Issue #21 EBITDA explained without the buzzword Dana Whitfield spent her first year running a commercial laundry in Kansas City convinced she had made a $1.4 million mistake. Kettle Creek Laundry Works washes sheets and towels for eleven mid-size hotels. Dana bought the business in January, financed the tunnel washers and delivery vans with an equipment loan, and worked every Saturday for twelve months. Revenue came in at $1.85 million. Great, but bad news. Her balance sheet read: Net loss =...
5 days ago • 4 min read
Issue #20 What is Burn Rate and How Long Your Cash Will Last Leaflet's bank balance hit $340,000 in March, and Priya Nair felt like she had won something. Eight months earlier, her Portland-based houseplant subscription startup had closed a friends-and-family round of $500,000. She had watched that number shrink every month since, but $340,000 still felt like a lot of runway. Then her bookkeeper sent over the March close, and Priya did the one calculation she had been avoiding since the round...
9 days ago • 4 min read
Issue #19 Debits and credits The system that confuses almost everyone Devon Reyes started ShineFleet Mobile Detailing out of a borrowed driveway in Tampa, washing boat trailers and pickup trucks for forty dollars a job. Eighteen months later, a property management company offered her a standing contract: forty units a month across six apartment complexes. To take it, she needed a second rig, a water reclamation tank, and pressure equipment rated for daily commercial use. The total came to...
12 days ago • 4 min read
Issue #18 Fixed vs variable costs and why the split drives every decision Elena had been running her taco truck in Charlotte for three years when the offer landed. A strip mall two miles from her regular lunch spot had a vacant unit, and the landlord wanted $3,400 a month for it. The unit had sit-down tables, a real kitchen, and a liquor license if she wanted one. Her accountant asked one question before anything else: how many tacos do you need to sell every month just to cover that rent,...
16 days ago • 5 min read
Issue #17 What a break-even point is and how to find yours Mara signed the lease on her Pilates studio in Seattle in March. By June, she had eleven regular clients, a full class schedule on the wall, and a bank account that kept dropping every month no matter how busy the studio looked. On paper, business was thriving. Classes were full. Clients kept booking. Instagram comments called the space beautiful. But the checking account showed a different picture, and Mara couldn't understand why...
19 days ago • 5 min read
Issue #16 Markup vs. Margin: the pricing mix-up that costs real money Nina opened a small bike shop in Nashville three years ago. She is good with customers, good with a wrench, and careful with money. When she set her prices, she followed one rule a mentor gave her early on: add 50 percent to whatever you pay for an item. A helmet that cost her $60 went on the shelf at $90. A pair of gloves that cost $20 sold for $30. Simple, consistent, done. She thought that 50 percent was her profit...
23 days ago • 3 min read
Issue #15 The cost that decides what a sale is worth Two builders make custom standing desks in the same Austin warehouse district. Call them Maya at Oakline and Devin at Grainwork. They sell almost the identical desk, solid white oak with steel legs, for the same $900. Same wood supplier down the road. Same customers finding them on the same websites. At the end of the year Maya keeps about $340 of profit on each desk. Devin keeps about $170. Same product, same price, half the profit. Devin...
26 days ago • 4 min read
Issue #14 What Retained Earnings Are and Why They Matter Two HVAC contractors opened their shops the same spring in Houston. Call them Reyes Air and Coleman Climate. For five straight years, they had nearly identical results: about $90,000 in net income each year, with a slow summer here and there. Same trade. Same city. Same profit on paper. This year, one of them bought a third service truck in cash, leased a small warehouse, and hired two more techs. The other is still running a single...
30 days ago • 4 min read
Issue #13 Cash vs accrual accounting: which one tells the truth Tara installed three full HVAC systems for a homebuilder in Phoenix during the last week of December. The invoices went out the same day, total $48,000, net-30. She also took delivery of $9,000 in equipment that month and put it on the supplier's account. Then she pulled her December numbers and nearly called her bookkeeper to report an error. Revenue for the month came in close to zero. The month she worked hardest looked like...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read