I watched a lot of Millionaire Matchmaker in my 20s, and I find myself thinking about the show even today. I KNOW that Patti Stanger turned out to be totally problematic in a zillion different ways, but since we didn’t get cancelled when Sheila published an excellent newsletter about Anne Hathaway’s age-defying face, I’m feeling emboldened.

On the show, Patti and her team of punk rock assistants would work with a client - usually an older “millionaire” seeking a young woman to ride shotgun in his red Ferrari. Ick. Patti would usually deliver said women - but that’s not where she’d start. No, first we’d start with an amusing romp through the man’s dating history, trying to detangle what’s go...

You’re chatting with a regular when they casually mention the news. Or maybe you’re scrolling Instagram when you come across a cheery, sponsored “We’re Hiring” post. Or, maybe worst of all, you spot a shiny, new “Coming Soon” sign in the window across the street.

No matter how it happens, nothing will ruin your day like learning a direct competitor is coming to your block, to your community, or just too close for comfort.

Competition in business is as certain as death and taxes - it’s only a matter of time before you’re going head to head with another business that will compete for your customers' attention and money.

And while you can negotiate an exclusive in your lease, that doesn...

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...

Have you ever been 💘 love bombed by retail real estate? Oh, yes, it’s a thing.

It goes like this: you’re just minding your own business when POW! [cue the romantic lighting and flattery] In an email, phone call, or personal visit — it’s a retail real estate broker who 😍 loooooves what you’re doing and has an amazing new location for your amazing business, or she wants to help you find some because you are 🔥 hottttttt.

When you’re running a successful (or successful to outside eyes) business, it’s really just a matter of time before you’ll start receiving unsolicited offers to consider new real estate opportunities. Now I know from personal experience running a retail business day-in-and-...

Why do so many new and growing businesses make bad decisions when it comes to signing a lease? I went to the wise oracle at Delphi — just kidding, I went to the internet — to learn what (as scientifically as possible) makes a good decision.

Scholarly-ish articles and graphics on the internet repeat similar concepts of the elements deemed essential to the process of making a “good” decision. It struck me over and over again how painfully absent many of these are for people seeking to sign their first…or even second or third lease. Here's what I found...

There are the four main pillars of good decision making:

Define Goals - What exactly do I want/need?
Uncover Alternatives - What are ...

We've got some thoughts on searching for the "one" perfect retail space, and why the entire premise is misguided and potentially derailing.

We've all seen fictionalized accounts of a lovelorn someone searching for the "perfect" partner. You know the ones -- we watch as the protagonist goes on an endless string of first and second dates, only to determine that no suitor is right, much to the frustration of their friends and family who keep urging them to stop being so picky. Like Molly's friends and family in Insecure before things got serious with Taurean.

Is this entire concept pretty antiquated and ridiculous? Yes. Is it relevant to retail real estate? Also, yes.

You see, ...