One hour a week

The cycle in Part II has four kinds of work: watching what the seeds do, planting or deepening one of them, asking for reviews and keeping the photos current, and reading the businesses you compete with. Spread over a month, those four jobs fit into four hours, one for each week.

The month in four hours

• Week 1: watch. The spot checks from the same places, the performance report, and the front desk's count by service (chapter 8). This is the monthly reading, and it sets what the other three weeks are for.
• Week 2: plant or deepen. One seed gets one part of the planting work: a service on the profile, a section on the page, or a set of photos (chapter 7, chapter 9). Planting a seed takes about an afternoon in total, so a seed is finished over a few of these weeks rather than in one.
• Week 3: reviews and photos. Read the new reviews, reply to all of them, ask the customers from the past month, and add a few photos of current work (chapter 10).
• Week 4: competitors and the seed cards. Read the leaders for your seeds, check their ads, and update the notes on each card (chapter 11).

An hour is enough because the work is divided. The mistake most owners make is trying to do all four jobs in one sitting at the end of the month, which turns into a long afternoon and then none. Four short sessions are easier to keep than one long one, and each one has a clear end.

The schedule assumes the groundwork is done: the profile is claimed, the long-tail sheet exists, and five seeds are chosen. If that is not yet true, the first month's hours go to that work, and the four-week cycle begins when the seed cards are written.

Who does which part

The hour belongs to whoever owns the profile, usually the owner or a manager. Some of the work belongs to the front desk and happens in minutes across the week: asking each customer for a review, writing down how people ask for a service, and keeping the tally by service. Agree on those small jobs once, and the weekly hour is mostly reading and editing.

Write the four weeks on a calendar and keep the same order. The order matters less than the repetition. If a week is missed, do that job in the next week's hour and push the next job along, so each hour still has one job. Doing two jobs in one hour to catch up is how the schedule stops working.

A year of work, as an example

The calendar below is an example for a med spa and a jeweler, built from the seasonality in our data. It is not a recommendation for any real business, and the months will differ for other trades.

If you run another trade, the shape still applies. Find the peak month for each service, using the methods in chapter 12, and count back from the peak to the months when the page and the photos should be finished. Check the months against your own bookings before you use them.

• January. Lip filler and wedding bands peak this month. Prepare the March services: microneedling, HydraFacial, chemical peel and ear piercing. Botox peaks in February, so its page should already be finished.
• February. Botox and IV therapy peak. Finish the March pages and photos, and prepare coolsculpting for April.
• March. Microneedling, HydraFacial, chemical peel and ear piercing peak. Plant the summer services now: laser hair removal, cash for gold and jewelry repair all peak in July.
• April. Coolsculpting peaks. Prepare the June page for lab grown diamond engagement rings and finish the July pages.
• May. The June and July pages should be ready before the month turns. Lab grown diamond engagement rings peak in June, and wedding bands are at their lowest that month.
• June. Lab grown diamond engagement rings peak. Prepare custom engagement rings for August and check the July seeds before the busy month.
• July. Laser hair removal, cash for gold and jewelry repair peak. Custom engagement rings peak in August, so that page needs to be finished.
• August. Custom engagement rings peak. Start the December work: watch repair, custom name necklaces and ring engraving.
• September. Tattoo removal peaks. Review the long-tail list and the profile's categories for the quarter, and choose which seeds have a peak left this year.
• October. Finish the December pages. Decide next year's five seeds and write the cards, using this year's bookings by month.
• November. Ear piercing and watch repair are at their lowest. Make the final checks on the December pages before the gift season.
• December. Watch repair, custom name necklaces and ring engraving peak. Botox, laser hair removal, HydraFacial and coolsculpting are at their low, which makes December a good month for editing the pages of the spring services.

A month in practice

These are illustrations, not recommendations for any real business.

A med spa in Bay Ridge has its five seeds chosen. In week 1 it checks HydraFacial in Bay Ridge from three spots, reads the performance report and writes down the front desk's count. In week 2 it adds a section to the HydraFacial page about parking and how long the appointment takes. In week 3 it replies to the new reviews, asks the customers from that week, and adds photos of the treatment room. In week 4 it reads the first place for the seed, notices that the photos are all of the waiting room, and writes that on the seed card. The next month, the same four jobs come around in the same order.

A jeweler in Sheepshead Bay is working in November, with wedding bands in Sheepshead Bay as one seed. Week 1 is the monthly check. Week 2 finishes the wedding bands page and adds photos of finished bands before the January peak. Week 3 is reviews and photos. Week 4 is the competitor page for ring resizing and a look at whether anyone is advertising watch repair. The December hour is already spoken for by the gift-season services.

Once a quarter

Four times a year, give one of the weekly hours to the longer list. Re-read the long-tail sheet from chapter 5: add the words customers used this quarter, drop services you no longer do, and check the categories on the profile against the work (chapter 3). This is also the moment to replace a seed that had its fair run and did not move (chapter 9), and to check that the people with access to the profile still work with you.

Once a year

One hour a year goes to the calendar itself. Look at last year's bookings by month, put the peaks next to the seeds, and choose the five for the coming year so that the busy months are covered. Write the start dates on the cards, and note which services have a page that has not been touched in a year.

The argument, in a few lines

Local markets stay split because a shop can only serve the people near it. The window customers look through does not stay split: it shows a few places at a time, and an AI assistant often names one or two. The big searches are held by businesses that have been collecting for years, and the small searches are where a small business can be the obvious answer. That is why the method works five seeds at a time, one hour a week, with about three months before a seed is judged.

None of it is quick. A seed needs a season, a profile needs a year of ordinary trade written down, and the calendar comes back around. The four jobs repeat in the same order every month, which is what makes the hour possible.

ITL Research measures local markets week by week and publishes market profiles at itlresearch.com, for owners who want to see their own market measured.