As I begin centering more of my work, life, and ministry in Shawnee, OK I have started to blog about what I do there under Shawnee Life. It currently exists as a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/lifeshawnee/.

Why start a new blog? Because I want to provide others with a peak into what a life lived in Shawnee can break. I want to break down stereotypes. I want to build a lifestyle blog that displays all that Shawnee has to offer and all that we enjoy in Shawnee.

I am going to talk about our favorite activities, where we like to eat, people and organizations that are doing incredible things, my favorite houses and trees, and bunch of other things. 

I believe that there are some amazing things on the horizon for Shawnee and I want others to join me in this adventure.

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This morning I am sitting at Starbucks in Shawnee, OK with Margot playing cards, drinking frappes, and enjoying a chocolate croissant. We have just spent a couple hours walking around the mall. I think that half that time was spent walking around Claires, which was a really long time. If Victoria Secret has lounge chairs outside for husbands to sit upon I think that Claires deserves lounge chairs for dads to sit upon. 

I have spent the last six weeks driving around Shawnee with one or more of my kids. We have visited numerous shops and stopped in numerous places to eat. We are beginning to find a few favorites, like The Gathering Place and Sadie J’s Popcorn. I have been praying about taking a new job here with Shawnee Forward, INC. What begin as a web site development project several months back turned into an offer to become the Director of Marketing and Events. Earlier in the year the Shawnee Chamber of Commerce and the Shawnee Economic Development Foundation merged to become Shawnee Forward. I will play a role in helping the organization communicate with existing and potential members and ensure that our events bring life and joy to our members and community. I will share more about this new work in the coming months. 

Over the last seven years I have spent time volunteering with the Chambers of Commerce in Harrah and Choctaw. I love the interactions with the people, meeting new business owners and entrepreneurs, and using my skills to help others succeed. I am a people person and love seeing people win. I love contributing to great projects.

On January 2nd I will start my new journey with Shawnee Forward, INC. There will be many changes and shifts that accompany this new venture. We will be pulling our work/life pendulum back for awhile and finding new ways to spend time together as a family. The girls want me to start a family blog/vlog so we will be posting together as Shawnee Life, first on Facebook and later in some other mediums. I invite you to follow us there. 

We will continue to live in Harrah for the foreseeable future. I have several opportunities that have opened up with Mission in Motion Design that I will be pursuing in Eastern Oklahoma County in 2019. Shawnee Forward, INC will be allowing me to continue servicing web and social media clients. 

Please shoot me a message if you want to learn more about what is happening in my move. I will be blogging more about what is happening and about things in general in 2019. December is going by much more quickly than I had anticipated, but I would love to connect with as many of you as possible. Thank you.

Jeremy Davidson. 

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Recently there has been one person whose video’s I have gotten energized and caught up in lately. They belong to Gary Vaynerchuk. I have read all of Gary’s books over the years and have taken away many things. One of the things that is resonating the most lately has to do with what makes one happy. Gary is a family first person, which I am really starting to appreciate right now with three of my own kids running around my house. I find myself thinking about how I am leading them.

Do I spend my time being happy with them or am I spending my time chase “stuff” that I think will eventually make them happy? It is an interesting question for me right now. I really want to spend more time with them. Challenging them. Playing with them after school. Chasing after the things that make them happy. Playing on the floor with them. The girls have discovered an affection for legos and enjoy sitting on the floor building stuff. My parents want to spend more time with us all.

I think for me right now it is time to re-evaluate what I am doing, how I am spending my time, and how I am prioritizing my work. How much time am I wasting during the day that I could redirect, which in turn would mean that I could get finished with work sooner, and spend more time with my children. What are the unimportant things that I am doing right now that I need to shed? Are there clients in my life I would be better without? Wait, what? Seriously though, that is the type of focus that I need in this moment. What projects should I be turning down? There have been many moments in the last year where I was stressed to the max thinking about how I was going to be able to accomplish what I had taken on. It is time to say “No” to more things and “Yes” to what matters most.

