Dr. Jason Lody has built a child care empire in short order thanks to the help of Playground’s all-in-one child care management software, scaling from zero to 21 locations in just 18 months by leveraging integrated data insights to improve margins and care quality.

While most child care centers struggle to operate profitably in even one location, Playground helped Jason – CEO of Eventus Education – identify key efficiencies and operational patterns across his sites, converging them into a single successful business. Ultimately, these improvements led to investor partnerships that have allowed him to expand further. 

Jason sat down with Playground to discuss his journey so that other child care directors can learn from his experience.

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Playground: The bridge from startup to scale

Jason quickly acquired a handful of child care businesses in 2024 and found operations highly fractured, with patchworked systems and KPIs making it difficult to pinpoint cohesive trends that could help facilitate his decision making and growth. What’s more, his centers were based across several states – including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida – making it even more difficult to consolidate efforts while operating across various regulatory systems.

Many of the locations were running on manual systems or legacy software, like Procare Desktop, at the time of acquisition. But Jason observed plenty of friction within the staff and family experience, and wanted to centralize and streamline in the pursuit of improving care quality and profit margins across the board. This is where Playground came in and provided a central source of truth to identify where and how the numbers in the business were working – or not. 

Improving operations, care quality and margins

Playground provides the data needed to improve care quality and profit margins simultaneously. In turn, these improvements lead to a sustainably profitable business. 

Jason’s application of Playground pole vaulted his key performance indicators (KPIs) across all locations thanks to the many efficiencies gained across enrollment, billing, communication, marketing, and beyond. Some major benefits to date include: 

• Profit margin improvements: 10% gain across each location

• Enrollment gains: Approximately 10% increase in each school

• Food Program: $119k estimated annual reimbursement savings

• QRIS ratings: Increased by 1 star at multiple sites

• CRM benefits: $300k in other annual subscription costs saved

• Staff productivity: 5 hours per location per week saved

• Marketing: 50% decrease in cost per lead

• Subsidy management: ~$60k annual savings by sparing the need for a dedicated specialist

For each change to his bottom line, qualitative improvements surfaced in tandem. Jason raves about the power of streamlining and its impact throughout the business: “The most significant return has come from administrative time savings. By digitizing attendance, parent communication, billing, document management, and reporting, our directors spend considerably less time on paperwork.” 

This centralized digitization created more time and data at the team’s disposal, leading to a more focused staff, higher quality care, and happier families. This trickle-down effect created a flywheel where satisfaction and retention increased for both staff and families alike. “Retaining even a small number of families who might otherwise leave generates revenue that far exceeds the software investment,” Jason says.

And the benefits didn’t end with the children, families or staff. Pitching a growth story with a favorable risk profile for investors also became viable, earning him a variety of valuable business partners to help continue his expansion.

Built for every stage: Driving consistency across centers

One of the more complicated aspects of Jason’s growth story was the diversity of the locations and their individual trajectories. Unifying these locations as a single, cohesive business with shared resources, oversight and mission felt cumbersome when each has its own strengths, weaknesses, and local dynamics. 

“At one point in 2025 I had 12 schools but only six were operating. The other six were vacant, and of the six operating, three were only operating for a few months,” Jason reports. This led to inconsistency across his books, muddying the waters for decision making. 

Playground integrated and isolated locational data on demand through a single intuitive interface, enabling economies of scale to quickly improve margins and set each location on the right track to profitability, growth and quality improvements.

Jason leverages Playground’s data insights regardless of the location’s stage or maturity, with more and more benefits becoming more apparent as the business grows. “Above 5 locations, Playground became indispensable for scaling efficiently. It became a foundational part of how we operate.”

Now, when he acquires a new location, he has the experience and data to help quickly onboard and integrate it to reach the quickest path to efficient margins, operations and quality care.

See how Playground can easily streamline your operations by booking a free demo.