Table of contents
This is the whole manual — 18 pages across five chapters. It is deliberately finite: we would rather keep 18 pages correct than publish six hundred once. Read in order if you're brand new; otherwise jump to the page that matches the problem on your desk this week.
Setting Up
The paperwork floor: legal structure, bank account, and insurance — done in one afternoon, revisited when something changes.
Money
Pricing with a backbone, invoices that get paid, taxes that don't ambush you, and what to pay yourself.
Getting Found
Every surface where customers look you up — search, maps, directories, reviews, your website, and the AI assistants that now answer for you. The longest chapter, on purpose.
- 3.1 The Six Listings, in Order Reviewed 8 Jun 2026
- 3.2 Your Business Fact Sheet: One Source of Truth Reviewed 6 Jun 2026
- 3.3 Reviews: Asking, Answering, Surviving the Bad One Reviewed 3 Jun 2026
- 3.4 What AI Assistants Say About You (and the Pages They Learn It From) Reviewed 10 Jun 2026
- 3.5 Your Website's Actual Job (and When a One-Pager Is Enough) Reviewed 27 May 2026
- 3.6 The Minimum Viable Social Presence Reviewed 22 May 2026
Customers
Intake that filters the wrong ones, follow-up that brings the right ones back, and referral asks that don't make you cringe.
Running It
The weekly close, the first hire, and the order to drop, automate, or hand off when you're drowning.