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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 next Childcare Rockstar.

• 0:00:34 Kris Murray: Now, let’s go. This is Childcare Rockstar Radio, episode 196 featuring the sisters. I am very excited to welcome you into this episode. This is a very special episode. We are featuring the winners of the 2024 Childcare Rockstar contest, Sister M. Mercedes Diaz and Sister Maria Consuela Garzon. And these ladies are going to blow you away. Today, the sisters are The Sisters of St Francis of the Martyr St George, which is a Catholic religious community dedicated to making Christ’s merciful love visible. And they built the St. Francis Daycare center in their community in 1980.

• 0:01:26 Kris Murray: So they’ve been doing this work for 45 years. But the sisters are newer to the game of ece. They came from the world of higher education in terms of high school and elementary teachers, and got kind of thrown in to leading and directing this childcare center. But, yeah, 45 years that this center has been open, and they have 38 team members who are serving as their teachers. They call them mission partners now. These are lay people.

• 0:02:01 Kris Murray: So there’s a mix of leadership from the nones and teachers from the regular community that are not nuns. And so, as you might imagine, there’s some interesting dynamics in leadership going on. We talk about that on the podcast, and we talk about trying to be courageous in the face of struggle, trying to create systems and structure where the business was basically being run by random paper and sticky notes and chaos.

• 0:02:37 Kris Murray: And so, because when you don’t know what you don’t know and you step into a world of early childhood education not knowing how to lead it, you can imagine how lost these two amazing women felt and how far they’ve come to transform themselves into confident leaders and marketers of their business and so much more, as well as educators. So they share that. They first came to our conference. I think they came to the Nashville Summit, and everybody was using the acronym ece and they didn’t know what ECE stood for, so they had to turn around and ask somebody that was in the audience with them. And so they quickly learned so much that they didn’t realize that they didn’t know. And so the title of today’s episode is ECE stands for empathy, courage and excellence. Because that’s what these two amazing humans represent, the Sisters.

• 0:03:40 Kris Murray: So without any further ado, we’re going to just jump right in. This is a powerful episode. It’s going to make you feel really good and enjoy it. You’ll also get some writer downers about how to transform a school and so much more. Child care rock stars, Sister Mercedes and Sister Maria. Let’s go here on Child Care Rockstar Radio. Welcome back to the show, everybody. It is my great pleasure and honor to introduce you to my guests today.

• 0:04:19 Kris Murray: Sister M. Mercedes Diaz and Sister Maria Consuela Garzon. Welcome to the podcast. How are you today, ladies?

• 0:04:27 Sister M. Mercedes: Great. We’re doing wonderful.

• 0:04:28 Sister Maria Consuela: Thanks for having us.

• 0:04:29 Sister M. Mercedes: It was a crazy morning, but here we are.

• 0:04:31 Kris Murray: Yay. Well, I’m thrilled to have you here. The Sisters were the winners of our Childcare Rockstar contest in October of 24 at the Child Care Success Summit. And after a long awaited delay, we are very excited to welcome you to the podcast today. Thank you. Yeah. Where are you right now? Where are you located and where are you sitting?

• 0:04:55 Sister M. Mercedes: Well, right now we are literally sitting in System American Soil’s office and she’s like right next to the main office. We are located in Alton, Illinois, which is right across river from St. Louis, about 40 minutes from St. Louis and yeah, that’s where we are.

• 0:05:12 Kris Murray: All right, cool. Tell us more about your program and the work that you do.

• 0:05:17 Sister Maria Consuela: So we’re at St. Francis Daycare Center. Our community, the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George, a really long name, opened the daycare in 1980. So this March will be 45 years that we’re open. We’re licensed for one hundred and thirty one kiddos, six weeks through pre K4. So we have ten total classrooms.

• 0:05:40 Kris Murray: Awesome. And how many teachers do you guys employ?

• 0:05:42 Sister M. Mercedes: Oh my. Well, all together we have 38 mission partners. We have the 10, I think we have 12, 13 lead teachers. A little bit more of assistance because we have some. We have two lead teachers that are floaters and a couple more that are teaching assistants.

• 0:06:05 Sister Maria Consuela: We have four sisters who work full time at the center. Otherwise it is lay people that are mission partners down here.

• 0:06:13 Kris Murray: Yeah, I want to learn more about that. That’s an interesting partnership. Well, 45 years is an incredible journey and I know that obviously you guys are way too young to have opened the school. How long have you individually worked in the daycare, each of you?

• 0:06:31 Sister Maria Consuela: We both got here at the same time on the same day in July of 23.

• 0:06:37 Sister M. Mercedes: But I entered the convent in 2002. When you enter the convent, there’s a group of you, of young women who’ve entered and they put you to do work in different areas. And I was put in the registration department in our hospital. Where were you as a postulate?

