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-...

I had a stack of books and a daily newspaper during the holiday break, but it was a recent article in The New Yorker that really got me thinking. So you can thank Cal Newport's “The Year in Quiet Quitting: A new generation discovers that it’s hard to balance work with a well lived life" from the December 29th issue for today's naval-gazing newsletter.

Newport argues that like the Boomers and Millennials before them, Gen Z is just taking its generational at-bat of reimagining the balance and intertwining of being a person and needing a job. As an elder millennial approaching my 42nd birthday, I could recognize the generational differences between my parents, my peers, and kids these days.

Like all long term relationships, your feelings toward your business will change and evolve over time. I don't know a seasoned retailer who doesn't have a big ol' mixed bag of feelings about their business. Few things in life can bring so much joy and frustration, pride and defeat - sometimes in a single day.

For retailers just starting out, it can be confusing and a little scary when they start feeling REAL feelings (other than excitement and joy) about their budding business. Is it time to throw in the towel? Probably not.

Go with me here on a little analogy trip...

The romance starts with butterflies and flirting: What if instead of counting these beans all day, I finally open...