A couple months ago I read The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann. Did you read it too? It seems like a lot of us did.

Like most everything I encounter, there were a few elements that made me think of retail leasing. To be clear, I don’t always think of leasing per se — that would be weirdly specific — but I DO have built in “retailer vision” which I can’t seem to remove. 

Well that’s what happened with The Wager, when at one of the most suspenseful parts of the tale, my mind went to the LOI and leasing process.

If you haven’t yet read it yet, here’s the part of the story you need to know for my point to make sense:

In the late 1700s, a bunch of sti...

Recently, a Pedal Retailer who is very close to lease execution said they were taken aback by how long, involved and challenging the whole process has been. They’d heard it many times before they started (from us and from others), but still it was somehow way more…well, everything…than they expected.

As is my modus operandi, I scanned my brain for the most apt metaphor, and since my home office looks straight into an eight-year-old’s hot mess of a bedroom, guess what metaphor popped up?

The Three Little Pigs 🐷

If you recall, The Three Little Pigs is a fable — a short story meant to teach us an important moral. Ostensibly the story is about working hard (the pigs) and greed (the wolf), b...

Okay, before we start, let me just acknowledge how much I hate the fact that I’m using a woman’s aging as the centerpiece of this article, but you all already know that I do my part in smashing the patriarchy AND I love a perfect metaphor. So here we are.

I saw this meme the other day about how Anne Hathaway looks pretty much exactly like she did 20 years ago. Now we all know why that’s the case, right? Clearly the woman won the genetic lottery, but she’s also been “investing” in maintaining her 19-year-old face since she was 19.

Now I’m sure this meme was trying to sell me something to stick in or on my face, but do you know what the image mashup made ME think of? You guessed it. Reta...

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...

Did you ever have one of those nifty decoder rings as a kid? A simple gadget that hovered over seemingly incomprehensible text or symbols would reveal its true meaning. ✨Magical✨ Don't you wish you had one of those for your leases (and to decode that look on your spouse's face when you put on the orange sweatpants…again)?

Anyway, sweatpants aside, I think we’ve cracked the case on the leases!

It's hard to sit down with an 65 page lease and read ALL of it. We hear it all the time, “An Act of God forcing me to close my business? That’ll never happen to me!” Umm, remember 2020? Still, you’re not entirely wrong. There are a lot of crazy sounding things in a lease that’ll likely never come to...

You don’t need to read your lease. You just need to know what it says.

I had lunch recently with a veteran commercial insurance broker. She works for pretty large independent agency in my area, and she’s an insurance woman like I’m a retailer — born into the business and steeped in years of first-hand experience. She insures small businesses — all types of insurance and all types of businesses (shocker: scrap yards are dangerous!), and she admitted that restaurants and bars are her favorite businesses to insure...but mostly because it’s more fun to meet a client there than in a scrap yard.

Anyhoo, our conversation turned to leases (as most of my conversations do), and she spoke the...

It's flipping freezing outside, and that means we've been binging spending plenty of quality time at home with our friends Netflix and Hulu thinking about Miranda. No, not that Miranda) - we're watching true crime and thinking about Miranda Rights. You know,

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?

We got to wishing there were Miranda Rights for retail space tours. Don't get us wrong - there is no shortage of laws designe...

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...