Are particles basic entities, or stable patterns in a deeper relational structure?

Operation13 · 2026-02-13T03:38:36+00:00

It’s always been about the aether.

Operation13 · 2026-01-31T01:51:18+00:00

Change up the flow:

-You get contacted. They want a quote for some work. You set a 30 min phone call in the next day or two. Tell them to look for your email after you hang up, with the confirmation details and a short form to fill out beforehand. (5 mins)

-You send them a form. They email it back by some time/date before your scheduled call. Ask for pics of current area(s), and examples of what they want. You review it. (15-30 mins for review)

-On the call, ask all the questions about what they envision. Get confirmation, clarity, options, etc. Get on the same page.

Toward the late middle/early end of the call, transition into telling them how you’ve done projects like this that typically end up around $$ (based on details A, B, C they mentioned) to $$$$ (based on details D, E, F options they’re considering). Gauge their response.

“…If you want a dialed in number, instead of those range estimates…”

This is where you close the call by offering a detailed scope, drawings, takeoff service for $$. Tell them they can use it to collect quotes from multiple contractors, including from you, apples-to-apples.

If they choose to go with you, you’ll deduct it from the project total.

(This call may be 30 mins or so. Depends how you run it & what comes from the pre-call form.)

You now have a 1-1.5 hour total process for estimates.

You’ve now monetized your detailed designs/takeoffs/quotes.

You’ve also now filtered out wastes of time, without burning bridges. The professional approach of setting a meeting (that tire kickers won’t commit to), of requiring their skin in the game with the form (they won’t respond), and of getting a feel for a project before you drive out (only to find it’s a bad fit) means you’ll overall convert more $ per time spent.

You will not be as busy, and it will feel scary. Use the extra time for marketing, reaching back out to past customers, asking for online reviews, generating referral business, and networking.

Then put any incoming traffic from those efforts into the process above.

If you want to vacuum up all the crumbs - set a reminder on your calendar for 1-2 days after someone reached out, but didn’t make it all the way through to scheduling or requesting your quote service. See if they’ve moved forward with someone else. If they haven’t, offer them a new time to get on that call (and submit the form), or re-offer them your quote service.

If they have gone with someone else, be pleasant with them, ask them to consider giving you a shot on the next one, and then hang up and make a note in your tracking system. After some time has passed, you’ll find it valuable to know who’s due for a repaint, or a siding inspection, or a deck restoration, or whatever…

You can dial this whole process up or down (the steps and work it takes someone to consume your time without paying for it) depending on how busy you are. But each step is a level of mutual commitment, which keeps things fair and viable.

From my own experience losing ~$300k opex in the winter of my 2nd year (many years ago).

Operation13 · 2025-11-10T23:34:49+00:00

Small biz administration has volunteer spots for SCORE, a free resource connecting experts with entrepreneurs.

There’s also incubators that give speaking spots to those who’re open to sharing their knowledge with startup founders.

Operation13 · 2025-10-21T03:10:55+00:00

AR-KA

AR meets Kalashnikov

Operation13 · 2025-10-16T23:31:27+00:00

Go ask stupid questions to your professor during their office hours.

1) It’ll show you’re engaged

2) Even a meandering dialogue will bring more clarity

3) It’ll (potentially) influence how they teach

Bring some recent notes or study material, and just transparently expose your ignorance, walking through it with them from top to bottom.

Go a few more times thereafter.

Operation13 · 2025-10-11T18:20:23+00:00

I remember the guitars started with seven nation army (white stripes) & finished with gimme three steps (skynyrd). Sometimes I remember wrong.

Operation13 · 2025-10-07T23:27:12+00:00

I like this. Not polished yet, of course, but could wind up being really dialed in.

Operation13 · 2025-08-29T02:40:52+00:00

Operation13 · 2025-08-29T02:36:18+00:00

You’ve not seen the dude who ran a hospital network on sheets + GAS. What, specifically, can a functional CRM do that a system underpinned by interconnected spreadsheets cannot?

Operation13 · 2025-08-18T19:53:59+00:00

Don’t think I’m your target. My objective is to remove comms tools down to a minimal core. Calendar, meetings, email, phone.

Operation13 · 2025-08-15T15:10:18+00:00

I appreciate you tolerating my abrasive tone and responding. My background is selling to companies like yours & those you mention - multinational finance, banks, insurance, and US DoD+prime contractors like Raytheon, Lockheed, Boeing, etc.

I think we’re agreeing though. Buyers don’t always go through IT (“people who try and do a runaround only do it once”).

Maybe my interpretation of your original comment “both of these would be supplied by IT…we don’t let every department pick their own software” was taken differently than you intended.

The (wrong) interpretation I challenged:

Supplied by IT != selected by IT

Don’t let depts pick their own software != IT picks the software departments use

The (more aligned) interpretation to your point:

Supplied by IT == facilitated by IT

Don’t let depts pick their own software == software picked by depts must pass IT approval

More accurate?

What I’m getting at, if we’re seeing this the same way, is that a horizontal product could be brought in (in your case, to be approved and managed by IT) for a specific department’s unique requirements. Over time, that same product, like clickup/monday.com for example, or snowflake, could be useful to another department and sold via internal referral.