• 0:06:53 Sister Maria Consuela: I taught at an elementary school, and.

• 0:06:55 Sister M. Mercedes: Then after profession, I taught high school and middle school, Spanish and religion.

• 0:07:01 Sister Maria Consuela: And then after profession, I taught second grade in Nebraska.

• 0:07:05 Sister M. Mercedes: I never stepped foot in the daycare. I only heard about the daycare. I saw the daycare from a distance. I never. I never thought ever in my entire life that I would ever end up in the daycare. It’s just. It wasn’t just. It wasn’t part of my. Nothing. Sure. Not there. Yeah. So both of us started 2 1/2 years ago.

• 0:07:29 Kris Murray: Okay, and how did you find the childcare success academy of all things?

• 0:07:34 Sister Maria Consuela: Well, so Mother Superior, she’s the one. There’s about 110 of us in the United States of our sisters, and she’s the one who gives every sister their assignments and lets them know what they’re going to be doing. So she told each of us that we’d be at the daycare, and then a sister wanted to travel.

• 0:07:51 Sister M. Mercedes: Yeah. So when. So she. She asked me, you know, would you pray about and consider being the director of our daycare? She told me the current state of the daycare, but she also told me why, like, what she saw in me, the gift that she saw in me that would be good for the daycare. And I agreed. I agreed on all of them. But she did give me time to pray about it. And I got to my room and I’m like, lord, I just want to travel.

• 0:08:19 Sister M. Mercedes: And I looked up online conferences for daycare business. I literally put the word business in there, and yours came up. And it was in Denver.

• 0:08:34 Sister Maria Consuela: No, Nashville.

• 0:08:35 Sister M. Mercedes: Nashville. I’ve never been to Nashville.

• 0:08:40 Sister Maria Consuela: And we knew. We knew nothing about daycares. And so that was the thing. This is true before us, for many years that kept this place running, but they didn’t have experience with the business of how to run a daycare. And so we knew we needed help because we knew nothing about this field. And so between that and a desire to travel, we ended up in Nashville when both of us were actually still teaching. And she was teaching middle school up in northern Illinois, and I was teaching second grade in Nebraska.

• 0:09:10 Sister M. Mercedes: We had to keep it secret.

• 0:09:12 Sister Maria Consuela: The sisters at my convent didn’t know where I was going or what I was doing because it wasn’t announced to everyone about transferring so, yeah, we were.

• 0:09:21 Sister M. Mercedes: Grateful that mother gave us the opportunity to get ready.

• 0:09:24 Kris Murray: Yes, absolutely. And I didn’t even know that you guys were all spread out across the United States. That’s amazing. So. But are you mostly in the Midwest or is it just all over the place?

• 0:09:37 Sister M. Mercedes: Yeah, when I entered, we were in New Jersey and in Washington, but right now we’re in mostly here, but we have Oklahoma and Nebraska, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois.

• 0:09:52 Sister Maria Consuela: Like a lot of convents in Illinois, so.

• 0:09:55 Kris Murray: Well, that’s an amazing story. I want to dig into more about the program before I do that. Tell me. I mean, you already shared with me some fun facts about your desire to travel and things, but is there anything else on the personal side that you would not mind sharing about each of you as a fun fact?

• 0:10:16 Sister M. Mercedes: A fun fact that’s personal and not too personal?

• 0:10:24 Kris Murray: Maybe something that you like, a hobby, an interest, something you enjoy doing on your. Okay, okay.

• 0:10:31 Sister M. Mercedes: Here’s so the one I give when I. People want to know something fun, I would say. Well, I was conceived in Dominican Republic and born in New Jersey. My first language is Spanish.

• 0:10:42 Kris Murray: Oh, wow.

• 0:10:44 Sister M. Mercedes: So English is my second language.

• 0:10:45 Kris Murray: Oh, wow. Okay.

• 0:10:46 Sister Maria Consuela: Cool.

• 0:10:46 Kris Murray: And so you’re still fluent today in.

• 0:10:48 Sister M. Mercedes: Spanish, and then I’m actually a Spanish teacher. And recently, a couple of weeks ago, we started a Spanish program for our pre K. Wow.

• 0:10:57 Kris Murray: Awesome. Congratulations.

• 0:10:58 Sister M. Mercedes: Thank you.

• 0:10:59 Kris Murray: Love that. And Maria, let’s see.

• 0:11:03 Sister Maria Consuela: 1. I mean, a hobby. My favorite hobby is writing letters. I don’t feel like I have a lot of time to do that as much anymore. But I do love writing letters. And a fun fact I always like to share is I once ran down an active volcano in a rainstorm.

• 0:11:18 Kris Murray: Whoa. Yeah. And where was that at?

• 0:11:21 Sister Maria Consuela: Nicaragua. Okay.

