Eight is not enough for Victoria Sopik.

She has eight of her own children, aged 11-22, and helps many more in her role as president and CEO of Markham, Ont.-based Kids & Company.

The firm operates onsite and off-site child-care facilities for companies and other organizations, including the University of Calgary. Employees receive guaranteed full-time, backup and emergency child-care services, as well as meal delivery and elder care for their parents.

Sopik can definitely relate to Tom Bradford, the lead character portrayed by Dick Van Patten on the 1970s and 1980s-era TV show Eight is Enough. Her family used to live in a large house like the one on the show.

Brennan O'Connor, Business Edge
Kids & Company president Victoria Sopik admits she learned the hard way about the importance of location in child-care centres.

"We just moved last year," she says. "We moved from the house that we've been living in for the last 15 years - to a much smaller house, because five of my children are either in university or they've moved out with friends. We're all in a transition phase in our house - in our life."

So is her six-year-old business, which generated about $15 million in revenue in 2007, after she and her partner invested $200,000 upon startup. The firm expects to become profitable this year while opening about 10 new facilities across the country.

1. What did your parents do?

"My mother is a teacher. My father passed away actually when I was young, so he didn't really work for very long. I had a stepfather who worked in the printing business."

2. What was your childhood dream?

"I always dreamed that I'd have lots of children. In my high school yearbook, it said that I wanted to have 10 children and to be a lawyer. I switched off that once I realized that I was more of an entrepreneur than I was a lawyer."

3. What steered you toward child care?

"I needed child care for my (first) child. I had a son who was born in 1985, so I wanted to work and I didn't know what I wanted to do work-wise. I knew I wanted to have my own business. I was looking for child care and looking for a job, so it sort of evolved. I worked in real estate briefly before I had my son. That was probably going to be my entrepreneurial career for then, because that was obviously entrepreneurial. I got to do my own schedule. Once I had my son, I was looking for child care so I could work and I realized that there was very little child care available. So I thought that was, maybe, a better bet. Prior to going to university, when I was 17, I founded a summer camp. It wasn't a year-round career, so it was a great business to have when I was a student. I, unfortunately, didn't make any money, so I ended up waitressing because I supported myself through university. I worked at a whole bunch of different (restaurants) ... I met my husband working at a sushi restaurant. I was the waitress while he was the waiter - while we were teenagers."

4. Why did you start up Kids & Company?

"I really saw that there was a need for child care for working moms with young babies. We (started) a company that specialized in child care for infants and toddlers. So, when you go back to work, you don't have to look for child care."

Victoria Sopik

5. How did you get the funds for Kids & Company?

"My partner is Jennifer (Nashmi). She's our (chief financial officer) and she's a (chartered accountant). We're a good mix. I'm the entrepreneur and I'm out doing sales and operations, and she's a CA, so she's got lots to do with financing and administration in our head office. At the beginning, we got a small-business loan from the Royal Bank, and then we got one from the (Business Development Bank of Canada), and then we used our credit cards until we got to the point where we needed more funds, and then we went and looked for investors. (We started with) a couple hundred thousand. We raised millions of dollars from investors. It continued to grow, but it was over a period of years. It was actually $13 million that we raised. They're high net-worth individuals. So it's not a venture fund or anything like that. They've invested in the company."

6. How has your business model changed?

"It's changed a lot over the years. We started out just doing backup, or emergency, child care, and then we ended up doing full-time child care. As well, we have our elder-care program. As well, we have a take-home dinner service. We have a whole bunch of different services that we expanded that, basically, allow us to provide as much as possible for our corporate clients. We want to be the best possible solution for them.

7. What mistakes have you learned from?

"We've certainly made lots of mistakes. We've been trying to grow quickly. So, when we're growing quickly, sometimes we made bad decisions about locations for our child-care centres. We thought that there would be more traffic per se and more children that would come by, so they ended up being left from the eye of parents and the public. So they've taken a slower amount of time to fill up, and that's cost us money, too. We've had to pay to run them, even though we're losing lots of money. We've certainly learned from our mistakes and hope to make those changes as we move forward."

8. How does your arrangement with companies work?

"The companies pay a membership fee. It's just like having a membership at the gym or a membership at Costco. In order to use our centres, you need to be a member. The companies have to be a member first and then the employees have to sign up."

9. How can you guarantee that parents will have child care?

"Because we don't open to the public. We only open to our clients. It's not something where people can just show up.

"You have to phone first, so we know by the number of people that registered, how many people that phoned, the number of people that are going to come."

