Your First 90 Days as an Entrepreneurr
Your First 90 Days as an Entrepreneur: A Practical Playbook for Focus, Cash, and Customer Discovery
The first quarter of your business is where habits harden. Move deliberately now, and everything after will feel lighter. Drift through it, and you’ll spend the next year undoing avoidable complexity. At Grace Management, we coach founders to treat Day 1 like a construction site: clear the ground, set a solid foundation, and frame only what the blueprint demands. This playbook gives you a week-by-week plan for your first 90 days—tight enough to keep you focused, flexible enough to fit your industry.
You’ll notice three themes: focus (do less, better), cash (survive to thrive), and customer discovery (build what people will pay for, not what you fantasize about). Follow this plan faithfully and you’ll exit Day 90 with a working offer, early revenue, credible proof, and a repeatable sales rhythm.
Days 1–30: Ruthless Focus, Clear Offers, and a Cash Map
Pick a sandbox and fence it. Describe your target customer so specifically it feels narrow: “Self-managed landlords with 10–40 units in [city], who’ve had a bad experience with maintenance response times.” Fence your problem: “We reduce after-hours emergencies and speed work orders.” Focus is scary precisely because it forces you to say no—do it anyway. Specialists command trust and margin; generalists get ground down.
Draft a one-page operating plan.
Problem we solve: in one sentence, from the customer’s mouth.
Our offer: the service/product and its outcomes (not features).
Price & terms: simple, transparent, with a money-back guarantee for 30 days if possible.
Acquisition: how you’ll meet your first 20 prospects (warm intros, local associations, targeted cold outreach, partnerships).
Delivery: how you fulfill without drama (SOPs, tools, boundaries).
Success metrics: 3 leading (conversations/week, proposals sent, time-to-first-value) + 3 outcomes (revenue, gross margin, retention).
Print it. Look at it daily. If an activity doesn’t move one of these needles, it’s a distraction masquerading as work.
Build a survival-to-runway cash map.
List your personal burn (rent, food, insurance) and business burn (tools, contractors). Decide your minimum monthly revenue to keep the lights on. Create a 13-week cash forecast: columns are weeks, rows are inflows/outflows. Update every Friday. Cash awareness is courage; ignorance is anxiety.
Craft a Minimum Credible Offer (MCO).
Your MCO is the simplest version of your service that creates undeniable value in 14 days. For a service business, this might be a 90-day stabilization plan focused on quick wins; for a product, a high-touch beta with manual processes behind the scenes. Promise less, deliver more, and collect testimonials as you go.
Do discovery calls before you do decks.
Conduct 20 short interviews with your exact target. Ask:
“Tell me about the last time this problem hurt.”
“What have you tried? What felt like a waste?”
“If this were magically solved next month, what changes?”
“Who else needs to sign off, and what scares them about switching?”
Take ruthless notes. Patterns will beat brainstorms every time.
Start selling by helping.
Replace pitches with problem-solving sessions. Come with a 1-page assessment: top three risks, quick wins, and a pathway to outcome. Charge a small diagnostic fee if you can; otherwise, make the plan so concrete it begs a “yes” to the paid next step.
Protect your time like equity.
Block daily focus windows. Say no to custom work that drags you off the blueprint. Use a “will not do” list: tasks you refuse to take on until revenue legitimizes them (brand overhaul, complex automation, fancy office). Simplicity is speed.
Days 31–60: Customer Discovery, Delivery Loops, and Credibility Signals
Turn discovery into a tight delivery loop.
Once you sign your first customers, execute small, visible wins fast. For property clients, that might be a 24-hour work-order SLA and a tenant communication plan. For B2B services, it might be a weekly results email with a single KPI and next action. The goal is to shorten the time between promise and proof.
Document while you deliver.
Every repeatable step becomes an SOP: a 1-page checklist with owner, inputs, outputs, and quality bar. Record short Looms for tricky parts. These artifacts are future training, but they also force you to clarify how value is created. Ship, then sharpen.
Price with courage, discount with purpose.
Price to win trust and survive—not to be the cheapest. If you offer a launch discount, make it conditional: case study, testimonial, or referral introductions in exchange. Define the end date and stick to it.
Collect credibility like oxygen.
