This Guy Makes $2M Per Year And Keeps All the Money

Hello! Welcome back to BotBox.

Have you heard of DesignJoy, a design agency with a twist for everyone?

Meet its genius founder, Brett Williams, who founded DesignJoy as a side project.

Today this project of his gets:

• Achieved $145K MRR

• Done monthly visits of over 130K+

• Used by over 30K designers

Amazingly, he solo-handled 130K+ daily users and scaled DesignJoy to $1.15M in revenue and he spends only $95/month for maintenance and keeps all the profit for himself.

In short, as a solopreneur Brett only does 3 things:

1. Service Clients for DesignJoy

2. Teach others in his Productize Yourself course

3. Spends $1100/year in subscriptions for $2M/year revenue

Let’s get into this amazing founder story.

How this all started

In 2017, Brett worked full-time but wanted to explore design freelancing/agency.

While looking for inspiration, he found a graphic design agency doing design-as-a-subscription.

He stole the idea and launched his similar MVP in 24 hours.

For those who don’t know MVP stands for minimum viable product. The exact steps he used to develop his MVP can categorized into 3:

1. Created a single-page board website on a Saturday (6–7 hours)

2. Paid $29 to get it up and running

3. Launched on Product Hunt

Idea it’s creation and marketing

He launched his brand “Hue” in July 2017 (renamed it after “Design Joy”). His business model is simply design-as-a-subscription: pay a fixed amount/month and you get unlimited designs.

This model was new and unheard of back in 2017, especially in his niche.

In the beginning, Brett regularly shared his product progress on indie-hackers (a vibrant community of solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, bootstrappers, etc.).

• He started writing detailed articles and replied to every question

• shared insights from his journey and created a narrative that people loved

That’s how he acquired his initial 100 customers.

On the other side, he also started sharing his progress on his Twitter/X profile. This way he gained trust and built a massive personal brand. Today most of his customers come from X.

But his MRR still stayed well below $50K for the first 4 years. He was unsure if DesignJoy would work out so he side-hustled for 3.5 years. He would do the work on Zoom meetings.

To summarize all the above steps, what he did:

1. First, pick his idea and launch it on Product Hunt

2. Second, built-in public by joining communities like Indie Hackers

3. Lastly, built a personal brand — most of his clients come from his Twitter now

How does DesignJoy exactly work

As I have stated at the start of the article — the design-as-a-subscription model idea was a new thing in 2017. So in this section, I will try to break down how DesignJoy works.

First, clients submit requests through a Trello board where they have access to every piece of information they need. One client can request Brett to work on one design at a time.

Then he works on design requests with a 24/48 hours turnaround time. He spends all his working time creating designs, never getting on any calls.

Brett has a zero-tolerance no-meetings policy. He gets on a prospect call and clears the doubts. But he never gets on quick calls to discuss work and works 100% async. Meetings are distractions so he’s created an environment where he can focus on serving clients.

He came out with a sustainable approach and limited the number of clients to 30–35 clients. He didn’t want to overwork himself because that would compromise quality and take a toll on his health too.

So he also drastically increased his rates from $500 to $5000.

His playbook and how is he doing today

Brett is famous for launching things in minimum time and making it successful like launching MVP within 24 hours and testing if the audience bites.

He created DesignJoy in 24 hours and his course Productize Yourself in 12 hours (recorded in his car). It’s doing over $90K/month.

His income as a solo designer in the last 365 days:

• Designjoy: $1.15M

• Productie Yourself: $940k

• Consulting: $24k

Founder story lessons

1. Keep a full-time job before you make enough money.

2. Have a belief in yourself. You are capable enough.

3. Know when to quit your job. He quit his job at $60K/month but could’ve quit way earlier.

Here’s the future of work in the next decade:

1. Serve multiple clients (solopreneur/business) and not just one

2. Work async, remotely, and focus 100% on your core skill

3. Once you have proven expertise, teach others