planning-rev2 net-new: session docs only
Drop main pollution. Keep BUSINESS_PLAN, glossary, Core 3 map, SOURCES, salon/bakery packs from 2026-09-15 session.
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# geolocal.io — Business Plan (working draft)
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**Branch:** `planning-rev2`
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**Status:** In progress — conversation checkpoint, not final
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**Purpose:** One durable place for the clean plan. Existing docs on `main` are raw material; this file is what we iterate.
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**How we work this file**
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- Checkpoint here after every few solid decisions (or when a phrase must not be lost).
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- Prefer revising this over spawning parallel strategy docs.
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- Mark unknowns as open questions. Do not invent market numbers here.
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- Nothing is locked until Ty says so. Checkpoint working directions; revise freely as the conversation matures.
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- Scribe the **essence** of agreed direction. Do not promote open-discussion packaging/options into POR until they stick.
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---
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## 1. North star (wording still open)
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**Intent (stable):** Enable local businesses to be discovered and recommended by AI assistants.
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Still wordsmithing the exact sentence. The job does not change while the phrasing does.
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---
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## 2. What the company is
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Infrastructure — not a consumer destination.
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- Host structured business truth so AI assistants can discover, understand, and recommend local businesses (services and local retail with real-world presence).
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- Give the business a simple way to point at that truth (no servers for them to run).
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- Orchestrate booking / payment / related partners where needed; do not rebuild Calendly or Shopify.
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- Stay invisible to end consumers; win by being useful to agents and trustworthy to owners.
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**Not:** another Yelp/Google for human browsing attention.
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---
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## 3. Who we serve
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**Primary customer:** the business owner.
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By extension:
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- Someone in their organization acting for them
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- A partner they already trust (agency, SEO, chamber, tourism board)
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Partners are a **path to the owner**, not a different product.
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---
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## 4. How demand shows up (two moments)
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1. **Presence for other AIs** — When a consumer’s assistant asks for a local plumber / salon / store, structured geolocal data can be consulted and acted on.
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2. **Owner (or their AI) asks for help** — Emerging path: “How do we help our business be discovered by AI?” Geolocal should invest in scenarios where the owner’s own AI can diagnose and set that up — not only human sales through agencies.
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Same north star; different moments of truth.
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---
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## 5. Wedge and flywheel (direction agreed)
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**Preferred wedge:** a free AI-visibility checkup (SSP audit).
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Why:
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- Shows immediate value / need
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- Builds critical mass
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- Small free actions amplify adoption
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**Long-term reputation bet:** become so useful and dense that AI systems default to checking geolocal for local-class queries — analogous to how they lean on Yelp or Foursquare today.
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**Strategic read (not pricing gimmick):** free usefulness → coverage → agent trust → more local queries resolved via geolocal → more owners want in → denser graph.
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### Phase 1 owner conversation (working direction — not locked)
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Speak **outcomes**, not plumbing. Example: “most recommended bakery on Whidbey Island for muffins.” Do not lead with MCP, endpoints, or `llms.txt`.
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Phase 1 *fixes* usually look like classic local visibility hygiene (2017-style) before deeper 2027 agent work:
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- NAP (Name, Address, Phone) consistency
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- Hours alignment across platforms
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- Maps / GBP / Yelp (and similar) listing hygiene
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**Working nuance (2026-09-15):** foundation-first for *fixes*, not for *measurement*. The free audit’s scoreboard is AI recommendability in plain English (“would an assistant recommend you for this job in this place — and why not?”), not “GBP is 67% complete.” If 2017 hygiene is already solid, skip fake Google-fix busywork and go straight to agent gaps. Differentiation vs commodity local SEO lives in that scoreboard.
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### Owner-facing scorecard (working direction — not locked)
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POR work: an intuitive scorecard a business owner understands. Top-level outcomes (wording TBD), not SEO jargon:
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1. **AI knows you exist** — findable identity / NAP / listings
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2. **AI knows what you do** — services, specialties, hours — enough to answer “what is this place?”