• 0:11:23 Kris Murray: Nice. Cool. I was gonna guess Hawaii, but I haven’t been there.

• 0:11:27 Sister Maria Consuela: Maybe someday with the cat, you know?

• 0:11:32 Kris Murray: Exactly.

• 0:11:33 Sister M. Mercedes: Did you have some suggestions about other places in the United States that we.

• 0:11:36 Sister Maria Consuela: Haven’T gone to travel?

• 0:11:39 Kris Murray: Okay, we’ll take those suggestions offline.

• 0:11:42 Sister M. Mercedes: Sounds good.

• 0:11:43 Kris Murray: Yeah. Awesome. I love that. I love that. Cool. So tell us more about your program in terms of how has your program grown and improved over the past few years? When you inherited it a year and a half ago, the program, you know, it looked a specific way. It was being run by those other sisters. And so since you’ve come in, have you made any changes? Have you just kind of gone along with the way that things were? Just tell us more about that.

• 0:12:13 Sister Maria Consuela: No, I don’t think we could have gone along with how things were. I think we would have gone a little Crazy.

• 0:12:18 Sister M. Mercedes: And I think it was also, you know, there’s a couple of things that. That. That came into that. So it was post Covid, and that was very heavy, not only here, but throughout, still everywhere. And so a lot of the changes that had to be made because of COVID some of them were still part of it. Like, for example, parents were still waiting at the door for their kids and not being allowed to come in and different things like that.

• 0:12:45 Sister M. Mercedes: I do want to say when I’ve gone, because there is paper everywhere, like official paper here and there and everywhere. And I still haven’t gone through all of our files. But what I did see, what I have seen is that there were many attempts by other sister directors to establish routines, checklists, lesson plans and all that, but there was nothing ever put in place that would create continuity between director and director.

• 0:13:15 Sister M. Mercedes: And so that’s my hope, is that we have grown a lot, but a lot of the things that we have done were done, but not.

• 0:13:27 Kris Murray: They were done haphazardly. They weren’t consistently done.

• 0:13:30 Sister M. Mercedes: No. And then the sister changes and the other sister who comes in, she’s doing the best she can. And so with. We really, you know, because we knew absolutely nothing, we’re not going to pretend that we. That we knew anything. And so having the academy has saved our. We were going down and it was like, you know, all we had to go was up. So we were given that, in a sense, that opportunity to. We were on the ground, always go up. And the academy gave us the tools that we needed.

• 0:14:07 Sister Maria Consuela: Like, one of the biggest things I think we did pretty quickly is had our families pick set schedules for their children so they were coming any various amounts of days per week.

• 0:14:21 Kris Murray: Wow.

• 0:14:23 Sister Maria Consuela: And rooms were over ratio always. And because everyone wanted to come on a Thursday and they were paying after the fact, not before care was given. Still with cash and check in 20, 23. So you’d walk, leave the office for a second, you come back and there’d be like a pile of lunch.

• 0:14:41 Kris Murray: Oh, my God.

• 0:14:43 Sister Maria Consuela: So withdrawal. You’re paying before care is given. Schedule. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, full time. And that helped a lot for. Especially with our staff and that they know who’s gonna come when.

• 0:15:00 Kris Murray: Yes.

• 0:15:00 Sister Maria Consuela: That consistency was huge. So those were two big changes we made pretty quickly just for the sake of calm.

• 0:15:10 Sister M. Mercedes: Stability and calmness.

• 0:15:11 Kris Murray: Yes. So can they pick. Can the parents pick any number of days and specific days? Or do you now have, like. Does it have to be three or five or two, or is there part time, full time like tell me more about that.

• 0:15:23 Sister Maria Consuela: Yeah, so part time is two days a week, Tuesday, Thursday, three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then five days a week full time. We do have kangaroo time. So there’s a drop in feature that if there is an opening in a room on a day where they’re not scheduled, they could drop in. But most of our rooms are at capacity, so.

• 0:15:44 Sister M. Mercedes: And then we, so we would go to the masterminds in the summit ready to ask all those questions. Okay, what do you do? And we took every break possible to find people that looked really intelligent. Just sit down and be like, can you help us? And it’s really beautiful because there’s such a great desire to share with one another freely and it’s really beautiful experience.

• 0:16:08 Kris Murray: Yes. Thank you for saying that. That’s one of the things I think that sets our group apart is that we’re. Everybody’s so open and wanting to help everyone else that’s in the academy. So I love that you got those resources. I thought it’s really cute that you were like somebody who looks really smart. Let’s go ask her. So I love that. That’s, that’s fantastic.

• 0:16:27 Sister M. Mercedes: She looks like she knows what she’s doing.

• 0:16:28 Kris Murray: Yeah, let’s go ask her. I love that. So you’re on kangaroo time. So I’m sure even just implementing kangaroo time software was a huge, you know, sea change to the nature of the daycare because that systems and those structures and so the parents react to it pretty well. Or did you have to do some change management in people’s mindsets to help them adopt it?

