How to Use Systems to Pivot and Prosper with Rachel Charlupski

Rachel Charlupski is the Founder of The Babysitting Company, a full-service childcare agency that refers professionally trained babysitters to clients and families nationwide. Since starting her business in college, Rachel has grown The Babysitting Company into a successful business with a network of over 1,200 sitters, nannies, and caregivers.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Rachel Charlupski talks about her love of babysitting and explains how she started The Babysitting Company
The role that systems play in Rachel’s business model
How Rachel and her team pivoted and thrived during the pandemic
The future of The Babysitting Company

In this episode:

What role do systems play in a successful business model? How can intentional systems help your company prosper during difficult times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic?

With years of entrepreneurial experience under her belt, Rachel Charlupski knows what makes a business successful. She is the Founder of The Babysitting Company, a full-service childcare agency that she has grown into a nationwide business. However, when the pandemic hit, she knew she had to adapt in order to survive. Today, Rachel is here to tell the inspiring story of how she implemented systems to pivot and thrive over the past year.

On this exciting episode of the Systems Simplified podcast, Adi Klevit talks with Rachel Charlupski, the Founder of The Babysitting Company. Rachel discusses how she turned her passion into a successful career, why systems are so crucial to her business model, and the strategies she used to achieve even greater success during the pandemic. Stay tuned for all this and more!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode:

This episode is brought to you by Business Success Consulting Group.

At Business Success Consulting Group, we create custom processes and tailor-made management systems so businesses can thrive.

Businesses simply can’t survive without workable systems and well-documented processes. That’s why our team of experienced professionals takes care of it for you.

We provide business owners, entrepreneurs, and key executives with strategic implementation, process improvement and documentation, and long-lasting systems necessary to support business expansion.

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Transcription:

Adi: [00:00:00] Hello, this is Adi Klevit the host of the system’s simplified podcast, where we featured top entrepreneurs, founders, and thought leaders on how to systematize a business. And this podcast is brought to you by business success consulting group and business success consulting group. We create tailor-made processes and customized management systems to help businesses thrive.

So visit us at www.bizsuccesscg.com. And today I have a special guest. Rachel from The Babysitting Company is the founder and CEO of the babysitting company. And I am so honored to have you on Rachel. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Let’s start with, with an introduction of what is the babysitting company?

Rachel: [00:00:49] Sure. So the babysitting company is a full service childcare agency. We refer babysitters that are trained professionally interviewed for people’s homes, residences for hotels, for sports teams, for events, travel. Really any reason someone could need a babysitter.

Adi: [00:01:09] Absolutely. And you are all over the country.

Rachel: [00:01:12] We are our hope is that anywhere our clients are traveling, that we’re able to accommodate them with cert with services.

Adi: [00:01:19] That’s great. So let’s start out. Let’s our clients are curious. We’re also going to have it posted below on the podcast information, but give us your website so they can go look at a babysitting company.

Rachel: [00:01:31] Of course, the website is the babysitting company.com.

Adi: [00:01:35] Excellent. Okay, good. And. You know, I know Rachel now for several years, you know, you’re a client and friend and I’ve seen you grow the company and it’s absolutely amazing. So that’s why I’m so excited that you are on this podcast to share with our listeners your journey and what you do and how you do it.

And you really. You know, one of the things we’re also going to talk about is your leadership skills and how you were able to maneuver the company throughout COVID and come out of it strong. So this is really, this is exciting. We’re going to talk about some interesting things here. So let’s start first of all, with give us your story.

Your story is so amazing, like how you started a company. So tell, tell me about a story. Sure.

Rachel: [00:02:19] I always babysat when I was in high school. I love babysitting. I loved babysitting for family, for neighbors, for friends. And I went away to school for college and I didn’t know anyone. And I really miss babysitting.

I missed working. I had a lot of downtime. I missed working. So I went to the local hotels and I said, if anyone needs a babysitter, please call me. Here is my driver’s license, my photo some information about me and I started to get so busy that My friends would say, wait a second. I want to do that too.

That is such an amazing job. You’re having such nice experiences. And it really grew from there where people were calling us from hotels guests who were staying at the hotels would pass on our information. And then when they were in other locations, so not just Phoenix, they would reach out and ask if we could set them up with babysitters and other places.

