A reply about email lists got me thinking about what I could actually offer!
This week I’ve had more back-and-forth on socials than I’m used to. Not customer signups or a sudden traffic jump. Just people replying, asking questions, and keeping a conversation going.
One discussion started with a founder talking about how he gets customers through SEO and email. I asked what gets people onto his email list—a tool, a guide, or something else.
His point was that the format depends on the audience. The thing you offer has to be genuinely useful. Then he asked whether I had any ideas.
That got me thinking about a simple job-pricing worksheet for small contractors. Something that helps them catch costs they might leave out of a quote.
I haven’t validated that idea, and I’m not rushing to make it. But it’s a more useful question than “What can I give away to collect emails?”
I’m building BubbaCode, a suite of apps for small businesses, and doing the marketing myself. This week hasn’t proved that the marketing is working yet. It has given me something specific to investigate instead of just another post to write.
Have you offered something free that people actually used—and what was it?
This is a great point. I think the shift from “what can I give away to collect emails?” to “what would actually be useful to my audience?” makes a huge difference.
The job-pricing worksheet sounds especially interesting because it solves a very specific problem rather than being just another generic lead magnet. I’d definitely be curious to see what you learn from validating it.
Thanks! The replies here have given me a better way to test it: use a real past job and see whether it catches anything their current process missed. Still an idea for now, but that gives me something more useful to check than whether people like the sound of it?
I’d be thrilled to be invited as a beta tester once you’re ready! Good luck, buddy, and happy building
I’d probably frame it less as a “freebie” and more as a before/after check on one real quote. Ask a contractor to take a job they already priced, run it through the worksheet, and mark anything they would add, remove, or price differently now.
If they catch one missed cost or change the margin, that’s a much stronger signal than an email signup. It also gives you the wording for the offer: “find the costs you’re leaving out of quotes” is clearer than “pricing worksheet.”
Having them mark what they’d add or remove would help me see what belongs in it, too. “Find the costs you’re leaving out” is much clearer than “pricing worksheet.” I’d just want to see it actually catch something before making that promise. Thanks for the suggestion!
The worksheet idea feels worth testing because it is close to the moment where money is actually decided.
I’d keep it very unpolished at first. Even a one-page Google Sheet or PDF with “materials, labour, travel, cleanup, disposal, contingency, margin” would tell you more than building a proper tool. Send it to 5 contractors and ask them to price one real past job again using it.
The signal I’d look for isn’t “nice worksheet.” It’s “I missed that cost last time” or “I’d use this before sending a quote.” That’s when the email-list offer starts looking like a product wedge, not just a lead magnet.
Using a past job is a good suggestion! They’d have the actual costs to compare against, rather than guessing whether the sheet might help. If it doesn’t catch anything their current process misses, that’s useful to know before spending time building it out.
Exactly. A past job makes the test much less theoretical.
I’d almost make the first version deliberately boring: one sheet, one real completed job, and one question at the end: “Would this have changed the quote before you sent it?” If the answer is no, you learned cheaply. If the answer is yes, the next question becomes where in their quoting workflow it should live.
That second part matters too, I reckon. A useful worksheet still fails if it arrives after the quote is already half-written.
The contractor worksheet is a concrete hypothesis. Have any contractors asked for something like this or actually tried a pricing tool before?
No one has asked me for this specific worksheet yet. It came out of a discussion about what might be useful, so I don’t want to mistake that for demand. I’d like to find out what contractors already use to price jobs and where they run into trouble before deciding whether a worksheet would help.
The existing-workflow question is the useful one to dig into. If you’re open to it, what’s the best email to reach you on?
"What can I give away to collect emails" is the question I would drop. "Did anyone use it" is the one I would keep.
I put a free plan up. Tonight the table says 39 people took it. Thirteen have used it at least once. The other 26 signed up and did not come back. A reply on socials is not the same as a person who opened the thing.
I would write down, for this week only, which reply named the worksheet and then used it, versus which reply only said they liked the idea.
Which of this week's social replies named a cost they had been leaving out of a quote?
None so far. The worksheet came up as a possibility during a conversation about useful email-list offers, not from a contractor naming a missed cost. I haven’t made it yet, so there’s no usage to measure. Asking contractors about their last quote would tell me more than asking whether they like the idea. Appreciate you sharing the signup versus usage numbers!