The Handshake which cost me a small fortune!

In 2016, at the ripe old age of 26, I won the contract to build a new nursery building at a prestigious school in the Preston area.

Part of the project involved bringing a new mains power and water supply through the staff car park and into the new building.

At the same time, a national construction company was on site installing a new boiler system. We met, agreed to share a trench, and shook hands on splitting the cost.

I was still fairly green in business. There were a few emails, but nothing that clearly documented exactly who was paying for what.

When the job was finished, the construction company refused to contribute, saying their boiler project had run out of budget.

That handshake cost me a couple of thousand pounds.

Another business lesson learned.

It's a lesson that's stuck with me ever since. These days, I like every agreement to be clear. The trouble is, chasing paperwork and emails after a conversation on site is slow, and things get forgotten.

So when building Tradeyfox, this became one of the features I wanted to solve.

You create an agreement on site, add photos if needed, record exactly who is responsible for what, who is paying for what, and have every party sign there and then. It's all stored against the job, with a clear audit trail, and if anything changes later, everyone signs again.

No paperwork going missing. No "that's not what we agreed." No relying on memory months later.

Just clear agreements, sorted on site, in minutes.

Sometimes the best features come from the mistakes that cost you the most.