"Location, location, location" I will add Landlords and Neighbors...

Hey guys!!! I hope everybody is having a great time, Mother's Day is in 5 days and for us that have our mother's alive it's a great blessing, call them, talk to them, they like to hear all your stuff. For the fathers we have to wait for our day that it’s a couple of weeks from today and socks and underwear are already arriving at all the stores...

Today I want to talk to you about one of the most important factors in the success of your business, the location. It all depends on the kind of business you're starting, a child care, a mechanic work shop, a beauty salon or a barber shop. How much budget you have assigned for the rent? How much traffic do you need?

Let me tell you a story, years ago a friend needed a warehouse for his businesses, he had decided that he needed a place where he could do some retail too. He started looking around, and remember everybody hears about "Location, location, location" but he never had previous bad experience with Landlords or Neighbors. So he found this amazing spot, a warehouse area where the unit he wanted was facing a great traffic area with over 7,000 cars a day, rent was great and everything looked fine, at least that's what he thought.

After he signed the contract, he invested over $10,000 preparing the showroom and moved all the inventory in. Second day after grand opening an electricity problem appears, so he called the landlord and told him what was going on.

One week later!!! The electricians show off and they find that the box where the meter is installed was half burned and that it needs to be changed. It took them another week and my friend business was closed all this time after being open for one day.

Then, the neighbors started to show. A neighbor from two units down had a party rental business and since he was used to park his truck in front of the empty unit my friend rented, he continued to do it. My friend talked to him a lot of times and he didn't did anything about it, so my friend called the landlord, who did nothing about it too. After all this the landlords decided that the building needed a painting so he contracted an illegal painting company and they sandblasted the rolling doors without a previous warning, needless to say that his warehouse ended up full of dust and sand all over his inventory, the landlord and the painting company started blaming each other and my friends business closed again.

What bring the nightmare to an end was that the landlord rented a unit to a person that build "illegal apartments" and rented them to "illegal immigrants" and one day when he came to open his business he found an old lady taking a bath on the parking lot on a swimsuit. I don't have to tell you that was the day he cancelled the contract and move everything out of there to a new much better facility.

What is the lesson here? Don't take a place because of the rent, or the location only, landlords and neighbors can be a pain in the ass too! Analyze the place you want at different times of the day and different days of the week. Talk to other tenants about the landlord, meet the people around your space.

Sometimes, like my friend found out later, it's better to pay a little bit more, but receive a better service and have peace of mind. At the end of the day, the place where you open your business must be there for a lot of years, so choose wisely before renting or buying a place for your business.

Remember to comment and ask question, I'm here to help you in any question you may have.

Thanks,

Elliott