270: How Can Event-Based Childcare Transform Your Business? With Hope King

In this episode, we sit down with Hope King, founder of Black Tie Babysitting, to chat about creative ways childcare professionals can branch out beyond traditional centers. Hope shares her journey of providing event-based childcare at weddings and corporate gatherings, offering tips on partnerships, staff empowerment, and setting up safe, fun spaces for kids. It’s a warm, insightful conversation packed with practical advice for anyone looking to expand their childcare business or support families in new ways.

Learn more at https://blacktiebabysitting.com/

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Transcript

Marie 00:00:03  Welcome to Child Care Conversations, the podcast where early childhood leaders like you get real world strategies, honest talk and a whole lot of support. Whether you're running one center or many. We're here to help you lead with confidence and clarity. This episode is brought to you by our summer partner Child Care Business Growth, your go to solution for filling spots, increasing revenue, and scaling your child care business without the burnout. We're proud to partner with a team that's as committed to your success as we are. Learn more at Childcare Business growth.com. Now let's get into today's conversation. One we think you're really going to love.

Kate 00:00:49  Everybody I know is always looking for additional ways to bring in revenue. And regardless of where you think you want to be financially, you're going to have a really hard time saving enough money to get there. You're going to have to need another job, another revenue stream. And if you're listening today, this could be you. But it could also be the staff that work in your program.

Kate 00:01:12  And so I'm so excited because Hope is joining us. Hope King out of the Dallas area. And we're going to have a conversation about child care. And it's not actually child care taking care of children in event settings. Because I want to make sure that we don't.

Carrie 00:01:30  Show child care. It's just child care outside of licensed and regulated care.

Kate 00:01:36  Well, I wanted to make sure I didn't say babysitting, and I wanted to make sure. I also didn't allude to the child care community with folks who are like, but you've got to be licensed and regulated. And I think that's the the angle that hope brings to this opportunity and hope. Let's just start real quick with a, brief introduction of you and how long you've been doing this, and what exactly it is that you do. Because I'm excited.

Hope 00:02:03  Great. Well, thank you so much for having me. So my name is Hope Ivory King, and I am the owner and founder of Black Tie Babysitting Incorporated. And we are a special occasion child care service.

Hope 00:02:18  and I'm based out of Dallas, Texas, but we also have offices in the DMV area. And so it's exactly what it sounds like. We do childcare at special occasions and events. 85% of our business is wedding child care, and then the rest is corporate event child care.

Kate 00:02:36  So when you say corporate event, are you talking like corporate Christmas parties?

Hope 00:02:40  Absolutely. Yep.

Kate 00:02:42  All right. Perfect.

Carrie 00:02:43  I think also those they should also if they're going to be sometimes paying for child care on site. I think those corporate picnics should also have, somebody there because the parents get a little too friendly with the cooler, right? There should be somebody who's being paid to keep everybody safe.

Hope 00:03:04  And and we have done that. We have done that too. So.

Carrie 00:03:08  Yeah.

Kate 00:03:09  So tell us a little bit about why you wanted to talk to the directors who listen to us. what? Your opportunity, what you think might be helpful to them.

Carrie 00:03:20  Do we want to start there or. How did you have this idea? I think that's kind of an interesting.

Carrie 00:03:26  Let's go there first and then why?

Kate 00:03:27  And then tell us how long you've been doing this. Okay. Sorry.

Hope 00:03:30  All right. Okay, great. So, I have owned black tie for 16 years. and really, it just started out of necessity for me. my sister was getting married, and at that time, I had during the time of her engagement and her actual wedding, I had gotten a divorce and I was pregnant with my fourth child. And so by the time she got married, literally my son was six months old and I had four children under the age of eight, and she was getting married in kind of an industrial aesthetic, and her ceremony was rooftop. So it was not child friendly at all. And, she had said, I do not want any children at my wedding. And so I'm Nigerian American, and most Nigerians have a lot of kids. And so I was just like, this is not going to work. People are not going to listen. And, you know, I had this heart to heart with her.

Hope 00:04:29  Like, do you know what it's like to get an invitation to be invited to a wedding? And then it says, no kids allowed. And you have kids. Like by the time you start factoring in, paying a babysitter, buying something for the the couple, and then you look like something is typically out of reach at that point. So you're just not going to go.

