The romantic version of starting out is a logo and a truck wrap. The version that survives is smaller. You can do one service well, you are legal to do it, a stranger can reach you, and you have a way to remember who called. Everything else can wait until someone has paid you twice.
This is not legal, tax, or insurance advice. Rules change by state and by trade. The point of the first week is to find the real requirements and meet them, not to collect motivational quotes about entrepreneurship.
Pick a service you can finish
"Home services" is not a business. Drain cleaning, weekly mowing, recurring house cleaning, no-cool diagnosis, panel changes, or garage-door springs might be. Choose the job you have already done under someone else's invoice, the one you can price without guessing and finish with the tools you own or can rent this month. Add a second service when the first one has a rhythm. Owners who launch with six trades and a wrapped van usually spend the first quarter apologizing.
Write down what you will not do. Gas lines, electrical panels, roofs, mold, and structural cracks are common ways a handy person creates a claim. Referring them is a sign you intend to be in business next year. Put that limit on the page you eventually publish. It filters the calls.
Get legal before you get loud
Look up the license for your trade in your state and your city. Plumbing, electrical, and HVAC are licensed in most places. Landscaping, cleaning, and handyman work may still need a local registration, a sales tax permit, or a contractor license past a dollar threshold. Call the board or the county clerk and write down what they say. Do not rely on a Facebook argument about who "really" needs a license.
Insurance is the other non-optional. General liability at a minimum, and workers' comp if anyone is on the job with you, even a friend you are "just helping." A realtor or a property manager will ask for a certificate before a homeowner does. Get the policy that matches the work, and keep the certificate where you can send it the same day.
Separate the money. A business bank account and a simple bookkeeping habit beat a complicated stack. Save for taxes as you go. The first good month is how people create a tax problem they did not expect.
Name the company something you can say on the phone and spell in a text. Check that the domain and the social handle are not already a different trade in your city. You do not need the domain connected on day one. You need the name to be consistent on the invoice, the voicemail, and the page.
Be reachable before you buy attention
A phone that you answer, a short service area, and a page that states the service and the city will outperform a month of boosted posts. The page can be simple. Say what you do, where you drive, how to reach you, and what the customer should tell you so you can decide whether to come. The trade and city guides are a checklist for that page if you do not want to stare at a blank document. Starting the free site is the same information turned into a public URL and a list for the people who write back.
Do not buy shared leads in week one unless you have already decided the toll is your only way to meet strangers and you can afford to lose the first ten. It is an expensive way to discover your price. Easier sources exist. The crew you just left, if you left on good terms. Neighbors. One property manager. The supply house. A specific offer to those people, with a link, is enough pipeline to learn whether your price and your speed are real.
Price the visit, then the job
Publish enough that a customer knows you are not hiding. That can be a trip fee, a range for a common job, or a sentence that says you quote after you see it and you do not dispatch for free estimates across the metro. What you cannot do is improvise a number in the driveway because you are afraid of silence. Write three prices before you need them. The common small job, the common half-day, and the job you would rather refer. Adjust them after ten real invoices, not after one nervous conversation.
Show up when you said you would. Send a short note after the job that says what you did. Ask for a review only when the work was clean, and ask them to mention the neighborhood and the task. Those reviews are the unpaid ads. The truck magnet can wait until the phone has rung without one.
The desk can be a list
You will forget a callback if it lives in your texts. A list with a name, a number, what they asked, and a status is the whole system until you have an office. Mark them new, contacted, quoted, won, or lost. Look at it every morning before you drive. That habit is worth more than a logo. The logo can be your name in a plain typeface until a customer complains they cannot find you, which they will not, if the name and the phone never change.