how that gap gets, gets filled.
• 0:21:52 Jami Hartmann: So yeah, it’s funny that we call it graduating out of Google Docs, right? And it’s true, like you, you use it and you know, when you don’t have as many employees, like you can get by just enough without needing a tool. And that’s where it’s like, yes, if, if you’re super aspirational and you don’t have a ton of employees, but like you want to get started soon as possible. Like, sure, we’d love to have you customer but typically what we see is customers come to us with some stuff documented and that could be in Google, it could be share SharePoint, it could be videos.
• 0:22:30 Jami Hartmann: There’s a lot of people that still have like actual manuals printed out and it’s in a binder and obviously that originates somewhere Digitally but like it’s usually spread across multiple places. And so even if you think about what is the experience of someone trying to, if ideally, even if it’s all documented, like what is the experience of someone trying to consume all of that information in all these different platforms? And then you obviously have like in person training or someone live telling you things. And so that is super inefficient, super inconsistent.
• 0:23:04 Kris Murray: Yes.
• 0:23:05 Jami Hartmann: Which is what’s also hard and it’s impossible to scale. And so um, what we do with Trainual and the, the product, if anyone’s listening this and has tried training on the past, over the last nine months, the product has changed so much in such a powerful way in that you can get started like with a very simple piece of content. You can drag and drop in a PDF and assign that out. You can record a video from, say the director records a video, adds that assigns it out. You can require completion for that video.
• 0:23:42 Jami Hartmann: It’s all more bite size, which is how we listen to a lot of customer feedback that it’s hard to get started. And it’s a document. We get that and we’ve changed the product to make it much easier to get things in. Then every customer goes through with our implementation team. You get a dedicated implementation rep and they like work with you for four weeks on a plan for how to get up and running things migrated. Where do you want to start there? You know how you assign content is by like we call them groups.
• 0:24:18 Jami Hartmann: Groups are made of people locations. So you kind of configure your groups and then you create your content and it’s like off to the races. And so, and I will also say that one of the biggest like breakthroughs when I talk to customers and, and prospects is a lot of people think that it, it, it should be one person doing all of this. And if you think of it like that, that is so intimidating. And that’s like, yeah, I don’t have time for that. Like I’ve got other things that are more pressing that are probably going to drive immediate revenue for the business.
• 0:24:54 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:24:56 Jami Hartmann: It is, it is something that you need to align on like as a leadership team.
• 0:25:00 Kris Murray: Yeah.
• 0:25:01 Jami Hartmann: And how it works well is like whoever is in charge of a process or whoever is in charge of X, Y and Z, they document it.
• 0:25:10 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:25:10 Jami Hartmann: They are the, they are the owner, they are the person responsible. And sure, that’s an easier way to get things like documented, but it also creates accountability for them. And so as things are updated or say someone comes to ask them a question, like they no longer have to just repeat themselves over and over again. It’s hey, check Trainual.
• 0:25:30 Kris Murray: Yeah.
• 0:25:31 Jami Hartmann: Like we, we even at train you all like we’ll, we’ll check each other sometimes where someone will be like hey, what, what’s this question? And someone will be like hey, it’s in the train. You’ll right here.
• 0:25:41 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:25:42 Jami Hartmann: So like we, we’ve, you know, we still have slip ups so to speak. But like as a rule of thumb everyone internally will check Tranial before you ask the question. Which frees up obviously all of our individual contributors time to be doing the things that they should and not just answering questions that other people like are just trying to find the information from.
• 0:26:02 Kris Murray: Right. So that’s a great best practice is not assigning this to one person. If you want it to get implemented and adopted and bought into quickly and get it really ramping up, you gotta get your leadership team all everybody needs buy in and then everybody needs to start adding all of their pieces.
• 0:26:22 Jami Hartmann: Yeah.
• 0:26:22 Kris Murray: Processes into it and hold each other accountable.
• 0:26:25 Jami Hartmann: Yeah. And I think there’s like phasing of like okay, here’s you know, our top 10 process and policies that we need to get in by end of quarter. Like that’s, you start bite size and then when it’s like okay and then you have this like, you know, it’s never. And Chris our founder says this a lot. Like it’s not that everything needs to be documented. Like that’s not it either. I think that’s a big misconception of like everything that everybody does needs to, it’s really like what do you want to repeat and what’s working and that’s what you should document. So like on the marketing side at Tranial for example, we probably document the least comparatively to other teams.
