Not long ago, I patronized a child-operated bake sale. Technically, she was a teen, but as anyone who knows me can attest, if someone too young to drive is selling creations at a table in public, I’m buying. Now this particular bake sale was a fundraiser, not an emerging small business, but I’m flexible. 
 

When I saw the email announcement on Thursday of said bake sale on Sunday, I planned ahead to get cash and show up on time. I am an easy and enthusiastic customer.

So on the big day, I approached the bake sale table. It was positioned front and center in a lobby swarming with children and parents – truly top notch real estate. But right from the jump, I was paralyzed with anxiety and d...

Percentage rent has a PR problem. It’s right up there with the personal guaranty on the list of concepts retailers love to hate... but should it be? The initial feeling of “oh haaaale no” is tough to overcome, but just like colonoscopies and unmedicated childbirth, once you learn how it really works, it’s not as bad as it sounds…in fact, a lot of people do it willingly.

💡 ICYMI there are two types of percentage rent. One is where the rent payment is a set percentage of revenues each month instead of a fixed base rent. Tenants love this, and they should. We’re talking about the other percentage rent – where above a certain threshold, a tenant pays some additional rent on top of their r...

If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you’ll know that there’s a solid 50% chance that I’ll have written this on a train, and a 10% chance that I’m going to use one of my favorite podcasts to make a point about real estate. Well, today’s no exception. 

I actually only have three true favorite podcasts. I already wrote Acquired a month ago. The second is about the Murdaugh murders*, and I haven’t yet found a not-completely-inappropriate way to relate that topic to real estate. But the third one continues to deliver gems.

So the moment I listened to episode #2 of The Rest is History’s four-part series on Greek myths, this newsletter was bursting fully-formed like Athena from Zeus...

We talked the other week about the critical role that project managers play in the buildout process protecting your budget, timeline, and sanity. You absolutely must have an experienced, professional buildout team if you want any hope of making it through in one piece. But even with the best teams in place, there are a host of unwelcome surprises along the way that can only be solved with history’s oldest salve: money.

Modifying any physical space – turning it from one look and use into another – is not a matter of imagination. It’s a very real process that’s ruled by physics and building code. 

So even in the best cases where the pre-lease construction due diligence has been duly done, te...

I’m sure I’ve told you before about my favorite podcast Acquired. I won’t bore you with all the reasons I love it, but I will say this – I am a superfan. I listen to old episodes (IKEA, Costco and Rolex are some of my faves), and I listen to new ones as soon as they drop. I own the merch, and I belong to their Slack channel where other nerds fans like me discuss the show and all sorts of related topics. 

So you can bet that when the (second, ever) live event at Radio City Music Hall was announced for July 15th, I blocked off the date in my calendar. And when tickets went on sale in early May, your girl snagged front row seats. I was so excited to go, and when Abby wasn’t available to join m...

Most of us grow up learning various life skills from our parents. Some of those skills are critically important, like a sense of humor or how to apologize. Some are more practical, like how to purify water from a stream or power wash vinyl siding. 

In my family, my sister and I learned a lot of things growing up, but “practical” skills? Debatable. I’m not sure that anyone ever saved money or survived in the woods by knowing all the words to Cats! or where Vermeer lived (Delft!) So having grown up in a home where DIY projects were pretty much limited to framing pictures and re-covering dining room chairs, you can infer that the world of commercial construction was pretty unfamiliar.



Needless ...

Real Housewives fans like me know that Bravo’s editors don't let anything slide… and we love them for it. Heather swears she never said something? Cue the shady music, the cutaway, and the evidentiary reel from three episodes ago where she said that very thing with freshly filled lips and a glass of Sauvy B. 

The fine folks at Bravo don’t just roll tape to set the record straight; their slow-motion replays and neon captions make fans like me squeal with delight at the gotcha! comeuppance from our couches.

Every so often, I wish I had my own room of Bravo editors to review the tapes and alert me when someone is being less than truthful, and I know I’m not alone here. In fact, it’s a sent...

A couple weeks ago we talked about why people lose their ever-loving minds and try to Mortal Kombat us when we tell them they’re going to need more money to open their brick and mortar business. 

So today we’re taking it one step farther and discussing one of the biggest reasons why it costs way more to get open than people often expect: brick and mortar businesses require certain up front expenditures that you absolutely, positively have to incur whether you want to or not. 

It would seem that the amount of money you spend would be entirely within your control – that if you’re scrappy enough, you can always make something work within your budget. To some extent that’s true; bigge...