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7 · The first ninety days

One operator, no money raised, a laptop and an agent seat.

Days 1 to 10: build the machine on yourself

• Build the sales site exactly the way a customer's will be built: public repository, GitHub Pages, custom domain, the agent doing the work from your brief. This is the product demo and the first test of the playbook.
• Write the first playbook (prototypes/webmaster-playbook.md is the starting point) and the setup checklist.
• Build the three mock-ups in this vault as real repositories, so you can show a change happening live. Ten minutes each with the agent.
• Open the operator's vault: playbook, templates, pricing, the sales notes. Everything you learn goes in it.
• Decide the company basics: name, the sales domain, the invoicing tool, the bank account. One afternoon.

Days 11 to 30: the first five customers, at the free-then-take-it-away price

• Rebuild five local businesses' sites unasked, on preview URLs, and send them. Two hours each.
• Give the ones who respond the customer session for two weeks.
• Take it away on day fifteen. Sign the ones who call, at the published setup price, with the first month of maintenance free.
• After each setup, update the playbook and the checklist with what took longest. Time every setup.

Days 31 to 60: ten customers and the monthly note

• Send the first monthly notes. This is where the maintenance package earns its price, so do it properly: what changed, what you noticed, one suggestion.
• Ask every customer for one introduction. Start the referral offer.
• Publish the prices on the sales site if they are not already.
• Set up the change-log review as a weekly habit: what are customers asking for? That list is the upsell menu and the roadmap.
• Add the second and third templates to the operator's vault, from the shapes of sites customers actually asked for.

Days 61 to 90: twenty customers, and the numbers

• Twenty on maintenance is about £1,800 of monthly recurring revenue at the assumed mix. With setups and on-demand work the month is over £3,000. Compare to the Small scenario and adjust prices.
• Measure the three numbers that matter: setup hours per customer (target: under five by customer twenty), maintenance minutes per customer per month (target: under an hour), churn (target: nobody leaves in the first ninety days who has used the customer session).
• Write down what broke. Every incident becomes a rule in the playbook, the same way every published vault on sgit.ai produced a rule.
• Decide whether to hire the second operator at fifty or to stay small and profitable. Both are fine. The plan works either way.

What to have by day 90

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