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3. **AI would recommend you** — enough trust + fit that an assistant would pick you for a real job in a place
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Keep to **three top-line outcomes**, each with plain “why not yet” underneath — not a 40-row SEO audit. Dual scoreboard still applies: hygiene work feeds rungs 1–2; recommendability is the differentiation line.
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**Agreed essence so far:** scorecard is owner-plain (exist / know what you do / would recommend), not a long SEO audit. How we *measure* “would recommend” (heuristics vs live assistant checks, free vs paid depth) is still open discussion — do not treat packaging ideas as POR until Ty says they stick.
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### Discovery foundation + AI readiness (working direction — essence)
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**Two tiers, one product story** (owner language):
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1. **Discovery foundation** — Core listings + NAP/hours/category/contact consistency (internal: “2017”)
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2. **AI readiness** — known-for queries, exist / know what you do / would recommend, structured presence when ready (internal: “2027”)
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Measure both early; *fix* foundation first when broken.
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Owner vocab (use these terms going forward):
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- **Core listings** — main places customers (and AI) look the business up
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- **The Core 3** — GBP, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places
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Foundation bar (brick-and-mortar local) — not reviews, photo perfection, or ranking #1:
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1. One clear identity — correct NAP everywhere that matters; no competing duplicates
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2. Claimed Core 3 listings (genre/market adds are separate, not universal min-bar)
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3. Accurate hours (incl. obvious holiday/seasonal where relevant)
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4. Right category + short plain “what you do”
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5. Reachable — working phone and/or website/contact path
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6. Not contradictory — site vs Core 3 don’t disagree on name/place/hours
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Checked *on* the Core 3 (and the site). Prerequisite for 2027 work **when flaws exist**; skip invented hygiene if already clean.
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**Foundation sync (P1)** across Core 3: NAP + primary category + hours + website URL + short description + service-area/address mode. Phone lives in NAP but must match. P2 (attributes, photos, menus, booking, secondary categories) is genre/known-for gated — not universal min-bar.
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### Surfacing work to owners (working direction — essence)
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**Later proof layer (working idea, not free first-hour):** platform KPI telemetry (e.g. Apple Insights — searches, place card views, Actions). Owner language: found you → tapped directions/call. Pair with GBP performance later. Show only what platforms return — never invent numbers. Fit = ongoing AI readiness / retention, not the initial free scorecard.
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Three layers (not one giant schema): **A** universal Discovery foundation → **B** thin genre pack → **C** known-for overlay. Scorecard first, then 3–7 actions max by impact.
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Deep example packs: [`docs/product/genre-packs/salon.md`](../product/genre-packs/salon.md), [`docs/product/genre-packs/bakery.md`](../product/genre-packs/bakery.md). Index: [`docs/product/genre-packs.md`](../product/genre-packs.md).
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### Validation gate (working direction — essence)
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Anyone using GeoLocal tools must pass a **business-representation check** first (e.g. prove control of a contact channel tied to that business). Mechanism details and free/silver/gold allotments stay open until COGS is real — only the gate itself is directional essence so far.
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### Free path after checkup (working direction — not locked)
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Free includes:
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1. Ranked DIY punch list the technical owner can execute (e.g. align hours across providers)
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2. Mint of a **minimal owned geolocal record** (name, place, category, plus plain-English AI recommendability) — densify does **not** wait for paid
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Soft upsell in-product: “comfortable DIY, or want GeoLocal to help?”
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### Paid “help” vs product (working direction — not locked)
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- **Paid listing cleanup** (Maps / hours / NAP fixes done for the owner) = partner / agency **fulfillment**, not the product.
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- **Product** = the owned geolocal record + ongoing AI-readiness score (and later agent-facing presence).
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Do not document GeoLocal as a local SEO shop with extra steps.
