Books / The First 90 Days of a Small Business Owner
The First 90 Days of a Small Business Owner
by Steve Kennedy
Start. Protect. Grow.
Ninety days, one week at a time, from an idea to a registered, insured service business with a bank account, a tax routine, written agreements, clean books and its first repeat customers. Each week has a short story from an invented cleaning business facing the same problem you are, the work in plain steps with the reason behind each one, the mistakes people make, and five things to have done by Friday.
Checkout by Stripe. BookFunnel emails your ebook within minutes, ready for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, Nook or the free BookFunnel app. Save with a bundle: Books 1 to 3 for $24.99, or all six for $44.99, at https://www.allinoneforprofit.com/books/.
Thirteen weeks
Start · Days 1 to 28
- Week 1What Exactly Are You Selling?
- Week 2Choose the Legal Structure
- Week 3Make It Official
- Week 4Separate the Money
Protect · Days 29 to 49
- Week 5Protect the Business
- Week 6Set Up the Books
- Week 7Price It So the Business Survives
Grow · Days 50 to 90
- Week 8Be Easy to Find
- Week 9Win the First Customers on Purpose
- Week 10Deliver the Work and Get Paid
- Week 11Turn Customers Into Regulars
- Week 12Plan the Work and the Year
- Week 13The Day 90 Review
A sample: how Week 1 begins
Week 1: What Exactly Are You Selling? The story.
The letter came on a Friday, which Dana Whitfield later decided was a kindness. It gave her the weekend.
The Harborview Hotel had been sold, and the new owners were bringing in a contract cleaning company. Dana had supervised housekeeping there for nine years: forty-two rooms a day on a full house, a crew of eleven, a supply budget she could recite from memory. Her last day would be the end of the month. There would be two weeks of severance.
On Saturday morning her phone rang three times before ten o'clock. The first call was a former guest, a retired teacher named Ellen Park, who had heard the news and wanted to know whether Dana would clean her house. The second was Ellen's neighbor. The third was the office manager at Hollis Family Dental, two blocks from the hotel, who had watched Dana's crew turn over the lobby every night for years and asked whether she "did offices."
What comes with the book
- The 90-day checklist: every "Before Friday" list in one file.
- A printable 13-week calendar.
- Legal structure comparison worksheet.
- Startup budget and first-year budget (Excel).
- Pricing worksheet (Excel).
- Insurance quote comparison sheet.
- Customer agreement outline.
- Intake form and invoice templates.
- Late-payment, follow-up and review request messages.
- Day 90 owner report.
- State links sheet: where to find each state's business registration office, tax department and licensing boards.
- Download every file from the book's bonus page; the link is in Appendix D.
- Works on paper, in a spreadsheet or in any system you use now. Each week ends with a short note on where All In One For Profit does that week's work.
- General guidance, not legal, tax or accounting advice.
What readers say
Free on an annual plan
Businesses on a paid annual plan of All In One For Profit get every book in the series free, inside the platform. See the plans at https://www.allinoneforprofit.com/pricing/, or take the setup assessment at https://www.allinoneforprofit.com/assessment/.
About the author
Steve Kennedy is the founder of All In One For Profit and All In One Nonprofit. He built the platform, and wrote this series, for the owners who do the work all day and the paperwork at night. More about Steve
The whole series
Six books: the small business owner, the private practice, the trades business, marketing a service business, running the books and your first hire: https://www.allinoneforprofit.com/books/