The share of applicants that sought financing at online fintech lenders has increased over the last five years, from 17% in the 2020 survey to 29% in the 2025 survey. 🚩 🚩 🚩

Financing terms, not risk, dictate how small business owners are treated in underwriting for CRE. Those terms favor development, not owner occupancy.

I swear if you focus on this some of the other stuff just works out.

When I talk about business owners in Tacoma trying to do everything themselves, I'm frustrated by the self-started "buy local" campaigns that focus on shopping and consumer choices. Friends—there is literally a playbook for this that we are not using. @theamiba.bsky.social

tl;dr You can't just be a chef-owner anymore, you have to side hustle. Ingredients are too expensive and hotels can offer your employees better pay and health insurance that you can't. Customers float between concept restaurants that are hot one minute, old the next. Rent is $30,000/month.

Tariffs. But also: the record label for housewares era is over? I always wanted to start that business. I guess I'm glad I opened a retail shop instead. (Not that I'm doing great in that business either. Is everything over?)

Washington D.C.! I’m coming out again March 14-18 ish with @mainstreetalliance.bsky.social—I would love to meet up if you’re local and doing Main Street, local self reliance, placemaking stuff. DM me!

Placemaking examples in Seattle

Every time a business owner gets sick, injured, or simply needs time away for personal matters we have to do this. It’s exhausting for all involved. Let’s fix the system so we can exit this extractive tech platform eventually. One can dream, right?

I don’t think I’ve ever had so many people writing to me to ask about encrypted/secure/private tools for comms, collaboration, and organizing. So @lhn.bsky.social and I talked to experts and assembled this: the Wired guide to organizing in an age of surveillance. www.wired.com/story/how-to...

Ughhhhh I gotta do this this year. I know a lot of people have a lot better reasons to be tired but I’m tired of having to migrate off one tech platform after another because of the shitty shit they pull. Leave Substack guide here is handy!

Got a request to add Fernseed to a list of businesses that participated in the Jan. 30 shutdown so people can support us. Organizer is planning to hand out the list at the March No Kings protest in Tacoma. Let me explain why this is misguided.

Sorry, First Citizens Bank. You thought you were just going to call and remind me my line is renewing in May and verify our annual revenue and not... get into a whole conversation about what our business financial needs are and how you can or can't meet them and the systemic reasons why? Oh, boy.

Relative to income and population growth, Washington’s budget has actually declined by 60% overall. From 1995 to 2025, the state’s yearly operating budget shrank from 1.55% to 0.63% of total personal income for every one million residents. More at opportunityinstitute.org/blog/post/wa... #WALeg

Millionaires Tax passes Washington State Senate!

Regardless of where you stand on this issue, it’s enraging that an organization called the Tacoma Business Council is making HB 2489 the hill they die on. Here’s a link to their alert on it. Tacoma Rising is also asking its list to oppose this bill. Again: why is this your issue? Of all the shit?

Join me in a cozy little 45-minute rant about how the deregulated banking system has allowed extractive “investors” to take over Main Street. Meanwhile business owners—the people who actually do the work—can’t buy buildings, and not because they can’t afford them.

We’re out here dying, Tacoma Rising turns it into the Hunger Games.

I just told a consultant in my Instagram comments that I am more than happy to share any Fernseed bookkeeping or metrics with people teaching business and entrepreneurship for good, not evil. I mean that. My books are open!

I wrote this post about the practical reality of getting financing to renovate a commercial property when you own a small business. It's way harder than it needs to be because '90s banking deregulation ruined everything. This one is for paid subscribers only, but I offer a 7-day free trial.

Donate to fund micro grants to Main Street businesses impacted financially by ICE occupation in Minneapolis.

My Q&A with @mainstreetamerica.bsky.social on the economic realities of running a business on Main Street. In summary, property ownership used to be the stabilizing mechanism for small businesses, and it’s largely gone due to bank consolidation.

I'm currently leading the 1,000 Main Streets group in Tacoma, open to businesses throughout the South Sound. Join our email list to get updates on future actions & meetings here: tacoma1000mainstreets.myflodesk.com

I haven’t seen any updates in all this coverage about who has possession of Alex Pretti’s phone. Anyone?

