Thirty years of family operation. The methodology came with him
The family business begins
Mike's parents (Lisa and Pat Galli) founded the first center in St. Charles County. Lisa couldn't find childcare she trusted for her son; Pat left engineering to help build the alternative. The first location grew into six over the next three decades.
Mike at age 8: in classrooms before he could read
Mike grew up inside the family centers. Summers, weekends, after school. He watched lesson plans get written, teachers get trained, and parents get reassured. By the time he was old enough to apply for a job, he'd already been there a decade.
Mike on the floor — 18 years and counting
Mike started running classrooms in his early twenties. Wrote lesson plans in the morning, ran activities in the afternoon, navigated DFS visits, managed staff turnover, and watched what actually worked across 1,200 children tracked with three research methods.
Family business sold. Methodology came with him.
The six-center family business sold. Mike took everything the family had built — every lesson plan, training pattern, compliance routine, and kindergarten-readiness measure, then started LTT to make it available to other Missouri operators.
LTT launches publicly
Mike's now full-time on Learn Teach Thrive. Training-first product, curriculum upsell, five clock-hour courses launching September. The methodology refined across thirty years of family operation, now built into a system any Missouri center can run.
My family built and operated six Missouri childcare centers across thirty years. I grew up in them. For the last 18 years, I've run classrooms myself — writing lesson plans in the morning, on the floor with teachers in the afternoon. That's how the methodology was built. Not from a desk.
Four things you can't get from a curriculum vendor
Compliance authority
Decades of DFS visits, license renewals, and state inspections. Mike knows what gets cited, what passes, and what the inspector actually looks at.
Floor experience
18 years personally running classrooms, plus a lifetime watching what works across six different Missouri centers operated by his family.
Credentialed outcomes
95% kindergarten-ready outcome, measured across ~1,200 children with three research methods. The numbers Mike inherited and the numbers he kept.
Built methodology
Lesson plans, training systems, documentation routines: the actual artifacts that ran six centers. Now codified as the LTT product.