Publish small case snippets (with permission): before/after pictures, response times, cost savings, quotes. Don’t wait for perfect. Five concrete wins beat one polished white paper. Add logos or anonymized descriptors to your site: “10–40 unit landlords,” “regional owner-operators,” “first-time investors.” Social proof reduces friction.
Create a referral-ready experience.
After each visible win, ask: “If this has been valuable, the highest compliment is an introduction to someone like you. Who comes to mind?” Provide a one-paragraph forwardable blurb. Track referrals in your CRM with next steps. Warm intros will power your first 10–20 customers faster than ads.
Build a simple sales pipeline you actually use.
Columns: New Lead → Discovery Scheduled → Qualified → Proposal Sent → Won/Lost. Add two fields to every card: Deal Risk (what could kill it) and Next Commitment (date/time of the next micro-yes). If a card has no next commitment, it’s fiction, not a deal.
Guard your reputation in the hard moments.
When something fails, call first, email second. Present options with costs and a clear recommendation. Own the timeline publicly with promised updates. Ship a written recap the next day. Recovery done well becomes a story customers retell in your favor.
Days 61–90: Systems, Pricing Power, and a Repeatable Sales Engine
Graduate from hustle to system.
By now you know your core motions; stabilize them:
Weekly CEO Review (60 minutes): cash forecast, pipeline status, delivery quality, and one thorny issue.
Promise Tracker: shared list of external commitments with owners and due dates. Overdue items trigger same-day outreach.
Quarterly Scorecard: pick 3 leading + 3 outcome metrics; publish them to your team, advisors, or even customers where appropriate.
Refine your offer into tiers.
Introduce Good/Better/Best packaging to create price anchors and help buyers self-select. Each tier should add outcomes, not just features (e.g., “24-hour response” → “same-day resolution” → “proactive prevention and quarterly audits”). Show the math of value creation; confidence grows when customers can see how outcomes improve.
Push prices when your proof deserves it.
If you’re closing >50% of qualified deals quickly, you’re likely priced too low. Raise rates for new customers while grandfathering early adopters who helped you grow (with a clear, fair future step-up plan). Pricing power is not greed; it’s the honest reflection of value delivered.
Codify your go-to-market rhythm.
Prospecting: 10–20 targeted outreach messages per week rooted in discovered pain (“We helped a 28-unit owner cut after-hours calls 40% in 60 days. Want the 1-page plan we used?”).
Content: one short case summary or practical tip weekly. Concrete beats clever.
Partnerships: offer a “diagnostic day” or workshop to local groups/associations where your buyers gather. Teaching is leverage.
Hire part-time help where you bottleneck.
If fulfillment is lagging sales, engage a contractor using your SOPs. If sales is lagging, hire an appointment-setter to book qualified conversations. Cashflow permitting, this is where $500–$1,500/month can compound momentum.
Tighten the switch-cost story.
Most buyers aren’t resisting your price; they’re resisting the work of switching. Write a one-pager titled “How We Make Switching Easy” with a clean timeline, roles, and a promise: “We do the heavy lifting; you stay in control.” Reducing perceived hassle is often the fastest path to yes.
End Day 90 with a public narrative.
Publish a simple “What We’ve Learned Serving [Niche] for 90 Days” post: the problem patterns, your outcomes, a testimonial, and the plan for the next quarter. This showcases momentum, attracts like-minded customers, and keeps you honest.
Common potholes (and exits):
Overbuilding tools: If you don’t have five paying customers, you don’t have a tooling problem—you have a selling problem.
Custom one-offs: Say yes carefully; document and turn useful custom work into standard offering only if multiple customers ask.
Shiny partnerships: If a partner can’t introduce you to three warm prospects this month, it’s a future idea, not a present priority.
Invisible pipeline: If you can’t see your deals, you can’t steer your week. Live in your pipeline view daily.
Ninety days isn’t long—but it’s long enough to set a trajectory. Lead with focus, manage cash like oxygen, and let real customer conversations shape your offer. Be the calm voice that tells the truth early and does what it said it would do. Do that for 90 days and you’ll have what many founders chase for years: a clear market, a credible offer, early proof, and the makings of a sales engine that grows because people trust you. That’s how you build something both profitable and honorable—one disciplined week at a time.