Carrie 00:04:48  For a Nigerian wedding because you got to be you got to have some jam going on there. You can't be showing up in something you got at Ross.

Hope 00:04:56  Right.

Carrie 00:04:57  Work at a Nigerian wedding.

Hope 00:04:59  Right. So I was just like, so. And she was like, we'll figure it out then. And we were just one day we were doing a tour of her venue, and I saw this empty space, and I was like, what? What's happening in this room? And she was like, nothing. You just get it, because you all have rented the entire building. And I was like, light bulb. I was like, hey, at that time, I had a part night, part time nanny that helped me with my kids, and I was like, hey, do you have a couple of friends that are like you that can come here on the day of my sister's wedding and watch my kids and watch other people's kids who inevitably I know or they're going to bring, even though they've been told not to.

Hope 00:05:35  And she was like, sure. So I packed up my toys. I packed up a slow cooker of hot dogs and brought some buns, which we don't do food anymore, you know? and so we we did that. And that night parents were like, oh my gosh, this was great. Whose business is this? And I was like, oh, it's mine. I didn't have a name. I didn't have a business plan. I didn't have anything. I just saw that, hey, this is an idea that I really think can work. and at that time, I was doing new business development at a web design firm, and I went back there to my development guys. I was like, hey, y'all, I need a website like tomorrow. And they were like, okay. And they build me a website. And I just used what I knew about new business development and speaking to people. And I just kept on knocking on doors, and I was blessed that I had a planner that was like, okay, we'll give you a try.

Hope 00:06:27  And it just went from there.

Carrie 00:06:30  I mean, that's how a lot of people start opening their child care center is they had a need because there wasn't anything that would meet their childcare needs in their community. So I think there's a lot of commonality there. But since we're in this inflection point in the childcare Care industry where our funding sources are having some challenges. in some states, more than others. Giving people other opportunities for how to bring revenue into their ecosystem, I think is really important. So let's just do a really quick, what are some opportunities? How could a childcare center partner with or become somebody who provides event based child care?

Hope 00:07:21  Well, I think the the thing is that that's the great thing. The beauty of it is there are so many opportunities and this is really dynamic. And that's why I wanted to have the conversation and bring it into this space, because number one is that you have the know how and you have the staff if you are a current director, because the reality is, is that the event childcare space is unregulated, right.

Hope 00:07:47  So we're making this up as we go. In this, the smart ones of us really take our cues from child care, right? Early childhood especially. We're taking those cues because most of our guests are going to be from nine years old and down. Right? Right. And and so I think there's the opportunity that if you full fledged would want to start an arm of your business that does event child care, you could do that. And you can source your your sitters from your current staff. You've already background checked them. You you're their reference. You know how they work. It could be an invitation. It could be a, you know, one of those things where it's like, you do a great job so you have the opportunity to be part of this select team. You know, even in my business, I have diversified my teams. So my my creme de la creme, those are the people who get to do our VIP care, very important care. And that's where we start doing stuff for athletes, for sports teams.

Hope 00:08:51  That's a team within itself, right? or if you wanted to partner with maybe a venue because venues have a lot of clauses in them that say if you have X amount of kids under a certain age, that you have to have professional childcare. Several venues are writing that clause in. So if you want to partner with the venue and say, hey, if you have this clause now, we can be sourced that for you. We can source those those folks for you.

Carrie 00:09:22  That is awesome. That is awesome. And I want to go deeper into it. But before we go any deeper, I don't want to cut us off mid thought process. We've got to take a quick break to thank our sponsor for this episode. The childcare business growth. That's a team that is helping childcare owners and directors grow smarter, stronger businesses every day like we're talking about right here. Whether you're trying to fill up enrollment or bring in more revenue. Hey, are we talking about that? I think we are. Or just stop doing everything yourself.

Carrie 00:09:56  They've got the tools, the training and the coaching to help. You don't have to do it all. You can outsource some of it to child care business growth. They work with programs that are at every stage, from the brand new centers and home based programs to multi-site operations, and their results speak for themselves. One of the people we recommended to child care business growth, her first video she did with them 17,000 impressions, and it has brought in a whole bunch of tours into her program. So learn more at Child Care Business growth. Com and tell them child care conversations. Thank you.

