Month one, week by week

The first month is mostly setup and first attempts, and knowing the shape in advance prevents the two failures that happen in it - doing everything at once, and doing nothing while preparing.

Week one: decisions, not production

Choose the subject, choose what you will recommend, and set up the automation. Roughly three hours, most of it thinking rather than clicking.

The subject decision is the one worth the time. Everything downstream is easier or harder depending on whether it is narrow enough, and narrowing costs nothing at this stage and a great deal later.

Week two: publish badly

Three or four pieces, made quickly, published without agonising. They will not be good and that is the correct outcome - nobody is watching yet, which makes this the cheapest possible time to be poor at it.

People who wait until they can produce something good spend week two producing nothing, and arrive at week six with the same skill they started with.

Week three: watch what gets found

Look at which pieces reached beyond your own followers. Not likes - reach to strangers, which is the only signal that matters this early.

Fifteen minutes, once. This is the analytics budget for the entire month and exceeding it is the most common way discretionary hours evaporate.

What the setup afternoon actually involves

Connecting an account, naming a trigger word, writing three lines of message, and testing it from a second account. Under two hours for most people and less once you have seen it done in a session.

People budget days for this and then postpone starting because they have not found the days. It is an afternoon, and the testing step is the only part worth being careful about.

Week four: more of whatever worked

Take the one or two subjects that travelled and make more in that direction. That is the whole method for the next stretch, and it stays the whole method for a surprisingly long time.

What should not happen in month one

• Building a website
• Designing a logo or a brand
• Buying tools beyond the free automation tier
• Reading the rest of the course before publishing anything

All four feel productive. All four are ways of not publishing, and the last one is the most expensive because it looks the most like diligence.

What week five looks like from inside

Like nothing has happened, because nothing visible has. Output is consistent, reach is small, and no external signal confirms any of it is working.

Knowing that this is the expected state rather than an early verdict is most of what carries people into month two, which is why it is worth reading before starting rather than during.

The month-one total

Around ten to twelve hours across four weeks. That is the entry cost in time, and it is lower than most people assume - the difficulty arrives in month three, not month one.

Getting past week six · The first ninety days · The full workload picture