Companion to "Your First Twelve Weeks," "The Calendar Is Your First Asset," and "Protect the Paycheck."
Twelve weeks, fifteen hours a week, one working business or one honest answer. If a gate fails, fix the gate or stop; do not push through on drama.
| Cycle start date | |
| Weekly build-hour budget (capped at 20) | hours |
| Phase | Work | Gate to pass |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1–2: setup | Business chosen; legal and account setup in one focused push (entity or sole-proprietor filing, business bank account, basic bookkeeping); calendar built; household conversation held; employment paperwork read | ☐ Calendar survived two weeks with at most one moved block, and the household knows the plan |
| Weeks 3–6: smallest sellable version | One offer a stranger could pay for this month, fixed scope, fixed price, weekend deliverable; simple storefront or one-page site; offer in plain sentences; minimal kit assembled; from about week four, telling people (network first, then the business course's channels) | ☐ Offer exists outside your head, and at least 20 real humans asked to buy. Asking is the gate. Revenue is not, yet |
| Weeks 7–10: serve | Deliver at a quality slightly above what you promised; log every hour honestly (customer, build, admin); ask every customer "what almost stopped you from hiring me?"; keep selling while serving (minimum two selling hours a week, out of the admin window) | ☐ At least three paying customers served, or enough prospect conversations to know exactly why not |
| Weeks 11–12: review | Pull the numbers: hours by type, revenue and profit from the business account, job-performance spot-check, household one-on-one (the promised show-and-tell); run the three fork tests as a first reading | ☐ Review done on numbers; one twelve-week cycle rarely passes the money test, and that is normal |
Honest expectation-setting for cycle one, so nobody quits their job over a fantasy: three to ten paying customers, a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars collected, and a clear read on whether demand exists. If your first cycle clears more than that, excellent, and if it clears less, the numbers, not the emotions, tell you whether cycle two is justified.
| Criterion | Tripped? |
|---|---|
| Cannot give the time: calendar collapsed twice in one cycle and the household contract broke. Stop, rest a month, restart smaller or not at all | ☐ Collapse 1: ☐ Collapse 2: |
| Cannot find the customer: forty or more real conversations, no paying customer, and no pattern in the no's pointing at a fixable offer | ☐ Conversations: |
| The job is slipping: performance warnings, missed reviews, visible damage. The business pauses until the paycheck is safe | ☐ Warning date: |
Killing an idea in twelve weeks is not losing. You risked fifteen hours a week and a few hundred dollars, and learned what the all-in founder paid a year of salary to learn.