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Your first day

What happens after you sign up, what Cook asks you, and the first thing to type.

Nothing is sent and nothing is spent while you sign up. It is about fifteen minutes of answering questions, and you can leave and come back to it.

1. You answer questions about your business

The first screen is an interview, in four short parts. It is a form, not a test, and you can leave and come back.

  1. Your businessWhere you are starting from, who you serve, what you are aiming at. Research uses these answers to work out who your best customer is.
  2. Assets and proofYour website if you have one, and any accounts you already use. Skip anything you do not have.
  3. Your tasteWhat you would never put your name on, and whose marketing you like. This becomes the rule set for anything Cook writes.
  4. Kickoff callYou can book a call with a person who walks through your setup with you.

Answer in plain sentences. “I groom dogs at people’s houses in Sacramento and I want more repeat customers” is a better answer than anything shorter.

2. Your workspace opens

When the interview is done, Cook opens. What you see depends on where your business is. If you have not yet settled your offer — what you sell, said plainly: who it is for, what they get, what it costs — Cook opens on Research only, and the rest appears as you go. That is deliberate, and Why is everything locked? explains it.

There is a chat box. That is the main way you use Cook.

3. You type the first thing

Ask for one real job, in your own words. Any of these work as they are written:

I do pressure washing in Tampa — driveways, roofs and pool decks. Who should I be advertising to, and what should I charge?

Build me a page for a free roof inspection, for homeowners in Tulsa, and put it on the internet.

Someone filled in my form an hour ago. Text them for me and try to book them in.

You do not need to say which department. You do not need to know the word for what you want. Describe the outcome, the way you would to a new employee.

The box you type into. It is the first thing on the screen when Cook opens.
The box you type into. It is the first thing on the screen when Cook opens.

What comes back

Some jobs finish while you watch. Research that reads a whole market can take a few minutes, and it keeps going after you close the tab. Anything that would cost money or reach a customer comes back as a request for you to approve first — see How to approve work.

If it did not understand you

Say it again with more detail about your business, not with more technical words. Cook is better with “homeowners with older tile roofs who have already had a leak” than with a term you had to go and look up.

Prompting basics — how to phrase a job so you get back what you wanted.