Week 1 — The Foundation — Your First 90 Days Online (Part 1)

The first ninety days decide more than you think

Most new businesses spend their first ninety days in a fog — reacting, improvising, doing whatever feels urgent that day. And the ones that come out of those ninety days with momentum almost always did the same unglamorous foundational work in the same order, early, before they needed it. The ones that struggle usually skipped it and spent the next year paying for the gaps.

This is the launch of a new series — Your First 90 Days Online — a week-by-week, milestone-by-milestone guide to what a new small business actually needs to do online in its first three months. This first part is Week 1: the foundation. The legal and structural pieces that everything else gets built on. Get these right and the rest of the ninety days has something solid to stand on. Your first 90 days online starts here, with the boring-but-critical setup.

Why Week 1 is foundational, not optional

The temptation in week one is to jump straight to the exciting stuff — the logo, the website, the social media. But building those on top of missing legal and structural foundations is like framing a house before pouring the slab. The foundation work isn’t glamorous, but skipping it creates problems that compound for years.

The data on new business survival is sobering. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows roughly one in five new businesses fails in the first year, and the early structural and financial decisions are a meaningful part of why. Getting the foundation right in Week 1 doesn’t guarantee success, but getting it wrong creates drag that follows the business for years.

The Week 1 foundation checklist

Here’s what actually needs to happen in the first week, in order. None of it is exciting. All of it matters.

1. Form the legal entity (LLC)

For most small businesses, forming an LLC is the right first move. It separates your personal assets from the business, which matters the first time anything goes wrong. In Florida, you form an LLC through the state’s Division of Corporations. Florida’s Sunbiz portal handles registration directly — it’s straightforward and far cheaper than the services that upsell you to do it. We covered the broader version of this in how to start a service business in Broward under $1,000.

2. Get your EIN

The Employer Identification Number is your business’s tax ID — needed for banking, taxes, and hiring. It’s free directly from the IRS, takes about fifteen minutes online, and you should never pay a third party for it. The IRS issues EINs for free — anyone charging you for one is charging for something the government gives away.

3. Open a business bank account

Separate business banking from day one. Mixing personal and business money is a bookkeeping nightmare, a tax problem, and it undermines the legal separation your LLC was supposed to provide. Open the account as soon as you have the LLC and EIN. This one decision saves enormous pain at tax time.

4. Set up a professional business email

Not yourbusiness@gmail.com — a real email at your own domain (you@yourbusiness.com). It’s a small thing that signals legitimacy on every email you send. It usually comes bundled with your domain or a low-cost Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 plan. Set it up in Week 1 so every communication from day one looks professional.

5. Secure your domain name

Register your domain even before the website exists. Domains get taken, and the name you want may not wait. Lock it down in Week 1, set it to auto-renew, and you’ve reserved your spot. The website comes later in the ninety days, but the domain should be yours now.

6. Handle licensing and registration

Depending on your trade and location, you may need specific licenses or registrations — a local business tax receipt, a trade license, industry-specific permits. Broward and your municipality have requirements worth checking in Week 1, because operating without required licensing is a problem that surfaces at the worst time.

The mistakes new owners make in Week 1

From watching new businesses launch:

• Skipping the legal entity to “save money,” then operating personally exposed for months until something goes wrong.
• Paying third parties for the EIN and LLC filing that they could do themselves for a fraction of the cost.
• Mixing personal and business money because they didn’t open the business account early — creating a bookkeeping mess that takes months to untangle.
• Jumping to the logo and website before the foundation, then having to redo things when the legal structure catches up.
• Not securing the domain early and losing the name they wanted.

The pattern: rushing to the visible, exciting work and skipping the invisible foundation. The foundation is what the exciting work stands on.

What this series will cover

Your First 90 Days Online maps the whole arc:

• Week 1 — The foundation (this part)
• Weeks 2-3 — The first web presence
• Weeks 4-6 — Getting found
• Weeks 7-9 — The first 30 customers
• Weeks 10-11 — Building the brand
• Day 90 — Audit and next-quarter plan

Each part takes one stage of the first ninety days and lays out exactly what to do, in order. Built so a brand-new business owner can follow it week by week and come out of the first quarter with real momentum instead of a fog of reactive improvisation.

Final Thoughts

The first ninety days set the trajectory, and Week 1 sets the foundation everything else stands on. The legal entity, the EIN, the business account, the professional email, the domain, the licensing — none of it is exciting, all of it matters, and getting it right early prevents problems that otherwise compound for years.

If you’re launching, do the Week 1 foundation work first, in order, before the logo and the website. The exciting work is more fun, but it only holds up if there’s something solid underneath it. Next in the series: turning this foundation into your first real web presence.