What's up, everybody? This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to
the IndieHackers podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making
a lot of money in the process. And on this show, I sit down with these IndieHackers to
discuss the ideas, the opportunities, and the strategies they're taking advantage of
so the rest of us can do the same. Alright, I'm here with Brett Williams. Brett, how's
it going? Great, man. How are you? Doing excellent. It's nice to meet you. I've been seeing your
name pop up constantly on IndieHackers, on Twitter for the last couple of years. And
it's crazy. You have this crazy business. You're making over a million dollars a year
as a one-person design agency. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. It's been a crazy ride for...
I've been going at it. Yeah, I've been at IndieHackers around for gosh, many years, but
going at this for five. So I've been around the block a couple of times with this thing.
Yeah, it's like the most inspirational possible story. It's like, who doesn't want to make
a million dollars by themselves? Every IndieHacker is like, if I could just not hire a whole
team, not manage a bunch of people, if I could work. It looks like you're in your apartment,
I assume. You just work from home and make a ton of money doing what I love. That's the
dream. And you've hit that dream. And you've been there for some time. It wasn't just yesterday.
You've been posting about this for years. I was reading some of your old comments on
IndieHackers. You just started design joy. Things were going okay. And one of them you
talked about this fear that it wouldn't scale. You're thinking, I'm doing this on the side.
I've got a full-time job or a different job. I'm working on these design projects for people.
I'm already at the point where I've got six or seven customers. I'm not sure if I could
possibly scale this business. So maybe, I think you said, maybe I'm forever doomed to
be a lifestyle business. And here you are. You clearly pushed past that point.
Yeah, I mean, it's partly my own self-doubt, but also I've had a lot of people over the
years that have just spoken to that. That also kind of put that doubt in as well. When
I explain the model and explain the fact that I'm doing myself, I mean, you have people
on one hand that say, getting clients will never be your bottleneck. It'll be scaling
this thing. And then you have other... The other side is like, you're going to burn yourself
out and you're never going to want to design another screen again.
And those two things have certainly played a part in just my mental health every day
and just figuring out like, is this a long-term play? But I mean, I guess time is sort of
told and time will continue to tell whether it is. But I've been going out long enough
where I've proven a lot of wrong up until this point. And I've just gotten better at
what I do. So it's in a sense, it's getting a little bit easier the further I go along.
So let's talk about the actual business. It's called DesignJoy. I'm looking at your website.
It's super slick as it probably should be because you're a designer. What's your skillset?
How did you build something like this? What did it take?
I've gone through the typical path. A designer kind of goes through. I started out... Actually
started out... I was one of the first... This is kind of a silly thing. I was kind of one
of the first ones on the internet to actually create these like silly, like corny, inspirational
quote images back in 2009. So I started out with like graphic design.
That was you.
That was me.
That was me.
I saw a lot of those.
Yep. Now they're everywhere. But yeah. So I started out like graphic design. Like that
was my that was my passion for the first year or two of like getting into the design world.
And then that gradually went into like web design, specifically like landing pages, marketing
sites. And then that sort of graduated onto like product design, branding. So the course
of my career, I've gotten the skill set of just about most areas in design with the exception
of a few. And then just kind of honed in on honed in on those.
How do you how do you become good at this? Is it like you're just like people are paying
you to do this? Are you just dabbling? Are you taking classes online? Because I think
yeah, most people I'm a designer myself. I think most people consider themselves either
have an eye for design or they don't.
Mm hmm. Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, for me, the path I think is different, especially
like in this day and age, right? The courses and and YouTube is so big. I got my I didn't
I didn't go to school for this. I'm a self taught designer. And I just hustled, I started
surrounding myself with good design. I'm like a sucker for like, dribble in the all these
like, super, you know, popular design sort of inspo sites, I'm constantly surrounding
myself with that. So it creates some creativity in my brain, but also gives me a lot of a
lot of direction to go with projects where I don't have to typically do a lot of research
before I start when I have almost like this repository, my brain of, of all these like
cool, you know, projects I've seen the past. So yeah, I mean, for me, it was like, I created
fake projects for myself, it's hard starting out designer to get a to get a design gig.
And so I created the experience for myself, which I don't hear a lot of people doing right?
Like I hear, I see a lot of forums, like, how do I get a job? If I don't have any experience?
Like, why don't people give me a chance, right? It's like, my advice is go out and create
the experience for yourself, create fake projects, take a project, go to product, take a project,
make it better, redesign it, go through that process. And that's really within anyone's
hands, you know, today to kind of start that process without waiting on someone else to
give you that opportunity.
Like that you said, you surrounded yourself with good design, you're on dribble, you're
looking at like the best designs, I think that's the best possible thing you can do
to get good at stuff. Because like half of it is just taste. You know, if you're out
there making different mock ups and designs, and you're creating logos and stuff, and you
don't have good taste, you can't even tell if your own stuff is good. When to stop working
on it and release it or when to keep working on it. And so I think surrounding yourself
with like really good design, and developing your taste over time. It's crazy, it makes
you so picky. Because I remember like when I was younger, I just thought everything looked
great. I was like, Oh, it looks amazing. And now I look back at the things I thought look
great. I'm like, that looks terrible. Like why did I look good? And it's because I didn't
have any taste.
Yeah, I mean, it also like it does that. But it also allows you to stay on top of kind
of what's in right? Because the design world many, much like any other industry evolves
and changes constantly, right? Like one day brutalist is in another, another time, like,
you know, flat minimalism. Now illustrations are out and photography is coming back in.
And so it's like a good way to just keep a pulse on staying like, you know, front and
center on sort of like latest design trends, because that's all they are. Design is just
a bunch of trends, right? That evolve all the time. And what better way to do that than
to immerse yourself in it every day.
So at some point, you built design joy. And I guess this is like sort of a twist where
you're like, you know, I'm a designer, I want to make money in a completely different way
than I have before. How did that idea come about?
