Operate the first 90 days
Protect cash, delivery quality, and customer learning during the fragile early stage.
An Introduction to the SBA
From U.S. Small Business Administration. Watch here or open it on YouTube .
Revisit the SBA's categories of assistance and select support based on the constraint visible in your scorecard, such as accounting, contracting, or financing.What this lesson is really solving.
For the first 90 days, protect cash, delivery quality, and learning. Track a handful of leading and lagging measures weekly: outreach, conversations, offers, wins, revenue, direct cost, delivery time, defects, and available cash.
Understand the idea before touching the steps.
The first system is a loop: sell, deliver, collect evidence, improve, repeat.
Follow these steps in order.
Take the action in each step; then use the deliverable below to prove the lesson is finished.
- 1
Create a standard delivery checklist and define what ‘done’ means before work begins.
- 2
Review weekly cash in, cash out, outstanding invoices, taxes reserved, and capacity sold.
- 3
Ask customers what nearly stopped the purchase and what outcome mattered most after delivery.
- 4
Document repeatable work, raise prices only with evidence, and stop low-margin exceptions from becoming policy.
See the standard in context.
After four pilots, Priya learns that setup takes six hours rather than four. She raises the next price, creates an intake checklist, and removes an unvalued report. Her Friday scorecard shows cash collected—not merely invoiced—and the next capacity limit.
Inspect before you move on.
- Revenue is separated from cash received and profit.
- The scorecard includes delivery quality as well as sales.
- Each weekly review ends with one named experiment and decision date.
Your deliverable
A 90-day operating scorecard covering leads, sales, margin, delivery time, and customer outcomes.
Watch for this
Growing revenue while ignoring cash timing, fulfillment capacity, and unpaid tax obligations.
Prove it—don’t just recognize it.
You can identify the one constraint that most limits the next month of healthy growth.
Quick knowledge check
Answer from the lesson—not from confidence alone. Score at least 2 of 3 to unlock completion.
This curriculum-aligned check is scored automatically and stored with your account when signed in. It is an objective learning signal, but it has not yet been independently validated as a standardized assessment.
Tools, templates, and references
Pass the knowledge check above first.
Completion unlocks after a score of 2 out of 3. Then confirm that you produced the lesson deliverable.
Go to the knowledge check