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...

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.

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...