Yeah, I mean, I, I had a corporate job, I was in the corporate world for quite a while
bouncing around every one or two years, I never stayed put anywhere. And I always kind
of, you know, like, like any kind of entrepreneurs stuck in like a corporate job, you have this
just burning desire to break out and to be able to make it on your own. And I had that
for a really long time, I thought of going to freelance route. That was sort of the route,
you know, it's big now, but like, you know, it was kind of growing back then. And I didn't
know how to enter the market as just another freelancer, because it you know, it's everyone's
a freelancer, it's hard to differentiate yourself, you're just one of a million others
that are out there. And so I thought, I'll create a brand around myself, I'll remove
my name from the equation, create this brand, I'll run it myself. I actually got the idea
to structure it the way I did from another productized design service called design pickle,
which I'm sure most people listening are familiar with. And I executed an area that they weren't
servicing, which was landing pages, branding and product design, they were heavily focused
on the graphic design side servicing local and small businesses, no one at the time were
like going after the YC, you know, startups and all these more premium end of businesses.
And so I created something that utilize their model because they validated it, I didn't
have to validate it at all and sort of piggybacked off that and took a different angle at it.
That's awesome. I think that's like the smartest thing you could possibly do is you look at
what's already working, you find someone like you said, who's already validated the idea
like, okay, you know, design pickles working, they're making money hand over fist. And then
you just figure out how can I make this my own, right? Put your own little tweak on it,
your own little twist on it, you know, target your own market that they're not targeting.
And that's fine. It kind of works because the business model is proven. It's such a
smart way to do things. I think so many people don't go that route because they think, oh,
this idea is already taken, you know, design pickles already doing unlimited design. I
guess my idea sucks. You know, I can't possibly do something that someone's already done.
And that's like, it's so it can be further from the truth.
No, I mean, it's yeah, kudos to you if you were able to create something unique that
hasn't been done before. I mean, that that's a that's a definitely like a good skill set
to have. But it's not always about reinventing the wheel. I don't I don't judge a startup
ideas about you know, about validity based on how unique it is. I think that's a mistake.
I think looking for opportunities make it better. Looking to niche down on a model that's
already proven to be working. There's so many different ways to borrow what's already out
there without outright stealing it and making your own and targeting a different audience
or offering a better product or service in general, even targeting the same audience.
You know, there's multiple ways to go about it.
Doing totally new stuff is so overrated. Because like you said, like, no one's like, ah, you
know, I've I would eat at this Italian restaurant, but like, I've already eaten an Italian restaurant
before. I'm done with the time restaurants forever. Like it needs to be something new.
Like no one does that. But I think as a creator, it's so easy to think like you have to do
something new. And that path is so much harder. It's so much harder because you're basically
doing something that like you haven't no one is proven will work. And what you're doing,
it's like you're making a million dollars a year and doing something that people have
wanted and paid for for like 100 years. Exactly. It's not it's not that new. It's not that
complex. You're just doing it. And I think a very clever or creative way that that allows
you to scale. So let's talk about the the structure. How does design joy work? Exactly.
Yeah. So what makes design joy different is it's what's called the product is ties service
where we basically sell design as you do a product. It's fixed outcome, fixed price,
basically subscription plans for companies in need of either a full-time designer, a
design support system, just one-off projects, ongoing design support. And it's just really
easy to get started. I've lowered the barrier as much as humanly possible to get started
with any service. It's actually quicker to sign up for design joy and get designs going
than to buy a t-shirt. It takes less time to do that. And yeah, so once companies have
a subscription, they basically essentially it's like a glorified freelance retainer for
me. It's a month-to-month thing. They can input design needs as they pop up. It could
be anything and everything from software design to logo creation, brand guide creation, pitch
decks, whatever. And they just work through one by one. So once we complete one request,
we move on to the next request and the process just keeps going. It's sort of like an execution
machine with a little bit of strategy involved as well.
Right. Yeah, I'm on your website. I'm testing out your super fast signup process. So I click
see plans. I see the plans. I basically just click get started. This is expensive. Design,
$4,995 a month. Our design plus web flow, $5,500 a month. And even enterprise, like
book a call and people can book a call. You don't have the pricing on the website. It's
when I imagine it's pretty pricey.
I just doubled my prices last Friday, I think. So yeah, it wasn't as expensive. But yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then I click sign up. I put on my email address and my password. And
the first thing it does is say confirm and pay $4,595 with a little checkout form. So
it's like, it's straight to business. You're not fucking around. I immediately get asked
to pay.
Straight to business right after that too. There's not like a, we don't hop on a call
or like, or I don't have any fancy onboarding forums. I just, I have this automated system
that creates a Trello board. You're sending invite and then you're in that, that you're
ready within like 30 seconds to submit a request.
So I think one of the biggest questions that people have for you, and I've seen this all
over. I saw this in Hacker News the other day, uh, when there was a post kind of about
your business. I saw this on Andy hackers. I seen this on Twitter where you're talking
about how many people are coming to design joy and how much money you're making. And
people are like, but Brett, like how can you possibly as a one person operation handle
this kind of flow? People even like done a bunch of like math on like in the comments
and try to figure out, okay, well, Brett has, you know, making a million dollars a year.
That's $20,000 a week. And he has, you know, he needs this many customers, 45 customers.
That means he has to be working one hour a week per customer. There's no way he could
possibly do it. This business is bullshit. How many customers do you have? I guess. And
how do you handle that workload?
Yeah, I've wrestled with this question because I didn't start out being able to do what I
do today. I mean, it's been a gradual sort of growth as a designer to be able to handle
the volume that I'm at. And no one can really understand it. And then this is just something
that I've just been enlightened of recently because I never knew how to answer this. I
would always just say like, Oh, I'm just fast, right? Like I'm just a fast designer. I'm,
you know, whatever. I think what I've come to the conclusion of is I, you know, I give
this reference of like, I've been like forged in this fire for five years. I started out
running it for three years managing seven to 10 clients. It gradually started growing
after like the three year mark to where it is now, which is in the 40 to 50 range. And
without going through that you, I understand how it seems impossible, especially like from
a designer standpoint that understands how projects typically go. But I, I've been forged
to be able to pump out design work at an insane rate of speed that other designers just probably
can't match because they haven't gone through what I've gone through. But aside from just
like just sheer like ability and skill, it would be more like, there's other things that
are involved too with allowing me to do this. Like I have a zero tolerance meeting policy.