• 0:16:54 Sister Maria Consuela: We maybe lost it. We had five families though, about like we did set schedules, automatic bill and kangaroo time all at once. So I think if anyone struggled with it, it was picking set schedules.

• 0:17:09 Kris Murray: Sure.

• 0:17:11 Sister Maria Consuela: But everyone else busted pretty quickly.

• 0:17:14 Kris Murray: I love this.

• 0:17:15 Sister M. Mercedes: This is to raise. We prided ourselves in having one of the lowest rates, but that doesn’t make sense for our business and especially with an older building that needed repair. I mean right now we’re getting our roof repair after 20 years. Praise God that they were good roofers before. Because it lasted. Yeah, it lasted. Right? So yeah, what was I saying?

• 0:17:43 Kris Murray: Yeah, that you needed to raise rates because you had.

• 0:17:45 Sister M. Mercedes: And that was scary. Very, very scary. Yeah, because it was, it was what? It was about 10% and. Okay, but did anybody leave because of that?

• 0:17:57 Sister Maria Consuela: Yeah, there was, there was like a family.

• 0:18:00 Sister M. Mercedes: Yeah.

• 0:18:01 Sister Maria Consuela: I mean, yeah, well, that’s another story.

• 0:18:03 Sister M. Mercedes: Yeah.

• 0:18:04 Sister Maria Consuela: But there were lots of discounts given before us. But that just is hard well, absolutely.

• 0:18:11 Kris Murray: Especially if you’re close to fully enrolled. Obviously people love bringing their children to you and you should be paid for the value that you provide a hundred percent. So that’s one of the things that we definitely teach. And so tell me more about that. So has your enrollment come up since you guys took over? And tell me more about your enrollment levels. Are you guys on wait list anywhere or you’re just continuing to try to get the word out there? How are you, how are you getting the word out about your school and.

• 0:18:40 Sister Maria Consuela: Events through twos are at full capacity with a waiting list. Right, the waiting list. Our pre K3 and pre K4 numbers are not at full capacity. And I think that’s similar struggles to what a lot of people are having all over the country.

• 0:18:54 Kris Murray: Yeah.

• 0:18:55 Sister Maria Consuela: Just with a lot of options out there. So. Correct. So our building is two stories. So upstairs we have all of our infants through twos and downstairs three and four. So upstairs is pretty much fully enrolled every day.

• 0:19:10 Kris Murray: Cool.

• 0:19:11 Sister Maria Consuela: We did start using line leader as well, just for the CRM aspect of it. So very helpful. Yeah. We never shared our ECE story in this podcast, but when we showed up at the summit in Nashville in 23, before we’re. Or no, it would have been 22.

• 0:19:30 Sister M. Mercedes: It was 22.

• 0:19:31 Sister Maria Consuela: 22. We kept hearing the phrase ECE, ECE and on one of the last days, we looked at somebody bias and we’re like, what does ECE mean? That person looked back at us, she was like, early childhood education.

• 0:19:45 Sister M. Mercedes: Oh no. That’s how bad this is, how bad it is.

• 0:19:50 Sister Maria Consuela: That’s where we started. So you’ve grown a lot. But so anyway, CRM, when we first heard about that. What is that? And before us, you know, it was just one sister as the director. And so we are directors and owners. Like our community owns the daycare. So mother technically is the owner, but she is not here. Doesn’t have a right, a role to play in the day to day. So there was this one sister doing it before where now it’s.

• 0:20:19 Sister M. Mercedes: I don’t know how that was possible.

• 0:20:21 Sister Maria Consuela: So there wasn’t a waiting list or tours were just written down on sticky note, you know, so it was.

• 0:20:28 Sister M. Mercedes: Yeah, yeah.

• 0:20:29 Kris Murray: So the old sticky note method.

• 0:20:35 Sister Maria Consuela: Very helpful. And just tracking our leads and converting them into enrollment. So yes, huge.

• 0:20:42 Kris Murray: I love that. And yeah, as we’re going to talk about when we’re together in Phoenix here in a couple days, we are noticing trends in the industry right now where as you mentioned, enrollment for threes and fours is down. In general, there’s just a more competitive landscape and people are also having fewer babies right now. So the competitive nature for every lead, for every family is more intense and needs to be more focused now than it was right after Covid, for example.

• 0:21:09 Kris Murray: So that is so important. And I love that you guys are using line leader and using a CRM because every lead, every is important. So that’s fantastic. Tell us more about your team. So you said you have 38 mission partners, so.

• 0:21:27 Sister M. Mercedes: Yeah. And that’s. That’s specific. So the phrase mission partner is something that. So we also have a hospital. The hospital is now celebrating that the sisters own.

