---
title: 'What to Focus On in the First Week of Starting an Online Business'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=O8wIhknoQpk'
video_id: 'O8wIhknoQpk'
date: 2026-07-31
duration_sec: 673
---

# What to Focus On in the First Week of Starting an Online Business

> Source: [What to Focus On in the First Week of Starting an Online Business](https://youtube.com/watch?v=O8wIhknoQpk)

## Summary

This video offers a practical, first-week roadmap for anyone starting an online business. Gillian Perkins shares the exact priorities she wishes she had followed across 10+ businesses, from defining your offer and pre-selling before building to setting up payments, organizing finances, and launching with a tight deadline.

### Key Points

- **First-week clarity** [00:02] — New business owners often have too many ideas. The key is figuring out the right first actions that will get the business growing and making money as soon as possible.
- **Define your offer** [00:28] — Before anything else, be crystal clear on exactly what you are selling and how it helps people. Spend day one answering those two questions.
- **Pre-sell before building** [01:08] — Don't create the product first. Validate demand by pre-selling: either Kickstarter-style with a launch date and early payments, or by delivering live (e.g., teaching a coaching program via Zoom or sending weekly recorded modules).
- **Set up a way to buy** [02:57] — Use modern shopping carts like Thrivecart or SamCart, connected to a payment processor like Stripe. This can be done in just a few hours and makes you ready to sell online quickly.
- **Organize your finances** [03:56] — Open a business bank account and set up bookkeeping. If you expect fewer than about 100 transactions a month, a spreadsheet works; otherwise use software like Wave or QuickBooks.
- **Set a launch date and market** [06:11] — Choose a launch date one to two weeks out. Hustle daily to tell people about your business, aim to reach at least five people per day, and start building basic infrastructure like a website, social media, and content.
- **Register your business** [08:58] — Handle the legal registration early in the first week. It costs a bit of money but is necessary to stay on the right side of the government.
- **Plan for 100K funnels** [09:37] — After the foundation is set, sales funnels are systematic ways to turn your business into serious monthly income. A free training at gillianperkins.com/breakdown walks through a real 100K funnel, including landing pages, emails, and webinars.

### Conclusion

The first week of an online business should be focused on clarity, validation, and simple systems—not perfection. By pre-selling, setting up payment and bookkeeping systems, and hustling toward a launch date, you create a strong foundation and gain the confidence and revenue needed to scale later.

