The 90-Day Digital Foundation Checklist for a New DMV Business
Most new business owners get the order wrong, and the order is most of the game. They spend three weeks on a logo before they have a way for a customer to reach them, or they buy a full software stack before they have had a single conversation.
This is the sequence we would run for a new DMV business, in ninety days. Nothing here is optional and nothing here is out of order. Print it and cross things off.
Days 1 to 14: be reachable and be real
Claim the domain. Even if you are not building the site yet. Get the .com if you can, and something short enough to say on the phone.
Set up a business email on that domain. Not a free consumer address. This is one of the fastest credibility signals there is, and one of the cheapest.
Get a business phone number. Separate from your personal cell, with texting, voicemail, and a call log. This is not reversible once you start handing out your cell, so do it now.
Create and fully complete your Google Business Profile. Correct primary category, hours, service area, phone, and at least six photos. This is the single highest-return hour in the first two weeks, because it is where local customers will actually find you.
Claim your name on the two social platforms your customers use. Two. Not six. You do not need to post yet, you need to own the handle.
Set up a password manager. Before you create thirty accounts, not after.
Days 15 to 30: be able to take money and remember people
Payment processing. Card payments, deposits, and a receipt that looks like a business sent it. Do not run year one through personal payment apps.
Accounting, from transaction one. Connect the business bank account. Reconstructing nine months of receipts in April is a preventable form of suffering.
One place where every lead lands. A spreadsheet is fine at this stage. Name, contact, what they wanted, date, next step. The next step column is the one that matters.
A one-page website, minimum. What you do, who for, where, and how to reach you. It does not have to be beautiful. It has to exist and load fast.
Start collecting emails. Every customer, every quote, every enquiry. You do not need to send anything yet. Building a list retroactively is close to impossible.
Days 31 to 60: stop the leaks
Cover the calls you miss. Either a live answering service or, at minimum, a voicemail greeting that is actually useful and a rule that you return every call within a set window.
Cover the website visitors who will not call. A chat or text widget catches the 9 p.m. browser who has one question.
Turn on online booking if your business books time. The back-and-forth to find a slot is where a surprising number of jobs quietly die.
Ask for your first five reviews. Immediately, from your first five customers, while the work is fresh. Getting to five changes how a stranger reads your profile more than getting from twenty to twenty-five will.
Write down your three most-asked questions and the answers. Put them on the site. This becomes your FAQ, your chat script, and half your social content.
Set up automatic backups for the website and for your business files. Then verify one restores.
Days 61 to 90: build the memory and the rhythm
Move the lead list into a real CRM, but only if you have started forgetting people or a second person needs to see the history. That is the trigger, not the calendar.
Build the three-email welcome sequence. Once. It then runs forever.
Build the quote follow-up sequence. Day 3, day 7, day 14, day 45. This is the highest-value thing on the whole list and it is the one most often skipped.
Add one real service page for each thing you sell. Not a list. A page each, because that is how people search.
Put a weekly maintenance block on the calendar. Fifteen minutes, same time every week: check reviews, post once to your Google Business Profile, follow up with anyone who went quiet, glance at your numbers.
Set a ninety-day review with yourself. What produced customers, what did not, what are you paying for that you never use.
What is deliberately not on this list
Paid ads. A logo redesign. A brand video. An app. A presence on six social platforms. Marketing automation. A podcast.
None of these are bad. All of them are month-six conversations, and all of them are more fun than the list above, which is exactly why new owners do them first.
The honest summary
A new business needs four things online: to be findable, to be reachable, to be trustworthy, and to not forget anyone. Every item above serves one of those four. If you are ever unsure whether something belongs in your first ninety days, ask which of the four it serves. If the answer is none of them, it can wait.
Systems before tools before AI. Get the foundation right and everything you build on top of it works better.
Want this built for you instead of by you? Let’s build your digital foundation. See how we do it at allhypedigital.com/services, or get a free Hype Report if you already started and want to know what you missed. One conversation, zero fluff, all hype.