Building Community and Connection in Business with Richie Huffman

**Michael** (0:00)
Super smart.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Zuckasch** (0:17)
So we've got nine kids combined, but Richie's got most of them.
Welcome to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Zuckasch, joined by my co-host Mike and our special guest today. We are talking about one of the most crucial aspects of business success, and that's building community and meaningful connections. So whether within an organization or between brands and customers or across industries, a strong sense of community fuels long-term trust, engagement, and impact, and it's just more fun and fulfilling when you're working in a thriving community. Mike, introduce our guest today as we dive into this topic.

**Michael** (1:02)
I'm excited to do so, Steve. Our listeners today are in for a real treat. Our guest today is Richie Huffman. He's the founder and CEO of Celebree School. As a leader in early childhood education, Richie has built a franchise that not only focuses on academic development, but also fosters trust and lasting relationships with families, educators, and franchisees. With a commitment to a purpose-driven growth, Celebree School has become a model for how businesses can scale while maintaining a deep sense of connection and care, which we know for our audience is key.
Richie, welcome to the show. We are so happy to have you with us today.

**Richie Huffman** (1:53)
Thank you, guys. Appreciate you having me on. Yeah.

**Michael** (1:56)
So maybe we can start off with, we're going to talk a lot about community, I think, today. So why is it that you believe that community is such an essential part of having a successful business?

**Richie Huffman** (2:11)
Well, I think, as you mentioned earlier, I think just here at Celebree, we're part of a community. We're providing an amazing service to communities through our preschool and through our Celebree. So I think we're talking a lot about empathy. And I think that I've been blessed to be a part of a business, founded a business that you can't help but to be empathetic. And because we're talking about children, and we're talking about the development of children.
And if you can't get passionate and empathetic about children and their development and the impact that you're having, you probably don't have a heartbeat. So I've probably been pretty blessed on having a business, starting a business that all of that takes place in.

**Michael** (3:06)
It's a good way to put it.

**Stephen Zuckasch** (3:12)
Yeah, so why don't we dive in a little bit here on, when we talk about community, it means different things in different contexts. From your experience, what defines a true business community?

**Richie Huffman** (3:26)
When you say community, I think we also use the word relationships.
And as the CEO, I think relationships and creating relationships and having community connections, I think that's probably one of the most important jobs as a CEO and as a business owner is, because when we say community and creating relationships, I think we're really creating open doors, right? We're opening doors into our world and into the other folks' world. So, you know, one of my main jobs, and I actually have it written here on my board, my job is to create those relationships and build relationships inside the communities they operate in. And I have like five key relationships that I'm constantly looking at creating. And number one is the relationships between myself and our franchise partners. And so that relationship to me is extremely important. The second one is my relationship with philanthropy and making sure that we have direct connections and as I mentioned before, opening doors to the opportunity to serve through philanthropy from a Celebree perspective as a school, but also through the Huffman Family Foundation. My third one is business leaders, other business leaders that I need to create relationships to, again, to open those doors and those pathways of communication. And can we do business together? Is there synergy here between us and your business? And then lastly, and not lastly, but another one is political relationships. You know, my job is to CEOs and make sure that we have political relationships, to make sure that we're continuous to, continuously fighting for policy and dollars that help us keep our schools opening and operating. And the last one is my executive team, making sure that those doors are open. And I have strong relationships with the key executive here at the Huffman Family Brands.

**Stephen Zuckasch** (5:31)
Yeah, it's definitely this, you can tell, it's this conscious capitalist kind of approach where you're just thinking about all the different stakeholders that include, go out into your community and, you know, not just within your own doors.