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For sales pros · the trades · every blue collar operator

CODE99

The 99% that gets you into the top 1%.
The system for operators who close faster.

You got thrown into the deep end. Thirty follow-ups a day. Remember every name, every promise, every number you quoted in the truck. Nobody handed you a system, and here is the part nobody tells you: your paycheck lives and dies by how organized you are.

Code99 is that system, free. The habits I ran from the tire counter to $50M+ in commercial projects: capture every conversation, follow up the same day, run your work like a business. Blue collar work ethic. White collar execution.

Enter for Success → No signup to look around. Jump to the Playbook
Blue collar work ethic. White collar execution. © 2026 Code99 · Built by an operator, for operators
Free tools. Free training. Built by an operator, for operators.

CODE99

Sharper in the field.
Faster on the follow-up.

CODE99 turns field pros into operators. A free tool database and learning center built from the systems I ran across every business I have touched: remember every conversation, follow up the same day, document like a professional, and bring modern business practice to blue collar work. Updated as the tools change. Blue collar work ethic. White collar execution.

Read the Playbook → Get the Drop
10
Field protocols, start to finish, free to run
10 MIN
From recorded meeting to sent follow-up, with AI doing the typing
300
Photos on one commercial roof, the standard that wins scope arguments
1%
The top you're chasing — the 99% is how you get there.
Close faster Follow up same day Remember every conversation The record is the memory Free tools, free training Blue collar work ethic, white collar execution Close faster Follow up same day Remember every conversation The record is the memory Free tools, free training Blue collar work ethic, white collar execution
The Operator Code
C.O.D.E. — the 99% that gets you into the top 1%.
C
Communication
Say it. Write it.
+
O
Organization
Sort it. Keep it.
+
D
Documentation
Record it.
+
E
Execution
Run it. Get paid.
=
CODE99
The operator mark
The System · Four Pillars
01
The Edge
Why documentation is professionalism, not paranoia, and how it makes you sell faster, build trust, and never lose a detail.
Read it →
02
The Playbook
Ten field protocols with the why behind each one, split by seat: on somebody's systems or running your own shop.
Run the protocols →
03
The Toolkit
The tool database. Every app vetted, free and paid side by side: AI, voice capture, CRM, photos, mileage, and scanning.
See the tools →
04
The Mission
Blue collar work ethic. White collar execution. The systems from three generations of family trade to $50M+ in projects, free for the field.
The mission →
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Everything here is free and stays current. New training drops in the Learning Center: how-tos, what worked in the field, and the tools worth your money. Know a rep, a tradesman, or a shop owner who needs it? Tag them.

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Code99 / 01 — The Edge
01

The Edge

Documentation isn't paranoia. It's professionalism. Whether you knock doors on commission or run the whole shop, the operator with the cleanest record closes more deals, builds deeper trust, gets paid faster, and never loses a conversation. This is the discipline that elevates a field pro into an operator.

Sell faster, sell sharper

Operators who track every conversation, every quote, every revision close more deals. The pipeline you can see is the pipeline you can move. Documentation accelerates your sales motion, not slows it down.

Build customer trust at scale

When a customer asks "what did we agree to," the one who pulls up dated notes, signed scope sheets, and email confirmations in ten seconds wins the relationship. Trust compounds on accuracy.

Get paid what you're owed

Pay disputes are won by whoever has the receipts. For a rep that is commissions cross-referenced to deals and comp plans versioned. For an owner it is invoices, change orders, and signed scope. Whoever tracks gets paid. Whoever doesn't argues.

Remember every conversation

Record the meeting, run the transcript through AI, and the follow-up email goes out the same day with every number you quoted. The customer who hears back in hours with the details in writing does not shop the other two bids.

The habit starts now.

Run the Playbook →Get the Drop
Code99 / 02 — The Playbook
02

The Playbook

Ten protocols. Run them as habits, not emergencies. Business has moved from carbon paper to AI in one working lifetime, and the winners of every era did the same thing: adopted the tools early and ran them with discipline. Each protocol tells you what to do, why it matters, and how it changes depending on whose systems you run on. None of them require permission, and almost none of them cost a dime.