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It is a sad day to have to report that my original CD copy of Ok Computer by Radiohead has become too scratched to play. Do I have it in my iTunes? Yes. Can I access it from five other services on my phone? Yes. But, but, but…that was one of my favorite CDs. Tears…

I keep around 5-7 CDs in my car that I treasure. The questions now is, “Do I replace it with a new copy or do I replace it with a new album?”

Do you have any suggested albums? What is your vote?

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For the past month the girls and I have been taking a drive to a library around Oklahoma City. They love going to the library. Margot reads well ahead of her grade and Maggie is just beginning to be able to read on her own. You have no idea how much I have prayed that they would enjoy reading as much as I do.

Saturday we got in the wagon and drove to downtown OKC to go. They had a blast going through the kids’ section, although Margot was still disappointed to find that there were to Dogman books available. She is currently in queue in the 9th position for the books at her school library. They could have spent hours roaming through the library and they even enjoyed one another’s company while we were there.

I grabbed several books from the section on Human Resources. I am trying to expand my depth in the field, as I hope to take the PHR certification test soon. Hopefully I will be able to complete reading these titles in the three weeks I have them checked out.

What is your favorite library to visit? When was the last time you went to a library?

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This year I dove head on into managing the day-to-day operations of the child care center at Harrah Church. Prior to the I had simply hired and mentored our center directors, reviewed financials, helped negotiate issues between the church and the child care center, and occasionally took meeting with disgruntled parents or employees. I had no idea the load that our director had to bear day-to-day. This is the toughest church job I have ever had. There are 35-40 full-time employees at the center and over 140 children at this point. My day starts around 7:30am and I am usually leaving the center by 6:30pm Monday through Friday. This year has really cemented for me several key leadership practices.

• You have to learn to delegate…and I mean really give things away. Once you give it away do not field the related matters. Send those over to the person you delegated the matter to. The biggest things that I have delegated to other staff are the weekly schedule, classroom observations, and ordering the food. I check in weekly with the people I delegated these items to but only in an effort to answer their questions about how they can win at what they are doing and to give them metrics to aim at.
• Always make time for people. There are two doors to my office and they are always open. Some of the best leadership conversation come when I haven’t set aside time for them. Parents love hearing me welcome them and frequently step into the office to talk about funny things their kids are doing at home. When I have made time for people and talked about what is happening in their life they understand that I care about them.
• Spend more time planning and organizing your work. “No battle plan every survives contact with the enemy.” I really love organizing things. My most visited store recently has been Staples. Childcare involves a tremendous amount of paperwork, record-keeping, teacher evaluation, constant re-evaluation of your systems, and making sure that everyone is operating according to regulations, rules, and policies. One lapse in any number of areas can result in a non-compliance on our public record or something far worse. It is better to have a plan that you can adapt.

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Child Care marketing in Oklahoma has been an incredible joy. I had the good fortune to work with a dozen clients in Oklahoma this past year and will continue that work in 2018. One Center in particular is currently in this middle of an expansion project. The are adding classrooms and seeking to enroll children from their waiting list, which topped more than 70 kids this past fall. Child Care Marketing for this Center has centered on their use of Facebook to reach more families, promote what their center is doing, displaying children’s artwork, holding contests, and talking about their teachers.

As noted in the previous paragraph, this center has reached more than 70 kids on their waiting list. Can you imagine having 70 additional kids knocking on your door trying to get in to pay your for your service? They can. This center is the only year-round Three Star Center within a 10-mile radius, and it may be further than that. This center charges $45 and more per week for an infant spot than all the centers within that radius. Even with a much steeper price point this center has achieved a full enrollment capacity, with 70 kids on a waiting list, whereas, other centers in the area struggle to enroll children.

This center is performing well for many reasons: quality teachers, attractive facilities, good leadership staff, a great work culture, consistent communication with parents, a good relationship with state licensing staff, and a solid marketing strategy. Most centers are capable of improving teachers, keeping their facilities in repair, and communicating well with their parents, though many fail to execute on these most basic items.

This center has worked hard implementing a child care marketing strategy in an effort to increase awareness regarding the quality of the center and their activities. They have a solid web site, consistently communicate with parents using their Facebook page, respond promptly to Facebook messages, use a Facebook group to communicate with teachers, and involve parents and teachers on multiple levels using the Facebook platform.

