Week 0: Before we start

Week 0 is the week before kickoff. We do the heavy lifting to get set up and learn your business, so day one starts with momentum instead of a blank page. Your part is small, and the sooner you handle it, the more we can do before we meet.

This is the detailed version of the "before we start" phase in the Growth Accelerator.

What we get done before day one

We use this week to set everything up and do our homework. By the time we sit down together, we already know your business. That breaks into five things:

• Stand up your workspace. We set up GrowthOS and get your site, data, and research ingested in one place.
• Connect your data and turn on tracking. Google Analytics and Search Console, plus your AI-visibility tracking, powered by CheckThat.
• Crawl and audit your site. A full crawl of every page and a complete website and SEO audit.
• Research your market. We dig into your space, your competitors, and your company, and map the whole picture out.
• Open our shared Slack and book kickoff. We set up a shared Slack channel so we're easy to reach from day one, and we get the kickoff on the calendar.

We do a first pass on your context so it reads accurate and directionally right, and we warm the workspace up so it's ready to work on day one. We hold off on launching a wave of opportunities until kickoff, when your input sharpens the aim. By then we have a real read on where you stand and a first draft of where your strategy should start.

What we need from you

Two small things, and earlier is better:

• Make sure Google Analytics and Search Console are set up. If they're already running, we just need access. If they're not, this is the week to turn them on, since they only start collecting once they're live.
• Send us anything worth knowing. Decks, brand guidelines, past research, whatever shapes how you see your market. The sooner we have it, the more we can read and form a point of view before kickoff. You can keep sending things afterward too, but anything up front gives us a head start.

What you walk into kickoff with

A team that already knows your space, your data flowing, and a starting strategy to react to. None of the cold-open, getting-to-know-you stretch that usually eats week one. Next is Week 1: kickoff, where we pressure-test what we found against what only your team knows.