In the “Episode” posts I’ll try and recount the steps I took toward opening a Box. Considering I haven’t officially opened yet it’ll be an ongoing process.

The minute you start talking a landlord you start to get a handle on how much you really don’t know.  All these questions come up that you didn’t even know you had to consider:

• How much work needs to be done to get a Use Permit?  
  Uhh.  I need the lights to work?
• What type of NCAIS use is it going to be?  
  NCIS?  Isn’t that a TV show?
• Do you need to make it ADA compliant?
  I don’t know how many people in wheelchairs will be coming to my gym
• Who is your permit expediter?
  That sounds illegal.

There are a lot more but those are the only ones I could think of funny answers too.  When faced with these problems I took the strategy that seemed to make the most sense to me… I took my time and investigated each different question. This turned out to be a double edge sword.

The good edge:  There is no way in hell I should just go with the flow and agree to things which I have no idea what they mean.  I don’t want to just agree to make things ADA compliant when it turns out that making it such could cost me tens of thousands of dollars. (ADA compliance is a waterfall of fixes where one change leads to 10 more, leads to 10 more.) I had to get take the time to figure out all of these potential questions and familiarize myself so that I knew how to proceed and which way would save me the most of my precious little money.  I was lucky enough to have done that and not wasted money.

The bad edge: This strategy takes a long time.  I intentionally slowed down the entire process so that I could educate myself.  It’s certainly one of those conundrums where you can only learn by doing.  It’s impossible to try and predict all the potential scenarios you’ll need to account for.  Taking each step one at a time opens you up for predators to come in.  This is exactly what happened to me. I was confident that no one would want a run down auto garage (which ordinarily I’d be pretty confident in).  But I was wrong.  Turns out another group, with a LOT more capital, had their sights set on it.  They were willing to offer almost double what I was.  I’m not going to even pretend to compete with that.

I don’t regret taking my time one bit.  I learned an absolutely tremendous amount about how to handle myself in different situations and how to handle different problems that arise.  I made the right choice, taking my time, it was just hard to lose the spot I had invested a lot of time and effort in.  It was the right choice in the end.  I feel this is a common occurrence in opening a business that’s location dependent.  You find the right spot and lose it.  Oh well, learn your lessons and keep working.