The Location Mistake That Almost Cost Me Everything

I almost signed the wrong lease.

Not because the numbers looked bad. Because the numbers looked great.

I was choosing between two locations. The first one — the obvious winner — was closer to the financial district. Better lobby. Sharper building. The kind of space where you walk in and think, "this is where a serious practice belongs." The demographic report backed it up: high household income, dense daytime population, professionals everywhere.

The second one was further out. Mixed. Residential homes blended with financial district overflow. Less glossy. Less obvious. On paper, the worse business.

I picked the second one — barely. And COVID is the only reason I'm writing this newsletter instead of a bankruptcy notice.

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What actually happened

When the financial district emptied out in 2020, it didn't come back. Not fully. Hybrid work, remote work, downsized leases — the professionals every demographic report told me to chase went home and stayed there.

Practices that depended on that daytime population got crushed. Their patient base stopped showing up to the building next door.

My practice survived — and grew — because half my patients lived within a few blocks of the chair. They didn't disappear. Some of them were home more, which meant they had time to actually come in.

The "worse" location saved my business.

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Three things I want you to take from this

1. A demographic report is a snapshot. A location is a bet on the future.

The financial district looked unbeatable in 2019. By 2021 it was a ghost town. You're not signing a one-year lease — you're signing a 10-year commitment. Ask what the area looks like in a downturn, not just at its peak.

2. Daytime population is fragile. Residential population is sticky.

People who work near you can stop working near you overnight. People who live near you don't move on a memo from HR. If your patient base depends on a single employer, a single industry, or a single commute pattern — you don't have a patient base. You have a hostage situation.

3. The "nicer" location is usually the more saturated one.

The financial district had a better lobby because every other dentist saw the same data I did. More competition. Higher rent. Smaller share of a shrinking pie. The location nobody was fighting over was the one with room for me to grow.

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What I don't love admitting

I came very close to signing the other lease. I had the paperwork. I'd started picturing the build-out. The only thing that stopped me was a gut hesitation I couldn't articulate — something about how empty the streets felt on a Saturday.

I want to be honest: I got lucky. I didn't out-analyze the situation. I out-hesitated it.

The lesson isn't "trust your gut." It's this:

When the obvious choice feels obvious, ask why nobody else has taken it yet. Usually there's a reason. And sometimes the reason is that you're seeing something the spreadsheet can't.

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Your homework before you sign anything

Look at your prospective location and ask one question:

If the biggest employer in this area went remote tomorrow, do I still have a practice?

If the answer is no, you're not picking a location. You're picking a single point of failure.

Then look at the mix. Pure residential is slow growth. Pure commercial is fragile. The sweet spot — the one I got, mostly by accident — is the overlap. Where people both live and work nearby. Because if one side disappears, the other one keeps your lights on.

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Next week

I'm breaking down the five questions you have to answer before you buy an existing practice — including the one most buyers never ask until it's too late.

And I'm putting together the location-evaluation checklist I built after going through all this — the one I wish I'd had before I started looking. If you want it when it drops, you're already on the list.

See you next week.

— Jennifer