• 0:27:07 Jami Hartmann: And that is because so much of what we do is experimental. And so we’re, we’re testing new ad channels, we’re coming up with new creative, we’re all sorts of stuff, we’re adding new tools, seeing if it works. And so so much is changing. And then when something starts to click and we’re like okay, let’s, let’s repeat this motion over and over again immediately into Trainual. And that you know, I think the other, the other thing too that we haven’t really talked about so far is just the searchability and access to information.
• 0:27:38 Jami Hartmann: And that is like ChatGPT has fundamentally changed how people financers.
• 0:27:45 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:27:45 Jami Hartmann: And you know, your staff is no different. And so we, we’ve always had search and AI search and train Ulm. But now it’s like if say someone on your staff has a question about a policy or a process and they’re digging through SharePoint or Google Drive or they’re looking through manual like papers, it’s like not gonna happen.
• 0:28:12 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:28:13 Jami Hartmann: Just not a good, not a good process. And right. In training, one of the things we recently rolled out was like an AI assistant and that is like it’s static throughout the whole experience. If you want it and you can have a conversation, you can ask it like hey, how many, what’s the process for submitting pto or what’s the policy on, you know, food allergens or what, whatever it may be. It’s like everything is surface to them. And so there’s like this.
• 0:28:42 Jami Hartmann: Once it’s documented, it’s like the gift that keeps on giving and free time.
• 0:28:47 Kris Murray: Cool. I love that. That’s a huge, huge piece is the AI agent component of it. So that’s, that’s very hot. I love that.
• 0:28:57 Jami Hartmann: Yeah, yeah. And I think too like just for talking about AI stuff, the, the content creation piece has, is fully AI driven. If that’s something that you know, say you don’t have a policy for something or you don’t have a process and you just need a starting point that’s also all built into the tool. So you can just say like write me a policy on this for you know, this industry or something and.
• 0:29:20 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:29:21 Jami Hartmann: It just, you can edit it and do all of the things that you would normally want to do.
• 0:29:24 Kris Murray: Cool. Yeah. Just curious, what other industries, niches or verticals you guys? I mean I’m sure it’s broad, but are there other ones besides child care that you kind of focus in on or you’ve gotten a lot of clients from?
• 0:29:38 Jami Hartmann: Yeah. So it’s such an interesting question. And as you know, as a marketer, I wish that there was like a few that just blew us out of the water.
• 0:29:49 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:29:49 Jami Hartmann: Then we could go a little bit deeper on those.
• 0:29:52 Kris Murray: Yes.
• 0:29:53 Jami Hartmann: But the reality is that Trainual works really well for any people powered business. And so you could say like, okay, most businesses are people powered. So like what does that actually mean? And it means that in order to grow or scale your company, you need to add people. And so service based businesses. So agencies, law offices, contractors, construction, H vac, plumbing, anything where it’s like, okay, we need to grow our revenue, we need to add people.
• 0:30:27 Jami Hartmann: That’s renewal is like a no brainer because it’s like this efficiency piece that’s going to make all of your effort like have such a higher ROI and then free up the people that are like, you know, for example, take like an H vac technician. Like typically how they train is they have their, their senior techs training the new techs. And from a business perspective you got to think like is, is that the best use of a senior text time is constantly training new people. It’s like no, they, they should be out there billing. Those are your like highest value staff members. And so and, and that’s like, if you think about that in the childcare space as well, like there, there are, you know, there’s so much that’s done by osmosis or through people. And sure, there’s always going to be a place for that. Like having a conversation with someone that’s in the current role that you’re, you’re going to be doing. It’s like you can’t replace that. And so like we still need that as an element. But there’s so much information that you can give a new hire or an existing member of like a change or something. Like there’s a process change or policy change or anything. There’s so much information you can deliver with the press of a button.
• 0:31:39 Jami Hartmann: And then again the accountability piece is really important because I mean you can see who has gone through the content, who’s completed, who did the. Because we have tests and quizzes that you can create as well, also AI generated. So you can just say create a test for me. Like what did they get on the score? Did they actually like read the material? And it’s not just like okay, clicking through the button.