First, know which seat you are in. Every protocol reads differently depending on who owns the accounts.

Seat 1, on somebody's systems: a 1099 rep or employee working from a company email, company CRM, company phone. The tools are not yours. Your job is to keep your own copy of everything you create.

Seat 2, you own the shop: the lawn care owner, the shop owner, the operator doing $500K a year on your own accounts. Nobody can take them from you, so exporting is not your problem. Discipline is: archive instead of delete, organize so you can find anything in ten seconds, and back up so one dead phone cannot erase five years of your business.
01

Email Archiving

Your inbox is the institutional memory of your business: quotes, approvals, scope changes, pay confirmations. What you do with it depends entirely on whose name is on the account.

  • Seat 2, you own the account: you never need to export what you already own. Your discipline is different: archive, never delete. The archive button clears your inbox without destroying the record, and storage is basically free. Deleting an email to feel tidy is burning a business record to save a penny.
  • Label as you go. One label or folder per customer or job. Ten seconds now beats twenty minutes of digging while a customer waits on the phone.
  • Lock the front door. Two-factor on, recovery phone and backup email kept current. Owners do not get locked out by a boss. They get locked out by a forgotten password and a recovery number from two phones ago.
  • Seat 1, company account: the mailbox is theirs, so own your copy. BCC or forward any thread that touches money, scope, or a promise to an address you own, same day. Monthly full export: Google Takeout for Workspace, File → Open & Export → .pst for Outlook.
Why this matters: eighteen months from now, somebody will remember a number differently than you do. The one who pulls up the thread in ten seconds wins politely. The other one argues from memory, and memory rounds every number in favor of whoever is talking.
02

Text Message Export

Half the real business happens over text: the verbal yes in writing, the "go ahead and start," the price you agreed to in the truck. So why export anything if it is your own phone? Because phones fall in lakes, ride off in stolen trucks, and die without warning. Right now that thread is a business record living in one fragile piece of glass.

  • Seat 2, your phone, your business: turn on automatic cloud backup tonight. Then export any thread where money or scope got agreed, once, when the job wraps. A searchable PDF beats scrolling fourteen months of messages to find one price.
  • Give the business its own number. A free second line (Google Voice or similar) keeps customer threads out of your family texts, looks right on the truck wrap, and can be handed to your first hire without giving out your personal cell.
  • iPhone: iMazing or Decipher TextMessage export to PDF, CSV, or TXT. The PDF renders like the Messages app with bubbles, dates, and names.
  • Android: SMS Backup & Restore (free) exports every conversation and auto-backs-up to Drive or Dropbox.
  • Seat 1, company phone: it goes back when you do. Export routinely, not eventually.
Export to PDF, not screenshots. A full thread preserves order, timestamps, and both sides. A cropped screenshot invites the "out of context" argument.
03

Phone Contacts

Your book of business is the most valuable thing you'll build, and the company CRM is not yours. Keep your own master copy — cleanly, and in a way nobody can call theft.

  • iPhone: iCloud.com → Contacts → select all → Export vCard.
  • Android: Google Contacts → Export → CSV or vCard.
  • Tag them. Customer, GC, adjuster, supplier, referral source. A tagged list is a sales tool, not just a backup.
  • Log the source. Note how and when you met each contact. A contact you sourced yourself is yours; documenting that protects you.
  • Seat 2, own the shop? Your contact list is the customer ledger. Sync it into a CRM (a free one is fine), tag by service and season, and run the follow-up: last spring's cleanup list is this spring's easiest revenue, and it costs nothing but the text.
Export quarterly. Relationships are the asset that follows you to the next opportunity — keep the list current and personal.
04

Contracts & AI Review

1099 agreements are where the real terms hide: draw vs. advance, chargebacks, non-compete, non-solicit, what happens to unpaid commissions when you leave, and forced arbitration. Read every page before you sign, and run it through AI to translate the legalese.

