Building SoldTools: Shipping Your Own Product Alongside Client Work

SoldTools is my own product — a toolkit for car sales professionals that handles lead capture, appointment scheduling, deal intelligence, and referrals. It's live at app.soldtools.com and being used by real salespeople.

Building it alongside client work was one of the hardest things I've done. Here's what that actually looks like.

Why I built it

Client work is rewarding, but it's always someone else's product. I wanted to experience the full cycle — identifying a problem, building the solution, getting it into users' hands, and iterating based on real feedback. SoldTools came from noticing that car sales teams were using a patchwork of spreadsheets, generic CRMs, and text messages to manage their pipeline.

The existing tools weren't built for how car salespeople actually work. They needed something faster, simpler, and designed around the showroom workflow — not adapted from generic sales software.

The reality of building two things at once

I won't sugarcoat it: it's hard. Client work pays the bills and deserves full attention. SoldTools gets evenings, weekends, and the gaps between engagements. There were months where it barely moved forward.

What made it possible was keeping the scope small. SoldTools doesn't try to be a full CRM. It does a few things well — lead capture from multiple sources, scheduling, and deal tracking — and leaves the rest alone.

What I learned from being my own client

Building your own product teaches you things client work can't. When you're the one fielding support requests and watching usage analytics, you develop a different relationship with the code. Every shortcut you took during development comes back to visit you personally.

It also made me a better client-work builder. I'm more honest about timelines, more careful about documentation, and more focused on building things that can be maintained long-term.

What I'd do differently

I'd ship even smaller. The first version of SoldTools had features nobody used because I assumed they'd be important. The features that actually stuck were the ones I built after watching salespeople use the early version.

I'd also set clearer boundaries between client time and product time. In the beginning, I'd context-switch constantly, which made both worse. Now I batch my SoldTools work into dedicated blocks.

SoldTools is still growing, and I'm still learning from it. That's the point.