How I would start a local business
in thirty days.

In 2019 I wrote a long post on Reddit about how I would start a local business from scratch if I lost everything and had thirty days to begin again. One reader wrote afterwards to thank me: it had given them the knowledge and confidence to stop working for someone else and launch their own business.

A lot has changed since. Google My Business is now Google Business Profile, AI can draft a website in an afternoon, people ask AI assistants for recommendations, and the rules on reviews have tightened. The fundamentals have not changed at all: choose practical demand, answer the phone, turn up on time, follow up, and ask every customer for a review. This is the plan, rewritten for today.

For context: I started a cleaning company in my final semester of university with seven hundred dollars, moved to Japan, ran it from there for eight years and sold it in 2024. Since 2018 I have taught the full version of this in the Local Business MBA. The examples lean on cleaning because that is where I started, but the same plan applies to lawn care, pressure washing, window cleaning, junk removal, handyman work, painting, or any service you deliver at a customer’s home or business.

One task a day, with three rest days, because the point is to reach day thirty with a business and your energy intact. Tick each day off as you go; your progress is saved in this browser.

Week one: decide

1Decide what the business is for

Before anything else, take two hours with a notebook. Write down why you want this business, what you want your life to look like in three years, and how many hours a week you can honestly give it. Then work backwards: does a local service business get you there?

It feels like a slow first day. It is the most important one. The worst outcome is not failing; it is building something that works and then traps you, because you never decided what it was for.

2Walk your town

Go for a walk, or a slow drive, and write down every local service you see: the vans in traffic, the signs on lawns, the shopfronts. Plumbers, cleaners, window washers, pest control, landscapers, remodellers. Most are run by people who are good at the work rather than trained in business, and plenty of them do very well.

At home, pick the five that interest you most and research them. Ask an AI assistant how each one works: typical prices, equipment, licensing, the busy season. Treat its answers as a starting point and check them against real companies’ websites and a few owners’ videos. A walk tells you more than any list of “best businesses to start” ever will.

3Choose one service and one city

Today you choose, and the choice will shape your next few years, so use a few tests:

• Healthy margins. Look for work that can make more than twenty percent profit once you have paid the people doing it.
• No heavy licensing. Some trades need licences, exams or bonds that cost months and thousands of dollars before your first job. Check your state’s or council’s rules.
• It doesn’t need you in the field. You want a business you can hire for, not a job you have to do yourself forever.
• Proven demand. Search the service and your city on Google Maps. If several companies have hundreds of reviews, there is plenty of work to go round.
• Room to grow. A cleaning company can add windows, carpets and move-outs; a lawn company can add leaves, gutters and snow.

If you are torn between two, pick the one with more room to grow, and pick today. This is the decision that stalls people for months.

4Read your competitors’ worst reviews

Search your service and city on Google Maps and open the ten best-known companies. Skip the five-star reviews and read the one-, two- and three-star ones. If there are hundreds, paste them into an AI assistant and ask it to group the complaints and count them.

You will find the same handful again and again: nobody answered the phone, the team arrived late without warning, the job was rushed, nobody communicated, and nobody would put a problem right afterwards. Almost none of them are about the work itself. They are about service.

That is your opening. Write down the five most common complaints and the promise you will make against each one: calls answered within the hour, a text when the team is on its way, a free re-do if something is missed. Build those promises into your website, your phone script and your hiring. You don’t need twenty years in the trade to run a better company than the ones in those reviews. You need to stop doing what annoys their customers.

5Residential or commercial

Pick one for your first year. Homes and businesses are different markets, with different marketing, sales, hours, staff and payment terms. My cleaning company did almost entirely homes and short-term rentals, and never needed an office contract to grow.

For a first business I recommend residential. Selling to homeowners is simpler, jobs are smaller and more frequent, and one late-paying commercial client can’t put your payroll at risk. Commercial can grow faster later, once the basics run without you.

Week two: set up

6Set the company up properly

In 2019 I put this near the end. It belongs at the start.

• A name that says what you do and where (Spokane Window Co. beats Apex Solutions), with the domain and social handles free.
• A legal entity. In the US that is usually an LLC; in the UK, a limited company or a sole trader. Fees vary by state and country, so check yours. This is my opinion, not legal advice: ask an accountant which structure suits you.
• A separate business bank account, from day one.
• Insurance. General liability at least, and in cleaning a bond as well. Ask an independent broker for quotes, because prices vary widely.
• Licences and permits for your service and area. Most cities and councils publish them online.