Kate 00:10:38  Thank you Gary. Okay. Now I'm going to jump in. So.

Carrie 00:10:42  Okay.

Kate 00:10:43  Yeah. Well, I'm just telling you. So hope I have to tell you that sitting here is somebody who's been married not once, but twice. That I got really, really excited listening to this because when I got married the second time, I had three children under five. And, well, between me and my new spouse.

Kate 00:11:03  And one of the things that we ended up doing was we curtailed the whole dang wedding around children. So it's kind of a novel concept that I don't have to get married at an amusement park and have crayons on every table as part of my table decor. If I should ever decide to get married again, because I'm sure I knew at the time. So over 22 years ago, it was absolutely an anomaly. Actually, it was 25 years ago. So 25 years ago, it was an absolute anomaly to have a child friendly wedding and a ridiculously child friendly wedding. And to the fact that over 50% of our guests were under the age of five. So.

Hope 00:11:44  Yeah.

Kate 00:11:44  You know, so I love the fact that you not only recognize this, you came up with a solution and you've been able to replicate it for over 16 years. And so to me, hopefully folks will go to the show notes, because in the show notes we'll have how you can contact. Hope you'll find more information about Hope's solutions to help you.

Kate 00:12:05  so Hope is not here to make $1 million on a franchise or a franchise. Hope genuinely wants to be there to support you doing this kind of endeavor as a second business, third business, fourth business. But you're getting to use the other businesses you have. I love it, I love it, I love it.

Carrie 00:12:24  Leveraging what you've already built. But I think the other thing is there's some people who are like, no, no, no, I'm just the director or I have already four schools and a trucking business and, you know, a salon. I do not need another type of business. But how can I still partner with hope or someone like Hope? So we talked about a little bit of that before we got to the recording button. So what are some other ways that people could maybe partner if they're not ready to take on this whole other business operation?

Hope 00:13:00  Yeah, I'll, I'll tell you. Like just the power of already having people is huge because we I have a payroll of about 75 here in Texas, and then my payroll is a little bit smaller in DMV.

Hope 00:13:15  because it's at 20, because when we went into DMV, it was a year before Covid and then Covid happened. So we paused the market to.

Carrie 00:13:25  Find the DMV because I'm sure some people why does the Department of Motor Vehicles need.

Hope 00:13:32  So and that is DC Maryland in Virginia.

Carrie 00:13:36  Yeah.

Hope 00:13:37  And so we paused that marketplace and and, you know, I got to a point. We had done such a great job of marketing and doing well with our events. We use my marketing tactics that we use to Dallas. We made the right relationships with the right people and moved really fast. And so after, you know, we could start having live events again, we started getting peppered with requests, but I wasn't ready to go back into that area and manage the two. I was trying to make sure that we were going to make it through after live events have been closed out, so we were literally I was giving the leads to other people. And then one day I was like, I think we'll keep those.

Hope 00:14:17  I think we can, we can, we can do those. Now let's, let's get back into the game. But I mean, anytime you get a request and if it's outside of the the staff you have, you have two choices. You can either try and staff up really quick, which I don't like to do, because you really need to have time to train your staff. Because if the kids don't know each other, you're not familiar with the venue and the staff doesn't know each other. That's a whole lot of unknowns that make having really great care and really great customer service difficult.

Carrie 00:14:52  So there's a lot of directors listening to this. Who would who would be like, I've been there. I opened a new classroom, I didn't give myself enough time. We got a whole new staff in there. I'm not doing that again.

Hope 00:15:04  Right, right. So but if I as a as a event child care event company knew that, hey, I can call this my friend over here, this director.

Hope 00:15:16  And for a fee, she's going to let her people work for me. I'm taking that all day because I know they have training.

Kate 00:15:22  Okay, so. So what city are you in? Because I want everybody in the Dallas Fort Worth area to be listening to this.