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---
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## 6. Business plan audience (still open)
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Clarify what this document must optimize for first:
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- Internal clarity (founders / operators)
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- Investors
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- Partners / channels
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Can serve more than one later; pick the primary reader for v1 structure.
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---
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## 7. Source material (do not duplicate blindly)
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Treat as inputs, not competing sources of truth while this draft is live:
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- `NORTH_STAR.md`
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- `docs/strategy/CANONICAL_STRATEGY.md`
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- `docs/gtm/`, `docs/investors/`, `docs/product/`
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- `docs/archive/` — historical only
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If something here conflicts with `CANONICAL_STRATEGY.md`, resolve on purpose in a later pass — do not silently fork forever.
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---
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## 8. Checkpoint log
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| When | What landed |
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| :--- | :--- |
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| 2026-09-15 | North star intent; owner-first buyer; partners as extension; agent-mediated “get discovered” path; free checkup wedge; reputation / critical-mass flywheel; open question on free durable win vs diagnosis-only |
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| 2026-09-15 | Working direction (not locked): phase 1 = outcome language + local-hygiene foundation; free may include DIY punch list + minimal owned record; paid listing-fix as partner/agency fulfillment; product = record + AI-readiness score; porbot = repo scribe, Desk = conversation |
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| 2026-09-15 | Process: nothing locked yet — distill POR as we build; porbot scribes so key insights are not lost |
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| 2026-09-15 | Working nuance: 2017 hygiene usually first *fix* work; dual scoreboard from day one (hygiene + AI recommendability); skip forced hygiene phase if foundation already solid |
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| 2026-09-15 | Working direction: owner scorecard ladder — knows you exist / knows what you do / would recommend you (wording TBD); open whether v1 recommend = heuristic vs live assistant pings |
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| 2026-09-15 | Process note: scribe essence of agreed direction only — exploratory packaging stays out of POR until it sticks |
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| 2026-09-15 | Essence: validation gate before tool use (prove you represent the business); plan tier numbers still open |
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| 2026-09-15 | Essence: owner vocab Core listings / Core 3; 2017 foundation six-point bar checked on Core 3 + site |
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| 2026-09-15 | Essence: two tiers — Discovery foundation → AI readiness (owner names); measure both early, fix foundation first when broken |
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| 2026-09-15 | Essence: P1 foundation sync = NAP + category + hours + website + description + service-area mode; P2 genre/known-for gated |
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| 2026-09-15 | Essence: Layer A/B/C surfacing; deep pack shells for salon + bakery under docs/product/genre-packs/ |
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| 2026-09-15 | Salon + bakery packs: parent/child × Core 3 example field matrices checked in |
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| 2026-09-15 | Pack matrices: added Why it matters + sourced vs placeholder honesty after Desk Core 3 source check |
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| 2026-09-15 | Replaced guessed genre matrices with sourced Core 3 field map (core3-field-map.md); salon/bakery = application notes only |
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| 2026-09-15 | Apple Core 3 column = UI labels until Business Connect Location API v1.3 field list dumped; no invented Apple schema names |
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| 2026-09-15 | Apple column filled from Configure location attributes guide; still BLOCKED on API camelCase names + per-genre attribute enums |
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| 2026-09-15 | Punted Apple partner API schema rabbit hole; noted Insights-style KPIs as later proof/retention (SOURCES.md); still BLOCKED on per-genre attribute enums |
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---
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## Next conversation topics
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1. Wordsmith the three scorecard rungs; define plain “why not yet” evidence under each
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2. How to measure “would recommend” honestly (still open)
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3. Primary reader for v1 of this plan (internal / investors / partners)
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4. Offer / packaging detail (what free record includes vs what paid unlocks beyond fulfillment) — no invented numbers
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5. 90-day proof: what “reputable enough that AI checks us” requires in coverage and quality
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6. Owner MCP vs GeoLocal.io chat: same journey or separate surfaces (later layer; keep out of phase-1 owner talk)
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# strategy
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Start with `BUSINESS_PLAN.md`.
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