So if a client signs up and they want to hop on a call, the answer is always no, no matter
what. Managing 40 clients, you can imagine if I hop on a call for an hour, I mean, I
get three or four clients work done in an hour. And it is true. And it sounds crazy,
but I don't, I don't really spend more than an hour a week on a client. So my hourly rate
is actually really high, but the volume of work that I give you is more than a typical
designer spends in an hour. So it's hard to kind of compare a typical designer with
myself having gone through what I've gone through with the design journey.
So basically you've become a superhuman is the answer to this question.
I mean, you put anybody through what I've been through. I mean, whether you take it,
you know, for development or content writing or any, any kind of skill or, you know, shooting
a basketball, right? Like if you go out and shoot a thousand hoops a day, right? Like you're
going to be good. And that's what I've done with design. You don't typically make that
same reference, but that's what I've done through design joy.
Just gotten super fast. And I found this post that I was referencing earlier from January
24th, 2020. So this is those precious couple of months before the pandemic, you posted
on Andy hackers post got 6,000 page views. You said, I run an unlimited design service
by myself with Brett Williams. And near the end of it, you say at any given point, I have
about six to seven clients subscribed with another two to three pause while their product
is in development. That results in about five to $6,000 a month in recurring revenue, $220,000
a day. It's not a significant amount, but it's a site income. You said I've been given
multiple opportunities to blow design joy up into a multimillion dollar business nearly
overnight by people like the Dave Ramsey show and others, but I have a no position to do
that. I can't duplicate myself. I can't hire designers to work as quickly as I can. Or
if I can't, they can't produce the level of quality that I demand my service provides.
So I guess design joy will forever just be a side project, not a real company with real
employees. But hey, if I can make an extra $6,000 every month, I suppose I should be
fine with that. That was a long time ago. $6,000 a month, small, far cry from what you're
doing right now. Tell me what happened since then, because obviously things have changed.
Really, the pandemic really accelerated things for me. It was an overnight growth spurt.
I don't know. I can't necessarily directly correlate it to the pandemic, but it happened
around the same time. That's when design joy went from like, okay, it's a side project
making a really good side income for me to now. This is quickly becoming my life and
taking over my full-time job. Certain things have happened. Sharing my story about being
a one-person design agency and doing the volume I am is in a way... It's a very notable thing
that people catch on to or are curious about and want to duplicate themselves.
So in part, it's my story of... It's funny. My growth has fueled my growth in a sense.
Sharing my milestones that I've hit fuel more growth and more growth and more growth. And
then all the way up until 4 weeks ago, I was doing I think like 80k MRR. I had a full-time
job until last October when I was doing 80k. And 4 weeks ago, somebody tweeted... Dan Rowden
on Twitter tweeted about design joy and it's jumped up 50k in revenue a month, 100 people
plus on a waiting list, double my prices. That one tweet just changed my life.
I got on Twitter finally. I was forced to go on Twitter, started building an audience,
giving insight looks into how I run things, what my Trello boards look like and Airtable
looks like, kind of peeling back the layers. So that was the biggest growth spurt. It was
just a matter of 2 weeks that my business basically grew by 50% almost.
And I'm looking at the Wayback Machine, classic website. It's awesome because you can just
go back in time, see any website and what it looked like at some point in the past.
So Wayback Machine, designjoy.co is your website. And I can see snapshots from 2019, snapshots
from March 2020. And you were charging, I think this is probably a big part of your
success. You were charging like $400 a month, $495 a month, literally 10 times less than
you're charging today. You can have 10 times for your customers, right? And make the same
amount today as you're making that. And you have more customers now than you did then.
So it's like this kind of explosion in the popularity of your website combined with the
fact that you're charging way more for what you do.
The price increases. Every time I've increased my prices, it hasn't been... I mean, sure,
it's to make more money, but the reaction has always been to stifle growth. As an entrepreneur,
I've never intended to grow designjoy. I have never had a formal traditional marketing strategy.
Never spent an ad on or a dollar on paid ads, anything like that. I've been content with
where I'm at no matter where I'm at. So yeah, every time that I've increased my prices,
I thought that it'll stifle growth. I thought that I'll price myself out of a market. And
it's a funny thing because I've been told, especially on indie hackers, right? I'll propose
a problem and everyone will be like, raise your prices. That's just the common answer,
right? If you're overwhelmed and the demand is higher than the supply.
And I always thought this kind of insecurity part of me is I didn't want to price myself
out. I didn't want to make myself too expensive. I thought I'd lose people. But it has had
the opposite reaction every single time. Even doubling my prices a couple of days ago has
had an opposite reaction. So I'm sure there's a ceiling to it, but the idea that raising
your prices will hinder you in any way has not been the case for me.
No, I'm talking to Patrick McKenzie later today. I'm actually talking to him tonight
because he's in Tokyo. I'm going to be talking to him on Japan time. But his whole mantra
for the last 15 years has been charge more. Literally just those two words, he has helped
so many entrepreneurs make a ton more money and make their businesses work. And I think
consulting and agency work in particular, there's this combination of charging more
that helps you, but also charging for a more broadly defined sort of thing.
And so I think one of the reasons why a lot of people don't want to be contractors or
freelancers or run an agency, because it seems like you're just trading dollars for hours.
And in some sense, you are. At the end of the day, you stop designing tomorrow. You
stop making money. That's it. Your customers leave. And that's a wrap. And so a lot of
people, when they become freelancers, they charge hourly. And the downside of charging
hourly is that you're very clearly communicating to your clients. You are paying for my time.
