Broken Systems, the First Five Years, and Raising Two Girls | Britt Riley | Episode 232

In this episode of The Girl Dad Show, Young Han sits down with Britt Riley, founder and CEO of Haven, to unpack why she built a company that puts childcare, workspace and fitness under one roof, what her market research turned up about the gaps in the childcare industry, and how Haven went from a single Rhode Island location to a national franchise model. Britt is direct about her view that the industry, left to its own devices, is broken, and about why she thinks a genuinely new model had to come from outside it. She talks about the research that preceded the business, the decision to franchise rather than scale alone, and what it takes to run a multi-location company without losing whatever made the first location work.

The conversation also gets personal. Britt started Haven out of her own experience trying to hold a career and parenthood together, and she is candid about what building it while raising two girls has actually required. She talks about how much of entrepreneurship she believes comes down to innate wiring rather than strategy, how she thinks about guiding her daughters' ambitions without steering them, and why she keeps returning to the idea that the first five years matter more than anything that follows. Expect a clear argument for treating early childhood as a societal problem rather than only a parenting one, a useful read on self-awareness as a founder, and the case for building the thing you could not find.

🔗 CONNECT WITH BRITT RILEY

👥 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanyweatherbyriley/

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourhavenlife/

💻 Haven: https://yourhavenlife.com/

🔗 CONNECT WITH YOUNG HAN

👥 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/younghan/

🐦 X: https://twitter.com/younghan

💻 Website: https://www.alwayshan.com/

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE GIRL DAD SHOW

💻 Website: https://thegirldadshow.com/

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/TheGirlDadShow/

🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thegirldadshow

👥 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-girl-dad-show

All episodes of The Girl Dad Show are proudly sponsored by Thesis, helping founders go further, together.

‍