Newsletter
One email a month, written for the person who signs the cheques.
The kind of thing it arrives with
About once a month · roughly four minutes · one click to leave
Written for
Honestly
It is not for everybody, and that is the point.
Worth your address if
- You run the place and you sign the cheques.
- Your best system is a spreadsheet, a whiteboard, or your own memory.
- You have been quoted for software before and could not tell whether the number was fair.
- You would rather understand a decision than be sold the answer to it.
Give it a miss if
- You want tips on writing software. This is written for the person paying for it, not the person building it.
- You want something weekly. This is not that, and filling a schedule is how newsletters get bad.
- You are after discount codes and launch announcements. There are none of either.
A sample issue
This is a whole one, top to bottom.
The quote that looked $9,000 cheaper
- From
- solo stack
- Issue
- Example
- Read
- About 4 minutes
[ 01 ] What happened
Three prices for the same job
A home builder had three prices in for the same framing package. The lowest was $73,600. The next one up was $82,790. Nine thousand dollars is a lot of money to walk past, so the low one was about to get the work.
It was not the cheapest. It was the shortest. That bid had not priced the engineered beams, the crane day or the tall wall details, and the other two had. Put on the same rows and priced like for like, it came out $2,750 dearer than the quote it appeared to beat.
| As quoted | Priced like for like | |
|---|---|---|
| The bid that looked cheapest | 73,600.00 | 85,540.00 |
| The bid it appeared to beat | 82,790.00 | 82,790.00 |
The builder’s own money, not ours. Three lines were missing from the first quote. Priced back in at the cheapest competing figure, it moves $11,940.
Nobody was being dishonest. Three suppliers wrote three quotes the way they each always write them. What was missing was anything that put them side by side on the same rows.
[ 02 ] What to do about it
The version that costs you nothing
Take the longest quote you have received and use its line items as your checklist. Go down the other two and write “not quoted” beside anything that is not there. Then ring each supplier and ask one question: is this excluded, or are you assuming somebody else is doing it.
About half the time the answer moves the number by thousands. Save the sheet. Next tender it takes ten minutes instead of an afternoon.
[ 03 ] When not to build anything
A spreadsheet is the right answer more often than we would like
If you take three prices twice a year, a spreadsheet with the line items down the side does this job properly and costs you an hour to set up. Do that instead.
It stops being the right answer when you are doing this most weeks, when somebody other than you has to do it the same way every time, or when the quotes arrive as files nobody has time to retype. That is where a tool starts earning its keep, and not before.
[ 04 ] What got built
Shipped last month
- A board for a shop that takes special orders, which flags anything still unplaced two weeks after the deposit was taken.
- A site checklist that keeps working on a tablet with no reception, and sends itself when the signal comes back.
- A bring-your-spreadsheet-across screen that shows you the rows it does not trust before it writes a single one of them.
— solo stack
The shape of it
Four things, every time, in the same order.
One thing that actually happened
A real problem out of real work. The business is never named and every figure is changed, but the shape of it is exactly as it was.
The fix that costs you nothing
Before anything gets recommended, you get the version you can do on Monday with what you already own. Sometimes that is the whole email.
When not to build anything
If the right answer is a tool you can buy for forty dollars a month, the issue says so and names it. We would rather be trusted than booked.
What got built last month
Three or four lines, dated. Partly so you can see what is possible, and partly so you can see the place is alive.
No small print
How often it comes, and what happens to your address.
1
email a month, at most
Some months there is nothing worth sending, and then nothing gets sent. There is no schedule to fill and no sequence running quietly in the background.
4
minutes to read
One story, one thing to do about it, one honest recommendation, and a short list of what got built. It is written to be finished on a phone.
1
click to leave
The link sits at the top and the bottom of every issue. Your address is used to send this and nothing else. It is never sold, rented or passed to anybody.
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Before you type it in
- One address, used to send this newsletter and nothing else.
- No drip sequence, no funnel, no sales email dressed up as an issue.
- Unsubscribe from any issue in one click, with nothing to confirm.
- If you later ask us to delete your address, it goes and stays gone.
Rather not hand over an email address at all? That is a reasonable position. Have a look at what has been built instead.
Where it comes from
It is written out of work like this.
See all of it →Three quotes, priced like for like
Every special order, and what needs chasing
A site walk with no reception
Client names are kept private. Every screen uses invented information, never a real customer’s records.
Or skip the queue