My partners and I started this company back in the fall of 2004 and we’ve come a long way.  From a single store in Timonium, MD, we now have 5 stores humming along in MD and VA.  From a small gaggle of owners and a few early die-hards, we now employ over 300 folks on our team.  From wondering if anyone would show up at all, we’ve now served over 80,000 customers.  We now buy millions of dollars of food each year, we have hundreds of vendors, we’ve been on TV.  So we’ve made it, right?  Well, lest we get too happy with ourselves, reality is always there to put us in our place!

Because the reality is that small business is hard.  And usually not glamorous.  For every food show I got to attend, I’d already taken 100 trips to the dumpster with leaking trash bags.  For every newspaper interview, I’d negotiated monthly rates with knife sharpeners and window cleaners and scores of other vendors.  For every award we won, I’d been called to the store 5 times at 3am because the alarm tripped accidentally.  Or I’d helped to wash dishes by hand because our dishwasher broke.  Or I’d spent half an evening fixing a computer (or trying to) because we didn’t have budget for IT support.

Whenever these little things cropped up– which was very often– I’d take to joking (or muttering, depending on my mood), “Small business is sexy!”  At first, our team looked at me like I was nuts.  But then it started to catch on and other folks started using the line, too.  We’d joke in meetings, saying “Small business is sexy” whenever one of us drew the short straw for some assignment like choosing the new model of floor mop.  We’d joke in emails, too.  Sometimes, our internal abbreviation “SBIS” would be the simple reply to an email thread discussing some unglamorous aspect of our business.

So it was with great joy, and a fair bit of pride, when Emily and Nikki, two of our valued and senior team members, memorialized our fun motto in fashion.  At an annual meeting around the holidays, they presented a bunch of us with plain white T shirts on which they had emblazoned– in Let’s Dish! font and Let’s Dish! colors no less!– “Small Business is Sexy!”  I loved it, and so did the team.  I wear it as much as possible, and I love watching the reaction I get in public.

So it came to pass that I was wearing it around the house last weekend.  It was under a sweater but then I pulled the sweater off and I was in trouble before I knew it.  My six year old is a voracious reader and we’re so proud of her for learning so much so fast…but it can be dangerous because nothing escapes her attention. She zeroed in on the shirt, recited aloud, “Small business is sexy” and then innocently asked, “Daddy, what does ’sexy’ mean?”  I froze momentarily, brain spinning; these sorts of “parenting moments” are happening more frequently as my girls get older, read more, and start to understand nuance and humor.  I came up with what I thought was a reasonable answer:  “Well, honey, ’sexy’ can mean a lot of things, but in this case it means exciting, intriguing, and fun.”

She tilted her head to the side and I could tell she was mulling this over.  She started to speak and I was sure  she was going to say, “But what are the other things it can mean?”  (That is generally how she  rolls these days.)  I was going to opt for “Don’t worry about it” or “You’ll learn more about it when you are older,” some classic parent cop-outs.  But instead, she smiled, though somewhat quizzically, and shook her head a little bit side to side.   (Remember that my kids think our work principally involves lots of meetings, lots of email, and making food that goes into plastic freezer bags.)  “But, Daddy,” she explained, “then small business is definitely NOT sexy.”  And then she turned and skipped off to play with her dolls.

Out of the mouths of babes.