Hope 00:15:27  And I am in Dallas Fort Worth. We run that. We run the whole metroplex. So if you're hearing me, listen to me, because I do, I get requests. I got a request the summer before last, and they needed childcare for 1200 kids, and I just could not do that with the staff that I had. And, I mean, we were talking real big numbers, but I just felt very uncomfortable. And if I would have had relationships with childcare owners and I could be like, look, I need 30 or 2015, what can you give me? Plus what I have? And we'll have training sessions special for this event so we can get ready. I would have done it.

Carrie 00:16:07  So it's a way for a center to to augment by basically getting a finder's fee for going here.

Carrie 00:16:16  I have found 17 trained childcare employees, and where they found them was in their classrooms and they were getting a referral fee.

Hope 00:16:26  Because there there's some people who I'm not one of those companies but some of them use Caricom to step up. And I mean, no offense to Caricom, but again, it's very hard to me to control an event if your staff has never worked together before.

Kate 00:16:41  Well, that's also expensive. I mean, you know. Right. I mean, I am going to look at it from that point of view. And I think that one of the things so one of the things that we have directors who struggle with is that we have staff who want to make some extra money. Right. And so then we've got staff who to do that. I'm going to go with PG rated options. I'm sure that there are some other options, but they'll they'll try to babysit for the stat for the for the for the, for the parents and family for center. Yeah. We really encourage the directors to kind of not really allow that.

Kate 00:17:15  We don't really, unless they've got a whole separate business that's like a nanny business or a babysitting service, that it is a separate business with separate liability, separate, policies and procedures. And so this is another one of those, in my opinion, awesome ways to make that happen. Because whether they do it themselves or they're collaborating with another vendor, they can say, yes, you can babysit, but you have to use, you know, a service or you have to be hired through a service. You can't babysit because of your role with us as a child care center. You can't.

Carrie 00:17:52  And because we don't want our staff to have that liability, like you don't want your staff to have to deal with a lawsuit either. But I think a third way that we that this could work is offering your space as a drop off venue for, say, there's a big church that is the wedding church in your neighborhood or in your town, and everybody gets married there, and your center is two and a half blocks away.

Carrie 00:18:23  Having that be a drop off childcare location for those weddings.

Kate 00:18:28  What about every faith based child care center? I mean, let's be real, right? Like, I mean, we have literally we talk a lot about, you know, child care owners collaborating with their local church to expand to another location. especially if they've already got some sort of a preschool room set up. I mean, this could be the ultimate easy lift. it could also be an easy lift for a church. I mean, if a church isn't ready to have a full blown child care center and they're listening, or maybe you're listening and you've got an external, and you know that the church is trying to get you to serve on a committee so that the church can start their own. I've been here. Okay. So so that they can start their own preschool program at the church. And you're like, why am I going to support that? You're not my competition. But here's what you could support. Right. You could absolutely support, that church being its own child, having its own Child.

Hope 00:19:24  I mean childcare, they very child.

Carrie 00:19:26  Care.

Kate 00:19:27  They haven't done.

Hope 00:19:30  Anything, I think.

Carrie 00:19:31  Of starting a business. And if you're going to start the business, reach out to Hope. Get some coaching. It'll save you money and it'll make it more likely that you're going to succeed. We have getting the finder's fee by providing, people who could work for hope or somebody like Hope.

Kate 00:19:50  Hope. We're going to be sending you all kinds of people. Who's going to be getting calls from people going? So I live just south of Fort Worth. How far south.

Hope 00:19:59  Fort Worth is. So yes, we need people in Fort Worth. Yep. Yes.

Carrie 00:20:03  And then that third option of being a a space for that child care to happen. Because not all places where people get married or have corporate events have a room that is at all child suitable.

Hope 00:20:18  I think that is a big one that because a lot of times, you know, we do. I do a lot of tours to see if a place is acceptable for us to provide child care, because people typically are like, oh, well, there's a pass through.

Hope 00:20:33  No, we don't put children in pass thrus, we don't put children in closets. They're just trying to make it work. And that work doesn't work. You know, one of our tagline for our company is we're rolling out the red carpet for your littlest guests. Because a lot of times, people who are planning these events do not see children as guests, right? So they don't care how they're accommodated. And we do. And so we're looking out for that. And there have been some times where I literally had to tell people we can't provide childcare there, especially facilities that are 100% outdoor. Now in Texas, we have a lot of those because people want that country. Feel that. I've read some the other day that said Texas style weddings are going away. Like I was like, well, y'all aren't in Texas. We're very much so still into that country chic type thing. But so we have a lot of people getting married at farms and other outside type places that have no inside.