Add this to the list of shit shop owners don’t get paid enough to deal with.

Good list of mutual aid efforts in Minneapolis.

I’ve received at least two of these since we purchased our commercial buildings in Centralia, Washington. My partner bothered to follow up just out of curiosity and this company represents Dollar General.

I still don’t see the right questions asked: *WHY* are BIPOC small business owners “often considered high risk” for lending? Underwriting defines risk, then you create programs to work around it. Look under the hood at the underwriting guidelines—ask better questions.

I started a podcast—or really just an audio version of my Substack so I don't have to spend so much time writing. This first episode is pretty straightforward while I learn the tech. Future episodes I will yell more about how broken everything is.

ICE observers in the Twin Cities are in need of dash cams to prevent further intimidation and frivolous claims. Cams are $110, memory cards $35, and ship to us directly via this wish list: www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/... If you've been looking for a way to help, we'd sure appreciate it!

On Jan. 7, two days after Nick Benson (@ottergoose.net) put out his call for dashcam donations, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot legal observer Renee Good in the face. Now, he’s received over 500 dashcams. @evystadium.bsky.social has more. Story by @mjgault.bsky.social: www.404media.co/how-one-guy-...

Okay @cityoftacoma.bsky.social—I want a seat at the table when you're exploring this, especially as I may have influenced this sentence even getting included in the Community and Economic Development Strategic Plan 2026-2030. (Feel free to verify that on your own.)

I'm no fan of Amex but get the money if you can. Small Business grants from @mainstreetamerica.bsky.social - applications due this Friday 1/16. mainstreet.org/about/partne...

They really bury the lead in reporting this everywhere. They’re returning to Tacoma—their first Tacoma shop closed when they were forced into internment camps during WWII.

Overdue post about my trip to our nation’s capital and what I learned meeting with senators for the first time about an issue no one knows about. Also WTF was I thinking dating Goldman Sachs?

Fuck you, Mitt Romney. You should’ve been saying this when you sold off ToysRUs for parts.

After everything I’ve been talking about for 4 years I finally watched It’s A Wonderful Life for the first time. Wow!

It's that heart-warming time of year again where I yell at everyone about how this whole #smallbusinesssaturday business is an ad campaign for the most evil credit card company in the industry.

Tacoma lost one of our (if not THE) best and brightest last week. Mattice was everything you want a community focused small business owner to be. Please read the GoFundMe details to understand just how under-supported so many business owners area. Donate if you can.

Trump's Chicago deportation blitz has hinged on aggressive and forceful policing tactics: Shootings, takedowns, chokeholds, car chases, chemical munitions, etc. To get a better sense of the scope and the impact, we mapped incidents, spoke to those affected and analyzed policy. tinyurl.com/3nrkaw55

What I miss having left Chicago: actual grit, then epic writing about it. Also do what Sinker says and donate to @icirr.bsky.social.

Lots of businesses giving back right now during the SNAP crisis. Some good thoughts here on how to direct that to mutual aid / not charity + incorporating mutual aid approach into other parts of business.

I will definitely be attending this webinar, though. Mark Fulop in PDX turned me on to public banking and now I'm all in.

I would totally go to this if I had infinite time & resources. Go on my behalf and report back.

I've been writing about businesses getting access to capital to buy their buildings for 18+ months now. I started by connecting the economic stability of owning the real estate to success in small biz, then *how banks lend* to why it's harder for business owners to get loans to buy their buildings.

There is no excuse for giving in to a bad deal — especially after voters turned out in record numbers last week to elect Democrats on the promise that they would stand up and fight for working families.

This is not what they actually say. This is what they used to say, in the long ago before times when Shaheen learned to do politics. There is no kumbaya median voter anymore. The question you get knocking doors is not "why can't you all just work together?" it's "why didn't / will you fight harder?

Rather, "AI is an easy excuse to trim a workforce and blame inevitability, not our desire for more profit during a downturn."

I finished this last week. Apologies in advance for talking about the smelter plume a lot for the next 6 months. I blame the arsenic in my soil.