This is not a service to help your business grow. This is not a service to help make you
money. You're just paying for my time. And that kind of screws you over. Whereas better
than that is to charge daily or weekly or monthly. Because you say, hey, you're not
paying for my time. You're paying for a business outcome that might make you millions of dollars.
So it might be worth millions of dollars for you to pay me. It might take me a few weeks
or whatever. But that's the price. I'm making you this much money. I want you to pay me
commensurate with that. And you shift from charging for your time to charging for work
that's done. And I think what you've done is the best version of it, which is not only
just charging monthly, but charging... You're basically on retainer. Even if you don't do
any work for somebody, they're still paying you. So it's almost a digital design version
of paying for a gym membership and then forgetting to go. But you're still paying. You know what?
You want the convenience of being able to go whenever you want to without having to
sign up again.
There's a large subset of my clients that really utilize design joy on a daily basis
and quite honestly, there's a lot that I go over a month without doing any work for them.
And so yeah, it's a beautiful thing for me. And also, it's not just a beautiful thing
for me, but it's nice for the client too because they're out of this sort of wheel of having
to get quotes from designers and having to work with them on a consistent basis when
often times they're very inconsistent and sometimes unreliable and difficult to find.
All these sort of like pain points of finding a designer are completely true. But it offers
predictability and they can budget for it. They can cancel it when they want to. If they
don't have any upcoming work, they can pause things. I've made it as client friendly as
I can while still offering myself the predictability too around what am I going to make this month?
So I don't have to be concerned about that.
Do you think this is something that anybody can do? I mean, this guy, I think you saw
the post. It was like a blog post by this guy Ahmed, who's an eddy hacker and he wrote
the agencies of one storm is coming. It's a very predictive post. Like here's what's
going to happen in the future. We're going to see more people like Brett and he was like
a little miniature case study on how your business works, how it's an agency of one
and why it's the future. Do you agree with him? Do you think it's going to be the future?
I don't know. I think that you've got to be two things to make this work. I mean, three
things really. You've got to have a good sense of business. Some designers are just designers
and I'm almost that. I've created businesses in the past and I understand how they work
and how to run one. But you got to have some sort of a good business sense. You got to
be a really good designer and you got to be really fast. Those three things rarely go
together. They certainly do and there's a lot of people out there that I think could
run a very successful agency of one whether you're talking design or again content or
some sort of even deeper niche than that. I think so. I think especially borrowing off
of what I've done with design joy and creating the parameters and restrictions that I've
set around it really allow for a lot of people to be able to do what I do as long as you're
having a good business sense, good at design, good at your skill and are fast at it.
Yeah, that makes sense. And I think one of the cool things is like, let's say you're
a typical designer, like every single time you talk to a client, you got to sit down,
you got to have a call, figure out what their particular needs are. It's not streamlined.
They're different than all your other clients. And so you've got to like shift your headspace.
Maybe do something you've never done before in a different way. There's all this back
and forth feedback. It just slows you down, you know, whereas if you structure yourself
instead of as a freelancer, the way that you've done it, it's more of like an intake form.
It's like, Hey, I'm Brett. This is what I do. Do you fit? Like, you know, I've got like
kind of a square hole or you a square peg. Come on in. I can process you real quick.
If you're not like go somewhere else. Like you're not my customer. Exactly. I mean, that's
I've fortunately been able to get to that point where I can, I can be selective with
who I work with. I can be brutally honest on my, they're like calls that people, most
people don't just like sign up the form and like drop five grand without talking to me
first. So I do allow, I do allow calls before signing up to ensure it's a good fit. And
it's not only to benefit the client to make sure it's a good fit, but it's also an opportunity
for me to determine if this client's a good fit as well. And I've gotten to the point
where I've been able to just be extremely transparent, honest about my process, what
design joy is versus what it is not. And it's allowed me, I think people trust me more because
I'm not, I don't try to sell design joy to you on these calls. I don't really need more
clients, but I want to work at the same time. I want to work with people who this model
works well for because it's a win way. So yeah, I think what you've done is pretty cool
because I think a lot of entrepreneurs are dealing with like more of a scarcity mindset
around customers. Like it's so rare to get anyone coming in to pay, right? It's such
a luxury to have somebody who wants to pay you over the internet. Like you can't turn
down anybody. If someone's going to come and they're going to pay you for something like
you got to say yes to it, right? It's the same as a scarcity mindset around anything
else in life. You know, like if you're starving, you're not going to turn down any food that
comes your way. You're going to say yes to it. But if you come from a place of abundance,
which like obviously is easy gear, if you have millions in revenue coming in from tons
of clients, then you can be picky. Then you can say this is not my customer. Uh, did you
start that way? You know, at what point did you begin to get picky? No, man. I was so
desperate upfront. Um, I would have taken any, any one in everybody. I mean, of course
there were clients along the way that just sucked the life out of me and the, the, just
the mental energy out of me. And I got rid of those, but I am a 3000% more picky now
than I was back then. And you have to be, I mean, it's, it's in an effort. It's not
to be conceded or to be harsh. It's really to protect what you've built and to protect
your client base and allow you to keep, you know, continue to serve them well. If you
let one bag egg into the mix, if I have to spend 30 minutes like on a call with you or
type an email to you that takes away from someone else's work. So yeah, I have to be
very protective over what I've built. How stressed are you? You look not stressed.
You look chilling. I mean, it's a lot of work you're doing all the time. Like how, how much
of a toll is taken on you? It's been different at different times. I would say the last month
has been probably the hardest just growing as much as I've grown. I was in a really
good sprint where I was working normal hours somewhat, especially since I quit my job.
And you know, maybe eight to nine hours, which is like nothing to run a million dollar one
person business, right? Yeah. But the growth that I've experienced over the past month
has set me back into my old ways where I'm just working till 1am every night. And even
then I'm not getting all the work done, having to start early the next day, go at it again
until 1am. 1am is like my cutting time. That's like, that's my closing hours. I will not
by any stretch of the imagination work till then because I know how to affect me the next
day. So I'm pretty much stressed. Yeah. Especially having a family. I mean, that plays a big
part into me. If I was just like a single guy, like just running this business by myself,
I could probably just go and go and go and go. Right. Yeah. How old are you? What's your
life like? What's your, tell me about your family. I'm 30 years old, married. I have
a four year old, a two year old and a newborn coming in four weeks. Oh wow. Yeah. It's a
lot stress. Yeah, man. Like no vacations, you know, right. I don't live a luxurious life.