I know owners who ran for years without an entity or insurance. One accident is all it takes.

7Build a simple website, with AI doing the first draft

Your website has one job: turning a visitor into a booking or a call. It needs:

• Your service, your area and your phone number at the top, with a button that calls you from a mobile.
• Online booking, or a quote form for jobs you need to see first. Many customers would rather book online than call.
• Prices, or “from” prices. People leave sites that make them call to find out.
• Your promises from day 4, and reviews as soon as you have them.
• Real photos of real jobs as soon as you have them. Stock photos of smiling strangers convince nobody.

Use a website builder, or the website that comes with your booking software. Then let AI write the first draft: give it your service, city, prices, promises and the complaints you found, and ask for a home page, a page for each service and an FAQ. Edit everything into your own words and check every fact. A page that sounds like every other page gives Google and customers no reason to choose you.

Don’t hire a designer yet, and don’t spend a week on it. Professional and easy to book is the whole brief. Put the money you save into marketing.

8Claim your Google Business Profile, and every listing that matters

For most local service businesses, the Google Business Profile is the most valuable free listing there is. It is what appears on Google Maps and in local results, and verification can take a while, so start today.

• Choose the most specific primary category, list every service, and set your service area. If customers don’t come to you, hide your address.
• Write a plain description of what you do and where. AI can draft it; make sure it sounds like you.
• Add real photos, your hours and your booking link.

Then claim the rest, using exactly the same business name, phone number and website everywhere: Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Yelp, Nextdoor, Facebook, and the directories for your trade. In the UK, add Bark and Checkatrade if they suit your work. Don’t skip the small regional sites: a couple of good reviews on a little-used platform can put you at the top of it.

Consistency matters more than it used to. When someone asks an AI assistant for a good cleaner near them, it tends to draw on these same listings and reviews. Study the profiles of the best companies in your trade, in your city and in bigger ones, and borrow what works.

9Booking software, payments and a business phone number

Three tools you will use every day:

• Booking software that handles quotes, scheduling, reminders and invoices. General ones such as Jobber and Housecall Pro suit most trades; some niches have their own, like ZenMaid for cleaning (a partner of mine) or Launch27. Start on the cheapest plan.
• Card payments through Stripe or Square, usually connected to your booking software. Take card details at booking.
• A business phone number. Never use your personal mobile; I know owners who ended up changing their own number because of it. A business phone app gives you calls and texts on a separate line. In the US, business texting now requires registering your number, and most business phone apps walk you through it.

An AI receptionist can catch after-hours calls and take messages, and it is worth considering for overflow. In the first months, though, answer yourself: those calls are where you learn what customers actually want.

10Rest

Take the day off. You have done a lot in a short time, and the next three weeks need you rested. Momentum that ends in a crash is not momentum.

Week three: price, hire, launch

11Set your prices

Keep pricing simple in year one so you can get on with building the business. Find the three to five competitors with the best reviews, and the most of them, and start at their prices or up to twenty percent above. Then check the number against your costs: what you pay the person doing the job, supplies, travel, card fees and a share of your overheads. If the price doesn’t leave a healthy margin after all of that, raise it. Put your prices, or “from” prices, on your website.

To win your first customers before you have reviews, use a first-visit offer that shrinks as your reviews grow. When I started, I took about a third off for the first ten customers and stepped it down from there. Never tie a discount to leaving a review: Google forbids it, and US law prohibits rewarding positive reviews.

The full method, with a worked example, is in How to Price Local Service Jobs.

12Set your budget

You can start a service business very cheaply by doing the work yourself, and plenty of good companies began that way. But if you want to build a company rather than a job, start with a small team from the beginning and keep money back for marketing, because you won’t know which channels work in your town until you test them. Many owners who start as the person doing every job find it takes years to step out of that role.

I would set aside between $1,000 and $1,500, and treat $500 as the bare minimum. What It Costs to Start a Local Service Business breaks down where it goes and what to leave until later.

13Write your first job post

Look at the job posts that attract good people in your trade and city, then write your own. AI is good at a first draft: tell it the role, the pay, the hours, the area and what a great hire looks like, and ask for two different versions.

Be specific about pay. People apply to clear numbers, and a growing number of US states and cities require pay ranges in job ads anyway. Post on Indeed and Craigslist, in local Facebook groups and on Nextdoor, and ask your own network. We hired some of our cleaners through Nextdoor, simply by asking neighbours who they would recommend.

