Local day care owner is Washington’s small business person of the year

MILL CREEK — Lori Blades started her business because she was a single mother, not in spite of it.

She worked as a bartender and waitress in the 1980s and struggled with putting her daughter, Amber Burnett, into the care of others.

“I was really uncomfortable with the child care I was able to find for her,” Blades said. “It broke my heart to leave her in the care of someone else. I thought I could do a better job. I could be good at this.”

That led her to launch what would eventually become Kids ‘N Us Early Learning Academies, day care for children 12 years old and younger.

The company has grown over the years and now employs 140 people who care for more than 800 children at five locations, four in Snohomish County and one in Skagit County.

Her success has led her to be named the Small Business Person of the Year for Washington by the Small Business Administration. She is to attend a gala at the Museum of Flight in Seattle on April 30 and then head to Washington, D.C., in early May for more honors.

“I’m going to go to the State Department, I’m going to the White House,” Blades said. “I’m just so ecstatic, I’m tickled pink. I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

Businesses are judged on a number of criteria for the award and Blades was a convincing winner, said Matthew Williams of the Seattle office of the SBA.

“She was top marks across the board on all of the categories — her staying power, her growth in number of employees and her ability to overcome adversity,” Williams said.

Blades also displays an impressive amount of business savvy, said Kim Willis, president and CEO of Ameritrust, a Seattle based firm that works with the SBA to finance small business owners. Willis nominated Blades for the award.

“We deal with a lot of business owners and we don’t see that type of business owner come around that often,” Willis said. “It’s been very fun to watch her grow and reap the rewards of her hard work.”

It’s the second year in a row that a Snohomish County business won the award. Last year, aerospace manufacturer and machine shop Cobalt Enterprises of Granite Falls and its owners, Fred Schule and Paul Clark, was recognized by the SBA with the award.

Blades, 54, had dropped out of high school as a ninth-grader after splitting time between her divorced parents’ homes in Snohomish County and Nevada. She eventually obtained her GED in 1979, the year she should have graduated from high school.

She had Amber with a husband who she divorced after a year of marriage. That’s when she was working as a waitress and bartender. She started doing home day care in 1984 and eventually went into business with a relative in 1986.

It was in 1988 that she struck out on her own and started her first Kids ‘N Us Early Learning Academy in a leased building in south Everett.

Juggling a new business and being a single mom was difficult, Blades said.

“I grabbed her out of bed at 4 in the morning, got in and opened up the school at 5 a.m. and then you work until 7 p.m. until the school closes and then you figure out a way to feed her dinner there, because you have to stay and do the books,” Blades said. “Then you come in on the weekends to wax the floors and paint the walls, in those days I actually striped the parking lot myself with a roller.”

She added a second location in Marysville in 1992 and then a third in 2002 in Lake Stevens. It was at that location that Blades overcame another obstacle.

Her father took ill about the time the Lake Stevens center opened. She spent a great deal of time with him and less time focusing on the business. Her bookkeeper told her the new location was struggling.

“She kept telling me, ‘We’re not doing so well, we’re not doing so well,’” Blades said. “I was so busy caring for my father that I just trusted her. I didn’t have enough safeguards in place.”

When the bookkeeper went on vacation, Blades met her accountant at the location on a routine visit. He asked for a financial statement on the business.

“I said there was a big stack of mail over here, but my bookkeeper told me not to open it,” Blades said. “He goes, ‘What do you mean not to open it?’ I was naive Lori.”

The stack of mail was filled with checks made out directly to the bookkeeper, Blades sad. Turns out the bookkeeper had embezzled $305,000 over three years. The bookkeeper was fired immediately and criminal charges were pursued. The woman spent time in prison.

“We learned a lot as a team about safeguards,” Blades said. “And I feel fairly certain that won’t happen to me again.”

Since then, she’s added locations in Mount Vernon and Smokey Point. Her corporate offices is in Mill Creek. The recession caused a hiccup in her growth, but she’s now looking to Bothell for a sixth location.

While Kids ‘N Us was located in leased spaces early, Blades has been able to buy all of her own buildings. (The last leased space is in Marysville, but she plans to move into a new building that she owns this summer.) Blades has been able to design the buildings to her specifications including a small door for the children at each lobby and small sinks and toilets for younger kids and toddlers.

“It’s hard to potty train a little guy on a toilet that’s scary and tall for them,” Blades said. “Having child-sized and child-appropriate things for them, the environment is much safer and conducive for them to learn.”

She also was an early adopter of security cameras in the day cares, first with the cameras with video feeds into her office in Mill Creek. In 2002, she added web cameras to allow parents to watch their children during day care through a company called Grow With Me.

She credits the strength of her business to her long-term staff, which includes her husband, Kevin, and an ex-husband as well as both of her children, Brennan, 22, and Burnett, who is now 33.

Burnett works at Kids ‘N Us as a vice president. She’s also a consumer of the business, dropping her toddler off at the Everett location.

“She’ll ultimately take over my job,” Blades said. “And my expectation is she’ll take this company much farther than I can.”

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