Case study
Tiny Giants Schools
A growing network of schools where family demand had outrun the systems built to keep up with it.
The school
Tiny Giants is the kind of school parents describe to their friends in a lower voice, like a secret. A preschool on Clay Street, an infant center on Filbert, and a founder, Jen, who knows every child's name and most of the grandparents'. Teachers here go by "Teacher" and a first name. The curriculum is homegrown. Drop-off ends with a real conversation.
When we met, Jen was about to open a third site on Franklin Street and grow from roughly 25 staff to 45. Everything that made the school wonderful was about to be stretched across three buildings.
What was happening
Every system ran through Jen.
Invoices went out one family at a time, each one looked up by hand. Teachers and site directors asked Jen for family contact information, because there was no roster they could check themselves. Payroll came off a different Google Doc at each site. Sign-in sheets weren't ready for the day licensing knocks. Applications lived in three documents across two eras, an old Google Form and a newer Squarespace form, and no one could see how many hundreds of families were waiting. Mornings started with ninety minutes of inbox. The calendar was sticky notes. Yelp reviews asked for more communication from a founder who was already answering email before sunrise.
None of it was a failure of care. It was a school that had grown past what one person's memory could hold.
What we built
All of it in the Google Workspace the school already paid for. Not a single new subscription. Every piece maps to one of the four services I bring to every engagement.
Operations Design
& Founder Systems
- One roster that's the source of truth. Every child, every family, enrollment status, bill-to, rates. Before, teachers and site directors had to ask Jen for contact information; now they look it up themselves, and everything else — invoicing, sign-in sheets, contact groups — reads from the same place.
- A calendar system: six calendars, each with its own audience, so directors see what they need and Jen's personal life stays hers.
- An inbox that sorts itself: six labels, filters, an unsubscribe blitz, and a fix for the shared-document notifications that had been quietly disappearing.
- Contact groups synced from the roster, updating themselves as enrollment changes.
- Franklin Street's "Coming Soon": homepage banner and landing page, written in Jen's voice, hedged to "early 2027."
AI-Powered Systems & Tools
- Invoicing in under five minutes a month. Siblings combined onto one invoice, PDFs filed by month, Gmail drafts to spot-check, a log of every send, and a "needs attention" list so no family is missed.
- Every application, found. Applications from 2018 to today, merged from every source into one tracker with an ID and a clear status for each family.
- A waitlist Jen can actually pull from, filtered by age and start date, with priority and sibling flags, payment reconciliation, and a flags tab for the odd ones.
- The application, redesigned: returning families skip the fee, a second parent is optional, referrals are captured, and interest in the new site is a single checkbox.
- A wait-pool announcement to families with children under three, ready for the Franklin Street news.
Compliance
- Sign-in sheets that are ready when licensing knocks, generated from the roster, one page per class, with the requirement printed right on the sheet and a 10 a.m. headcount habit for teachers.
- A licensing site roster for each school's director — physician, allergies, authorizations — pulled from the same source, ready to hand over.
Playbooks, Enablement
& Training
- A how-to binder for every system, written for the person who runs it next.
- Directors trained on the calendar and the systems, site by site — plus a two-minute quiz to make the habit stick.
- The brand, organized: five logo variants exported and filed so any director can drop one into a document.
What changed
Months in, everything still runs without me. That was the design.
In Jen's words
As a small business owner, nothing is more valuable than time and Jared keeps finding ways to buy time back so I can focus on what I do best.
Jen Silver · Founder & Executive Director, Tiny Giants Schools
What's next
We're building the talent systems that protect the warmth of Tiny Giants through hiring and onboarding as the team nearly doubles from 25 to 45.
Interested families can apply to the new Day School at Franklin Street at tinygiantssf.com/dayschool.
Built with
Everything I build is in the tools you already own, with the people who'll run it, and documented so it keeps working after I'm gone.
The Walkthrough
One day at your school, on your schedule. I watch drop-off, sit with your director, walk the rooms, and stay through the midday crunch. You get a plain-language map of where the hours go, and one fix shipped that same week.
$1,500 · credited toward any build within 60 days
Book a WalkthroughBack on the Floor
Your school's operating system. One true roster. Five-minute invoicing. Sign-in sheets that are ready when licensing knocks. A calendar that delegates, an inbox that sorts itself, and a binder so your directors run it. Three weeks, and your mornings are yours again.
from $8,500
Get my mornings backFrom Hello to Enrolled
Every application you've ever received, in one tracker you can trust. A waitlist you can pull from by age and start date. A form where returning families skip the fee. And every family knowing where they stand.
from $9,500
Find every familyNot sure which? Tell me about your mess and I'll tell you where I'd start. · Or see every package →
Is your school running on one person's memory?
Tell me about your mess. I'll tell you where I'd start.
Book an intro call