Buzy Bodies

07/03/2017

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/why-im-supporting-childcare-workers-on-strike-for-more-money-and-respect-20170307-gusbmc.html

Early childhood educators get paid a third of a teacher's wage

04/03/2017

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery 😘

05/02/2017

Good evening all,

Alana & I have had some time to collect our thoughts since our last post in early January. We were completely floored at the prospect of a new direct competitor as we said, but with the benefit of time we have somewhat come to terms with it and still strongly believe that the initial concept of Buzy Bodies is something that’s needed as an alternative to a formal childcare arrangement. We’ve also had time to think laterally and develop some further ideas around how our work space might work for parents. I’m travelling to Melbourne in a couple of weeks and will be visiting the “Happy Hubbub” (www.happyhubbub.com.au) workspace. I’ve been fortunate enough to secure a meeting with the owner which will provide an amazing opportunity for us to learn from them about how it might be possible to make this work! I’ve also held discussions with a local working hub about the potential of collaborating with an existing space. Anyway, the purpose of this post is to just let you all know that we have not given up, and we’re continuing to do our homework.
We continue to progress with our customised booking system and are at the testing stage for functionality – we think it’s amazing, the end result being a simple, four click process to book a space.
We are thinking that our next step will be another survey – I know, I know, why do we need to do that? Well, we are going to get a lot more specific about pricing and options and how that sits from an affordability aspect. No point us doing this if it turns out to not be viable for everyday parents. We’re working on the creation of the survey and hope to have it up for completion soon.
Thank you all for your patience while we continue to work on this behind the scenes. For those who don’t know who we are, here are our bio’s:

Lara Kable
I have 2 beautiful boys – Ryan is 4 and Anthony is 3, and I work fulltime.
Upon return from maternity leave with my employer, I was in the privileged position of being offered the ability to work a couple of days a week from home. While I was grateful for the gesture as it provided an opportunity to somewhat balance life and work, the practicalities of working from home with a baby were soon apparent. Between settling, feeding and general cleaning up after him, there was little actual work done. Then came the guilt of “letting the team down” at work.
I would have loved an option like Buzy Bodies.
Some of the features that we’ve embedded into the Centre from both my experience as a working mum and from feedback received from the survey include:
• A designated breastfeeding area
• A nap room
• A clear distinction between the work space and crèche
• Quality, secure high speed Wi-Fi internet
• Highly qualified childcare professionals caring for your children
I’m confident that the vision we have with Buzy Bodies will help those who are finding things a bit of a struggle as I did.

Alana O’Keefe
I have been working in the childcare industry since I was 18 years old. I have loved children for as long as I can remember and it has been a lifelong dream of mine to combine working with children while running my own business.
I grew up in Noosa on the Sunshine Coast and am now very happy to call Newcastle home, having moved here 8 years ago. I have a loving supporting family in my Mum, Dad and brother, 2 great step parents and a gorgeous one year old Staffy who is definitely my little baby!
I was lucky enough to secure a traineeship when I first started working in childcare, this gave me a lot of hands on experience when I was just starting out and showed me I had picked the right profession. I have experience in a range of different childcare settings from Long day cares, Family day care, Nannying and Pre-Schools.
I met Lara 4 years ago, when she hired me to be the Nanny for her gorgeous boys. We have developed a sister-like friendship over this time. We are really excited to see our concept develop into a real-life business and I look forward to working closely with your children.

05/02/2017

Maybe we need a HECS style system for out of pocket childcare expenses for parents to eliminate the affordability debate of returning to work?

Australian working mothers with children under five experience stress 90 percent of the time according to new research from the University of New South Wales. How did we get into this mess?

13/01/2017

https://www.facebook.com/erin.richards1/posts/10212273045807581

It's a great idea in theory, but in practice, there are hurdles. Plus, a short list of co-working spaces around the world that offer childcare.

11/01/2017

Good evening,

It has recently been brought to our attention that a business offering the same services as our proposed Centre will be opening in mid-February.

As you can appreciate, this presents us with some issues. Centres such as this run on tight margins after paying staff, rent, and other expenses. Alana and I worked very hard in the early days on the figures; what we always came back to was that it had to be affordable! We wanted mums to use our Centre and enjoy the benefits the time devoted on their business could bring. All the while with the kiddies having an absolute ball! That was our dream.

