The first 30 days with an outsourced growth team

Before day 1: the account register

Before the team touches anything, make a list of every account your growth depends on. This is the single most valuable hour you'll spend.

For each line, the owner should be an email address at your company that isn't tied to one employee, such as an admin@ or office@ address. If a former employee, a relative or an agency is the only owner, mark it red. Recovering it becomes task one.

While you're at it, confirm your business name details are current in the Ontario Business Registry, since the name and address on your Google profile and website should match your registration.

Week 1: access and kickoff

Grant access the right way

Never share passwords. Add each team member, or the team's agency account, as a user with the access level they need: manager rather than owner on the Google profile, standard rather than admin on ads where possible. Write down what you granted, so removal is easy later.

Run a proper kickoff

A good kickoff takes 60 to 90 minutes and covers:

1. The goal. One sentence, with a number and a date where possible.
2. The economics. Average sale value, gross margin, and how many enquiries typically become customers.
3. The calendar. Busy and slow months, holidays, capacity limits.
4. The geography. Which Ontario cities or regions you want work from, ranked, and which you don't.
5. The customer. Who buys, who decides, what they ask on the first call.
6. History. What's been tried, by whom, and what happened.
7. Your side. Who makes decisions, and who answers enquiries.

If the team doesn't ask about margins and capacity, ask why not. A plan that brings in work you can't handle or can't profit from is a bad plan.

Week 2: tracking and the baseline

Nothing should change in week 2 except measurement. The team should:

• check that analytics records visits and the actions that matter (calls, texts, emails)
• set up call tracking or confirm the existing setup works
• start a lead log: every enquiry, with date, source, response time and outcome
• pull the last 12 months of whatever data exists

At the end of the week you should receive a first scorecard. It will show your baseline: where enquiries come from today, what they cost, how fast they're answered. Keep a copy. Every future result will be judged against it.

A note on consent records

If you plan to send follow-up emails or texts, check how consent is recorded. Canada's anti-spam law expects senders to be able to show consent, identify themselves and offer an unsubscribe option. As of October 2026, those are the basics; confirm details with your lawyer. Onboarding is the right time to fix how consent is captured, before any new campaign starts.

Week 3: quick fixes and the draft plan

With a baseline in hand, the team can make low-risk fixes that don't muddy the data: wrong hours on the Google profile, a broken phone link, an ads campaign spending in the wrong cities, a voicemail greeting that says nothing useful. Each fix should be logged with a date, so its effect can be seen.

Meanwhile, the growth lead drafts the 90-day plan. It should name:

• the goal and the numbers that track it
• each task, the role that owns it, and the week it ships
• what you need to provide, and when
• costs, including any media budget

Week 4: plan sign-off and rhythm

By the end of week 4:

• the account register is green, or every red line has a recovery task with a date
• the lead log is running and your staff are using it
• the plan is agreed in writing
• the weekly rhythm has started: a short Monday plan, work shipping midweek, the Friday scorecard

Our own clients follow this exact sequence in the first month of a growth audit or embedded growth team.

What to expect from your side

Onboarding moves at the speed of your replies. The single biggest cause of a slow first month is access requests sitting in an inbox. Nominate one person to handle them, give that person authority to add users, and ask the team for a single combined list of requests rather than a trickle.

Red flags in the first month

Pause and ask questions if you see any of these:

• The vendor asks for your passwords instead of user access.
• They create new accounts in their own name for your business.
• Big changes in week 1, before any baseline exists.
• No questions about margins, capacity or geography.
• Reports full of impressions and clicks but no enquiry counts.
• A different contact person every week, or nobody who owns the plan.
• Promises of fixed rankings or lead counts. Nobody controls those.

Your onboarding checklist

Print this and tick it off:

1. Account register complete, owners recorded.
2. Every account owned by a company address, or a recovery task set.
3. Access granted as users, not passwords, and recorded.
4. Kickoff held, covering goal, economics, calendar, geography, customer, history and your side.
5. Tracking verified for calls, texts and emails.
6. Lead log running.
7. Baseline scorecard received and saved.
8. Consent capture checked.
9. 90-day plan agreed in writing.
10. Weekly rhythm started.

When all ten are ticked, the onboarding worked, whoever you hired. If you'd like help getting there, see our services or get in touch.