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Overwhelmed? Feel like your business can't run for a day without you? You're not alone.
When you're a solo business owner, everything ends up depending on you. You're the only one who can do the work, answer the email, keep the plates spinning. So you're on the hook every day: nights, weekends, even the vacations you do manage to take. The overwhelm never really lifts.
But being a solopreneur doesn't have to mean doing it all yourself. With the right systems, parts of your business can run without you. That's what gets you your time back, and gives you the freedom to take a real break. And the freedom to do the work you actually want instead of the work you feel stuck doing.
Joe Casabona learned this the hard way. He went from so overwhelmed he had a panic attack to taking 4–6 weeks off a year, worry-free, and he's helped hundreds of solopreneurs build systems that give them their time back.
Every week, one clear idea to help you get your time back without hiring a team...or selling your soul to AI. Start listening, then grab the free newsletter at https://streamlinedsolopreneur.com.
Last year we needed to have a new fence built. Ours was falling apart, and we had a new puppy who would easily get out. So we had a few options: do nothing— that's always an option, even if it's not a good one— hire somebody to do it for us at great cost, like $10,000, or do it ourselves for $2,000 plus one weekend. Option 3 also required skill, expertise, and the right tools, which I don't have. But luckily my father-in-law and brother-in-law do. So we opted to build it ourselves.
Now, we faced a similar choice a couple of years prior when we had to replace our HVAC, except here we couldn't do nothing. And we didn't have the skills, expertise, tools, or access to the raw material. We had to hire somebody to replace it for us.
Now, I just got back from Ecamm's Creator Camp, where one of the biggest topics of discussion was the very idea around DIY Versus paying for a tool, but for software. And that's what I want to talk about today.
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Streamlined Solopreneur. My name's Joe Casabona, and today I want to talk about when to vibe code your own tool and when to actually pay for the software.
So what is the major question that came up at Ecamm's Creator Camp and really what's been coming up a lot lately? It's this: now that AI can write reliable software for us, should we replace our software subscriptions with tools we've vibe coded? It's easy to think the answer is almost always yes. The temptation of replacing our tools or our monthly subscriptions is really good.
I would love to not have to pay thousands of dollars a year for software. And to be honest, I have been vibe coding a lot more of my own tools lately. Here are a couple of examples. I coded a replacement Stream Deck plugin for Apple Music because Elgato removed theirs. I even made some improvements to it, like adding playlist button support and dial support for the Stream Deck Plus. I also deleted Elgato's Camera Hub app and created my own teleprompter app. I am using that right now. It's so much better.
Elgato's Camera Hub app was supposed to have this thing called Voice Sync where the teleprompter would move based on what you were saying, and it did not work even remotely reliably. And the tool I'm using does work reliably. In fact, I'm ad-libbing off the script right now, and the app is telling me, are you ad-libbing? So I coded this with Claude in a half hour.
The biggest projects I've replaced are web-based. I replaced Senja with my own testimonial collector, and I built my own beta reader software. I did this because honestly, with Senja, I wasn't collecting enough testimonials to really justify the $30 a month. And nobody was using the submit-a-video-testimonial feature. I know that some companies like Ecamm use it for customer research and for a lot of other things, or a lot of people get a lot of video testimonials.
And if I were in that boat, maybe I would keep paying for Senja. But $30 a month is a little much for the 1 to 2 text-based testimonials I get. And the beta reader software, like, I don't even know if people are gonna beta read my book. And so it didn't make a lot of sense for me to start paying for this software. And it could be the case that once I get users into this beta reader software, once I start writing my book, I might want to pay for the software, but I didn't at this moment.
But like I said, the temptation to replace every subscription with software we need to support shouldn't blind us to the fact that there are some things we shouldn't replace. It's really nice to think there's a world where, oh, I will just pay $100 a month for Claude and $5 a month for Lovable, and I will replace thousands of dollars of software. But that's— not tenable. I'm not going to say it's not possible, and I'll talk about why in a minute, but it's not tenable.
For example, I will likely never replace Kit, which sends my emails. I don't want to deal with deliverability. I don't want to deal with checking automations or managing payments for subscriptions or spam. Ecamm, which is my recording and live streaming software. I don't want to have to deal with concurrent streams and massive overlays and managing resources and reliably recording files.
