Getting Ready for the Next Big Step

On Wednesday, I meet with the owner of a specialty food shop to make our second offer to purchase his business and assume the remainder of his lease. Our first offer, which was quite a bit lower than he had wanted, but all that we felt we could afford, was refused. After he called and told us the news, we were a bit disappointed, but as my husband reminded me, “the offer was good, and if we don’t get it, it wasn’t meant to be”. So we stepped up our search, checking Craigslist every day (sometimes twice a day), dug out any people that could help us with our search. Nothing really jumped out at us, except a much smaller place in Belltown that was not that much cheaper and poorly laid out.

On the one hand, I wanted to open a shop so badly that almost anything would work, but on the other, I knew that my shop would be something special, and I had to wait for something that “felt” right. This “feeling” was so hard to describe to real estate professionals and even my husband, but it was an extremely important component to completing the vision of the business, my dream. I knew that specialty food shop had the feeling, so I was searching for something similar. Hope seemed a bit weak.

And then a few months later, that specialty food shop owner called back. The offer he wants me to submit is about 11 grand higher than our original offer. In the scheme of opening a food establishment, it’s not that much money, but for everyday people like us recovering from cancer, it really is. So we really have to be smart about how we phrase our counter offer. Negotiating actually is quite fun if you think about it. It seems to be all about trying to make the other person think they’re getting a deal. So for example we’re going to give him most of the money he wants, BUT, we’re going to ask for two months lead time to get the shop ready. We think he’ll respond well to this offer because we’re going to tell him that those two months of lead time will be important to our success, and since we’re going to be a sub-leaser, if we fail, he fails. It feels really good to ask for what you want. I hope we get it.