I’d never been to Los Angeles before. That was the first place we expanded. And someone that we had worked with had asked if we had babysitters there and I explained, this is just a hobby I’m in college. And they said, you really need to have babysitters and other places because your babysitters were best.

But you set us up with, and I said, well, if that family needs someone, there’s probably other families that do also. And I just, anywhere someone really started to call, we. Went there either drove or flew. And I stayed with family and friends. I figured out who I knew in the area social media and Facebook and just my own network of friends, family, teachers really pulled together and allowed us to start really organically.

Adi: [00:03:50] That’s great. That is great. So now name some of the cities you’re at right now.

Rachel: [00:03:55] Sure. So we are in Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, of course. We are in Do you try it? Chicago? Orlando, South Florida, Boston DC, Naples, Philadelphia. I think that’s New York and the Hamptons. Okay.

Adi: [00:04:12] And I can say also with your adventurous spirit, if we have a listener that I want a babysitting in their city, go ahead and reach out because you might be able to figure it out.

Of course. Great. Okay. So let’s talk about systems, you know, you you’re, and I know because I. Work with you. I know you have amazing systems and that’s one of the things that sets you apart from other babysitting comp from other companies, similar to what you do is that you have those systems. Well, you are well-defined and you stick to the systems and that’s how you are able to hire really good people that are trustworthy and also create that experience, because I know that customer service is amazing is you take care of your clients.

Like they were your own family.

Rachel: [00:04:58] Yeah. I think that systems have to work not only for the company and for the people that are working in the office nine to five, but also for the contractors. And I think really the reason why we’ve been able to sustain ourselves for so long through a recession through COVID is really listening to what everyone is.

Asking or needs because I’m only on one side of it. I only see what works for me. But really being open to changes too. We do a lot of surveys to find out what could possibly work better and it might be something that. It’s really obvious that we just, you know, when you’re in the same routine for so long, a lot of times you overlook things that could be a quick fix.

So really getting that information from the people we work with has been really helpful.

Adi: [00:05:46] Absolutely. Yeah. That’s a key key ingredient in making good systems is having those surveys and really understanding, not just. Did dictating what works, but finding out what works. Right. So that’s super important.

Yeah. Very good point. So let’s, you know, you before COVID pre COVID, you know, as you mentioned, you know, you did a lot of babysitting for events and you go to hotels and you know, it’s not, it’s not just babysitting in people’s homes. I mean, this is like sending a group of babysitters into big events.

Right. And you said sport, you know, in sport events and sport. Teams, et cetera. Right? So, but now with COVID, that changed all of a sudden, right? Not to throw you back into last March, but let’s talk about the resiliency that you showed because you, you amazingly just managed to work through the pandemic and come out of it stronger than ever, where you were thinking that.

Even babysitting, like who would want to babysitting in their home during the pandemic. Right? I mean, it can, it could be very easily. It could have been a business that would just go out of business, but you did not let it happen. And you use the word at its very being used so many times the pivoting ward, you, you pivoted, you adjusted and tell us the story.

It’s very inspiring.

Rachel: [00:07:05] So there were a few things. Well what motivated me really is. Being really strong for, for so many people that it counted on, on me for work. But also, you know, there were times there, there was a time when no one was working, everything was shut down. So we really needed to figure out what we could do to keep busy keep our minds going to keep our name out there.

And what we did was focus on what we could do. We could help in in training and You know, a lot of our clients that had either nannies at home or full-time childcare at home or people that weren’t our clients yet, they really had a lot of questions on how to deal with COVID in their home.

And we had a lot of that information from doing research and from really just being familiar with ways that. W challenges that could come up with, with with COVID and having your, your, your childcare provider, whether you were cutting hours or needed more hours or location changes. So we were able to offer our clients and people that were in our clients yet screening and consulting information.

And that was really great because not only were we able to sustain some business during that time. But we were really putting our name out there. So that was one of the things that we did. We had never assisted with screening other candidates or for families or helping them interview or consulting.

And that was I wish that we would’ve done that for a long time. It was, it was something that I really enjoyed doing and continue to like and then we also started doing virtual babysitting. The virtual babysitting isn’t when parents leave their home and leave their child with a computer they could be in the next room.