14Interview, then pay for a trial

Most hiring advice is written for corporate recruiters and doesn’t fit a small local business. Keep it practical:

• A short phone screen first. Are they polite, reliable and clear about their experience?
• Confirm the basics: transport, the right to work, and consent to a background check through a proper screening service.
• Then a paid trial job. It tells you more than any interview.

Remind every candidate the day before and on the morning. Aim to bring on two people or teams before you have work for both, so a no-show on the first day doesn’t become a cancelled customer.

15Bring your first team on properly

Decide how you will work together. Many new owners start with independent contractors, which is how my first company began, but the rules on who counts as a contractor have tightened in many places. Talk to an accountant before you rely on contractors, and do the paperwork your country requires; in the US that means a W-9 before the first job, a written agreement, and proof of their insurance.

Then write down exactly how a job should be done. Record yourself walking through one, ask AI to turn the recording into a checklist, and edit it until a new person could follow it. Watch the first three jobs closely. Those first customers are the foundation of your reputation.

16Start your free marketing

While everyone else argues about ad campaigns, you can win a steady stream of work for free. Pick a few of these and do some every day:

• Your Google Business Profile. Add photos of real jobs and post updates every week. It is the free channel that matters most.
• Nextdoor. Answer questions helpfully rather than selling, and ask happy customers who use it to recommend you.
• Local Facebook groups: parents’ groups, community groups, buy-and-sell groups. Introduce yourself as the owner, be useful, and share a few genuine reviews once you have them.
• Your customers’ neighbours. After every job, leave a door hanger at the houses either side and across the road. People trust the company their neighbour uses.
• Partnerships with estate agents and realtors, property managers, short-term rental hosts and complementary trades, who all need someone reliable to recommend.
• Short videos. For visual work like pressure washing, cleaning or lawns, a fifteen-second before-and-after can reach more local people than you would expect.

And write down every question customers ask you on the phone. Each one is a page or an FAQ answer for your website, in your own words, which is exactly what helps you show up in search.

17Choose two paid channels to test

Don’t try ten paid channels at once; you will spend your budget without learning anything. Pick two that suit your service and city, and learn them properly:

• Google Local Services Ads. You pay per lead, not per click, and Google checks your business before your listing goes live, which earns it a verification badge. Available for many home services in the US and a growing list of other countries.
• Thumbtack, or Bark in the UK. Lead marketplaces where speed and follow-up decide who gets hired. Thumbtack is how my company got hired hundreds of times in its first months.
• Yelp ads, but only once you have ten to fifteen good reviews there.
• Angi, the company behind HomeAdvisor. It can work, but leads are often sent to several companies at once and the cost per lead is high.
• Nextdoor ads, and postcards to whole neighbourhoods (Every Door Direct Mail in the US). Unfashionable, and still effective for local services.
• Google Ads search campaigns and Facebook ads. Powerful later, expensive to learn. I wouldn’t pay anyone to run Google Ads until the business was bringing in around $10,000 a month.

Every city is different, so treat your first two choices as experiments.

18Soft launch

Tell people you are open: friends, family, your social accounts, the groups you have joined. Not to pressure anyone into buying, but because saying it out loud makes it real, and real is the cure for perfectionism. If friends book, treat them exactly like any other customer and ask for honest feedback.

19Learn to answer, and to book

Speed wins more local jobs than price. Answer every call, and reply to every web enquiry within minutes if you can. Many people contact two or three companies and book the first one that responds properly.

When they call, treat them the way a good hotel treats a guest checking in: assume they are booking and walk them through it. Ask the questions, give the price, offer a time, take the details. Never get someone on the phone and then tell them to book online; you are handing them the chance to check a competitor.

Most callers aren’t price shoppers. They need a lawn mowed or a house cleaned and they want it sorted. If someone hesitates, your first-visit offer is your way of saying you will earn their trust on the first job, which is where repeat business starts.

Before your first real call, practise. Ask an AI assistant to play a hesitant customer, a price shopper and an impatient one, and run each conversation until it feels natural.

20Rest

Another day off. Walk somewhere you like, and check your phone only as much as you have to.

Week four: follow up, measure, settle in

21Build your follow-up routine

If this is your first business, your follow-up is probably weak; most owners’ is. Keep two simple lists, in your booking software or a spreadsheet: people who enquired but didn’t book, and customers after their first job who could become regulars.

For new enquiries I used a routine like this, and stopped the moment someone said no:

• Day one: call, then send a short text saying who you are and why you called. Call again at two other times of day, and leave a voicemail on the last try.
• Day two: call twice more, then send one text asking whether they are still interested.
• After that: one call or text a day for a week, then rest the lead and try again a few weeks later.