I just, I just work nonstop. So yeah, I saw this thread on Twitter the other day. It was
like, ironically, it's kind of coming to the opposite conclusion. And this guy's saying,
how old will your kids be if you die at 85? And so he's kind of saying like, if you think
about this, it'll make you want to work less than you do. And so for him, if he dies at
85, his oldest daughter will be 50. So I guess he got her when he was 35 and he'll probably
be able to leave a decent inheritance with it. He asked, is that really the best outcome?
Like by the time his daughter is 50, like she's not necessarily going to need his inheritance.
She's going to be, you know, like in retirement and the face, like it's good. Maybe his grandkids
will care. And he's talking about the fact that generally speaking, like saving a ton
of money when you're old, it's like you can't really use it as well as you can when you're
young. There's other ways to ensure yourself if you're worried about risk. And like, if
you want to leave it behind, like essentially, like your kids might not even need it that
much. And so yeah, ultimately people might spend their lives like working and accumulating
all this money. And then look back and realize, actually, I didn't need all this money and
it was fine. I could have just worked less than I would have been. Yeah. And my life.
No, I agree. I mean, it's like, it's tough too, because the more money you make naturally,
the less money means to you. And that's been, that's been the case to me. And then then
the focus becomes just how much you work and what is taking away from other things. And
it's been burning at me for like the last, especially the last three or four weeks where
I've taken my nights have basically been taken from me. Then that's usually when I spend
with my girls and my wife, right? And you know, I'd like to be able to sit down at the
dinner table, have dinner instead of like having it here at my desk. So yeah, it's been
something that I've been mulling over and struggling with, especially for the last three
or four weeks that I've had moments of just honestly, like just wanting to run away from
it all or cut like three quarters of my client base or just start something different to
go get a normal job. Like when normal hours, right? Like I have those moments of weakness
where I just want to like escape, but you know, I'm still figuring out how to get to
something that's, that's more sustainable and more like family friendly for me. So I
don't think those are moments of weakness though. I think those are moments of clarity
to some degree, right? That's your body telling you like, ah, is this too much, right? And
you have like so many different levers you can pull. Like the fact that you doubled your
prices, if you're sort of the kink in your chain is not, is not getting new customers
in the door, right? It's scaling yourself. Then you can afford to charge more and more
and more and more and more and just tell everybody else they're not your customer. And that's
something you can do. But then what happens to your existing customers? I guess they're
still on the old prices. They're sort of grandfather. I wouldn't wreck. There's certain things I
would recommend following what I do. And there's a lot of things I would not recommend following
what I do. And that's, that's, I think that's one of them. I've been, I had a client that
I've had since day one of launching on product hunt in 2017. I've kept two or three, I don't
know if they were day one customers, but most of them were like right around there. And
I've kept them at that same price. I had several that are still on the 1k a month plan that
I had, you know, a few years back. So yeah, I mean, especially since doubling my prices
and getting still a lot of interest in people signing up, it's getting to the point where,
and I apologize if a current client is watching this, but it's getting to the point where
I'm going to have no choice, but, but to eventually kind of ungrandfather people in and probably
release them, which will end up probably happening from in the most cases. But I think that's
absolutely the right decision. It's your business. It's totally okay. There's other designers
on earth. Like if you stop designing stuff for people, they're not going to be like,
you know, completely screwed. They'll be fine, you know, and your life can be a lot better.
And if like all of your customers are paying the new rate, you know, if you could get to
that point, like home, oh my God, would your life be so much simpler and better? Everybody
else will be just fine.
If I could take just 20, like if I could just snap my fingers, have 20 clients instead of
what I have. Yeah, I would probably work six, seven hours a day. No problem at all. Right.
So yeah, that's, that's in the cards for me, but I can do it. It's just a little, it's
a little scary to do something like that. It's a little scary to cut like, you know,
half or even a quarter of your clients. I mean, that's not something anyone enjoys doing.
No. And then another lever you can pull is hiring. And so I think I've seen like you've
been looking to try to find designers to help you. Has that been successful at all?
Oh man, I've had so much interest. I mean, not, not just from that, but just I get messages
all the time on, on chat. That's like, you know, people wanting to, to sort of join the
team and take on some design work. I, I too feel the pain and it's exactly why I created
Design Joy. I feel the pain of hiring good designers. I'm a senior level guy. So I only
want to work with senior level people, nothing against people who are just, I mean, I had
just started at one point in my life, but where I'm at, where I position Design Joy
is certainly on the more premium end of things, you know, paying attention to every single
pixel that's put on a screen, right? Following conventions and things like that. So it is
a particular type of designer that I'm looking for. And I just haven't not been able to find
one that if I find one that does designs pretty things, they're slacking in the detail side
of things. If they're really on the detail side of things, they're slacking on the creative
into things. Now I'm still trying to find someone that does both.
Have you had to fire someone? Like if you like tried somebody out and really, okay,
this is going to go well. And then, you know, nevermind.
I mean, my, my process here is like find someone that, that looks good on the outside, put
him, give him a couple of projects to do in Figma, go in there and inspect every detail
of it, checking pixels and checking just, you know, aesthetic in general. And that's
where the majority of them fall short.
That's thankless work. Like you're spending your time vetting designers are potentially
higher that goes nowhere. You could have spent that time making another $5,000 doing work
for a new client.
Yeah. And also it's like, I don't like managing people. I don't even, I don't call myself
an entrepreneur. I'm like, I'm a designer. I don't mean to like downplay it by any means,
but I'm a designer. I don't have interest in managing people. And I'm a very introverted
person doing something like this is a lot, a lot of like energy that, that it's taken
from me, though I enjoy it thoroughly, but it's like, I'm an introverted person. So bringing
on a team, taking on the livelihood of other people, having to manage them, having to make
sure that they have a consistent amount of work, reviewing the work, ensuring it's quality.