Review this 1099 contractor agreement. List every clause that affects how and when I get paid, and quote the exact language for each.
Identify any non-compete, non-solicit, or chargeback clause. Explain each in plain English and tell me how long it lasts and where it applies.
What happens to my unpaid or pending commissions if I'm terminated, laid off, or quit? Quote the exact sentences.
Flag anything unusual or one-sided compared to a standard independent-contractor agreement, and list the questions I should ask before signing.
AI is a flashlight, not a lawyer. For anything with a non-compete or real money attached, pay a licensed attorney for an hour before you sign. Cheapest insurance you'll ever buy.
05

Commission & Pay Tracking

Commission disputes are won by whoever has the cleaner ledger. Build yours from day one — your numbers, kept independently of theirs, so you can prove the gap to the dollar.

  • Keep a running ledger: deal, customer, contract value, your rate, expected commission, date approved, date paid, amount paid, variance, source-doc link.
  • Cross-reference every payment back to the specific deals it covers.
  • Save every approval (email/text). Version your comp plan each time it changes, with the date.
  • Screenshot the company portal monthly — your deals, statuses, and pipeline values as they show them.
  • Seat 2, own the shop? Same ledger, different name: job costing. Quoted price, actual cost, hours, margin, per job. The owner who knows margin by job raises prices with confidence. The one who does not works harder every year for the same money.
Reconcile monthly. The difference between "expected" and "paid," line by line, is your case before it's ever a case.
06

Expenses & Tax Records

As a 1099 you eat your own expenses — and you deduct them. Sloppy records mean you overpay taxes all year or can't defend the deductions if you're audited. Both are money left on the table.

  • Separate the money. A dedicated business account and card make every expense self-documenting.
  • Scan every receipt the day you get it. Paper fades; a photo doesn't.
  • Track mileage automatically — Stride (free), MileIQ, or Everlance.
  • Log the rest: home office, phone, tools, supplies, software, fuel.
  • Set aside ~25–30% of every check for quarterly estimated taxes.
Keep records seven years. Three years is the standard IRS audit window, but it stretches to six or seven for big understatements. Every logged business mile is worth the IRS standard rate at tax time — 72.5¢ for 2026 — so untracked miles are dollars you're lighting on fire.
07

Photo & Voice Documentation

Photos win scope arguments. Recordings win "that's not what we agreed" arguments. Both are powerful — but recording people has rules that change at the state line, and getting them wrong can turn your evidence into your liability.

  • Photos: shoot every property before and after, every area of damage, every completed scope. Keep originals with date and location data intact.
  • Recordings: recording a call you're part of is legal in most of the country under one-party consent. But some states require all parties to consent.
All-party consent
California, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Washington (and Illinois, generally) require everyone on the call to consent.
Phone vs. in-person
Nevada requires all-party consent for phone calls; Oregon requires it for in-person conversations. Know which situation you're in.
Ambiguous / caveat
Connecticut (civil liability for calls), Delaware, Michigan, Montana, and Vermont have unsettled or unusual rules. Treat them as all-party to be safe.
Everywhere else (~38 + D.C.)
One-party consent: you can record a conversation you're part of without telling the other side.
Calls cross state lines. When your state and theirs disagree, follow the stricter rule. When in doubt, get consent on tape: "just confirming you're okay with me recording this for my notes." A yes turns a risky recording into a clean one.
08

The Follow-Up Engine

The operator who follows up the same day with every detail in writing beats the one with the better pitch. Rep or owner, most people forget half the meeting by dinner. Here is the ten-minute loop that fixes it.

  • 1. Record the meeting. A wearable recorder on your shirt or the recorder app in your pocket. Know your state's consent rules first (Protocol 07).
  • 2. Get the transcript. Good recorders transcribe automatically; otherwise run the audio through a transcription app.
  • 3. Feed it to AI. Paste the transcript into Claude or ChatGPT with the prompt below.
  • 4. Send it the same day. Follow-up email in your voice, action items on your list, note in your CRM. Ten minutes, start to finish.
Here is the transcript of my customer meeting today. Give me: 1) every commitment I made, 2) every number I quoted, 3) a follow-up email in my voice confirming what we agreed, 4) a short CRM note with the next step and the date.
Why it wins: same-day follow-up with exact numbers reads like competence because it is competence. While the other bids are still "getting back to" the customer, your scope and price are already sitting in their inbox, in writing.
09

Look Like a Business

You would not show up to a $10,000 estimate in pajamas. Sending that invoice from [email protected] is the same outfit. Customers judge the paperwork before they judge the work, and they judge it at exactly the moment trust matters most.

