I’ve got a confession to make - I don’t pre-rinse my dishes before I put them in the dishwasher. Don’t believe in it. I heard on a podcast once that modern dishwashers are designed to wash dirty dishes, and the pre-rinse just wastes water. So, basically, I’m a #DomesticDutyQueen AND an environmentalist.

Also, I am obsessed with efficiency and I abhor extra steps. This may surprise some of you, since so many of my working hours are spent crafting and negotiating the LOI, a document with no legal standing that gets crumpled up and thrown out in favor of the almighty lease. (Hopefully recycled, because the environment.) So, what’s the point?

Let’s pretend your lease is like a house that you...

Many first-time retailers are pretty surprised to find out that it takes such a looooong time to sign a lease and get open. Some even think, “oh wow, that’s like being pregnant with a baby,” but they are wrong, because it’s really like being pregnant with a donkey. How do we know this? We googled it. Turns out, donkeys have a gestation period of 11 - 15 months (also — unrelated but fascinating — a female donkey is called a jenny.)

Anyhow, if you can get your lease signed in the time it takes to bake a human baby cake, good for you! But it’s more typical for you to be on burro-ed time (fair warning - more donkey puns coming.)

There are at least four distinct stages in the process, and these...

ICYMI:  “LOI” stands for Letter of Intent, and it refers to the short document that you and your landlord will trade back and forth to nail down the most important business terms of a potential lease -- the fundamental elements of your relationship together.

We’ve heard it so many times from first-time retailers. “Oh, I already got an LOI on that space, so this is how much the rent costs.” NO, SIR! This is not Crate&Barrel where standard shams cost $39 and a glittered foam apple costs $72. 

When you start searching for the right space, you’re not in a Crate&Barrel at all. You’re in a loud, crowded Turkish bazaar. You browse stalls until you find something that catches your eye, and then th...