The First 90 Days: Setting Up a Service Business in the Right Order

A Note on Order, and on Universal Checklists

There is no universal setup checklist for a service business, and any article that gives you one is quietly assuming a state and a trade. Licensing requirements differ enormously: some trades require a state license, some are licensed at the city or county level, some require a licensed supervisor, some require none of it. Registration, permitting, sales tax treatment, and bonding requirements all vary the same way.

So treat what follows as a sequence rather than a checklist. The order is the useful part, because the sequencing mistakes are what cost real money. Verify every specific requirement with your state licensing board, your city or county, and a local accountant who works with your trade.

The organizing principle is simple: do the things first that are expensive or impossible to undo later, and do the things last that you can change in an afternoon. Legal structure, licensing, insurance, and your phone number are hard to unwind. Your logo, your truck lettering, and your website copy are not.

The other principle is that the first ninety days should end with revenue, not with a perfect setup. A beautifully organized business with no customers is a hobby with paperwork. Roughly the first half of this period is structure, and the second half is aggressively acquiring the first handful of customers.

Days 1 to 15: Structure, Licensing, and the Boring Foundation

Start with legal structure, because things that come later attach to it. Sole proprietorship, LLC, or corporation all have different liability, tax, and administrative consequences, and the right answer depends on your state, your income, whether you will have employees, and your risk exposure. This is a one-hour conversation with an accountant that is worth paying for, and getting it right first means you are not reissuing licenses, insurance, and bank accounts under a new entity in month four.

Then licensing, which is the item most likely to stop you cold. Find your state's licensing authority for your specific trade and read what they actually require, rather than relying on what someone in the trade told you. Some licenses require documented experience hours, an exam, a bond, or proof of insurance before issuance, and those have lead times measured in weeks. Starting this on day one and discovering a ninety-day exam queue is survivable; discovering it in month three is not.

Alongside that, handle the mechanical items: a federal EIN, a business bank account opened the day the entity exists, and a bookkeeping method chosen before transactions start accumulating. The single most common early mistake is running business money through a personal account for a few months and reconstructing it later, which is painful, error-prone, and can undermine the liability separation you formed the entity to get.

Also check local requirements, which people skip. City or county business registration, zoning if you operate from home, sales tax registration if your state taxes what you sell, and any permit requirements for the work itself. These are usually small and quick, and they are much easier to do now than to explain later.

Days 10 to 30: Insurance and Real Risk

Insurance overlaps with licensing because some licenses require proof of coverage, so start the conversation early. Find a licensed commercial agent who writes policies for your trade in your state, describe your operations honestly and in detail, and let them tell you what you need. This article is not insurance advice and cannot tell you that.

The categories worth knowing by name: general liability for third-party injury and property damage, workers compensation if you have employees, which is a state-law question with varying thresholds, commercial auto for vehicles used in the business, and tools and equipment coverage, since your general liability will not pay to replace your own stolen tools.

The commercial auto point is the one that catches new owners hardest, so verify it specifically. Personal auto policies commonly exclude business use of the vehicle, and finding that out after an accident is an expensive way to learn it. Call your personal auto insurer, describe exactly how the truck will be used, and get the answer in writing before you start driving to jobs.

There is a commercial dimension too. Many customers, especially property managers, general contractors, and commercial clients, will not let you on site without a certificate of insurance at a specified limit. That requirement can gate entire categories of work, which means insurance is not only protection, it is access. Ask your agent what limits are typical for your trade so you are not turning away your first commercial job over a limit you could have set correctly on day one.

Days 15 to 30: The Phone Number Decision

The phone number is the most underrated early decision because it is the one that gets hardest to change. It goes on your Google listing, your truck, your invoices, your business cards, your website, and eventually into hundreds of customers' contacts. Changing it later means updating everything and losing the callbacks from everyone who did not get the memo.

The core choice is whether to use your personal cell or get a separate business number. Using your personal number is free and instant, and its costs arrive later: you can never be off, you cannot hand it to an employee, you cannot sell the business with it, and separating personal and business calls becomes impossible. Most owners who start this way end up switching, which is exactly the migration you are trying to avoid.

A separate business number costs little and solves those problems. What matters is that it is a real number that can send and receive text messages, because a large share of customers now prefer texting and a landline-style number that cannot receive texts will silently lose those leads. Area code matters too: a local area code reads as a local business, and in most trades that is worth something.

Whatever you choose, decide what happens when you cannot answer, because in the first ninety days you will miss a lot of calls. You are on jobs, driving, and under a truck, and every one of those callers is choosing between you and someone else. Around 78 percent of customers hire the first business that calls them back and roughly 85 percent of people who reach voicemail never call again, which means the missed-call plan is not an operational nicety, it is a large share of your early revenue. A returned call within minutes, or an immediate text acknowledging the call, is the difference.

Days 20 to 45: Google Business Profile and Basic Presence

For local service businesses, a Google Business Profile is usually the single highest-return marketing asset, and it is free. When someone searches for your trade plus their city, the map results appear above the ordinary results, and a complete verified profile is how you appear there. Claim it early, because verification can take time and the profile needs to accumulate history.

Complete it properly, since partial profiles perform badly. Exact business name, correct primary category plus relevant secondary categories, precise service area, real hours, phone number matching everything else you publish, and a description in plain language. Add photos of actual work, not stock images, and keep adding them, because profiles with real recent photos consistently look more credible to someone deciding between three options.

Reviews are the compounding part. A new business with no reviews sitting next to established competitors with dozens is at an obvious disadvantage, and the only fix is to start collecting from customer one. Ask every satisfied customer, ask at the moment the work is done and they are visibly happy, and make it easy by sending the direct link rather than explaining where to click. Never buy reviews or write your own; platforms detect it, penalties are real, and it is dishonest.

A website matters less than the profile early on, but it should exist. Even a single page with what you do, where you work, proof of licensing and insurance, real photos, and an obvious phone number is enough to close the credibility gap for someone who found you on Google and wants to check you are real. Consistency across every surface, same name, same number, same address format, helps both customers and search engines take you seriously.

Days 30 to 90: The First Ten Customers

The first ten customers are different from every customer after them, and they should be pursued differently. They are not primarily about revenue. They are about proof: reviews, photos, referrals, and the operational lessons you can only get by doing the work for money. That means it is often correct to take jobs in this window that you would decline later.

Start with people who already know you. Personal network, previous employer's overflow if you left on good terms, other trades who work adjacent to yours and get asked for referrals constantly. A plumber, an electrician, and a general handyman in the same area are each fielding requests for the other two every week. Introduce yourself to five of them in person; it is the cheapest lead source in the trades and almost nobody does it deliberately.

Local online communities are the other early channel: neighborhood groups, community pages, local recommendation threads. Participate as a real person, answer questions helpfully without pitching, and be visible before you need something. People hire the contractor whose name they have seen being useful.

Then extract maximum value from each job. Photograph before and after, with permission. Ask for the review at the moment of completion. Ask directly whether they know anyone else who needs the same work, which feels awkward the first three times and stops feeling awkward after that. Note in one place how long the job actually took versus what you quoted, because ten data points is the beginning of knowing whether your pricing works. By day ninety the target is not a large business. It is a licensed, insured, findable business with a working phone, real reviews, ten completed jobs, and honest numbers about what those jobs cost you.