Carrie 00:21:27  You're talking about my daughter.

Carrie 00:21:29  She was looking for one of those, and then we explained that a lot of the people were old and they needed to have an air conditioned.

Hope 00:21:36  Right, right.

Carrie 00:21:38  So the reception is in air conditioning. The wedding is outside, right?

Kate 00:21:42  It's still Labor Day weekend. That's all I know.

Hope 00:21:45  Right. But so but yeah, I mean we that's when the requirement that we've had to put into our stuff that we have to have four walls and a door for us to provide services.

Kate 00:21:57  No air conditioning. You need to add the air conditioning, right? Yeah. No bathroom.

Hope 00:22:01  Right. But so but but so if there was a place that you could literally say, hey, we can provide childcare here at this facility, people would drop it off because as we, as our company grew, because at first I didn't do hotel care and we do didn't do Airbnb care. And now we do offer those services? That was one of the biggest things. What can we bring kids to? You know, I don't we don't have a brick and mortar.

Hope 00:22:27  That's the whole point. We come to you, but sometimes that's just not convenient for folks. And the venue is not convenient. It doesn't lend itself to that. So I think that's an excellent idea.

Kate 00:22:39  That we could probably even spend a fourth one, which is where your staff or you literally rent that childcare space. So in other words, the owner doesn't even have to manage it with their own staff. It could just be they rent a room so I right. That just made a four point carry.

Hope 00:22:57  It has it has bathrooms right y'all. I mean typically when we go on site we have everything we have. We basically when I'm talking to people, we bring the daycare with us. So I have traveling toddler beds, I have full size cribs. I mean, we have all the gear. I have $7,000 worth of storage a month, I mean, a year because of baby gear alone, because we have to bring it on site. So that would be tremendous, especially for a startup that may not have that inventory to be able to say, hey, I can do this right here.

Hope 00:23:30  Stuff's already included.

Kate 00:23:32  You know, carry another thing. And we talk about this sometimes where sometimes owners know that they've got staff who've been with them for 15 years and they've been wanting to do something, but they don't really know what they want. This is a great little nudge. So if you're one of those owners that you're all about supporting your leaders and your program, who they just they just need to go run their business because they've been wanting to do this for a long time. I think this is a great kind of little nudge business. If you've got that that awesome staff person who should have been running their own program a decade ago. and if you're somebody.

Carrie 00:24:06  They love you and they don't want to leave you and they don't want to leave their community, this is a way that they can halfway leave you and have their own business.

Kate 00:24:14  And you can be their mentor. You could literally help them learn to run a business. And, you know, I think that could be an awesome collaborative for.

Kate 00:24:24  Right? It could be a sibling, you know, it could be like you got a relative who's in the field ish or wants to be, but you're like, I don't really want to work with my sister. you know, this could be a way I help you launch your business, right? So, I love it, I love it. Hope. Thank you so much for for for sharing this dialogue and this concept. Carrie, do we have anything else we want to check in with hope before we,

Carrie 00:24:47  I mean, I just want people to know that Kate's already been referring people to Hope. And that, I would hope, came to nine of my 11 sessions with score. She knows her stuff. And, I hope that if this at all sparked thoughts for you.

Hope 00:25:05  You hoped.

Kate 00:25:06  You hoped I heard you. Yes.

Carrie 00:25:10  and reach out to her if you think you would be a good guest on this podcast? Like Hope has been an amazing one. Reach out to us at Kate and Carrie at Child Care Conversations, and we'll get you on the show as soon as we possibly can.

Carrie 00:25:25  But I hope that you enjoyed this and I'll talk to you next week.

Marie 00:25:31  Thanks for tuning in. We love bringing you real talk and fresh insight from the world of early childhood education. Be sure to follow us on social media to stay connected and catch all of the latest episodes. And if you're planning a conference, training or special event, Kate and Kerry would love to speak to your audience. You can learn more about their keynote sessions and workshops at Kate and Kerry. If you learned something today, share the show and leave us a review below. We'll see you next time on Child Care Conversations.