  • Buy your domain. Ten to fifteen bucks a year. Email on your own domain ([email protected]) through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 runs about $6 to $7 a month and instantly reads like a real company. Your work is professional. Your email address should stop telling people otherwise.
  • Invoice from software, not a Word doc. Wave is free; QuickBooks or Jobber earn their keep at volume. Numbered invoices, online payment links, automatic reminders. You get paid faster because paying you got easier.
  • Write estimates like contracts. Scope, price, timeline, what is NOT included, signature line. The not-included line prevents more arguments than the other four combined.
  • Match the details. Same logo, same phone number, same name on the truck, the invoice, the estimate, and the voicemail greeting. Consistency is what "established" actually looks like from the outside.
The math: the whole professional stack costs about $25 a month. One customer who takes the other bid because your paperwork felt like a side hustle costs more than a decade of it.
10

Reviews & Visibility

We scanned 5,662 trade businesses with no web presence. 1,701 of them hold a perfect 5.0 on Google. Elite work, completely invisible. A reputation nobody can find might as well not exist, because Google, and now AI, can only recommend what they can read.

  • Claim your Google Business Profile. Free, twenty minutes, and it is the new front door of your business. Real photos of real jobs, accurate hours, your services written in plain words. Most shops leave this door unlocked and empty.
  • Print the QR code. Google gives every business a direct review link. Turn it into a QR code and print it on your cards, your invoices, and a laminated sheet in the truck. Ask at the moment of the happy handshake, not in an email three weeks later. The ask-now rate embarrasses the ask-later rate.
  • Reply to every review. Two sentences, every time, including the rough ones. Future customers read your replies to find out who they are really hiring.
  • Get a real website with your name on it. Your services, your reviews, your phone number, on a page you own, written so a search engine can actually read it. A Facebook page alone is rented visibility on a billboard somebody else can take down.
Why now: your next customer is asking their phone who to call, and the answer comes from what is written down and findable. The best operator in town loses to a findable average one every single day, right up until he writes it down.

Run the system.

Get New Drops by Email →See the Toolkit →
Code99 / 03 — The Toolkit
03

The Toolkit

Every app vetted, every link verified, free and paid options side by side. Pricing moves — always confirm the current rate in the store before you buy. Start with the free tier in each category; upgrade only when the volume earns it.

