Sample Business
Twelve phases from the first phone call to a working system. Your progress saves in this browser.
Twelve phases in order. Each says who does it, roughly how long it takes, and what finished looks like, because "done" is the part people disagree about.
Work top to bottom. Phases 3 and 5 can overlap. Nothing after phase 7 works properly if phase 2 was skipped.
The reasoning behind all of this is in 00-the-process.html.
Who: you · Time: 15 minutes, once · Done when: you could take a call right now
Write the permission sentence now rather than improvising it. Something like: "Before we get going, I record these calls so I can build your notes properly rather than scribbling while you talk. Is that alright with you?" Say it after the recording starts so the answer is captured.
Who: you and them · Time: whatever it takes · Done when: there is an audio file
The temptation is to capture. Resist it. The recording captures. Your job on this call is to notice, and you cannot notice while you are transcribing by hand.
If they use a word you do not know, ask what it means right then. That answer belongs in the glossary and it is the kind of thing that never comes up twice.
Who: you · Time: 30 minutes · Done when: the transcript is filed and skimmed once
Do the vocabulary before anything else. It is the fastest win in the entire build and it makes every later file sound like the business instead of like a consultant.
Who: you, alone · Time: 45 to 90 minutes · Done when: form 00 is as full as it can get without them
A gap list is a deliverable in its own right. "No Google Business Profile, 34 reviews across two sites, none answered, no posts since 2022" is more useful to a business owner than most paid audits, and you produced it in an hour before they told you anything.
Who: you and them · Time: 60 to 90 minutes · Done when: the script is worked through and recorded
Confirming beats asking. "You have thirty four reviews and I could not find a reply to any of them, is that deliberate?" opens a better conversation than "do you do anything with reviews?"
Who: you, then them · Time: 20 minutes to send, a week to come back · Done when: forms return
If a form comes back thin, that is information. Either the question was unclear or nobody owns that part of the business. Both are worth knowing and neither is fixed by asking again in the same words.
Who: you · Time: varies, usually a few hours · Done when: everything form 00 named is in hand
Never edit a source in place. Store the original and extract from it. The moment you have only an edited version you have lost the ability to check yourself.
Who: you · Time: the bulk of the work · Done when: no placeholder remains unreplaced
That last check takes ten seconds and catches the mistake that embarrasses you later. An unreplaced placeholder in a file an AI reads becomes an unreplaced placeholder in something a customer reads.
Who: you · Time: 30 minutes · Done when: it can read every file
Who: you · Time: 20 minutes · Done when: five insider questions get specific answers
This is the gate. Fluent and general is a failure, not a pass. An answer that could have been written about any business in the industry means the file behind it says nothing specific, and you now know exactly which one to go fix.
Who: you · Time: ongoing · Done when: the common tasks each have a starting point
Who: whoever owns it · Time: minutes per week · Done when: there is a named owner and a cadence
A knowledge base with no named owner is abandoned already. It just does not know it yet.
Record everything. Transcribe it fast. Research before you ask. Send each question to the person who actually knows. Move the answers into files organized by subject, not by where they came from. Then interrogate the result and fix what it cannot answer.