• 0:32:05 Jami Hartmann: Got it, got the training, but it’s specific to your center. It’s not this cookie cutter pre built content that applies to like, you know, every child care center in the United States. Like it’s right your, how you want your staff to operate. Right.
• 0:32:21 Kris Murray: Well that’s cool. I didn’t know that you had the capability of creating assessments or tests and quizzes. That’s cool.
• 0:32:27 Jami Hartmann: Yeah, and there’s, yeah, there’s different types you can do, you know, multiple choice, short answer, you know, whatever. So yeah, that’s, that’s been a feature that a lot of customers have loved.
• 0:32:36 Kris Murray: Awesome. What are some industry trends that you’re seeing that your clients are experiencing?
• 0:32:44 Jami Hartmann: Yeah, I think at the core I would say it’s like finding training and retaining staff. I think that’s probably the biggest, you know, there’s. People are just inherently unpredictable and hard. Like even as, you know, a manager, when, when I have new people, managers on my team that are going to start managing someone, I’m like, I tell them this is a lot harder than you think. It’s going to be like managing people and emotions. And then even with childcare, it’s like you’re managing parents and children. It’s like you have the hardest job.
• 0:33:25 Kris Murray: Yeah.
• 0:33:25 Jami Hartmann: But I think that is, that is the, the, the biggest problem. And I think it’s, you know, you can get a software to help with a lot of these, you know, like a applicant tracking system, ats to find and source, say new teachers or staff. The training element is typically, I would say under, under invested in. And so if you’re thinking about your competitors, centers and what they’re doing or what is the best of the best in your region doing, I guarantee you that they have some sort of more sophisticated training program and SOPs and policies in place than scattered docs everywhere. And if you think, you know, it’s like that becomes a competitive advantage for sure.
• 0:34:12 Kris Murray: It still shocks me how many childcare center owners I talk to that have no formal training in place. I’m like, what? And I don’t, I can’t imagine how they actually operate. It’s shocking to me, Jamie. I’m like, in 2025, like, seriously, you just put a new hire in the classroom and they learn by osmosis. Like, what? Anyways, it’s, it happens. It’s out there.
• 0:34:42 Jami Hartmann: Yeah. And I, So as someone who, you know, I’ve always been a working mom. My kids have gone to preschools. I’ve done it. I, you know, two kids, different ages, I’ve moved states, I found preschools and child care centers and Arizona and California. I’ve seen it all as a parent and the thing, and I’m sure a lot of the listeners know this, but like the parents are constantly talking about the different options, what they like and what they don’t like.
• 0:35:16 Kris Murray: Yes.
• 0:35:16 Jami Hartmann: We’re always, all the time, always asking me like newer moms, hey, what’s the best preschool? What’s the best Montessori school? What’s the best non Montessori school? Like, I, and it’s just this conversation of, hey, did you like it? What did you like? What didn’t you like? And in my experience, the thing that always turns me off the most is the constant turnover of teachers. That is such a red flag as a parent.
• 0:35:49 Kris Murray: Yeah.
• 0:35:50 Jami Hartmann: That we here in California, my son went to a center here and it. They. The actual lead teacher was fantastic. She was great. She was getting her master’s, but she couldn’t be There a lot of the days. And so they had few people come in, they were temps. The director was doing circle time at some points. And it became, I was like, this is a revolving door and I just don’t want my son in this environment.
• 0:36:21 Jami Hartmann: I don’t think it’s necessarily hurting him. But there’s better options at this point with more consistency that my young son really needs. And so, and you know, on the flip side, it’s like when you’re doing a tour, knowing that the teachers have been there a long time is like one of the best, biggest things that I’m like, awesome. That’s great. And that’s universally what I talk to with a lot of parents. It’s the same thing.
• 0:36:45 Jami Hartmann: Yeah. And I think part of that if, if we’re tying this back to what, like how, like how you create that. And it’s like that is a byproduct of having a very well run center program.
• 0:37:01 Kris Murray: Yes.
• 0:37:02 Jami Hartmann: And if, if you don’t, it’s like things fall apart and then you know, that’s, that’s one of, that’s super visible to families. But it’s really like the core of how to run your center.
