LOIs are the foundation of the house 🏠 leases loi negotiations small business Feb 21, 2023

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.


Clean Up Cleaning GIF by Maytag


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...

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⌛️ Why does is take so damn long to sign a lease? buildouts leases loi negotiations site selection timeline Feb 07, 2023

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...

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How landlords view pop-ups 🎈 common misconceptions landlords leases startups Jan 31, 2023

Last month I got a question so good that I decided to write a whole newsletter about it.

The question was:

“A landlord is offering a space for a long term lease - would she lease it to me as a pop-up, for just six months or so?”

It is such a good question that I couldn’t pack a full answer into the end of our Q&A. Here’s what I said in the webinar: Don’t worry about what a landlord will or won’t let you do. Instead, stay true to YOUR business plan and make a plan that works for YOU.


I Get What I Want Sheldon Cooper GIF by CBS


But, let’s assume you’ve done just that and concluded that it does work for your business plan to pursue a short term deal. Would a landlord even be willing to entertain it?

The short answer is maybe. Deal...

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