What is your center doing to marketing itself using social media? What are the “pain points” within your child care business associated with social media marketing and improving your web site? How important is marketing your child care center to you? If there was someone available to help you think through your marketing strategy and goals would you engage their service?

Clearly you have a lot to ponder. Take time to consider how bringing in a Child Care Marketing Specialist can help improve your center’s performance and enrollment numbers.

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Child Care marketing does not have to be difficult. With the right strategic plan and set of goals you can begin working towards pushing past the pain points in your business and start spending more time on making your Child Care Center better.

When you set out to market your child care center on Facebook there are many different approaches to gaining traction and raising awareness of your Child Care Center. The best child care marketing that I have seen take hold at Harrah Early Learning Center has been our door decoration contests. In our most recent door decoration contest we invited each of the ten classrooms to decorate their door or the wall outside of their room. We create a photo album with a numbered picture of each door and ask parents, friends…heck anybody with the link to vote for their favorite door by typing “winner” in the comments below the picture of their favorite door. I will embed the Facebook Post below.

This contest happened to be Christmas themed. It was a close contest between our 1-Year Old classroom, which went with a reindeer theme using the faces of the children, and the Kindergarten School Age classroom, which also chose to put up a reindeer themed door. Each door had more than 100 votes. Ultimately the 1-Year Old Classroom won out. They have won the last two door contests we have held.

When you look at the Insights for this Facebook Post you will see the following stats:

• 6,264 People Reached
• 381 Reactions, Comments & Shares
• 91 Likes
• 53 Shares
• 1,936 Post Clicks

190 of the comments on the post were the result of the 53 shares. That is nearly four comments for every share. The big statistic here is 6,264 people reached. The current Census population for the City of Harrah is 6,044 people. Essentially, this contest is the equivalent of having every person in our town drop by the Center to vote, and a few of those people voting twice.

Child Care Marketing on Facebook can be a very fun and simple event. Our teachers loved decorating their doors and the winners love the contest because I purchase them lunch from their favorite Mexican restaurant, Ted’s Cafe Escondido.

Sign up for my email list to read more about my Child Care Marketing tips and how you can increase exposure for your Child Care Center and ultimately expand your enrollment.

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This year I have been putting focus on a part of my job here at Harrah Church that has been growing in importance. I have been the overseer of a large child care center that is owned by the church for many years. In fact, for several years we had two centers operating in Eastern Oklahoma County. There are currently 126+ children enrolled and around 32 employees. By comparison, Harrah Church has four full-time employees and two part-time employees. It is a large operation for a child care center. This is an incredible proving ground for leadership. This past month I was awarded my Child Care Director’s Level 7 Credentials and a Master Teacher Certificate.

The Harrah Early Learning Center has earned the highest possible accreditation score for longer than I have been involved in it. We have an incredible staff and are fortunate to have gained a great reputation within our community. Our waiting list can be as much as 9-months out and over this past summer had over 65 kids on it.

I started taking classes in the beginning of the year to train as a Director for our Center. This has included more than 200 hours of CEUs and various other training. I have learned so much about the Child Care industry in that time. The State of Oklahoma is a difficult place to operate a child care center within because of funding and regulatory challenges, but I have found it to be easy to find success here with the proper training and the right network of skilled and knowledgeable friends.

This summer I was able to teach a Bible Study to our teachers on Tuesday evenings. I hired an assistant with skill in discipling women and that has been very fruitful. Harrah Church has seen many women and their husbands come to know the Lord. We will be baptizing one of these couples at our Christmas Eve service. It has been so rewarding.

If your church has any interest in operating a child care center and becoming a greater part of your community do not hesitate to call me. Let’s do lunch.

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This weekend I have been binging Season Two of The Crown on Netflix. I have really enjoyed this series, the stories, and the characters. Truth be told, I have been sucked into The Crown. I like the pace of the storytelling and peeking into Royal Family. As an aging pastor it has been good to watch how these characters change or do not change as the culture shifts around them. Have you watched it? What did you think?

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