• 0:37:15 Kris Murray: For sure. Yeah. Parents hearkening back to my years of being at the pool, at the gym with my little ones, at a cocktail party, at a neighborhood party, having dinner with another family. We were always talking about our daycare center experiences and what was good and what wasn’t and staff turnover. And you’re right, there is no bigger red flag than that revolving door of teachers. In fact, I left one of the nation’s leading chains, pulled my kids right out because I just saw a revolving door, especially in the older infant. It was like the 12 to 18 month infant room, young toddlers. And like literally there was a different teacher in there every week that would not even really talk to me. And I’m like, okay, this, this has to end.
• 0:38:10 Jami Hartmann: Yeah, this is done.
• 0:38:11 Kris Murray: This is. Yeah, I’m out. Yeah.
• 0:38:13 Jami Hartmann: And yeah. And I think too the other thing is like, that’s hard to necessarily like put your finger on, but there’s also an element of like communication to, to parents and families that sometimes it’s like the place that my boys are at now, it’s like I get a notice, I just got notice yesterday about the Halloween parade, what time it is, where it’s going to be if our kids are going back to school or not. Right. Like a month in advance.
• 0:38:42 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:38:43 Jami Hartmann: I know what’s going to be happening. And obviously as a working mom and A working dad, my husband as well. Like that is so important for us. And it’s like, yes, they have their stuff.
• 0:38:53 Kris Murray: Stuff together. Yeah.
• 0:38:55 Jami Hartmann: And, and that, and at the core of that is process and like aligned and documented and like repeatable because it’s. Yes, they have a playbook that works every year. They’re iterating on it, making it better based on feedback. But hey, you know, at this time this goes out, parents have enough notice. But like, and if we go back to my experience at the one that wasn’t, didn’t have their stuff together, it would be like two days before, oh, bring the kids in, you know, Christmas jammies or Halloween jammies. And I’m like have Halloween jammies. Like okay, I’ll go to Target right now. And then it’s like constant stress. That’s like, we gotta get ahead of this.
• 0:39:40 Kris Murray: Yes.
• 0:39:40 Jami Hartmann: Yeah. And that, and that goes back to.
• 0:39:42 Kris Murray: Yeah, parents are stressed enough, they do not need a 48 hour notice to go get freaking Halloween jammies. And that’s happening all the time by the way. So.
• 0:39:51 Jami Hartmann: Yes.
• 0:39:52 Kris Murray: So yeah, this is amazing. This is a great system that will help avoid all of those pain points guys. So I love that. And this episode is airing after the summit, I think. Or maybe it’s right before. Anyways, we’re right around the timeframe of the childcare success summit. So you guys are going to be there again as a sponsoring booth.
• 0:40:14 Jami Hartmann: Yes.
• 0:40:15 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:40:15 Jami Hartmann: So yeah, we’re really excited and I’ll just say when my team comes back from the event, they like, they love going so much. They love the community, they love talking to you all and like figuring out how to help you and just showing up and being a part of the community as well. And so we’re excited to come back this year. I know we’ve got some fun things planned as well.
• 0:40:38 Kris Murray: Yeah, excited about that. That’s awesome. What is on the horizon for you and your team? What are you excited about for the remainder and or 2026?
• 0:40:48 Jami Hartmann: So from a product perspective, I think we’re really excited about doubling down on the AI element. So that means more, I would say agentic experiences with our AI. So like what can you ask it to do? Can you ask it to pull up a policy for you and update X, Y and Z? Right. So like that’s. We’re experimenting and trying to make sure that our customers have the latest technology to run their businesses as efficiently and scalably as possible. So like AI is a big focus for us.
• 0:41:28 Jami Hartmann: One of the value props of trainual versus say like A clunky lms. So a learning management system that’s people ask us like are you a learning management system? And the answer is yes and no. LMSs have typically been only for enterprise customers, aka very expensive tools.
• 0:41:48 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:41:50 Jami Hartmann: And also typically they’ve only had like pre built content. So it’s not specific to how your center runs, it’s just how maybe a center should run. And obviously think about through your center and all of the nuances of even like drop off or how parents get in the door or how they sign out or sign in. It’s so different.
• 0:42:11 Kris Murray: Yeah.
