This is probably not news to you, but since we send these newsletters every week, I basically move through life asking myself how to make this thing I [saw / heard / experienced] into content that at least mildly connects to retail real estate. When I find something that provides multiple angles, I’m thrilled. So thank you, Disney and Taylor Swift, for making the six-part docuseries The End of An Era about the record-breaking The Eras Tour. Also, thanks to my sister who told me I should watch it and that I’d probably cry. She was right about both. 

To refresh your memory, the tour included 149 shows in 51 cities on 5 continents over the course of 21 months. At each performance, Taylor an...

👋 Hi, it's Faith! I'm exciting to share my first official Pedal blog today. I'll be popping up alongside Sheila and Abby now and again, so if something sounds new or foreign to these pages (like competitive running or vegetarian cooking), don't panic...it's just me. Enjoy!

If you’re like me and 90% of my friends, your new years resolutions involve some version of: “getting to the gym more,” “eating healthier,” or “running a marathon" -- fun crowd we are, I know. But we’re also committed, and training for and running a marathon will keep us motivated all year long.

What do we do first? We develop personalized training plans. Getting “marathon ready” is anything but standard, so how lo...

Imagine for a moment that you’re dating someone you really like. You’ve been together for six months, and so far, so good. You’re excited about your future together. 

Now imagine a fairy swoops in and says it’s time for you to commit to being with this person for the next 10 years. What would you say? Certainly if you’re dating Christian Bale or Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises (just me?), you’d say yes. But anyone else? That would feel like a lot of pressure to put on a new relationship.

That’s exactly what’s happening when a new business signs a lease. No wonder the typical five to ten-year lease terms can feel really intimidating.

Turns out, people with advanced degree...

Remember the Presidential Fitness Test from elementary school? If you’re reading this newsletter, the answer is most likely, yes. Evidently the program was replaced in 2013, but my daughter’s PE curriculum still includes a nearly identical version, so it’s very much a part of my life again.

Since I didn’t actually enjoy exercise of any form until my mid 30’s (thank you, Peloton), those fitness tests were somewhere between annoying and dreadful. I recall sit-and-reach being kinda fun, but I didn’t like the mile run, and I downright hated the pull-ups. Even when we got to do the remedial version, the “flexed-arm-hang,” I could never, ever seem to do it. I wasn’t alone. I’m pretty sure that...

The other day I opened my fridge and suffered an olfactory assault. It wasn't the worst mystery odor I’d ever smelled, but it was pretty bad. I hadn’t noticed anything the day before, so it seemed to have come on fast and strong. 

It wasn’t immediately obvious to me what was causing the smell, but it could have been a couple things — all of which I’ll blame on my husband, since he’s the only one who cooks for a family of six when there are only three of us at the table. So the only thing to do was to proceed with the unpleasant #adulting task of sniffing everything until you find the culprit. It was the leftovers in the Dutch oven.

I won’t attempt to pathologize why my brain doe...

Top on the list of New Business Misconceptions is “you should never sign a personal guaranty.” It sits right up there with “I can’t make a budget until I find the space” and “I won’t need to pull permits.” The personal guaranty has a bad reputation partly because it is, in fact, a little scary; but for small businesses, it’s incredibly common and often inevitable, no matter what the local celeb chef told you in between bench presses.

⚖️ Quick reminder here — although Abby grew up with two attorneys as parents, and I’m deeply familiar with the South Carolina justice system thanks to the Murdaugh Murders Podcast, we’re not actually attorneys, and this is not legal advice. 

Okay, consid...

We all know that Ben Franklin was right about death and taxes, but there’s another certainty of life that he left out. If I could Bill and Ted my way back to the 1790’s (no thanks), I think he’d agree that when you want something is rarely when you can have it...if you can have it at all. 

Obviously I’m not talking about anything money can buy, since you can buy anything on the internet and have it within 2-3 business days. But for the big stuff that really matters --  security, health, relationships -- as hard as we will something into existence, we have limited control. 

All we can do is dig deep and have hope and patience. Well, that’s exactly what Cara and Travis Loving did.

 ...

Last weekend I went to Charlottesville for a 30th birthday party. This party, for which I gladly drove two and half hours each way, wasn’t for a dear friend or family member — it was for a business. Not just any business…one of my most favorite retail businesses, Scarpa, a truly one-of-a-kind women’s boutique.

I worked at Scarpa during my last years in college and for a couple years after. I’ve told you many times before that I grew up in a retailing family, so if I was born with the kindling, it was my time at Scarpa that struck the match that lit my bonfire of love for retail.

Scarpa came into being in 1994 when a burgeoning architect in her early twenties, Amy Gardner, recognize...