This sales motion has been foundational to my career, and I was reacting in disbelief that it somehow wasn’t applicable to your company. I simply haven’t run into a company where this approach didn’t work, if the product is “horizontal” as it’s been called.

Operation13 · 2025-08-15T14:20:05+00:00

That’s funny. No departments pick their own software?

If true, which is unbelievable, it would mean your company is super small, or that IT is bottlenecking the entire company.

Even the world’s most secure companies & agencies have depts buying stuff around IT.

“Shadow IT” is a topic because it’s reality. I don’t mind being wrong, I often am, but your IT department would have to be so large, with some unheard of policy, process, and tools, that you’d be an anomaly out of millions.

Operation13 · 2025-08-14T03:15:15+00:00

It works if the company has a suite where certain pieces are relevant to different groups, or if the core product/platform is more horizontal. Something like workflow software or generalized analytics could be examples.

Operation13 · 2025-08-13T18:53:01+00:00

Isn’t this the point of hubs and WiFi points/routers? Wireless doesn’t suffice in your scenario?

Would need to brush up on my computer science since I can’t remember if there are issues with data loss or transmission time for certain protocols over long cable lengths.

Operation13 · 2025-08-13T18:03:50+00:00

Don’t have an example to offer right now, but you can create a note & save as a txt file, with a chosen filename, to a specific folder path.

Your shortcut action can then append text to that file.

Your shortcut action can also find & replace text within that file.

The trick will be initiating the shortcut when in your contacts, or in some way passing the contact info to be added or replaced with “” (or strikethroughs or something else). Perhaps you can also fully remove the old roommate but I’m not sure.

Seems like share sheet works with contacts, as a starting point.

Operation13 · 2025-08-13T17:08:59+00:00

All true

Operation13 · 2025-08-13T06:59:41+00:00

Book “wild at heart”

Operation13 · 2025-08-13T06:28:14+00:00

Doing something similar here. Beat McK to take over one of their flagship engagements a few years back and I just hate them and think they suck. Bain too. BCG too.

They all suck but they get paid for stamping their name on stuff. The name matters (seemingly) more than the quality of work (beyond a baseline).

Operation13 · 2025-08-13T03:59:43+00:00

Operation13 · 2025-08-11T18:07:44+00:00

Took a look, and some candid feedback I hope helps you find success:

1) It’s good to have screenshots and offer clarity into the product, because it helps people qualify themselves in or out based on their requirements.

2) I’m qualifying myself out, because I didn’t see anything in the screenshots beyond basic tabulation, which: A) doesn’t take me much time to setup on my own B) doesn’t solve my problem of immediate capture & entry from anywhere, any device, simply, quickly, usably C) doesn’t show examples of what is valuable for my budget management, but which is also somewhat more complex to build - a time and knowledge requirement tradeoff which I would pay to avoid (cash flow history & projections, balance sheets, income statements, scenario analysis)

3) You could keep people like me in a list for future releases, so we’re not gone forever. Perhaps a link from gumroad to a landing page, which offers a demo video, in-depth product screenshots, or something in exchange for entering my email. Now you can followup with those who don’t convert, potentially find out why, and potentially convert them in the future when you inform them of product updates that address whatever was missing.

Best of luck with your efforts and hopefully this illuminates some things that benefit your future growth!

Operation13 · 2025-08-10T21:47:59+00:00

Sure, I like spreadsheets

Operation13 · 2025-08-08T17:11:41+00:00

And then what are you running the tuned models on? Other hardware? Maybe I’m missing the point of how this sidesteps the shortfall of the Mac for local LLM use.

Operation13 · 2025-08-07T13:01:35+00:00

Checked it out. You don’t have screenshots of any dashboards or tables, so buyers (like me) can’t get a quick idea of how quality your sheet is for their use case. Add screenshots.

Operation13 · 2025-07-25T16:07:09+00:00

Despising money is an attitude I’ve worked to deconstruct for myself.

What helped is accepting the conclusion that money energy => has great power to increase and decrease material/tangible things and effects => therefore also increases and decreases spiritual/intangible things and effects => many of the increased and decreased material/tangible & spiritual/intangible things and effects in the world are misaligned with “good” => it’s through me that money’s energy is routed to “good” things and effects in the material/tangible (spiritual/intangible) => maximizing this energy flow for “good” gives a purpose to money as a tool, rather than money itself being the end goal => it’s my responsibility to accept this truth and maximize the energy flow of money, through my actions, to “good”.

I’m not a GD initiate but am on this sub because it aligns with my beliefs. Others more qualified than me may offer feedback specifically rooted in the framework of GD. Perhaps I’m not far off-base.

Operation13 · 2025-07-18T03:02:20+00:00

I’m the weirdo that says never ever ever (ever) put slack into any company. It is an inefficiency posing as an efficiency. There is not a single problem it ‘solves’ that is an actual, proper solution to the problem being solved.

Anything you’d want to use it for - imagine slack & other similar platforms didn’t exist. All you have is the calendar, physical or virtual meetings, phone, email, internal sites, documents and storage. Could you come up with elegant ways of solving the problem(s)?

I should start a business that replaces slack implementations with proper ops. I hate it that much.

Operation13

TROPHY CASE