A competitor undercutting prices and opening at the same time (mid February) is not ideal. We understand very well that it takes time to build a business through word of mouth, and through customers having an enjoyable experience. We were willing to wear it in the short term as we believed our Centre would be an amazing space, and because of that, the people would come. We are perfectionists unfortunately! Using the results of our survey, we methodically worked through what parents wanted and how we needed to tailor our offering to that. We weren’t at any point interested in opening a Centre we couldn’t be proud of from the outset. Oh boy, it was going to be amazing! Regrettably, having a competitor potentially removing even just 10 customers could mean the difference to us between breaking even and running at a loss.

After some very frank discussions between us, in the cold hard light of day, we have decided that now is not the appropriate time to proceed with the opening of Buzy Bodies.

To say we are devastated is an understatement. We have invested time, energy, money, weekends and time away from our families over the last 5 months. I know many of you will be disappointed, but believe me nowhere near as disappointed as us. I believe we may have even shed some tears.

On the bright side, we have developed an amazing customised booking system and website that can be tailored to a different endeavour down the track. Alana and I continue to brainstorm ideas to help working parents of children 0 – 6! That is our passion and we don’t and won’t sway from it. It may seem like we are giving up. Not at all! The business world can be brutal, but we have a shared mindset of rising above. We really believe the concept is a great one, providing flexibility for working parents. This is a setback, there is no doubt. But we will keep working hard to come up with a workable solution.

We would like to thank all of you who completed our survey – your input was amazing and created the backbone of our service offering. We would also like to thank those who liked our page and commented regularly to give us a boost (Bec!). Please continue to like our page, as should we get the opportunity to move ahead in the future, we would like you to know what we're up to.

Hopefully we’ll be in touch again soon with a different idea to make the work/life balance easier.

Best wishes Queens!

Lara & Alana.

03/01/2017

As promised, here is our job advertisement. Feel free to share around!
https://www.seek.com.au/Job/32509240?_ga=1.160535101.1893608332.1483318191

01/01/2017

Happy New Year!
Alana & I are excited to provide an update on Buzy Bodies progress.
We signed a Heads of Agreement for the lease of a property at 54 Clyde Street Hamilton North in mid December. Our proposed lease start date is 1 February 2017. This is the same space we mentioned in our last update. We have been granted approval to access the space prior to the lease commencement, allowing for our builder to get in there and do their thing so we are expecting we will be open for business in mid February. We're really happy with this space and like we said last time, plenty of free on-site parking and a nice little cafe out the front.
We will be posting ads this week for staff recruitment. We will share on our page, so if you know anyone looking for work feel free to let them know. While we will be hiring 2 full time staff initially, we will also be scoping for people to go on our casual list.
Our customised booking system is really coming along and we have been working hard over Christmas with our web developer on the system. These things take time but we're really thrilled with the progress. We should be in a place to go live with our new website closer to the end of January.
We have been made aware that much of our email correspondence to date has been inadvertently directed to Junk. With the new website, we will be moving to a new host and will have a new email address, one that hopefully is a little more email friendly. Until that time, we will prefer to post here on Facebook for updates so that you don't miss out. Therefore, it's really important that you like our page to ensure you receive our updates in your feed.
Thank you for your support so far. Feel free to share with anyone you think may benefit from our new venture and make sure to tell them to like our page so they can see our progress.

Lara & Alana.

10/12/2016

Amen
http://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace-relations/yes-women-want-to-be-ceos-even-when-they-have-children-20161206-gt4wgq.html

Women and men are not always supported in their desire for work flexibility. There's stigmas, and much resistance.

15/11/2016

Thanks for the support everyone! We're now at over 80 interested parents and we believe our project to be viable👏
A quick update on where we're at:
1. We are scoping out a space in Hamilton North. It is a downstairs/upstairs arrangement with the crèche downstairs. We're hoping to get in there for a start in early February but we will need to work with our builder on this deadline. The awesome point as far as we are concerned is it has plenty of on-site free parking!! Our survey results say this is really important for potential users.
2. We have engaged the services of a web developer for a custom built booking system. This will enable us to allow for single and bulk purchases, discounts for bulk purchases, specials from time to time, etc. We firmly believe that along with our staff, a very flexible booking system is crucial.
We will continue to update you as we progress.
Thanks again!
Alana & Lara

02/11/2016

How true!

When I conducted some research with Millennials I found that flexible working was vital for any modern employee, with 91% saying flexible working was important and 92% saying they wanted the option to

26/10/2016

We've had a fantastic result with our survey so far - thank you again to everyone who has taken the time to complete the survey. This really instills confidence that this project is something that is needed here in Newcastle. We really want to hit a target of 100 registered parents! So we would like to ask a big favour. If each of you can think of just one other person who might find this service beneficial and personally ask them to complete the survey, we'll be over the line. Thanks in advance for getting us out there. Have a great night!