• 0:21:38 Kris Murray: And we.

• 0:21:39 Sister M. Mercedes: The hospital has been here for 100 years now. Or we’ve been in an alternative. Yeah. Which is the same. Okay. So about 100 years. And they’ve called the lay people that work with us mission partners. We just rolled that out here and it elevated their work with us and it hopefully is going to help with them against us. Oh, the sisters, you know, or they just would call off because our convent is right up the hill.

• 0:22:09 Sister M. Mercedes: They’ll just call down a sister that.

• 0:22:11 Sister Maria Consuela: Doesn’T have that works checks all the things. Like we can’t. In the past, you would just call a sister. So we’re all our Mother House. So the Mother House is the terminology for the biggest convent in the US So it’s kind of our home base is at the top of a hill. The convent is attached to the hospital. You walk down the hill and the daycare center is at the bottom of the hill. So it’s all in walking distance.

• 0:22:36 Sister Maria Consuela: And so in the past, they would just. Well, I can call off because they can just find a. Well, the sisters up there all have jobs too.

• 0:22:44 Sister M. Mercedes: You know, when we first started in our first year, there was an assistant director and she was a layperson in the history. I haven’t heard because we did an in depth looking into our history for the mission statement which we now have and values. But when we looked, there was this assistant director. But since then we haven’t had an assistant director who was 1980. Yeah. So who was a layperson. So I think, you know, since you asked about our mission partners, I think that it’s important to raise leaders within them.

• 0:23:19 Sister M. Mercedes: And I don’t want to use them us. But there has to be that connection that almost like a bridge person. And we do have people who have been here for over 30 years who are great mentors. And I want to hopefully with time elevate them in a way more than us.

• 0:23:38 Sister Maria Consuela: Sometimes about the history, like, hey, or daycare. Where did this come from? Or, you know, they’ve been hearing. They’ve seen a lot. They’ve seen sisters come and go, and they’ve been consistent. But sister did share. We started to use the term mission partners. We have been open for almost 45 years, and until this year, we’ve never had a mission statement, and we’ve never had core values.

• 0:24:00 Kris Murray: Wow.

• 0:24:01 Sister Maria Consuela: And so we have a professional development day coming up on President’s Day, which that’s also something. Before we got here, they hadn’t had a staff meeting in, I think, six. Six years. So they never closed for professional development day. So from the academy, we’re like, okay, we need to close an hour early once a month, and we need to have two professional development days per semester. And so we implemented both of those.

• 0:24:26 Sister Maria Consuela: And so on our professional development day this February, we’re rolling out to our mission partners, our mission statement and our core values, which we’re really excited. Excited about.

• 0:24:36 Kris Murray: Fantastic. That’s going to help your culture a lot. And I love just that you have the awareness of, since the mission partners are lay people and you’re the sisters, that there could be this push, pull, or this us versus them thinking and trying to break those barriers down and make it more of a cohesive community of educators and leaders. I love that so much. So you guys are. You guys are making great strides in leadership.

• 0:25:03 Kris Murray: Thank you.

• 0:25:04 Sister Maria Consuela: Thanks.

• 0:25:04 Kris Murray: You’re welcome. Let’s talk about mindset. Did you come in and did you kind of look around and go look at all the piles of paper? Look at this somewhat dysfunctional situation with the sticky notes and everything that we have to deal with? Did you get overwhelmed? And how did you get past the overwhelm if you had that experience?

• 0:25:28 Sister M. Mercedes: Okay, so I’m going to take a deep breath.

• 0:25:29 Kris Murray: Okay.

• 0:25:32 Sister M. Mercedes: Triggered my memories. We were like firefighters.

• 0:25:37 Sister Maria Consuela: That’s exactly what I was thinking as a firefighter. That’s what.

• 0:25:40 Sister M. Mercedes: And we came ready to do that. You know, ready.

• 0:25:43 Kris Murray: Right. Let’s go.

• 0:25:45 Sister M. Mercedes: You know?

• 0:25:45 Sister Maria Consuela: Yeah.

• 0:25:45 Kris Murray: Yeah.

• 0:25:46 Sister M. Mercedes: And for me, it was how we walked into the door. And I mean, there was, you know, us. How we walked into the. Were we gonna come in, like, holy moly. What we’re going to find today? Or like, with the Lord, we got this. And so, I mean, there’s. There was even a point where the leadership team, the four of us, four sisters, I realized that there was a point we were coming down here, and it was like, task focus. I mean, as sisters, you’re disciplined to do these tasks.

• 0:26:16 Sister M. Mercedes: And. And it was like, just bringing to mind, okay, hey, sisters, let’s say hello to one another. Let’s. Let’s smile at the person. Remember, there’s people on our way to the task. And we started, like, sometimes closing the door when sister was doing scheduling, because it was like, cray cray back in the day when we first began.