Do I trust myself to vibe code something with AI that will reliably record and save isolated versions of all of my files? I don't. And the guys at Ecamm know this stuff really well. They've been doing it for a long time. And finally, my podcast hosts, RSS.com and Transistor. I will not replace them because, again, I'm serving up audio files or video files now. I'm doing the analytics and trying to account for spam. These are just things that the 3 companies that are the 4 companies that I just named have a lot of expertise in this.
And so now we get to the crux of the matter. How do you decide if you should replace software you pay for with something you have vibe coded? And it comes down to those things I mentioned earlier: skill, expertise, and the right tools, as well as your dependency on the software.
So with the fence, and not at all with the HVAC, but with the fence, we had the skill, being able to build anything, use tools properly, like, like carpentry tools. We had the expertise knowing how to build a reliable fence. This was something my brother-in-law apparently has a lot of experience in. And we had the tools, namely an auger, which allowed us to sink the posts without having to manually dig 3-foot holes. But in this case, we could also do nothing. That is, we didn't have complete dependency on the fence. We could take the dog out and put him on a leash.
When it comes to our HVAC, like I said, we didn't have the skills, the expertise or the tools, but we also have dependency on our HVAC, especially in the bitterly cold winters we have here in the Northeast. So doing nothing was not an option for us. We didn't have any of the skills, expertise, or tools to replace the HVAC ourselves. And so we decided- well, we didn't really; it was decided for us, right? We had to pay somebody to replace our HVAC. But let's move away from the home examples. What does this look like in software? Let's break it down one by one.
1. Skill. Do you have the skill to do this? You don't need to write code anymore. This is true. But you still need to understand software security and maintenance. You can't just launch a tool into the ether, possibly one that has usernames and passwords or your own data, and just trust it's going to work. You still need to at least ask the right questions or know the audits to do the security, and you need to know what to do if things break. Right. If you make an iOS app or an iPad app, and then the next version of iOS comes out and your app breaks, you need to be confident that you can fix it or the AI can fix it, or that you can just stop using it. So, that's the skill part.
2. Expertise. You need to know enough about the problem and how to solve it to build a solution for it. I think we've seen time and time again, right, vague prompts lead to incomplete or inaccurate responses. The first thing I do when I create new software is create the spec, and I use that using one of the ”smarter models”. And then I will feed that to Claude Code after reviewing everything and going through it to make sure it touches everything I needed to touch.
But if you're just like, hey, I need a way to send emails, right? I wanna replace Kit. I want a way to send emails. There's gonna be a lot of stuff that the large language model will not be able to help you with. In fact, when I replaced Senja, it straight up said, hey, do you want the video part? 'Cause that's gonna be super hard. So you need the expertise, and I had the expertise to know I'm not going to want the videos. All right.
3. Tools. The tools to actually deploy the software are much easier to use now, but do you know how to use those tools? Do you know how to use Netlify or Vercel and Supabase or Cloudflare? There's a lot of free options now. And knowing which one to use is important because, for example, I just replaced my personal website, casabona.org. It was a WordPress site. Now it's a flat file site. I'm hosting it on Netlify, which means that every time I write a blog post, I have to deploy it, and it uses 15 credits. If I was writing multiple blog posts a day, I would have made an incredible mistake. And I probably should have kept paying for my WordPress host or moved to a different thing like Ghost if I was sick of WordPress. So that's something you need to understand.
4. Perhaps the most important question, right? Because the first 3, like maybe they're not insurmountable; maybe “AI can help you”, or maybe you have friends who have expertise in this area, but dependency. If the software stopped working and you didn't know how to fix it, how would that impact your business? I was coding an iOS app back in March, and I really wanted this feature, and I thought it would be neat. And that version of OpenAI's Codex couldn't get it right. It's fixed. It wasn't fixed. It's fixed. It wasn't fixed. And then it told me how to fix it. And I had no idea. I have never programmed with Swift. I had never written an iOS app before. And luckily I had the skill and expertise to make feature branches so that if something went awry, it didn't kill the whole app, but it also wasn't a required feature. So that's the dependency thing.
So let's look at my examples again.
First, let's do the Stream Deck plugin and the teleprompter app. I have the skill, expertise, and tools, and I have zero dependency on these. If they disappeared tomorrow, I'd be mildly inconvenienced. So I was very comfortable vibe coding them. If my Stream Deck plugin stopped working, I could go pay $8 for one. It maybe wouldn't do everything I wanted to do, but also I have the media keys on my keyboard. Like, that's not the only way I can control Apple Music.