They could be in another room in the house getting some things done, possibly a meeting. And that started with individual one-on-one virtual sessions. And it expanded to companies. We work with companies with 20,000 employees and every time there’s a big meeting a lot of companies do weekly sessions, daily sessions.

To allow just some extra time for their parents. The people that are parents that are working there to have some some time. So that was something that again, there was no reason we didn’t do it before we were just never put in a position to have that thought. So all of the things that we started doing in COVID we’ll continue to do.

Adi: [00:09:18] Absolutely. And I think it’s a great idea because a lot of our listeners are business owners and providing that service. It’s, it’s so great too, for retention of employees. It’s a great part of your, of the couch culture to actually help. Well, cause it’s a big issue in terms of parents that now are facing, working from home and having to homeschool or have kids at home that are doing school from home at, as the opening up, et cetera.

But it’s still, it’s a great resource. To do that. So that’s, that’s fantastic. So you basically shifted from the more the events, you know, going into events and hotels and big. Events you stick and do babysitting in hotels because people are starting to travel, but you shifted more to what is needed.

And again, it goes back to serving and asking what is needed and providing what

Rachel: [00:10:07] is needed. Yep. For sure. And anytime a client would call and, and ask, we would, you know, do our best to help them. I think just really keeping in contact with clients, with the hotel partners that we had really just reaching out to people.

And that worked out really well. We got a lot of. Press for the virtual sitting. And once the press started happening, we really, it was a snowball from there. So not only did it help our business, it helped you know, sitters keeping working and really kept our name out there.

Adi: [00:10:36] Absolutely. And you also told me about, you know, for instance, if a family was expanding and the mother was expecting, or she was, she was pregnant and she was expecting her mother or her mother-in-law and a family member to come over and that travel was restricted.

So you saw that, that that’s an opportunity to help in terms of providing a babysitter, a qualified babysitter, right?

Rachel: [00:10:56] Normally people could be at the hospital if you had another child at home and it was the middle of the night. You could. You could take that other child to the hospital, or you could leave your child with another family member or friend, but in the middle of COVID, it wasn’t possible.

So we did a lot of assistance with family, with families that were expanding new families. And it, it was something that we were really proud to be able to offer because people were really stuck. It wasn’t something that they ever thought they were going to be in that kind of situation.

Adi: [00:11:25] That’s great.

So let’s talk about the future. So what is the future of the babysitting company? What does it look like?

Rachel: [00:11:32] Well, I feel like this is the future for the past year. This is like what we were waiting for. And I remember there were so many days where I was just down, everyone was down and people would say, Oh, just wait.

When things are opening up. Your phone’s not going to stop ringing. And I thought there’s no way. You know, you really, it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you’re in the middle of the tunnel. But we’re really fortunate. Miami is very open. They’ve done everything they can to safely welcome guests.

Not only people traveling short-term, but a lot of people who. Decided to get out of the cold. Maybe it was New York or Chicago and they’ve made Miami their longer term home. So that’s been really great for us because that is where one of our biggest offices are. So the future, I think really Realizing the positive things that came out of COVID spending more time communicating with our sitters.

We had more time. So it was nice to really get to know people. Our clients, we really reached out and probably realizing, you know, how thankful we are. We’re of course everyone’s thankful when they have a business, but maybe not saying it as much as they should. So I think our future is really Thanking our clients thanking the people that work with us that make our work possible and just being more grateful and understanding that your business is not just about you.

There’s so many people support that that makes your business a success. And I think really realizing that going forward in the future is, is definitely top on our list.

Adi: [00:13:04] Absolutely. Absolutely. And you’re also very you have great presence on social media so people can find you there. Yes. And, but let’s give our listeners your phone number in case they just want to call you right now and book a babysitter. Or ask you a question.

Rachel: [00:13:17] Sure. The number is (888) 407-7822.

Adi: [00:13:23] Excellent. Well, Rachel, thank you so much for being a guest on this podcast and for sharing all this valuable information. So we really hope that this will inspire other entrepreneurs to do too. If they have a dream to do the same, to follow the dream and not give up, because, you know, we, we have obstacles, but it’s all a matter of continuing pushing forward.

So you can actually accomplish just like you. Give the examples. So that’s awesome. Thank you so much.

Rachel: [00:13:52] Thank you for having me.

Adi: [00:13:53] You’re very welcome.