That stress in my head at least seems greater than taking on all the work myself.
Yeah. I'm the same way. I don't want a giant team. I don't want ideally almost no time
at Indie Hackers. We have some contractors. It's me and my brother really full time. And
that's it. It's like the tiniest possible.
I was just reading that. That's awesome. And that's amazing.
It's cool to work with people that you actually like, if you're going to work with anyone
at all. And I think the vast majority of Indie Hackers do this because like we don't want
that lifestyle. Like I don't know very many people who started a business and say, you
know what? I love it. I've gotten away from the early days where I was just building and
creating stuff and using my creative brain. And now I'm just managing people. Like no
one says, no, I don't know. It's I'm content where I'm at that they may grant it. Like,
and I'm sure you're the same way, right? Like you see maybe other teams on Twitter that
are getting together and like creating some cool stuff. And that, I mean, that interests
me a lot. Like I do for sure know that there could be a potential, you know, a huge value
ad in building a team and just being around like-minded people sort of going after the
same goal, right? As like as corny as that sounds, that does sound really fun to me.
But getting there and staying there is a whole other ball game.
Yeah. You did an AMA on the hackers and you talked about this. You said the world tells
you that every business should grow, but in reality all comes down to your own personal
desires, what you want out of life. And I've chosen the path, fewer headaches, less meetings,
less managing people, and less constantly worrying about expanding and growing all at
the end of the day, making a solid living working for myself. And I think that's like
the dream, right? Like less bullshit, more of the good stuff. Hopefully not to the point
where you're stressed out and say them to 1am, but like, at least you're not going to
youth with meetings.
It's kind of silly to hear that back knowing where I'm at scale-wise, but it's important
to note that I didn't choose to get here. This was not something that I actively pursued
to be at the volume that I am at now. When I wrote that post, I was probably at a far
less volume. I would imagine. I don't know what it was. But yeah, it sounds kind of silly,
but the philosophy still hangs true, right?
Well, I think this is like the beauty of your business. If you start a business that...
Specifically, it's like the beauty of charging more. If you start a business, you're charging
people $5 a month, or $25 a month, or even $100 a month. The number of customers that
you need to get to the revenue run rate that you're at is astronomical. You have to be
super good at growth, right? Like, okay, what is a million dollars a year? It's like $83,000
a month. If you're charging $100 a month, that means you need 830 paying customers at
$100 a month. And even $100 a month is more than the most indie hackers want to charge,
because most people come out of the gate and say, oh, I'm no good. I'm brand new. I'm just
a one-person company. No one's going to pay me more than 5 or 10 or 20 bucks a month,
which is absolutely wrong. Here you are charging $5,000 a month. And I know not all of the
customers are paying that rate. But assuming they actually got to that point, that's what?
You need like 16 customers to make a million dollars a year? 16 customers.
When you're... I got my... I just raised my prices. I signed 2 people on yesterday at
the new rate. It's actually $5,500 because they both did Webflow. And it really is...
It's amazing because in one day, most indie hackers and entrepreneurs would dream of growing
their MRR by 10K in a day. That's like... A lot of them would like to get to 10K just
at all. But charging more and offering a premium service and just executing a well allows for
me to do that. My MRR can grow 20K a day if I have a good day. And likewise, they can
also drop by that if people drop off, which has happened far and far less often as I've
gotten better and worked with better people and charged higher prices.
But yeah, when you're charging more, like you said, if I'm charging... If I was charged
$449 a month, it would take me forever to get to where I am. And I would never be able
to handle it. I mean, that'd be unimaginable. But yeah, charging more is always better.
I was reading this tweet from... Do you know Peter Levels? Guy behind Nomad List, Remote
OK. He's prolific on Twitter. He's tweeted over the weekend. He's like, a month ago I
bought the domain, rock.co, for $8,000. And I made it into a short link service for remote
jobs. So he's got this job board, Remote OK. And if you post a job on there and you send
the link to somebody, the link to your job is www.remoteok.com, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, what if you want a link shortened version of it?
Well, he now has that as an option where when you're doing a job, you can do a link short.
He's charging $100 to get a link shortened version.
That's the dream right there. $100. He did this. He said, I did this a month ago. He's
now sold 125 of them at $100 a month. So he's added basically $12,000 a month of recurring
revenue, literally charging for links. What I'm doing is like, yeah, it's cool, but that's
the dream. It's great. It's crazy, right? But I think people will pay money for things.
They could go to Bitly and copy paste their job listing into there and get their own short
link for free. And they are paying him a hundred bucks.
I just think that as entrepreneurs, a lot of us are just naturally insecure. Not all
of us suffer from this uninformed optimism where we think everything's going to work
and everything's going to be great. A lot of people like myself are very risk-averse
and over-analytical about whether something's plausible or not, or whether I'm charging
too much. And there's so many people out there that are in so many different situations
that what they can afford and what they can't. And we forget that there are a lot of people
out there will pay a premium for something that they like.
So many people. The amount of money I spend on food is ridiculous. I'm like, I don't want
to cook. I just order out. And then I pay an embarrassing amount of money just to get
food delivered. My food budget, DoorDash, is the biggest
budget item that I have. The same here. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous.
I used to play poker with one of the founders of DoorDash, who's now a billionaire.
Oh, really? Oh, my gosh. He was very reckless at the poker table.
And I was always like, hey, can I get a discount? Just spend a lot of money on DoorDash. And
people will do it, though. I think that's the point, right?
So I want to talk about what it takes to build a sort of agency of one. We talked about a
few things, right? Number one, you need this amazing skill set, right? You are super streamlined.
You have done the same thing over and over, day after day after day after day. At this
point, it's probably just in your bones. Like a virtuoso musician, right? I used to play
the saxophone. And when I started, I sucked. And after five or six years, I was super good
at the saxophone, because it's all I did. But you need that.
