I have a name, a logo and a lease negotiation, and no actual plan underneath it

Nate Harrison· Dog daycare and boarding; name picked, negotiating a warehouse lease· Named it, Pet Services·2w

I picked the name in February, bought the domain the same night, and had a friend do a logo I genuinely love. Since then I've been negotiating a warehouse lease for dog daycare and boarding, and somewhere in the last month it hit me that the name and the logo are the only two things I've finished.

I don't have a real budget. I have a spreadsheet full of numbers I invented about how many dogs fit in four thousand square feet. I haven't called about kennel licensing in my county. I have no idea what insurance costs for a business where the product is other people's animals. The landlord keeps asking questions I can't answer, like what my power requirements are, and I'm googling on mute.

The gap between having a concept and having a plan is a lot wider than I expected, and I think I ran straight at the fun parts because they were the ones I already knew how to do.

For people who've been here: what's the first unglamorous thing you did that made everything else line up? I'm trying not to sign a five year lease as my way of forcing the issue.

4 replies

Lena Kaminski· Open·2w

Pets specifically: call your county about kennel licensing before you sign, not after. Where I am, boarding overnight is a completely different animal from daycare in the licensing sense, and the overnight piece drove square footage, drainage and even how many exits the building needed. If that warehouse can't meet it, that's a lease you don't want.

Insurance for animal care was its own conversation too. Mine wanted to know about drop-off procedures and whether dogs are ever off leash together. Get a quote with boarding included before you commit to rent, because it was a bigger monthly line than I'd assumed.

Rob Mackenzie· Open·2w

The unglamorous thing, since you asked: I write the monthly nut before I do anything else. Rent, insurance, utilities, the loan, my own pay, then the number of customers at my price that covers it. One page. If that page is ugly, no amount of branding fixes it, and I've learned that expensively.

Your invented spreadsheet isn't useless, by the way. It's a hypothesis. Go and stand in two daycares a town over at drop-off time, count dogs and count staff, and replace three of your made up numbers with observed ones. That's an afternoon, and it'll change your rent conversation.

Nate Harrison· Named it·2w

Did the monthly nut last night and it was ugly in a useful way. At the rent they're asking I need about twenty six dogs a day at my planned rate just to stand still, and I'd been telling myself twenty was comfortable. I've gone back to the landlord with a lower number and a longer free rent period. Also calling the county Monday about the overnight piece.

Greg Foster· Open·2w

On the lease itself, since that's the live thing. Everything in a first draft is the landlord's wish list and almost all of it moves. I got two months of free rent while I built out, a cap on the annual increase, and I got the personal guarantee cut from the full term down to two years, which my lawyer said was the single most valuable hour of his time I bought.

Four hundred dollars for a commercial lease review was the best money I spent that year. You're about to sign the largest obligation of your life so far.

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