Only contact people who have contacted you, note every lead and where it came from, and set a fixed time each day for follow-up. Your software can automate the reminder texts; the calls are still yours.

22Track six numbers every week

Put these in a sheet and update them every Monday:

1. Leads: calls, messages and forms.
2. Booking rate: the share of leads that book.
3. Cost per booking: what you spent on marketing, divided by the bookings it brought.
4. Average job value.
5. Repeat rate: the share of first-time customers who book again.
6. Reviews: how many came in this week, and your average rating.

If a number goes the wrong way, ask why and fix that one thing. If something works unusually well, do more of it. AI can read the sheet and point out what changed, but the decisions are yours. Most owners never track even this much, which puts you ahead of people who have been in business for years.

23Ask every customer for a review

Reviews are still the most powerful thing a local business can collect, and the rules have changed since I first wrote this. Ask every customer, not only the happy ones: choosing who to ask breaks Google’s rules. Never offer anything in return for a review. And never write, buy or swap reviews.

What works is simple. Call or text the day after each job to check they were happy, put right anything that wasn’t, and send a direct link to your Google review page by text. Make it a daily habit until you have well over fifty reviews, then automate the request through your booking software and keep going.

Reply to every review, good or bad, within a day or two. AI can draft the replies; make each one specific, and sign it yourself.

24Know your margins

Your margin decides almost everything else: what you can pay your team, how much you can spend on marketing, and what is left for you. Service businesses run thinner margins than software companies, but they make up for it with customers who stay for years.

In my experience most local service businesses land somewhere between fifteen and thirty-five percent profit once everything is counted, with labour the biggest cost by far. Some trades, like exterior painting, can run much higher. Find out what is normal in yours by asking in owners’ groups for your trade, then work out your own honestly, including your own time.

25Design a daily routine that survives real life

Whether you have whole days or an hour before work, you need a routine you can keep. Mine is simple:

• List every task and grade it from A to E by importance. Always work on the As and Bs.
• Batch the small things, such as emails, messages and admin, into one or two fixed windows a day instead of letting them interrupt you all day.
• Protect a daily slot for follow-up and one for marketing. They always matter.

In the first months some things can’t wait: a team gets lost, a customer rings to book. Handle those as they come and batch everything else. If you want a book on this, Greg McKeown’s Essentialism comes close.

The day the phone becomes the thing that stops you working on the business, hand it to someone else. That is what my own first virtual assistants did for my cleaning company, and it is what the VA course teaches.

26Score your channels

Now set up the habit that stops you wasting money. For each channel, track what you spend and the bookings it brings, and divide one by the other.

Later, compare the value of the jobs as well, because a channel that brings bigger jobs can be worth a higher cost per booking. Do this properly once you have a month or two of data, then every quarter, and keep only the top one or two paid channels.

27Double down on your two best free channels

Do the same for your free channels. Work out where your bookings and referrals actually come from, and stop spreading yourself across two dozen platforms. Two free channels and two paid ones, worked every day, will do more than a little effort everywhere. The one exception is your Google Business Profile: whatever else you do, keep earning reviews there.

28Build local partnerships

Some of the best work comes through other people. Join a local networking group and get to know the people who are asked for recommendations every week: estate agents and realtors, property managers, short-term rental hosts, and the trades next to yours. Before I had even joined a BNI chapter, members were sending me cleaning referrals after a single visitor event.

Offer something useful in return. Every spring we ran joint offers with window cleaners and home organisers, two or three services on the same day. If your work is seasonal, build these partnerships before the busy season, not during it.

29Rest

Take the day. Look at what you have built in a month: a company with a website, a team, prices, marketing, a sales routine and its first reviews. That is more than most business courses ever ask of anyone.

30Open for business, and plan the next ninety days

Today is your first official day in business. From here, the work is the same every day: some marketing, quick answers, follow-up, care for the customers you already have, and a review request after every job.

Then plan the next ninety days. Pick one number from day 22 to improve and one task to hand over. And when things start to move, write and tell me how it is going. I mean that.

What comes next

At some point most new businesses hit a plateau: the marketing that used to work stops working, and it feels like the end of the road. It usually isn’t a marketing problem. It is the business outgrowing the way it was set up. I wrote about that stage in The Valley of Despair.

If you would like to do all of this with a guide, the Local Business MBA is the full version: five stages from your first customer to a company that runs without you, with the template vault and direct access to me.

“Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.” Bruce Lee said it about martial arts. It works for business plans too.