• 0:26:35 Sister Maria Consuela: I have an attendance policy now. That’s something.

• 0:26:37 Sister M. Mercedes: Attendance policy. But that was a very, like, high tense area, and parents are walking by there and looking at that. So the mindset of. Because before you ask that question, I just felt the need to just share with everybody who’s listening to this, that if they’re in a position where their place is, like, nuts, bad culture, they’ve never done a meeting, however that looks like for you, is to, like you said, do it even though you’re scared.

• 0:27:12 Sister M. Mercedes: Know what the goal is in mind. Like, see it and keep your eye on it. And don’t be discouraged by that. First meeting that they’ve ever had in six years. They were like little children bickering and having little pods here talking. And I’m like, this is not what a meeting of adult professionals look like. And so it’s like, okay, what do they need then? What’s the next step before we can get to that goal? Well, they need to know that they are professionals.

• 0:27:41 Sister M. Mercedes: What does that mean? What does that look like? And what tool could I use to teach them that? It’s like that. Little steps. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

• 0:27:50 Kris Murray: That’s right.

• 0:27:51 Sister M. Mercedes: You got to know what the goal is. And we’re still not there. And I hope to think that we could say we’re not there yet. We’re not there yet because we want to always be reaching to something better. We will always have something to work on. We want to leave this place in a better situation for the next set of sisters, but with things already in place that she can just follow and improve on. Anything about mindset is for you.

• 0:28:19 Sister Maria Consuela: I mean, I think you said, okay, like, with the Lord, I’m going to do this, because if it’s on our own strength, like, I don’t know.

• 0:28:27 Sister M. Mercedes: I would have ran. I would have ran if it wasn’t.

• 0:28:30 Sister Maria Consuela: Yeah.

• 0:28:31 Sister M. Mercedes: And I don’t run, so.

• 0:28:33 Kris Murray: Right. Right. It was. It was quite daunting is what I’m hearing very much.

• 0:28:38 Sister Maria Consuela: And of our comfort zones, too, is out of our knowledge base, you know.

• 0:28:42 Sister M. Mercedes: Sure.

• 0:28:44 Sister Maria Consuela: We had never been in positions of leadership before. We had never been in this field before, you know, so it was and it was a lot of hard decisions that we had to make, which were for the good of the children and for the good of our mission partners. But no one likes disappointing people or, you know, so it was just.

• 0:29:02 Sister M. Mercedes: And change is hard and we had to make a lot of it.

• 0:29:05 Kris Murray: Yes, absolutely. So some of the things that you’re doing are going to baby step you further into it. Like the core values in the mission meeting that you’re going to have shortly. Having them start to celebrate each other based on core value behaviors and specifically doing shout outs for each other will be huge. For giving them examples for. Oh, so now get in a group with your other toddler teachers and talk about this core value and how you guys, as a smaller team could implement, you know, could show up with this core value in a bigger way. Those kinds of little, you know, breakouts for folks or having them share across the aisle or sharing on a team meeting, giving them rewards, like giving them gift cards or rewards of whatever nature for showing those behaviors. So you’re on your way. But that the core value piece, and you’ll. I’m sure you’ve heard this from Academy folks, is one of the biggest shifts that you’re going to make in their mindset as professional educators and how you want them to show up too. So I love that.

• 0:30:10 Sister M. Mercedes: And they were a part in creating the mission statement and the core values.

• 0:30:14 Kris Murray: Perfect. That’s what you want.

• 0:30:16 Sister M. Mercedes: They’ll connect to them. It’ll resonate 100%.

• 0:30:20 Kris Murray: Yeah. You want that buy in. And I can’t wait to see where you guys take this. This is amazing. Talk about your. Well, first of all, what made you decide to enter the child care rockstar contest?

• 0:30:38 Sister M. Mercedes: Why not? I mean, we’re part of growth. I knew that we had done a lot of change with the help of the Academy. It did take some bravery because it’s like, really? Should we really do it? There are other people out there who are doing amazing things.

• 0:31:03 Sister Maria Consuela: We learned from them.

• 0:31:04 Sister M. Mercedes: Yeah. And here we are, you know, like, who are we? But I thought it was important to be recognized for the hard work for us. It seems like not. You’re saying, wow, you’ve done a lot. We see how much more we got to go.

• 0:31:24 Kris Murray: Right?

• 0:31:26 Sister M. Mercedes: And then there’s the whole, like, imposter syndrome. Like, really? Do I really belong in this category?

• 0:31:32 Kris Murray: Right.

• 0:31:33 Sister Maria Consuela: I think Jen. We love Jen Slavin. She was our coach and our butt since we first showed up in Nashville. And she took us under her wing.

• 0:31:43 Sister M. Mercedes: But yes, encouraged us also to enter.

