Latest / Solopreneur Sessions with Fexingo: One-Person Businesses, Freelancing, and Independent Work / How One Cheap Tool Turned a $10k Side Project Into a Business
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this story I keep coming back to, about a freelance designer who built a side project that now pays her rent. And the wild part isn't the revenue — it's the tool that made it possible. A twenty-nine-dollar piece of software. Luna: Twenty-nine dollars? That's like the price of a nice dinner. I have to hear this. Lucas: Right. Her name is Priya, she's a brand designer based in Austin. For years she did the usual client work — logos, brand guidelines, the occasional website. But the part she hated most was onboarding. Sending the same welcome emails, collecting the same assets, chasing the same signatures. Luna: The stuff that eats your hours but never shows up on an invoice. Lucas: Exactly. So she built a simple automated workflow using a bot that handles the repetitive parts. It sends the questionnaire, reminds clients when it's due, and files the responses into her project folder. All triggered by a single email she sends at the start of a project. Luna: That sounds like something you could hack together with a few free tools. What's the twenty-nine dollars for? Lucas: That's the thing — she tried the free versions first. But they hit limits fast. She needed more than a handful of active automations, and she needed the bots to actually talk to each other. The twenty-nine-dollar tier gave her enough capacity to run her whole client calendar without touching a spreadsheet. Luna: So the cheap tool was the unlock. Not some enterprise platform. Lucas: Precisely. And here's where it gets interesting. She realized that the same onboarding problem affects every freelancer she knows. So she started offering this setup as a productized service — 'onboarding done for you' at a flat rate. She'd charge four hundred dollars to build the same workflow for other designers. Luna: Wait, so she's selling the automation she built for herself? Lucas: Yes. And within six months, that service — built on a twenty-nine-dollar subscription — was generating about three thousand dollars a month. That's her rent, in most cities. Luna: That's a great story. But is it replicable? Or is she just a unicorn who happens to be good at both design and automation? Lucas: I think the replicable part is the mindset. She didn't invent a new technology. She found a boring, recurring pain point and applied a tool that already existed. The key wasn't the tool itself — it was her willingness to package that solution for others. Luna: So the real product isn't the software. It's the system. Lucas: Exactly. And that's a pattern we see over and over with solopreneurs who build something that lasts. They don't need a massive budget or a custom-coded platform. They need a clear problem and a tool that's good enough to solve it. Luna: I can think of a few other examples. There's a guy who sells a template for client proposals that's basically a Google Doc with some clever formatting. He charges ninety-nine dollars a pop and does maybe fifty sales a month. Lucas: See, that's the same thing. The tool — in that case, a document — is almost trivial. The value is in the framework, the prompts, the process. And that's something you can build without writing a line of code. Lucas: Now, Priya's story also highlights something about how tools evolve. She started with a free plan, hit a wall, and then paid a modest amount to remove that wall. That's the classic journey — you only pay when the tool has proven its worth. Luna: That's a smart way to think about it. Too many people buy a suite of tools upfront and never use half of them. Lucas: Right. And there's a deeper lesson here about tool-driven growth. When you build your business on a cheap, flexible tool, you're not locked in. You can switch if something better comes along, or if your needs change. That flexibility is a competitive advantage for a one-person company. Luna: So what's the takeaway for someone listening who wants to do something similar? They should just… pick a pain point and find a bot? Lucas: More or less. But the first step is to document your own workflow. Write down every repetitive task you do, even the ones that only take five minutes. Those are the candidates for automation. Then look for a tool that can handle the most common ones. Luna: That's practical. But I have to ask — what happens when the tool changes its pricing or gets acquired? Isn't there a risk in building your whole business on one platform? Lucas: There is a risk, absolutely. Priya's workflow depends on that tool's uptime and features. But she's not building a tech company — she's building a service business that helps other designers. If the tool disappears, the core value — her knowledge and process — still exists. She'd just find another way to deliver it. Luna: That's a good point. The tool is scaffolding, not the building itself. Lucas: And that's why I love this story. It's a reminder that you don't need to be a developer or have a big budget to create something that sustains you. You need to be observant about the problems you face every day. Luna: And you need to be willing to charge for the solution. Lucas: Exactly. Priya now runs that onboarding service as a side business alongside her design work. She's thinking about turning it into a full-time thing, but she's being deliberate about it. She's not just chasing the next shiny tool — she's building a system that works. Luna: That's the kind of approach we could all learn from. Speaking of learning, you know, if these conversations have moved your work forward in some small way, you could help keep them going by supporting the show. We keep it ad-free, and listener support is what makes that possible. If you're so inclined, you can buy us a coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, that's a quiet way to keep the lights on. But back to Priya — what's she doing next? She told me she's started to document her whole process in a template, which she plans to sell. Not just the automation, but the entire onboarding script and email sequence. Luna: So she's doubling down on the system, not just the tool. That's a smart evolution. Lucas: It is. And it shows that the real resource is her experience, not the twenty-nine-dollar subscription. That's the takeaway I hope listeners get: your expertise is the product. The tools just help you package it. Luna: I think that's a perfect note to end on. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. We'll catch you next time.