• 0:42:12 Jami Hartmann: And so trano is kind of like in the middle of having like content that’s specific to your business and also offering pre built content where it makes sense and where that may make sense for your center is any sort of like compliance or things that you need to check the box of, you know, specific, you know, anti harassment training or anything like that. Like there’s no need for you as a center owner or director to create that from scratch yourself. Like that’s been done. We have that. So we recently launched pre built courses and so you can have both, you can, you can buy pre built courses or you can make your own.
• 0:42:51 Jami Hartmann: And we’re going to be adding more courses there so that our customers have like exactly what they want. So there’s been more requests around that. And then the other thing that we’re really focused on is just integrations. We really understand that so many businesses have so many tools and it’s overwhelming and how do they work together and how is there efficiencies? And so we’re really doubling down on integrating with tools that your center uses every day.
• 0:43:22 Jami Hartmann: That may mean for your payroll system that all of those users are automatically piped into trainual and so you don’t have to like add people multiple times in multiple places.
• 0:43:34 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:43:35 Jami Hartmann: That’s what we’re really excited as a business to bring.
• 0:43:40 Kris Murray: That’s very cool. I love that idea because yeah, the biggest pain point has always been all of these different systems and all of the replicated work of putting people in and out and, and updating all of the profiles for all of the customers and the employees and all the across all these different 18 systems.
• 0:43:58 Jami Hartmann: So yeah, yeah. And there’s one thing I don’t like. This feature in training doesn’t get a ton of adoption but I’m going to use this time to push it because I think there’s such a good use case for child care centers is that have this option for any sort of Training, you create a course, it’s called Public Share. And so you can create a link that then you can share with anybody and so they don’t have to have a seat in training.
• 0:44:26 Jami Hartmann: And so as a parent, it’s like just having a link that’s always up to date with even the handbook or like the policies that I’m agreeing to or like a specific event that’s coming up or holidays or anything like that that you just go and it’s like literally everything you need to know and then you know that it’s always up to date and you’re not like resharing PDFs with. With parents and families and I’m like downloading things, trying to figure out what’s. What, what’s the latest.
• 0:44:57 Kris Murray: Right.
• 0:44:58 Jami Hartmann: So that’s another.
• 0:44:59 Kris Murray: That’s cool.
• 0:45:00 Jami Hartmann: Yeah. The value of Trainual to not just your staff, but also the families.
• 0:45:06 Kris Murray: Yeah, that’s very. It’s like version control and knowledge control and making sure that everybody has the latest, most up to date version. That’s like huge. I love that. Very cool. Awesome. Well, is there anything that you didn’t get a chance to share or any final thoughts that you have for our folks?
• 0:45:28 Jami Hartmann: No, I just. If anybody’s interested in taking a deeper look at Trainual and isn’t going to be at the event, just go to trainual.com childcare. That’s where you can find all the information you can reach out to Me personally, I’m happy to answer any questions. If you have any questions about, you know, younger moms or families or what you’re looking for. Have a really incredible team at Trinul. Our customer support and success teams like are absolutely incredible as well.
• 0:45:59 Jami Hartmann: And so if you need anything, just, just reach out and we look forward to seeing a lot of you at the event.
• 0:46:04 Kris Murray: Okay, awesome. Well, Jamie, this has been fantastic. Great conversation. I love kind of getting back to that mom’s perspective. Getting back to, you know, what are those red flags and what are the green flags that is going to, you know, and making sure everybody’s in alignment on your team. And I love also what you said about not everything needs to be documented, but just the things that are. That need to be repeatable and what’s working like that.
• 0:46:34 Kris Murray: That was a drop of gold right there. So thank you so much for being here on the podcast today.
• 0:46:39 Jami Hartmann: Thanks so much, Chris. Appreciate it.
• 0:46:41 Kris Murray: Thanks everybody for tuning in. Hope you got some writer downers there and take action and we will see you soon. Take care and God bless. I hope you liked this episode of Child Care Rockstar Radio. If you did, please leave a review and share it with someone you know to help spread the word to friends in our industry and on social media. Child care business success is my passion and I’m honored to be on this journey with you.
• 0:47:07 Kris Murray: As a thank you for listening, I’ve got a new video training that shows you how to add six figures or more of new revenue to your program in the next 60 days by improving your hiring and your enrollment systems. To watch my new video, just go to www.fixmyschool.com. that’s Fix My School.com thanks. Take care and God bless.