The real meaning of EBITDA 😉

What did we all do before memes? How did we express ourselves so pointedly? I suppose we’ve always been doing this, and I have a vague recollection from Latin 2 that people were etching sick burns on columns in the Roman forum.

Anyhow, I saw a perfect small business meme the other day:

EBITDA: Earnings before insomnia, therapy, depression and anxiety.

Lollllll. 

No shade if you don’t get the joke. EBITDA really stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and it’s basically a calculation of profitability before all the complicated tax and accounting finagling. 

If you DO get the joke, it feels spot on.

When my restaurant closed in 2013 after four years in business, I was incapable of crying until probably 2015. I told people I had been emotionally cauterized, and I still think that’s the best description of what happened. My partners and I had a particularly brutal time of it (we had signed a lease four months before the Great Recession), and by the time it was all over, I had no tears left to cry, and my body had been so constantly full of cortisol that I just couldn’t feel anything anymore. 

Geez, Sheila! Stop being such a downer! Take a lorazepam, woman!

Okay, I hear you, but here’s why I’m telling you all this…

😖 Stress and anxiety are as commonplace in small business ownership as paying taxes and running payroll. I don’t know a small business owner who doesn’t struggle with one or both. 🥺

If you’re a small retailer, and you feel these things, you’re not doing something wrong. You’re normal. It’s normal to feel these things in the very beginning, and it’s normal to feel these things 30 years in. 

The media paints a false picture of what business ownership looks like (and it makes me really mad!) Being an “entrepreneur” is so sexy these days that any yahoo with an idea will claim to be one, and it’s a thin veil for unemployment. TV and movies just make things worse with montages of Blake Lively opening a flower shop in high street real estate in about three minutes. So dreamy! So easy! So utterly unrealistic!

We’re constantly sold the idea that “being your own boss” is the ultimate freedom, and it absolutely can be. But the price of this freedom? Stability. Predictability. Consistency. All the things we need to combat stress and anxiety.

Now because I know Abby will insist that we touch on real estate somewhere, I’ll say this:

💪 Your space should work for, not against, your business

⚓ Your lease should provide stability to anchor you through the chaos.

👋 Your lease should provide enough flexibility to maneuver an exit when the time comes. 

From the moment you share your business idea with another human, the vulnerability spigot turns on, and it really never turns off. We’re hyper aware of this at Pedal, and it’s at the foundation of what we do and how we do it.