• 0:31:48 Kris Murray: And she came and she came and visited you guys and did some team. Team trainings or what? Did she just go ahead?

• 0:31:54 Sister Maria Consuela: She came with her three daughter. Okay.

• 0:31:57 Kris Murray: Just a visit. Okay, cool.

• 0:31:59 Sister Maria Consuela: She did walk around and got to see our center, but yeah, we just. She wanted to bring her girls to be able to meet us, so we.

• 0:32:06 Sister M. Mercedes: Took them to the zoo.

• 0:32:08 Kris Murray: I love it. I love that so much. And then how did it feel to win?

• 0:32:15 Sister M. Mercedes: Yeah, well, sister couldn’t go, unfortunately.

• 0:32:18 Sister Maria Consuela: When we went to something for the academy, we had a sister who was director qualified here in the building. And she had gotten transferred at the end of the summer at some point before the summit. And so there wasn’t anybody ready to take my place. So I was not there.

• 0:32:35 Sister M. Mercedes: So then I took our accountant. I know we did so much together. And how did it feel to win? I was in the running with two other amazing women who are just, they’re just great. And yeah, I couldn’t believe like you see in the video or in the picture, like, what did I. Did we just win? You know, I love if I can do something other than being a nun, which I think I could probably do this while being a nun is comedy.

• 0:33:11 Sister M. Mercedes: So like. But it would be like Michael. I think it’s Michael Jr. It’s a motivational comedy.

• 0:33:18 Kris Murray: Uh huh.

• 0:33:18 Sister M. Mercedes: And so I just put those two. I just put that on the stage there for everybody. I wasn’t even done with what I had prepared.

• 0:33:27 Sister Maria Consuela: And you know, you were shocked, right?

• 0:33:31 Sister M. Mercedes: I was shocked.

• 0:33:32 Sister Maria Consuela: And you cried a little.

• 0:33:33 Sister M. Mercedes: I did. I had to like compose myself. And then there’s that picture of me, which I don’t like, but it’s out there now when I’m like this, you know.

• 0:33:41 Kris Murray: Right.

• 0:33:42 Sister M. Mercedes: There’s not the most like beautiful picture of me, but there it is.

• 0:33:47 Kris Murray: Yeah.

• 0:33:48 Sister Maria Consuela: The tech. We talk about how. Because Chris, you wrote the who. The tech was who Chris.

• 0:33:56 Sister M. Mercedes: That was the most beautiful thing. Your, your humility to get down on the floor and then to write God’s ECE leadership team. That, that memory is really beautiful because it does show like just your, your heart and your humility and all this. And so we’re, we’re very grateful.

• 0:34:17 Kris Murray: Well, I’m grateful for you guys. That was an amazing moment and yeah, I just felt it. And I do feel, you know, you guys were heaven sent to me. I, While we were just talking, I had a memory come in and I want to share it with you. The first ECE conference that I went to was NAEYC, National association of the Education Young Child in 2010. I was just getting into the industry. I had just started my business and I was learning and going to all these different conferences. And then I set up a booth at naeyc and it was a big investment for me at the time because I wasn’t really making much money at all at that point.

• 0:34:58 Kris Murray: And I met some sisters there. I have a picture somewhere. I don’t know if I can find it, but I did a little roundtable workshop. I didn’t even do like a full blown breakout session at NACY because there’s so many amazing speakers and I didn’t know to like submit my proposal or anything. And so. But they were like, well, we have extra space for people that want to do roundtables and do a top teach a topic.

• 0:35:27 Kris Murray: So I was like, let me do that. And I had two sisters at my table. Now I don’t know if they were from the same organization as y’all.

• 0:35:36 Sister Maria Consuela: Probably not.

• 0:35:37 Sister M. Mercedes: Or they were. Do they wear. Because we all would wear the same thing. So it’d be this gray habit with the person.

• 0:35:43 Kris Murray: I don’t know. I feel like maybe it was.

• 0:35:45 Sister M. Mercedes: But I have to go.

• 0:35:46 Kris Murray: Yeah, I have to go. Right, so. But it was from 2010 in Anaheim, California.

• 0:35:51 Sister M. Mercedes: Okay.

• 0:35:52 Kris Murray: At the NA conference. And so I remember though them really being interested in what I was sharing. Like they were just soaking it up and I was like, oh my God, I have sisters that came over to my booth. We like hugged and they might have like bought my book or so. I don’t even know because at that point I didn’t even have a book out. But maybe one of my like manuals for how to do child care business that I had. So anyways, we’ll find out hopefully at some point if they were connected to you. But I do feel like that pull and that connection to make an impact for you guys and with you and yeah, that came out on the moment on stage and I was just.

• 0:36:34 Kris Murray: I love, I love you guys and I love everything that you stand for and all the work that you do and that you’re here sharing your story is really. This is a, this is a great hour for me. This is really.

