How Pedal is not like ❌ old school brokerages: Part 5

✨ Welcome to a four part series we’re calling “What makes Pedal so unique and effective in the retail real estate industry.” Otherwise known as “Why we need our own TV show pronto.”  ✨

Today we’re discussing final point #4: 

We prepare our clients to be fully participative in negotiating their deals.

Last year, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. I promise not to take you through a graphic extended metaphor about my labor and delivery – new readers may think this is because it's unprofessional and kinda gross, but longer-time readers will know that we already wrote a newsletter about the ways in which the process of renting a space is like having a baby. (Missed it? Send us a note and we’ll make sure you get it. It was great. But not that great for dinnertime convo.)

Whether you’ve personally been in a delivery room or just seen it on TV, you know there can be many high-stakes decisions forced under the worst conditions: stress, time constraints and shockingly intense pain, oh excuse me, discomfort. Even crunchy moms like Sheila who gave birth in a blow-up pool will agree that we can’t know exactly how things will unfold and what choices we’ll need to make until we’re faced with them.

Negotiating a retail deal is a whole lot of something. It can be painful and it’s definitely exhausting, but by all accounts it isn’t as acutely stressful or time constrained as giving birth. So why do so many tenants make leasing decisions like a sweaty, sweary laboring mother in the delivery room?

Since my earliest days as a broker, this has always confused and concerned me. The decisions and commitments new retailers make are important and consequential, and once they sign the lease, they’re bound to these decisions for the next five to ten years. Most retailers know this, but somehow at pivotal decision points, they end up firing from the hip after their broker gives a 30-second explanation and recommendation.

I’ve seen the painful consequences of these impulsive decisions many times; it both broke my heart and haunted me. Every business is different, every business owner has a different risk tolerance, and risks should be known, considered and calculated. 

I hated being the de-facto decision-maker for my clients – so we do things differently at Pedal. First-time Pedal Retailers learn about the commercial real estate process and essential concepts and terminology before they’re asked to make a business decision about it. Seriously.

In the Dream Space Accelerator, we teach six live group classes on core topics that lay the foundation for everything to come. Once we get into Dream Space Brokerage, we have proprietary video “homework” assignments. With quizzes. We’re not messing around. And, because we’ve worked so hard to prepare the financial framework, we have an objective basis upon which to make informed, measured decisions once negotiations begin.

When Pedal Retailers are asked to make a critical choice about their space or their deal, they come into it with opinions, ideas and enough background to ask smart questions and decide for themselves. We offer our insight and advice, but the decisions are ultimately theirs.

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And so, there you have it – four reasons why Pedal stands alone, working day in and day out to change the system from the inside. We didn’t set out to disrupt commercial real estate because we like “disrupting.” I mean, we’re both first-born girls who thrive on Words of Affirmation, and Abby’s an Enneagram 3 for crying out loud. We’ve followed our mission of increasing the success rate for new brick-and-mortar businesses, and it’s led us to do things our own way. But hey, different results require different methods, right?