The Plan

"Work hard, work passionately, but apply your most precious asset - time - to what is most meaningful to you. What are you willing to do for the rest of your life? does not mean, literally, what will you do for the rest of your life? That question would be absurd, given the inevitability of change. No, what the question really asks is, if your life were to end suddenly and unexpectedly tomorrow, would you be able to say you've been doing what you truly care about today? What would you willing to do for the rest of your life? What would it take to do it right now?"
-Randy Komisar, in The Monk and the Riddle

I read that quote today, as I was sitting on the bike at the gym. I'm taking this entrepreneurship class starting next week, and have to read The Monk and the Riddle before the first day of class. I like this quote because it relates to what I've been planning to post about for the past week; my business plan.

A week ago, I finished up BUS 290, the capstone class to the MBA program I'm in. It's odd that I'm not taking the capstone as my last class, since a capstone class should be the cap that finishes off the program.

Anyhow, the class was entirely project-based: No tests, or formal homework, or anything like that. Our homework was to work on our projects, our test was the project, and most of the reading was to be done researching our projects. I think that's kind of cool, but probably not good for a community college mathematics class.

The project was this: create a business plan for a business you could actually put together with resources you could get access to. No billion-dollar corporation, no gigantic non-profit that would benefit millions of people. It had to be something you could actually do.

I decided to open a bed and breakfast, in Flagstaff, AZ. Why a bed and breakfast you may ask? It's kind of a long story.

I remember staying at a bed and breakfast in England, in 1986. There were sheep and a sheepdog, and I thought it was cool. I was 10, so sheep and a sheepdog were very exciting.

Fast forward to 1999. I was in Belize - not the beachy Belize you see on travel sites, with the beautiful waters and the snorkeling. No, I was in the heart of Belize City, where the people live. The lodging there was less than desirable - cockroaches scampering through the community showers and a creaky wood floor I swore sunk a little with every step. I thought to myself, 'this city needs a bed and breakfast'. I even came up with a name: Jeff's B^3 (Bed and Breakfast in Belize).

In my adult life, I have loved going to bed and breakfasts, not only to enjoy them, but also to criticize them; find things I could do better, or make better. Flies on the fruit? C'mon, I wouldn't let that happen. Dry muffins? I could make them much better. You see, I believe that I can clean better and faster than most people (I worked as a janitor for a year), and can make breakfasts people would love to eat (you should ask me about my chocolate chip banana bread).

I decided that the bed and breakfast idea would be the one to go with. I chose Flagstaff because of the family ties I have to the city (my grandfather worked for the city's newspaper, my dad was born there, and Lauren grew up there). It's the beautiful town in Arizona people don't seem to know about. When I brought up this idea to classmates, the first response was, 'you want to open a b&b in the desert?' - Flagstaff is about as different from a desert as you can imagine.

So, I put together the plan, the strategies of pricing, marketing, monetary budgeting, and everything else. I found out a lot of information about bed and breakfasts and tourists to Flagstaff. I discovered bed and breakfasts can easily make a killing in that city. I made a list of all the things needed to run the bed and breakfast. I came up with a name - Maya's - I named it after my niece.

The one thing I didn't think about enough was a warning that came early on, from Lauren's dad: personal time. And that's where the quote above comes in. Time.

After putting together everything, we had to present our plan to the class, in a brief, 8-minute slide presentation. I ended my presentation by saying I didn't think I would actually do this. It was too time-consuming, and I don't think I would be willing to run a bed and breakfast for, in Randy Komisar's words, the rest of my life.

If you want to read the business plan, it's posted here. Please note that this is a pdf file that is almost 40 pages long, so think about if it's worth your time.