I think the streamlined workflow part is really important. Or it's not just that you're good,
but you're getting predictable sort of customers coming. It's not completely different every
single time, right? You're like, this is what I do. I do web flow and I do design. What else
do you think you need? What else makes this possible for other people who are trying to
do this?
The streamlined workflow is honestly like that's probably the... It goes hand in hand
with having the skill and having the ability to do it quickly. It's not one or the other.
It's making it as simple and as manageable for yourself. It's also important to mention,
you don't have to get to the scale of design joy. I mean, if you're making 10K a month,
that's a very healthy living for most people out there. And most people would love that.
People... And I'm not saying this just because I'm a designer, right? But a lot of people
suck it. Their landing pages just suck. They create this beautiful service that's on the
back end, works very efficiently. And then they just totally neglect the actual selling
part of it. Which if I could live in a world where money wasn't a thing and I could just
help indie hackers just create gorgeous landing pages that just sell what they do. That's
my passion. I would love to be in a position to do that. Because I feel like so many people
need it. But yeah, investing in investing in your brand... And again, it sounds silly
becoming a designer, but investing in your brand and your market positioning and niching
down and going after something very specific that is something... It doesn't have to be
reoccurring. It could be one-off podcast editing. It could be... I'm literally helping my sister
build a productized interior design service. That's physical stuff. And the model can be
applied to anything. But honestly, just making it as simple as you can for both parties.
I'm not going through and investing a lot of money and building my own tools to manage
and using existing stuff out there that again, has been proven. I don't have to manage it
or pay for it or scale it. Tell me about that too. Because I think these tools are super
useful. I was looking at the source of your website. So I'm like, your website is clean.
It looks really good. But it's also well-made. It's responsive. I shrink my window. It still
looks good. It's got these animations. And you're not a computer programmer. You don't
do...
I don't do code at all.
Yeah, you don't do code. So how did you make this?
Webflow. Webflow is probably my favorite tool that I've come across in the last four or
five years. I've been using it since, gosh, like 2018 or something like that. And I've
gotten very good at it. I can design pretty much any landing page design at all with zero
code.
One of my best friends got... She learned how to code. I actually had her on the podcast
a couple times. And her first thing out of the gate was not to just go make custom apps
with people. She learned how to code and just went to Webflow, which you don't even need
to know how to code to use Webflow. But if you do, it's way better. And she just made
Webflow websites for people and became a Webflow consultant and was a Webflow expert.
I can tell you straight up. I've seen it. I've been at the forefront of Webflow work
for a long time in terms of doing the work and seeing its growth. It's very rare that
I talked to a startup that is not interested in converting to Webflow or starting in Webflow.
It's nowhere close to taking over WordPress by any stretch of the imagination, just given
its history and given the fact that so many companies are already invested in it and stuck
in it. But Webflow is... Honestly, it's like the future of the web. It's honestly the most
impressive website building tool out there. And it allows me as a designer to design whatever
I want to imagine in Figma and actually be able to develop at Pixel Perfect with zero
code, which is incredible feat.
People don't know what Webflow is. Check out episode number 144 of the podcast. I talked
to Vlad, the founder of Webflow. Yeah. And they were gonna die. Their company was like...
There was a point where it was like, our company is not gonna work, right? And now they're
raised hundreds of millions of dollars, raised evaluations, just crushing it. He's like the
sweetest guy ever. So check out that episode if you haven't heard it. So Webflow, one of
your secret weapons. What else? What other tools do you use to do what you do?
A couple more tools. I use Trello. So Trello is where my client's design queue lives. And
there's other tools out there that are beefier that have more features, but Trello is a very
streamlined, simple tool. Most people are used to the Kambana boards already or even used
to Trello itself. So I set up people's queue in there and that's where they input requests
and provide feedback. And that's why I deliver designs. So that's the whole project management
side of things. And then I use Airtable for internal purposes to consolidate the 50 or
so boards that I have for each client into a single view. And that's where I manage project
status. And it's just a single table. And that's it.
That's so smart. Your clients come in and they're using the software. Because you could
just do it all over email. Like, okay, email me.
A lot of people that do start out doing product design services, they also... A lot of invest
in their own tools that they'll go out and build a queue-based product or platform that
clients could sign into. And it's like a branded experience. But even then, I mean, you're
never going to be better than Trello. I mean, you may get more specific and it may eventually
get there. But for me, it was just so much simpler to just use a tool that exists. Allow
some other team that I don't have to do anything worth. Allow it to make it better, manage
it. And if it goes down, they'll take care of it. I don't have to have dev debt in that
regard.
What about Entercom? Because I noticed when I go to your website, you've got the classic
Entercom widget in the bottom right. I can click that. I presumably chat with you, ask
you questions. How valuable is that for you?
Oh my goodness. Oh man. Insanely valuable. So for a long time, I didn't offer calls.
Again, I'm an introvert. I don't like to get on face-to-face calls or calls in general.
So for the first 3.5 years, Entercom was my sole route for customers to get in touch before
they sign up. And most of them do.
But still today is. I would pay $1,000 a month for Entercom. And it'd still be more than
worth it to me than more than $50 or so that I pay today.
People complain constantly about how expensive Entercom is as your business grows. I guess
it's not a big issue for you because you don't need millions of customers. But it's a super
expensive tool. And it sounds like you're getting your money's worth.
For me, it is. Yeah. I can't speak to those that receive hundreds of intakes a day and
pay for that. But for me, I couldn't imagine going away from it.
Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at their pricing plans right now. It's like they got two tabs
for most businesses and for very small businesses. And if you click for most businesses, all
of their plans are like, get a demo. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They do not show the
price on their website. That's what they're saying. Most people should go with this enterprise
pricing route. And even if you're a starter business, it starts off at $75 a month, which
isn't cheap for people who are just getting started.