AI Assistants · the force multiplier
Claude
iOS · Android · Web
Paste a meeting transcript, get the follow-up email, action items, and CRM note. Summarizes a 40-page contract in plain English. Runs the Follow-Up Engine (Protocol 08).
Free tier · Pro ~$20/mo
ChatGPT
iOS · Android · Web
The everywhere assistant. Pre-knock research on a property, objection practice on the drive over, translating spec sheets, cleaning up your follow-up texts.
Free tier · Plus ~$20/mo
Voice & Field Capture · never lose a conversation
Plaud
Hardware · iOS · Android
Wearable recorder that transcribes and summarizes every meeting automatically. The front end of the Follow-Up Engine. Check your state's consent rules (Protocol 07).
Device from ~$159 · app free tier
CompanyCam
iOS · Android · Web
Photos organized by project automatically, timestamped and GPS-tagged. The 300-photo standard without the camera-roll chaos.
Free trial · from ~$24/user/mo
HubSpot Free CRM
iOS · Android · Web
Your own pipeline, contacts, and follow-up reminders, free. Your book of business deserves better infrastructure than your memory.
Free
Cloud Storage & Sync · where the record lives
Google Drive
iOS · Android · Web
The most generous free tier and the easiest place to auto-back-up exports and scans.
15 GB free · plans from ~$2/mo
Dropbox
iOS · Android · Web · Desktop
Rock-solid sync and sharing. Small free tier, but excellent for a single synced folder of evidence.
2 GB free · plans from ~$12/mo
OneDrive
iOS · Android · Web · Desktop
Best if you already live in Microsoft 365 / Outlook. Comes bundled with Office plans.
5 GB free · 1 TB with M365
iCloud Drive
iOS · Mac · Web
Seamless on iPhone — photos and files back up automatically. Tight if you shoot a lot of photos.
5 GB free · 50 GB ~$0.99/mo
Text Message Export · get the thread off the phone
iMazing
iPhone (Mac/PC)
All-in-one iPhone manager. Exports messages to PDF, CSV, or TXT and backs up the whole device.
~$29.99/yr · free trial
Decipher TextMessage
iPhone (Mac/PC)
Purpose-built for exporting iMessage/SMS. PDF output looks exactly like the Messages app.
~$29.99/yr · free trial
SMS Backup & Restore
Android
Free, reliable. Exports every conversation to XML/HTML and auto-backs-up to Drive or Dropbox.
Free
Mileage & Expenses · turn driving into deductions
Stride
iOS · Android
Completely free mileage and expense tracker built for 1099 workers. No paid tier, no catch.
Free
MileIQ
iOS · Android
Automatic drive detection — swipe to classify business vs. personal. Free for limited drives.
40 drives/mo free · ~$8.99/mo
Everlance
iOS · Android
Mileage plus expense and receipt capture in one app. Solid free tier; upgrade for unlimited.
Free tier · ~$9/mo
Call Recording & Transcription · know your state first (Protocol 07)
Rev Call Recorder
iOS
Free, unlimited call recording, no ads. Pay only when you want a transcript.
Free to record · transcripts pay-as-you-go
TapeACall
iOS · Android
Veteran call recorder with unlimited recordings and built-in transcripts. Seven-day trial.
~$59.99–79.99/yr · trial
Otter.ai
iOS · Android · Web
Best-in-class transcription for meetings and in-person conversations. Searchable notes.
300 min/mo free · from ~$8.33/mo
Cube ACR
Android
Auto-records calls (and some VoIP apps) on Android. Freemium — upgrade for cloud backup.
Free tier · paid upgrade
Document & Receipt Scanning · paper into searchable files
Microsoft Lens
iOS · Android
Free, fast scanner with auto-crop and OCR. Saves straight to PDF or OneDrive.
Free
Adobe Scan
iOS · Android
Excellent OCR and multi-page PDFs. Free tier covers everyday scanning; cloud sync built in.
Free · optional premium
Apple Notes Scanner
iPhone (built-in)
Already on your phone. In Notes, tap the camera → Scan Documents. Zero install, instant PDF.
Free · built-in
Genius Scan
iOS · Android
Clean, quick scanner with good edge detection. Free for basic exports; paid adds OCR and cloud.
Free tier · paid upgrade
AI Contract Review · translate the legalese (Protocol 04)
Claude
iOS · Android · Web
Strong at reading long documents and quoting exact clauses back to you. Use the Protocol 04 prompts.
Free tier · paid plan available
ChatGPT
iOS · Android · Web
Widely available, handles file uploads, good plain-English explanations of contract terms.
Free tier · paid plan available

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Code99 / 04 — The Mission
04

The Mission

This is not a course funnel. There is nothing to buy. It is the operating system I built across every business I have run, handed to the people doing the work.

I am a third generation tire kid from the north side of Chicago. Three generations behind a counter taught me the blue collar half: show up early, do the work right, own the outcome. Then I spent years running commercial roofing sales at scale, opening offices in multiple states, building teams, and touching $50M+ in projects. That taught me the white collar half: systems, documentation, and follow-up win. Every time.

The top performers everywhere I have worked had one thing in common: they kept everything. Notes on every customer. Photos of every property. Confirmations on every quote revision. Their follow-up landed the same day, their customers trusted them more, and their commissions never went sideways. That was never talent. It was a system, and a system can be handed to anybody.

Code99 is that system, handed over. Every protocol, tool, and training on this site is something I have run in a real business with my own money on the line. And because half these tools did not exist two years ago, the site moves with the field: the Learning Center drops new how-tos, what-worked breakdowns, and try-this-instead calls as we test them.

The mission is simple: blue collar work ethic, white collar execution. Bring modern business practice to the people who actually build things, free.

FIELD NOTES

"Blue collar work ethic. White collar execution. Bringing business practice into the future for the people who build things."

Tag an operator who needs it.