Continuing from last week’s lesson about some of the blind spots that people experience in independent software, we’re now going to move through the most load-bearing parts of your business.

In this paid lesson, we’ll talk about the four biggest parts of your home page, and what you should do instead.

One more note about staying in your lane, building off of last week’s letter.

Recent technological developments have largely occurred because of the growth imperative. We had a big success, then another big success, then a little success, and along the way a bunch of other successes that have rewritten the way that society works now. Then we ran out of ideas for a bit, and so what fills the void? Moreover, what happens when the answer to that question is forced onto customers who don’t actually want it, and are asking for something else?

There will, of course, be a quieter rebellion against that form of technology, and it will come faster than you think. People try to do stuff they like. People seek ease & convenience. And they’re smarter than you think.

In this monthlong course, we’re going to teach you about everything we’ve learned when designing for independent software businesses.

This isn’t a “design for developers” course. There are plenty of those, and learning aesthetics only gets you so far. Instead, we’re going to talk about the real-world issues that independent software businesses face at various stages of growth.

You’ll come out understanding some of the biggest things that people mess up, and you’ll learn both why and what to do about it.

Our first lesson is going to focus on some of the more unintuitive principles or blind spots that we tend to encounter.

Our final office hours for paid members is today! Join us at 1p Central Time to chat about all things value-based design. Happy to answer any questions or pressing issues you may currently have. Find out what 1p Central Time is in your time zone here.

If you’re a paid member, our meeting link is at the end of this email. If you sign up between now and 1p, we’ll send the meeting link your way. Moving forward, we’re offering 30 minute 1:1 sessions for new members. Book your 1:1 here.

Returning back to design for software this week.

First, our final office hours for paid members is coming up! Join us on **Tuesday, August 5 ** to ask me anything about value-based design & getting an impact with your work. These vary in attendance from 1 to 10 people, and they’re always helpful for you and for me. August office hours link after the jump!

We’re offering free half-hour calls to new members going forward. Easier than our previous hours, and more value for you. Current members can book a half-hour call with me, too – link’s at the bottom of this letter.

Now that we’ve established that you’ll be posting price, let’s talk about what prices and how. In this paid lesson, we’ll talk about pricing tiers: why they’re important, and how you should create them.

There is much noise right now. I just spent a month discussing it. How do value-based designers stay in our lane and continue to generate outsize impact for our clients?

Your goal now is to find businesses that perceive business like normal people. The rules have not changed and will not change. Here, for those in the back, are the rules:

• A business exists to serve its customers, not the other way around.
• A business needs to make more than it spends in order to survive.
• A sustainable, durable business makes its money directly from its customers – not from investors or shareholders.

That’s it. Those are the rules.

In software businesses, we post price. We post price in almost all circumstances. We post price for B2C, we post price for B2B. We post price.

In this lesson, we’ll discuss why we post price, why you will post price, and what it means for businesses to post price.

Two brief updates to membership:

• We changed billing systems the other week. Our thanks to those who signed up after the change and called out a bunch of old cobwebs that we forgot to clean up. If you were on the old system, we sent you an email that you have a couple of weeks to switch over; we’ll be turning that one off on August 01.
• We’re offering free half-hour calls to new members going forward. Easier than our previous hours, and more value for you.

Now would be a great time to join us as a member, especially if you work in software. We’ve got a lot of great lessons planned over the coming months.

It used to be that you would build something and people would use it. But it’s not enough to just make a tool that works anymore. That’s where positioning comes in, or the process of making your product stand out in a competitive market.

In this paid lesson, we’ll be going deep on how to apply a simple positioning to independent software businesses. If you’ve never gone through this exercise before, start here.

Over the past two weeks, we talked a little about the high-level view of post-LLM design and how buyers view design now. Apparently “the nickd take on LLM” resonates, since all of my opinions are universally correct and many of you are wondering how to move going forward.

I’m going to write a little more today and a little next week, and then we’ll get back to our regular programming, because (despite what you may have heard) there’s quite a bit more to value-based design than how we respond to LLM. In the meantime, I might package some of my thoughts on post-LLM design into a smaller offering. Hit reply if you might be interested.

“Post-LLM value-based design” is a bit of a mouthful, and it’s also inaccurate, because value-based design is an evergreen principle that responds to conditions.

