Solo Builders Club

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Hey — It's Jerrell

Hope your holidays have been wonderful and full of good friends, great food, and better eggnog (look, I just had eggnog for the first time this year and I can never un-taste what has been tasted…it’s amazing).

And, most importantly, I hope you’ve prepared your microwave for the coming days:

Estimated read time: ~2 minutes and 17 seconds.

Three Automation Tools That Actually Make Life Easier

Let's talk about automation. Not the "robots taking our jobs" kind, but the "I'm tired of copy-pasting data between apps" kind. Here are three tools that actually make sense for solo builders.

1/ Integrately

Imagine you're trying to connect your tools together, and instead of spending hours watching tutorial videos, you just... click once. That's Integrately's whole thing. They've got millions of pre-made automations ready to go. Last week, I connected my newsletter to my CRM in less time than it takes to make coffee. Yes, they only have 1,100 integrations (compared to Zapier's 5,000+), but unless you're running NASA from your laptop, that's probably enough. At $29/month, it's like hiring a very efficient assistant who never asks for vacations.

2/ Pipedream

Here's a hot take: Pipedream is what would happen if Zapier went to engineering school. It's powerful enough for the tech folks but won't make the rest of us cry. I use it for tasks that are just a bit too complex for simpler tools - like when I needed to sync data between my payment processor and three different spreadsheets. Fair warning though: the learning curve is rough. But once it clicks? Pure magic.

3/ Parabola

Let me tell you about the tool that saved me from spreadsheet hell. Parabola is like having a data analyst who actually explains things in human language. Their drag-and-drop interface makes data transformation feel less like rocket science and more like playing with Legos. At $79/month it's not cheap, but considering I used to spend hours manually updating reports, it's cheaper than my sanity. Just don't expect it to handle non-data tasks - it's like asking a math genius to write poetry.

Two Pricing Mistakes That Still Keep Me Up At Night

1/

The "I'm Just Getting Started" trap. When I launched my first product (a template pack for product managers), I priced it at $9 because I thought "who would pay more for something I made?" Six months and 200 sales later, I realized I had a problem: customers were asking for support that cost more than what they paid. When I finally raised the price to $49, something weird happened - sales actually increased. Turns out, higher pricing made it feel more valuable. Now I start with a higher price and offer launch discounts instead of trying to raise prices later.

2/

The "One Size Fits None" blunder. My second product was a Notion workspace for freelancers. I offered it at one price ($29) because pricing tiers seemed complicated. Big mistake. I kept getting emails like "Can I just get the invoice templates?" and "I'd pay more for client management features." When I finally split it into Basic ($19), Pro ($49), and Agency ($99) tiers, two things happened: total revenue tripled, and support requests dropped because people could choose exactly what they needed.

One Thought on the Real Cost of Free

I used to think offering a free plan was non-negotiable. "Growth hack your way to success!" they said. "The users will convert eventually!" they promised.

Three months and 1,472 free users later, I learned what "free" actually costs. Every morning started with support tickets from users who had invested exactly $0 in my product but expected instant, personal help. My paid users - you know, the ones actually keeping the lights on - were getting lost in the noise.

But here's the real kicker: when I analyzed the data, only 0.8% of free users ever upgraded. Not 8%. Not even 1%. Point eight percent. I was essentially running a free service while hoping for paid subscribers, like a lemonade stand giving away free drinks but hoping people would feel guilty enough to leave a tip.

Now? I offer a 14-day trial and then it's paid or goodbye. My support load dropped by 90%, my actual conversion rate went up to 12%, and I can actually focus on making the product better for people who value it enough to pay for it.

Turns out, free plans are like those "free" puppies that end up costing more than a purebred. Sometimes the best price is just... a price.

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And that’s it for issue #9. Thanks for reading.

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See you next week — Jerrell & Chase

P.S. — We just launched our Solo Builder Toolkit! Please check it out here. Make sure to get it now, because we’ll be updating it every week with new tools that we find.

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