Same thing with the teleprompter. There's a lot of teleprompter apps. I vibe coded this one 'cause there are some very specific features I wanted, and I have them now, and it's working great, like unbelievably great, but I have zero dependency. Okay.
2. Send Your Replacement and the beta reader software. Beta reader software, man, that really does a number on my accent. I try to keep my New York accent on a low burn, but beta reader software really kills me. Okay. I have the skill, I have some expertise, and I have most of the tools. So I felt very comfortable doing this. And again, virtually no dependency on these.
Would I be inconvenienced if my Senja replacement went away? Yes, I'd have to update a bunch of embeds across my websites, and that would be annoying, but I would spin up a Google Form to keep collecting testimonials. And the beta reader software, forget about it. Like, I'm not even using that right now.
Okay. So those are the things I've coded. Now, let's look at Kit, Ecamm, and podcast hosting. I do not have the skills for these types of software, nor do I have the expertise. Things like deliverability or concurrent streaming, file storage, spam management, server management. There's a lot of things that can go wrong with all of these, which is why I trust Kit, Ecamm, RSS.com, and Transistor.
I have some of the tools. I know how software works. And so I know enough to know that I don't have all of the skills, tools, and expertise, but that leads me to number 4. I have deep Dependency on all of these things. I am using Ecamm right now to record. I sent an email with Kit this morning. Both of my podcasts go out later this week, and I know they will reliably do so. If they went away tomorrow, I'd be screwed.
Yes, I could find a Kit replacement. Yes, I could find a podcast host replacement. I honestly don't believe I would find a good enough Ecamm replacement. Like, yes, OBS exists, but I would be really left in the lurch, which is why I happily pay for all of those things. I guess disclosure here, I am a content creator and evangelist for RSS.com, and so I do get that account for free, but I host actual podcasts over there.
Now, I suspect I'm at a slight advantage here because I have software development expertise. I have a master's degree in software engineering. Maybe some would say because of that, I have the burden of knowledge and maybe just go out there and try stuff and see what happens. These decisions are going to be different for you. Maybe you don't have the dependency I have on Kit, and so you could try creating your own ESP, though. I really wouldn't recommend that. It's up to you to evaluate if you want to spend time coding something, testing it, deploying it, and most importantly, supporting it. That's the big one because yeah, you might launch something and it works great today.
But what happens a month from now, 2 months from now, 6 months from now, when something goes wrong and you don't know how to fix it? Again, I know the temptation is great. Having the discernment to know when you should code a replacement or keep paying for something that is well-supported and reliable is important. If you need help with this, or if you've been wondering how you should approach using AI to write or replace software for you, I am cooking up something special. It's a cohort and course where I will walk you through how to figure out what to replace, how to use AI to replace it, and how to make sure it turns into a long-term solution for you. We'll have an example project to walk through before you start building your own.
And that's really my goal for the end of this cohort. You will have a tool that you have fully replaced with your own version, thanks to vibe coding with AI. This is something I have saved literally thousands of dollars on. I've replaced websites where I was paying a ton for hosting. I've replaced tools with high monthly subscriptions.
What I've done for myself is to replace the tools that I know I won't need in 6 months if they go away, or the tools that I don't have heavy dependency on, because I don't want you to switch and then end up having to switch back. So I will be with you every step of the way to help you. If you're interested, you can head over to streamlined.fm/waitlist, scan the QR code to join the waitlist, and you'll be the first to be notified when presale opens. There will be a special presale price. Again, that is streamlined.fm/waitlist.
So that's it for this episode of The Streamlined Solopreneur. In it, we went over the basically 4 criteria to figure out if you should look into vibe coding a replacement or just pay for the tool. I am a big proponent of paying for software that's worth paying for. I pay for convenience all the time, and I pay for expertise. But if there's a tool that you can reliably replace to save yourself some extra money or simplify your tech stack, I think that's really worth looking into. So let me know over at streamlinedfeedback.com. Have you vibe coded your own tool? Are you worried about it? You can send me a voice note. I'll play it on the show. But that's it for this episode of The Streamlined Solopreneur.
Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, I hope you find some space in your week.