Presumably, your home page has a masthead, and that masthead has a button for someone to get started using your product. In this lesson, we’ll talk about how to write ones that get a little… wordy.

Our monthly office hours for paid members is today! Join us at 1p Central Time to chat about all things value-based design. Happy to answer any questions or pressing issues you may currently have. Find out what 1p Central Time is in your time zone here. If you’re a paid member, our meeting link is at the end of this email. If you sign up between now and 1p, we’ll send the meeting link your way.

In last week’s letter, I wrote about the world we exist in as designers after LLM’s broad-scale introduction. Now I’d like to talk a little bit about the labor aspects of LLM, which are, like it or not, heavily influencing those who buy design as of press time.

There’s a lot of noise out there. Almost all writing on this topic is unreadable. I sort of get why people are getting loud, though, considering western civilization is slowly collapsing and nothing feels remotely safe or permanent anymore. Kinda makes sense why people would think LLM is a cool safety blanket of future-forward manifestation, eh?

First, our monthly office hours for paid members is coming up! Join us on Tuesday, July 8 to ask me anything about value-based design & getting an impact with your work. These vary in attendance from 1 to 10 people, and they’re always helpful for you and for me. Signup link after the jump!

First, two stories about how social proof can be put in your headline. Then, a lesson about why and when you should do so.

Our prices on new consultative work will change at 5p CDT today. Now’s your last chance to buy a teardown, roadmap, or call with us at our current rate. If you’re an active client, your fees will not change for the duration of your work with us.

A couple of weeks ago, I surveyed everyone about what we should write about next, and “post-LLM design” won by a landslide. I find this to be fascinating, because we’ve positioned ourselves rather firmly as skeptical of LLM, at least with respect to some of the messaging that exists around it.

For the first half of my career, tech was changing the world, and there was a lot of optimism & promise around it. We didn’t really question much. The iPhone came out, then we all made a bunch of apps, then we ruined taxis & hotels. The internet was a place where we could all connect with one another and understand the world’s information. Twitter had infighting, but we thought it was funny.

We already established that design is not dead. In this paid lesson, we’ll discuss the specific ways that design is surviving, alongside some steps for you to take.

No.

Asking for design input from a wide range of stakeholders has its upsides and downsides. One downside is when someone sees a large company or influencer offering a specific solution, and they think “well, we should do that, too.”

On face, this is not a horrible idea. Other people did all of this work and succeeded, so why not us? It’s more efficient, helps us compete.

You know better, so let’s talk about it.

Some business announcements this week, and then a brief note on fiat plays:

• Our repositioning is more-or-less complete. If you find anything on our site that looks off or requires a rewrite, please let us know.
• We’re kicking off a major summerlong project on the topic of onboarding, and I’m doing a small literature review for it. I’m already intimately aware of Hulick’s work, but if you have any other books or resources for me to review, hit reply and point me to ‘em.
• For the first time in five years, we’re going to be changing our fees for new work in a few weeks. Since we could change it all right now, that means a lot of things are on sale as of the conclusion of this sentence. Now would be a very good time to book a roadmap, call, or retainer, if you feel so called. Thanks for your support of us, now & always.
• Lastly, one brief question: what would you like me to write about next?

In last week’s paid lesson, we defined the seam and discussed what you can do to address it. We’re building on that lesson by talking about why a style guide is important, and what makes it different from a design system.

Our monthly office hours for paid members is today! Join us at 1p Central Time to chat about all things value-based design. Happy to answer any questions or pressing issues you may currently have. Find out what 1p Central Time is in your time zone here.If you’re a paid member, our meeting link is at the end of this email. If you sign up between now and 1p, we’ll send the meeting link your way.

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Financially, we have something here called the breakeven point, where we know we’ll be able to live comfortably, meet our expenses, and do what we want to do for the year. This typically comes around late August, when a lot of businesses lock in their strategies for the rest of the year and have chosen to get us involved. A couple of years, it didn’t happen at all. One year, it happened in early June because everybody suddenly invested in our work in response to a global pandemic.

I don’t want to jinx anything, but it’s nonzero likely that we’ll reach the breakeven point soon. Our existing client portfolio has not changed since last September, and a couple of them have chosen to hire us for more expansive work. With one more renewal, we’ll be good for the year.