What Does Your Agency Actually Do in Week 1 of a New Client Project? (Sharing Mine)

The first week of a new client project is where most agency chaos lives.

Not the work itself — the setup. The "where's the brief?", the "can you send us access to X?", the "wait, I thought we covered this in the call" messages that eat the first 3-5 days.

I spent a long time doing this differently every project. Then I wrote it down. Here's exactly what I do now in week 1:

My current week-1 process:

1. Within 2 hours of contract signing — send a short welcome email with next steps. Not a big document. Just: "signed ✓, kickoff call scheduled, please complete [intake form link] before we meet."

2. EOD Day 1 — create the shared project folder/workspace with their name, set up the project board with the first 4 milestones, send the folder link.

3. Day 2 morning — send the access request email (the real one, with a specific list of every tool/account they need to add us to). If you wait, this drags for 2 weeks.

4. Day 2 afternoon — run a missing-input check on their intake form responses. Flag anything vague or missing before the kickoff call, not during it.

5. 48h before kickoff — send the kickoff agenda. Short: what we'll cover, what decisions need to happen, what they should prepare.

6. Kickoff call — confirm scope, decision-maker contacts, reporting preferences, and emergency escalation path. (That last one saves you later.)

7. Within 24h post-kickoff — send a kickoff recap with decisions made and week-1 action items. This is the "we agreed to X, you own Y" document that prevents scope creep later.

8. End of week 1 — check access status, chase anything still missing, confirm deliverable dates haven't moved.

What I used to skip (and why it cost me):

• Emergency contact — who do I call if the client goes dark mid-project? Found out the hard way.
• Reporting preferences — how often, what format, what tool? Set this week 1 or you'll be asked "where's the update?" for the entire project.
• Scope baseline document — a simple 1-paragraph "here's what we're building" that both sides agree on. Takes 10 minutes, prevents 3-week debates.
• Access timeline — telling them "we need access by day 5 to stay on schedule." Without a deadline, it happens on day 12.

I turned this into a repeatable checklist and it cut my project setup time roughly in half.

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Now I'm curious about yours:

What does your agency or freelance practice actually do in week 1? Especially:

• Do you send the access request early or wait for the kickoff?
• How do you handle clients who go silent after signing?
• Is there a step you added after a painful experience that's now non-negotiable?

Drop your process in the comments — I'm working on improving mine and I learn more from real examples than any framework.

(If you want the checklist version of mine, it's at agencyonboardingos.com/checklist — free, no email required.)