Your first ninety days

Days 1 to 15: build the platform

This fortnight is setup, and it is where most plans die, so treat it as the project it is. Run the fit check from The work, and who it fits one more time with your household present. Confirm your garage situation: space for one car plus workbench and shelving, a zoning and home-occupation answer from your city or county office, and a covenant check if an HOA applies.

Register the business entity and open the separate bank account. Buy insurance: garagekeeper's and general liability, sized for the car values you will hold. Buy the core tools in the order A shop for five thousand dollars prescribed: compressor and welder first, hand tools and safety gear second, and stop there.

Pick the lane the market can find, one marque or era, and join its club with an actual membership, not a bookmark. Reserve your business name on the platforms where builds get documented, because the account is free and the photo record starts on day one.

Days 16 to 30: choose the project

This is the scoping fork with real money behind it, and the discipline of the first thirty minutes of Finding cars worth restoring applies without exception. Walk away candidates are free. The candidate that passes gets valued against the valuation tools, estimated line by line, and bought or taken in only when the napkin math survives contact with real quotes.

For the first project, choose your own car or a small client job, not a frame-off and not two flips at once. Fund it correctly: client money through a deposit and phase one, or your own bounded capital on a condition-ladder flip. Write the estimate, the payment schedule, and the tracking sheet before the car arrives, not after.

Days 31 to 60: do the work in daylight

Execute phase one with the camera running. Photograph everything, bag and tag the disassembly, track every part in the spreadsheet from Parts, the long tail, and log every hour against the estimate. Hit the first gate, issue the first milestone invoice or make the first go-or-revise decision on the flip, and send the weekly updates if a client is watching.

Show up once at a cruise night or club meeting as a participant, car talk only, cards later. The goal of this window is a visible, documented body of work, because that is the only asset a new shop can actually market.

Days 61 to 90: convert and decide

Finish phase one, or the flip's mechanical milestone, and convert: the documented project becomes the portfolio piece, the club acquaintance becomes the referral, the general shop that declined an old car sends it to you. Ask the two questions from First customers, the quotable sentence and the name of one friend with an old car, at the moment the work lands.

Then adjust the machine. Recalibrate your hourly estimates with sixty days of tracked reality. Review your rate against the local market with one finished job behind you. Book the next project against the dealer ceiling if it is a flip, or against calendar capacity if it is client work.

| Checkpoint | Pass looks like | Fail response | |---|---|---| | Day 15 | Entity, insurance, tools, lane chosen | Extend setup one week, no more | | Day 30 | One funded, well-scoped project | Keep sourcing; do not lower standards | | Day 60 | Phase one done, first invoice paid, hours tracked | Review pricing and scope honestly | | Day 90 | One documented outcome, next project booked | Consider the smaller-job lane or exit at a gate |

Ninety days in, you will know the three things that matter: whether the work fits your hands, whether your estimates survive reality, and whether the money moves at a pace your household can live with. Whatever the answers, you will have bought them cheaply.

The ramp beyond ninety days, the full-shop graduation, and where to keep learning are what the course closes with.