## Transcript

are about to and now you have so many different ideas about what you need to be focusing on and you are wondering what do I need to do first what do I need to do now to get this thing to start growing to start making me money
as soon as possible well over the last 15 years or so I've started over 10 businesses so I have a lot of thoughts about what I wish I'd done first with some of those businesses and what I've found has been really important to do
really early on so that's what I'm going to be sharing with you today now if you're starting a business then I'm sure that you have some sort of idea what this business is about or what kind of business it is but it is surprising how
many people start businesses without knowing exactly what they are selling really really this may or may not be you maybe you've got a widget sitting here that you know you want to sell maybe you are crocheting stuffed animals you know
you want to sell those maybe you are a bookkeeper and you want to sell your bookkeeping services but if you are not crystal clear on exactly what it is that you are going to sell and how it helps people then that is your first task
spend day one answering those questions now once you figure out what you're going to sell then the obvious next thing to do would be to immediately get not what you want to do at
all because a lot of the time products take a while to create and if you are this is just an idea you have you don't NE necessarily know if anyone actually wants this product instead of creating your product what you want to do for
step two is actually figure out how you can pre-sell your product there are a bunch of different ways to do this the two most common ones are either straight similar to what you see people do on Kickstarter where basically you say I've
got this idea I'm planning to launch this product on this date sign up now this product on this date sign up now pay now and then I'll deliver it on this date another way you can do this is if it's something that you could deliver
live so for example let's say you're thinking about creating an online course or a coaching program well instead of creating all of the curriculum ahead of time pre-sell it have people sign up now and start delivering it immediately or
next week or whenever the start date for the program is but host it live you can either do this via zoom and actually teach the classes live or just each week you can record the next module of lessons and edit them and then send them
off to your students this actually is something that you can often sell for a higher price it has a higher perceived value people find it more valuable and they get more out of it when they are learning in the moment it's realtime
learning it's more fresh than a pre-recorded course and it's a smarter start making money a lot sooner rather than waiting until after you create the product so that's step two figure out how to pre-sell your product so now that
how you're going going to sell it now you need to actually set up the system you need to actually set up the system that enables people to buy it now it is a beautiful age that we live in where this is so easy even when I started my
first online business which was about 8 years ago or so it was so much harder to start press any key where's the any key we had to use WordPress with these clunky plugins that did not work well connect them to PayPal or hire a really
expensive developer today there are tons of easy and affordable options like Thrive cart and Sam card and so many more that are shopping carts where you can really easily set up a product connect it to a payment processor like
stripe and in a matter of just a few hours you can be ready to start selling a product online and that is step three set up a way for people to buy your product okay so now that you are set up so that people can give you money you
need to make sure that you have a system in place to keep that money organized as it is coming in or else you will very quickly make a mess with your brand new business and as your business grows it will just become a bigger and bigger
mess you want to make sure that things are organized from day one because then as stuff starts coming in and your business grows everything can just go into its place it can fit in like a puzzle piece and your business will stay
organized very easily so what you need to do next is you need to set up a way to organize your business finances and there are two main systems here that you will want to set up one is simply opening a business bank account that in
and of itself just means that all the money that comes into your business or goes out can come into that one container it's kind of like that really common home organization advice of like everything needs to have a place in your
house a home for everything and a thing for every home or something like that well you need the same thing in your business if you know where the thing is supposed to go it's easy to put it away if it doesn't have a home then it's
super hard to keep things organized so open a business bank account the other thing is some sort of simple business bookkeeping software solution now this can be a lot of different things it could be like QuickBooks or zero or wave
that's really cool or it could even be a spreadsheet it all really depends on how many transactions you are expecting to have per month with your new business if it's less than I would say about a 100 transactions a spreadsheet really is the
go but if it's going to be more than about a 100 transactions or so or you need to be invoicing people then you might want to go with an actual software like wave or QuickBooks or something like that I actually did a whole video
about how to do your business bookeeping in a really simple way so I will link that up in the corner there in that video I break down exactly how to use a bookkeeping if you want to go that route and there's even a link to get a
bookkeeping spreadsheet that I built for you for free in the description of that video up there so at this point your business is pretty much set up to start making money money going to make some money got a product you've set up that
product to sell and you are ready to start accepting money and so now you come to the point where you get to start marketing your business in short you need to tell people about your business about how you could help them and about
the product itself now I find that the best way to do this is to set a particular launch date a particular date that people can buy your beta product up until or they can pre- your product up until and then that really helps you to
that goal in place when I'm talking about this date I'm thinking something like one to two weeks in the future so you can really kind of get your hustle on tell a bunch of people and try to sell as many units of whatever it is
that your business is selling before that date I find that one of the most back from ever turning their business into a success is that they start way too slowly they give themselves tons of time
and slowly try to get the word out slowly try to get their first sales process if you can get yourself to hustle for even just the first few weeks you can get your first few customers
right away that gives you a ton of confidence that people actually want what you are selling and gives you social proof and it can get you testimonials and of course it gets those first dollars into your bank account
which can give you a budget to invest into your business into growing your business so set yourself a launch date and then do these things to tell people first of all make a list of a ton of different people you can tell they do
not need to be people who you necessarily think will want to buy this product it is totally okay and good to tell people about your business who you don't think will be interested because it will give you practice
talking about it and they very well might know someone who is interested word out is to make sure that you're telling people every day now this could look like you going down and reaching out to the next five people on your
Outreach list it could look like you posting on Instagram it could look like you writing an email to a whole bunch of people all at once but do something every day to get the word out to I would say at least five people and then the
word out is to start to kind of build the infrastructure that is going to give you tools to reach more people in the future so I'm talking about things like setting up a website for your business setting up social media platforms and
starting to create content those things are not going to immediately turn into new customers for your business but they lay that Foundation all right and then the last thing you'll want to make sure that you do in week one is register your
something that you are legally obligated to do so you will want to make sure that money in fact it's going to cost you a little bit of money but you got to do it to stay on the right side of the government so make sure you take care of
that in your first week as well so by going through the steps that I'm talking about in this video you are going to create an incredibly strong Foundation to grow your business on and that sets you up to be able to turn your business
into a great source of income but it's not actually going to get you there it's just letting the ground work so let's talk for a moment about how to cross that bridge and get your business to start earning you really good money each
and every month what I call these systems that do this is 100k funnels so a funnel or a sales funnel is just a process that makes your business money past about how sales funnels actually work and how to optimize your funnels to
crash course on how to build a funnel like this and you want to see one of these 100K funnels in real life then I want you to head to Gillian perkins.com breakdown what you're going to find there is a free training that I put
together where I walk you through one of my real 100K sales funnels and in that training I take you step by step through the entire funnel I show you the actual landing pages the actual emails I send the webinar that I use in the funnel so
that you can really understand how the whole thing works and you can build said this training is totally free and it's also really easy to watch because it's four short videos that you can skip around between just to focus on
whichever part of the funnel is most interesting or most important to you right now again you can sign up for that free training at Gillian perkins.com breakdown and now it's time for a little Choose Your Own Adventure if right now
business you want to start then watch this video right here to learn about five of the highest paying gigs that you can get started with right now online or start or maybe you even started it but you aren't sure what kind of content to
create to attract the right people to your business then watch this video right here about how to decide what content to create even if you don't have content to create even if you don't have an audience yet