The endless journey to opening day 🛥️

A couple months ago I read The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann. Did you read it too? It seems like a lot of us did.

Like most everything I encounter, there were a few elements that made me think of retail leasing. To be clear, I don’t always think of leasing per se — that would be weirdly specific — but I DO have built in “retailer vision” which I can’t seem to remove. 

Well that’s what happened with The Wager, when at one of the most suspenseful parts of the tale, my mind went to the LOI and leasing process.

If you haven’t yet read it yet, here’s the part of the story you need to know for my point to make sense:

In the late 1700s, a bunch of stinky British guys boarded a big ship called the Wager and sailed across the Atlantic to (of course) attempt to steal treasure from a bunch of stinky Spanish guys hanging out in the Pacific Ocean who had a ship full of treasure that they, also, had stolen.

After a very disgusting months-long journey where everyone was pretty much covered in every bodily fluid imaginable, they made it to Cape Horn — the southern tip of South America and, incidentally, an incredibly dangerous maritime passage with nasty, freezing weather.

So things really go off the rails once they round the Horn, and in short order they crash their ship and have to make camp on an island with nothing but celery to eat. (Side note: scurvy is NO JOKE. I thought it was a gum disease, but it’s not — your entire body falls apart.)

Okay, so after these guys are super hungry and a little murder-y, the captain decides that they need to cobble together a boat to head west and keep going to get that Spanish treasure (#goals with a hint of #toxicmasculinity).

Well a bunch of other guys are like, umm…no, we’re not coming. We’re starving bags of bones, and we’re going to try to go home. So these guys, team “mutineer,” build their own questionable raft/ship thing and start heading east.

After a while they hang a left down what they thiiiiiiink is the Straight of Magellan, because *fingers crossed* this is the shortcut east that avoids Cape Horn again. So they’re sailing, sailing, sailing for weeks…and then the navigator guy is like, “my GPS isn’t working, I think this might not be the real Straight of Magellan". So they turned around. And sailed for weeks alllllllllll the way back to where they first turned left. And once they got there, they realized that whoops — they’d been right all along. That WAS the Straight of Magellan. They must have been really pissed at that guy. But he was probably dead by then, so lucky.

Okay, so they head back through the Straight of Magellan, still starving but marginally more confident than last time. Then OH MY GOD they did it! They made it to the Atlantic Ocean! They’re so happy and relieved that all they have to do is make another left to head up the coast to the nearest human settlement where maybe they can get some food and not die for a little longer. And how far away is this next settlement, you ask? 1,200 miles away in Brazil. 

1,200 more miles to go on this tiny, literal-piece-of-trash boat with a bunch of guys who haven’t had a shower in more than a year. And they kept going.

Long story short (because there’s a lot more), a handful of the original seamen from the Wager made it home and, wouldn’t you know, had a LOT to say about it.

So here’s why I’m telling you this:

Signing an LOI on a space feels like it should be a relief. Like it should feel like an accomplishment…just like making it through the Straight of Magellan to the Atlantic. You’ve spent so many month slogging away on a business plan and touring spaces and going back and forth and back and forth on deals. You’re tired and bruised and all the excitement of embarking on the journey is long gone. And when you do finally sign that LOI, you’re like the mutineers making that left turn towards Brazil…facing down 1,200 more miles until you can rest. 

Like these poor guys passing through the Straight of Magellan, the LOI process can have a lot of emotional drama, heated discussions about critical decisions, disappointment and even some dead ends. And if you make it through, what’s waiting for you in the end? More treacherous journey — lease negotiations. And you’ll keep going.

In the face of more challenges, there’s no going back…not unless you want to eat celery and slowly go insane. If you want to reach your goal — be it returning home or opening your brick-and-mortar — the only way is through the battering waters of the retail real estate process. Which is, of course, far less deadly than 18th century seafaring.