Yeah. For me, it's funny because I was on the startup, actually it was the early stage
program up until a month and a half ago. They emailed me. They're like, hey, you're ready
to move on from this early stage. I was doing a million bucks a year. So I was like, of
course I am. But it was just funny that I was able to do that for as long as I did.
But now I'm actually paying what everyone else is paying for it. But still well worth
it. So let's talk about, just to finish off here,
the marketing aspect of it. Because it seems like it'll be a quick conversation. You haven't
really had to do very much. How do people find... I mean, at this point, you're on podcasts,
your Twitter accounts blowing up. But in the early days, somebody is just starting this.
When you were just starting this, nobody knew who you were. 99.99% of people have never
heard of you, didn't need your services. How do you get past that barrier where every customer
is a rarity?
I had no audience at all when I started DesignJoy. It was actually called to you at the time.
But when I started DesignJoy, I didn't have a Twitter, I didn't have an Instagram, nothing.
I was just a nobody. But I had a good idea and I had the ability to design something
that looked nice and a concept that was appealing.
So I did what a lot of people do. Typically, it's the quickest way to enter the market.
And that doesn't work for everybody. It worked for me, which was Product Hunt. So I found
a good solid hunter on Product Hunt that had a good following.
I actually built DesignJoy. I thought of the idea on a Thursday. I built it on a Friday
and Saturday, launched on a Sunday at midnight. And it was a one-page site just like it is
today. It looked a little different, but one-page site.
And that was really... It was instantaneous. I didn't sleep for 2 days. I was up all night
on intercom, answering kinds of questions, made all kinds of mistakes, offered free tasks,
which never got around to doing, but got hundreds of those. Of course, why wouldn't I?
Because yeah, that was where I entered the market. Honestly, it carried me for about
a year or more just because these new design tools would pop up and DesignJoy would surface
on the sidebar and got a lot of referral clicks that way.
And then as I've grown, I started to share my story on IndieHackers. IndieHackers has
unequivocally been the number one source of customers for myself.
Really?
Not even close. Not even close. It's rare that I get on a call with someone and I ask
them how they don't say to IndieHackers. Now, it's getting like Twitter because I started
that a month ago, but IndieHackers is... Nothing has even come close to that.
I was going to say, if I wanted to start a business like this and I wanted my first customers,
there's a whole group on IndieHackers called Landing Page Feedback where people post their
landing page that they hacked together for their product. And I don't know, there's hundreds
of posts a month in there. And almost all of them are super crappy. And these were all
people with businesses who want to grow and are financially motivated to have a good landing
page.
I would literally just go through here and be like, here's why it's not great. Here's
how I can help you and try to find clients because there's so many people on IndieHackers
who have money, have businesses and they want help. And they're literally asking like, can
somebody please help me?
It's hard. It's hard to hire developers. It's hard to hire designers. It's funny because
they're everywhere, but they're very hard to actually get engaged with. But one interesting
thing that I've done with Design Joy that I've never heard anyone else talk about before
in terms of getting clients, and I've said this on a couple of podcasts I was on recently,
but it was landing page inspo sites have been massive for me as well.
So sites like Landbook, Nice Very Nice, Dribble even. If you think about it, luckily I had
a good looking landing page that actually was accepted in these sites. And a lot of
people that's accessible to them, there's services out there like Design Joy and others
that can give that to them. But I posted Design Joy every time I redesign it, which I'd like
to do it more, but I've done it a few times. And I posted these sites and it's like, if
you think about it, it's really the perfect place because you have designers and founders
and entrepreneurs going there to get inspiration for their own sites. They come across a site
that they like. It's a design firm. And what better resource could I utilize or something
like that?
It's directly in front of your customers, your potential customers.
Yeah, those have been huge for me as well. And then I created a site project called Scribbles
as well. And it was like a 24-hour project. I posted it to Product Hunt and I was the
only one person that upvoted it. I didn't get any traction, but I posted on Landbook
and then now it's like booming and 20,000 plus downloads, but it's connected to Design
Joy. And it sends a lot of referrals my way too. So I've created this other thing that
took 6 hours of my time and it now filters leads to Design Joy. And I was able to leverage
Landbook Product Hunt, which ended up working out. But that's a strategy too, is to create
these micro projects that are actually in their own traction that filter over to you.
Yeah, I see. You have it up on Gumroad and it costs about $4 for somebody to buy it.
It's $4, yeah.
$4 bucks. And how much have you sold?
$20,000 plus of them.
That's crazy.
Yeah, like Envision uses them. A lot of people, Google, a lot of people have used them. And
it's been like, honestly, it was Scribbles idea on my iPad. That was it. And I vectorized
them. Because I can't draw worth of crap, but I could do Scribbles, right?
Yeah.
So yeah.
Most people pay money to advertise. Like, I'm going to buy ads. Like, I'm going to make
money with my ad for Design Joy. And people are paying me to download this thing. And
they're like, oh, let's just Design Joy thing. And bigger clients. Super cool. Listen, Brett,
we've been talking for an hour. I could talk to you for probably two more. Thanks a ton
for coming on and sharing the story behind Design Joy. I love stories where it's just
one person living the Indiana dream and crushing it. I hope you could find a way to work less
and still make money, but like you're killing it.
No, no, it is my pleasure. And thank you for everything you've done. I mean, for providing
a platform for me. And I know, you know, it sounds corny, but like every other indie hacker
out there, like indie hackers, the platform has been invaluable to me just from not just
from like a, you know, getting clients, but also getting wisdom and insight. And they're
the reason why I've raised my price is just the feedback that I got in there. And it's
somewhere that I go every single day and get inspired. So thank you for the platform that
you've built and continue to run.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you tell listeners where they can go to learn more about you. I mean,
you're on Twitter. Where can they find you on Twitter? Where can they find Design Joy?
Where can they find Scribbles? Like what else are you doing online that people should know
about?
Find designjoy.co or just Google Design Joy. I'm now on Twitter at Brett from DJ. That's
my handle. And then, yeah, the Scribbles pack is actually Scribbles with 3B's.design. So
yep.
All right. Thanks so much, Brett.
Thank you.