There are videos floating around the internet of dogs “choosing” their humans for adoption. Have you seen them? I’m not crying, you are! 

Actually, I am definitely crying. In these videos, the humans show up with the intent of bringing home a dog, but by trusting the process, their open mindedness really pays off. 

🐶 This deal was a little bit like that. 💞

Joseph Ryan, owner of Force Free DC, wasn’t just looking for any four walls and a leash lease, lol. He’s DC’s top-rated dog trainer (two-time Best of DC, no big deal), and his business had outgrown its temporary setup. That’s when he called Pedal. We came, we sat, and we stayed. (Sorry, but there are going to be a lot of...

Opening your first retail location is a lot like having a first baby. The experience takes over your brain and consumes your world.

Though my first pregnancy in 2023-24 feels like ancient history thanks to the fog of parenthood, I remember it all too well. I counted down to every appointment, my husband attended them all, and I recounted them in detail to my mother. (If memory serves, Sheila even attended an appointment! All small businesses are family businesses, amirite?) I read books, took e-courses, traveled to the end of the internet to find the perfect glider-rocker, and you better believe I had my hospital bag ready six weeks before my due date.

I see something very si...

We all know that Ben Franklin was right about death and taxes, but there’s another certainty of life that he left out. If I could Bill and Ted my way back to the 1790’s (no thanks), I think he’d agree that when you want something is rarely when you can have it...if you can have it at all. 

Obviously I’m not talking about anything money can buy, since you can buy anything on the internet and have it within 2-3 business days. But for the big stuff that really matters --  security, health, relationships -- as hard as we will something into existence, we have limited control. 

All we can do is dig deep and have hope and patience. Well, that’s exactly what Cara and Travis Loving did.

 ...

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...

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...

What did we all do before memes? How did we express ourselves so pointedly? I suppose we’ve always been doing this, and I have a vague recollection from Latin 2 that people were etching sick burns on columns in the Roman forum.

Anyhow, I saw a perfect small business meme the other day:

EBITDA: Earnings before insomnia, therapy, depression and anxiety.

Lollllll. 

No shade if you don’t get the joke. EBITDA really stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and it’s basically a calculation of profitability before all the complicated tax and accounting finagling. 

If you DO get the joke, it feels spot on.

When my restaurant closed in 20...