Gigi Schweikert: [00:00] When I hear your story and I hear you working in the garment district and then I hear you talking about working in the center and dealing with operations and finance and HR and marketing, if there’s someone out there who’s looking at this clip and thinking, “Wow, I’d be interested in multi-unit franchising, but I’m not sure that I’d be able to do that educational part or learn all those components.” What would you say?
Raj Prakash: [00:26] I think, with us, what worked I can share that with you. I’m not sure if the same thing would work for somebody else because situations can be different. What helped us was that Veenu spent about a year and a half in the centers learning and understanding the business, which was a huge loss for the other business because she came out and she started spending time here. She learned the business completely. Then, when we started our own center, she had a much better understanding to start with.
Raj Prakash: [00:59] In business, we knew the other aspects like finance and HR were there. But education and curriculum are very important, right? Because the age groups that we serve currently are zero to five, which are the founding years. This dictates what these children are going to become when they grow up. We need to make sure that we are training them well. Veenu had to go through and learn all that.
Raj Prakash: [01:28] I think all this can be done because the support is there because, with all the training, you have to be open to learning. You cannot just say that you are going to hire people and let them run the business. It’s not going to happen. Yes, it will happen, but you can run a successful business when you know what you’re doing.