• 0:36:46 Sister Maria Consuela: Thank you for your calling too, you know, because if you wouldn’t do that, I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know what this would look like if it wasn’t for the Academy. Like our day to day life. Like we, I don’t know, I think we’d be way lost.

• 0:37:03 Kris Murray: Well, we are happy to have helped you get out of pain, get out of overwhelm. And improve your school. Improve it for the families and mostly the children, of course. For. Yeah, for your teachers, your mission partners. So I guess I want to ask you the classic question, since you are the child care rock stars this year might feel weird, but I want to ask you, how do you define a child care rock star?

• 0:37:36 Sister Maria Consuela: The first phrase, I mean, this is not a complete thought that came to my mind was heart. Like, I think a child care rock star is someone who has a huge heart and a courageous heart. That’s what came to my mind right away.

• 0:37:53 Sister M. Mercedes: Yeah. It’s after that is like, this balance between heart, like, heart and will. And because a lot of us, most of us in this industry, are very artful. Like, we’re full of love, and we feel bad when a family can’t pay. At the same time, we have to keep in mind that in order for us to care for the amount of kids that can come into our building, we have to make hard decisions that sometimes looks like, you know, we’ve been told, like, oh, you’re not Catholic enough, or you’re not loving, or you don’t know how to make sacrifices for our children because of the hard decisions that we’ve had to make. And we take those to heart, like, oh, like that. That hurts my heart.

• 0:38:55 Sister M. Mercedes: So a rock star is. A rock star is someone who can see the star, who can see, like, where your goal is, and then take those steps courageously fall and get up, have arguments and make up and be stronger because of it.

• 0:39:15 Sister Maria Consuela: Yeah, courageous. I think that’s why I said courageous heart, because it’s not. I think a lot of people in this industry can. Yeah, it can be hard to make.

• 0:39:22 Sister M. Mercedes: Those decisions, and it’s not about having a hard heart, but a courageous heart.

• 0:39:27 Kris Murray: There you go.

• 0:39:27 Sister M. Mercedes: That’s it.

• 0:39:29 Kris Murray: I love it. Marshall Goldsmith, one of the top leadership experts in the world that I had on this podcast, also spoke at the summit. Great guy. He says the two of the top three traits of leadership are courage and humility. And I feel that’s what you’re describing is having that.

• 0:39:48 Sister M. Mercedes: The two. What is the third one?

• 0:39:50 Kris Murray: Yeah, the third one is discipline.

• 0:39:54 Sister M. Mercedes: Okay.

• 0:39:56 Kris Murray: So having that discipline to, like you said, go and march towards the star, towards the vision that you’ve set out, and even if you fall on the mat, the discipline to get back up again and courage takes a lot of courage. Yeah. All right, ladies. Well, this has been amazing, sisters. I am so grateful for you. Anything else that you would like to share? And also if you want to give any contact information or your website or I don’t know if you, you know, your social, anything like that. But any, anything else that you would like to share with the audience.

• 0:40:35 Sister M. Mercedes: We are working on our on our.

• 0:40:37 Sister Maria Consuela: Website updated a little bit, but we’re about to upload a brand new one.

• 0:40:43 Sister M. Mercedes: And it’s stfrancisdaycare.org and you can find us on Facebook.

• 0:40:49 Sister Maria Consuela: We’re trying to just post more pictures of our children and mission partners and we’re working. I’m excited for the core values to come out. So we’re going to start celebrating mission partner birthdays and all that good stuff. So cool. Definitely find us on Facebook.

• 0:41:06 Kris Murray: Cool. Well, thank you so much for being here today on the podcast celebrating you as the child Care rock stars. Can’t wait to see you for your VIP trip out here in Colorado. And it’s going to be an amazing day where we’re going to work together, the three or four of us. I don’t know if Jennifer’s coming. She’s trying to work her schedule around, but we’ll have an amazing day here in my home and we’ll go out to dinner and we’ll celebrate you guys.

• 0:41:36 Kris Murray: So I can’t wait for that. Thank you guys in the audience. Thank you for listening and watching to this podcast. I know everyone got some good inspiration today and if you’re ever feeling down, just use this as a way to get back up again. And hopefully that will help you continue to reach for that star and have a courageous heart.

• 0:41:59 Sister Maria Consuela: So, yeah, we’re in it together.

• 0:42:01 Kris Murray: Absolutely. 100%. Thank you, sisters. Big hugs to you and big hugs to everybody out there in the audience. Take care. God bless.

• 0:42:11 Sister Maria Consuela: God bless.

• 0:42:14 Kris Murray: 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. 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.

• 0:42:43 Kris Murray: To watch my new video, just go to www.fixmyschool.com. that’s fixmyschool.com thanks. Take care and God bless.