Lee Sweitzer has been around Mustangs all his life and even had a 1984 5.0 Mustang for his first car. At 17, he graduated high school and joined the service to become a Marine. He was stationed in Southern California and continued to race Mustangs. He has spent several years planning and preparing to open up his own performance shop to follow his passion. Lee has seen shop owners work themselves to the bone and is trying very hard to avoid falling into those pitfalls. He understands that it takes a bunch of hard work, but he wants to avoid making mistakes by researching ways to operate more efficiently. He has attended the Essentials of Operating a Shop seminar, many business seminars, talked with business coaches, and read business books. He has just received the keys to his initial shop space and has begun to get the business going part time. It is a very small space but he really isn’t tied down to a lease agreement so he has the option to move out whenever he needs more space. Lee already plans to work part time for several months to build up a client base and then look into moving into a larger space to hold multiple lifts and eventually, a chassis dyno. He is taking the task of opening up a shop very seriously and wants to limit his risk of making mistakes as he moves forward. Writing a formal business plan was an integral part of this process. While this may seem rare in the performance automotive world, writing a business plan forces you to take a hard look at the structure of how you want to operate.