10. How many elder-care operations do you have?

"We're across the country. We're in all different cities. It depends on the city. Some cities have just a handful of people using them. Some cities have a lot more. Elder care is smaller (than child-care operations) in a way. We established our child-care (business) early on, so we've had a large number of years with that. Elder care is new. With our aging demographics, we're going to expect elder care to be as significant probably as child care."

11. How does your arrangement with the University of Calgary work?

"Anyone that works at the University of Calgary can have either full-time child care or backup child care. We have a number of centres in Calgary. We're going to have six centres open (by) next year (that can accommodate U of C employees' kids)."

12. How can providing day-care services for employees benefit a company's bottom line?

"They want to have our service because we help them attract and retain employees. If they don't have our service, their employees can't use their child-care centre. They can't register and have guaranteed child care. If they're away on maternity leave, often, they can't find child care to come back to work. The cost for the company is that they have to replace that person. They have to hire a recruiter, hire a head hunter, put an ad in the paper, interview and then they have a new employee come.

Typically, if they have an employee that they love and that employee goes on maternity leave, they want the employee to come back. By being a client of ours, they can have that.

Being a client is relatively affordable for most companies - $5,000 if you're in one city and $10,000 if you're national."

13. How does being the mother of eight children benefit your business?

"Well, I think I understand what it's like to be a working mother - that's for sure. Working mothers and fathers because, as you probably know, younger fathers these days are quite involved, as mothers have been, in terms of raising a family and putting family priorities at the top of the list when it comes to work-life balance. I truly understand what parents are going through."

14. How do you balance your business with getting your kids to all of their activities?

"My children are typical. They golf and they play hockey and all different sports. Most of the events are in the evening, which is good, and I have my BlackBerry. So I can work from sporting events with my BlackBerry - I love that - and my husband does lots of the sports."

15. What's your advice to other women executives who are trying to grow a family as well as a business or career?

"You can't always do everything that you want to do all the time. "You can't always get to the events that you want to get to ... You can't beat yourself up. You just have to do the best you can."

16. What's your company's biggest challenge?

"Trying to maintain the right level of growth to meet the needs of our clients. We have lots of people coming and going. The clients realize that we're providing child care for them, so we're constantly trying to ensure we have quality child-care centres available for them."

17. What are your company's growth plans?

"We're planning to open 10 more centres in the next 12 months, so we have lots going on. We're in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Waterloo, southern Ontario (including Oakville), Calgary of course, and we're opening in Halifax and Vancouver and Edmonton this year."

18. How do you see the child-care markets in Eastern Canada versus Western Canada?

"I think it's the same. They just need good child care everywhere."

19. Do you find more moms are staying home in Eastern Canada because of the state of the economy there?

"The state of the economy is everywhere. What I've found with young families is that both parents need to work. They want to pay for the car and the mortgage and all those expenses around having young children. Both parents would like to stay home. Most find that the one-year (maternity or paternity) leave is perfect for them. They're happy to come back to work - and then they need child care."

20. What would you do if you weren't running Kids & Company anymore?

"Because I've been an entrepreneur for 20 years, I think what I would like to do is advise (other entrepreneurs). I'm comfortable running Kids & Company for another 10 years. After that, I'll be ready for early retirement."

Victoria Sopik

* Title: President/CEO, Kids & Company.

* Born/raised/age: Toronto, 44.

* Education: Sopik holds a bachelor of business administration from the University of Western Ontario.

* Family: Married to Jeffrey Sopik, eight children, six boys and two girls, ranging in age from 11 to 22.

* Career: After graduating from university, Sopik worked briefly in real estate and then founded a non-profit child-care agency in 1985 and ran it for about 15 years. In 2002, she launched Kids & Company.

* Moonlighting: Sopik is involved with many charities that assist women and children. She is most active with the Canadian Women's Foundation.

* Passions: Children, golf, tennis.

Kids & Company

* Brass: Victoria Sopik, president and CEO; Jennifer Nashmi, CFO; Sue Purser, vice-president of operations.

* Profile: Kids & Company operates childcare centres for employees of companies and other organizations, such as the University of Calgary, at onsite and offsite facilities across Canada. The company also offers elder care and meal delivery.

* Stats: Kids & Company has about 20 centres across Canada with 350 employees. The firm generated revenues of $15 million last year.

* Corporate Structure: The private firm is owned by Sopik, Nashmi and other private investors.

* Website: www.kidsandcompany.ca * HQ: 50 Minthorn Blvd., Suite 100, Markham, Ont., L3T 7X8 * Phone: (905) 771-1153.

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)