Small Business Launch Systems Checklist

1. Offer and audience

• We can identify the customer, problem, offer, scope, exclusions, and next step in plain language.
• The buyer, user, influencer, and approver are identified when they are different people.
• Pricing logic, delivery cost, capacity, cash timing, and minimum viable offer have been reviewed.
• The offer is understandable without the founder personally explaining every detail.
• Claims, proof, assumptions, and outcomes we cannot promise are documented.

2. Business foundation

• Entity, trade name, tax, licensing, permit, insurance, banking, and bookkeeping questions have owners.
• Qualified legal, tax, insurance, or licensing advisers are used where the decision requires them.
• Customer agreement, scope, cancellation, refund, privacy, and intellectual-property terms match the real offer.
• Official address, registered-agent, renewal, and filing deadlines are recorded.
• Business and personal money, accounts, and records are appropriately separated.

3. Digital identity and ownership

• The business controls the domain registrar, DNS, hosting, and renewal payment method.
• Professional email and role addresses are configured on the business domain.
• Every critical account has a primary owner, backup owner, MFA, and client-controlled recovery path.
• Passwords and recovery codes are stored in an approved password manager, not email or chat.
• An account register lists purpose, owner, admin roles, cost, renewal, data held, and exit procedure.

4. Website and customer path

• The homepage tells the right visitor what the business does and what to do next.
• Distinct services, products, locations, audiences, or intents have appropriate destination pages.
• Mobile, accessibility, speed, search metadata, schema, sitemap, robots, redirects, and sharing previews are tested.
• Forms, calls, chat, booking, quotes, purchases, and fallback paths are tested end to end.
• Privacy, terms, refund/cancellation, and required disclosures reflect actual operations.

5. Local and social presence

• Google Business Profile eligibility is documented before a profile is created or claimed.
• Business name, contact information, hours, service area, categories, and descriptions are consistent.
• Only platforms the customer uses and the team can maintain are selected.
• Profile names, handles, bios, images, banners, links, admins, and recovery methods are documented.
• Comments, messages, complaints, reviews, and leads have response and escalation rules.

6. Lead capture and permissioned audience

• Every lead is stored durably before notification email or automation is attempted.
• Source, campaign, landing page, offer, consent, form version, and timestamp are recorded.
• Marketing permission is optional and separate from necessary service communication.
• Unsubscribe, suppression, bounce, complaint, duplicate, retention, and deletion states are controlled.
• No purchased, scraped, or fabricated audience is treated as an owned email list.

7. Follow-up and appointments

• Every active inquiry has a named owner, due time, next action, and visible status.
• Acknowledgement, qualification, follow-up, human approval, stop, and escalation rules are documented.
• Bookable appointment types, availability, buffers, time zones, capacity, and qualification are configured.
• Confirmations, reminders, rescheduling, cancellations, no-shows, and meeting preparation are handled.
• Replies, opt-outs, purchases, bookings, complaints, and exceptions stop inappropriate automation.

8. Sales, payment, and onboarding

• Fit, discovery, qualification, proposal, scope, exclusions, dependencies, and acceptance criteria agree.
• Signature, deposit, invoice, receipt, failed payment, refund, cancellation, and dispute paths are defined.
• No ordinary form, email, or spreadsheet collects payment-card data.
• Welcome, kickoff, access, assets, milestones, approvals, status, launch, training, and handoff have owners.
• Out-of-scope work enters a written change-order process before work begins.

9. Measurement and management

• A baseline exists for traffic, inquiries, response, bookings, shows, opportunities, customers, and revenue attribution.
• Search Console and privacy-appropriate web analytics are client-controlled and tested.
• UTM, event, source, stage, and conversion naming are documented.
• A weekly operating view shows leads without owners, overdue actions, failures, no-shows, and pipeline movement.
• A monthly decision review identifies what to improve, stop, expand, or validate next.

10. Security, continuity, and handoff

• Least privilege, MFA, secure devices, updates, backups, restoration, monitoring, and incident response are defined.
• Data collected, purpose, sharing, retention, deletion, vendors, and access are documented.
• The business can recover from a lost device, locked account, failed vendor, outage, or owner absence.
• Source files, domains, code, data, brand assets, contracts, licenses, and recurring costs can be transferred.
• The completed system can be operated by someone other than the person who built it.