Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tyrone Burks. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Tyrone, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

I inherited our family business (2nd generation), and that. business came with employees. The first thing to recognize when you come into a new environment is the culture in which it operates, and I immediately sensed the culture of negativity. I own/operate a childcare facility, in this environment, if you are not tight-knit, and have trust and comfort in your coworkers for support, it can make the job daunting. So I began hosting monthly team building events, and nearly 8 years later we do these team events each quarter and my staff loves it!

Through Team building events, teacher recognition and awards, to incentive pay all helped form core staff members, who truly love and care for one another, while providing care at a high level. The next step was to ensure my hiring process was extremely thorough so we only hired teachers that fit our culture.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Tyrone Burks, I was on active duty Air Force for nearly a decade, before coming home to run my family’s business, which is childcare. My time in the military prepared me extensively, I’ve similarly structured our childcare program to a military chain of command for efficiency, communication, and quality control.

On the surface of our organization “Loving Arms Enterprises” first provides a nationally accredited high-quality early childhood program, intentionally designed to set a standard of education, for the little learners in our program.

However, we also believe “we are the community stabilizers”, so if you are a family that comes through our doors, we can help you find childcare, but also resources if you are seeking employment, shelter, food, etc. We aim to be a beacon of support to families in need within our community.

We also have a training entity within our enterprise, that is solely focused on bringing high-quality childcare to any community in need or interested in stabilizing their community. We can acquire your current childcare if you are a current provider looking to pivot, we can help providers in-home and center-based upscale their program as we have been in this industry for 30 years and have done in-home, group, and center-based childcare. We also work with real estate developers looking to bring childcare to a particular city, or housing division, as we have all the infrastructure digitally to have high-quality childcare programs, from parent and staff handbooks to staff orientation processes and documents, we also have specialized curriculum written by our Director of Education (Kansas State Grad GO CATS!) for children from Infant to schoolage!

Have you ever had to pivot?

I was stationed at Creech AFB, NV about 20 miles north of Vegas. I was thriving as a young NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer). In 2015 I found out that my father had prostate cancer, I was a year away from reenlisting and I decided that day to submit my separation package from the Air Force. Nothing else would’ve made me leave the military, gratefully he beat the cancer and I’m home with family, sometimes things in life happen to propel or force you to be where you need to.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Never let negativity linger, nothing is too small to at least investigate. Your investigation doesn’t have to result in someone’s termination of employment, but it might uncover, a process that needs to be developed to save you from a potential future loss of revenue or personnel. Invest in your people, and I mean sweat equity, get to know them, know their families, know what motivates them and what discourages them. Lastly, I leave this point with a quote “Lead from within, not from above”.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lovingarmsenterprises.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tyrone_burks/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tyrone.burks.3
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyrone-burks/

Image Credits

Morgan Burks