Page 168 - Business Plans that Work A Guide for Small Business

11

CONCLUSION

Lazybones Epilogue

The Lazybones plan that we used throughout this book is an actual plan
produced by the entrepreneur trying to grow his business beyond a life-
style firm. This is the first iteration of the plan and likely quite different
from the current plan that the team is implementing. Since the writing of
the plan, Lazybones has opened and closed a new store near the Univer-
sity of Connecticut (UConn) and then subsequently opened a store near
the University of Delaware. Dan noted that they tried to open UConn too
quickly and Dan and Joel (the corporate staff) were overextended bring-
ing Boston and Boulder up to speed. The main difficulty in opening any
store is making sure you have the right store management team in place
and that the team has the appropriate training. Adding UConn so quickly
after the new locations in Boulder and Boston made it difficult for Joel
and Dan to properly oversee the UConn operation. This speaks to some
of the comments we added to the plan regarding developing the appropri-
ate infrastructure around franchise support and training (even though the
initial stores are company owned). Once the Boston and Boulder loca-
tions were operating efficiently and after they closed UConn, Lazybones
opened the Delaware store. Thus, at this point two years out from the

157