How Brett Williams Built Design Joy to $1.7M ARR

Designjoy replaces unreliable freelancers and agencies for one flat monthly fee, delivering designs quick.

Founded By

Brett Williams

Monthly Revenue

$145K

Days To Build

Score

Founders

Employees

0 (est.)

Profitable

Yes

Days To Build

Year Started

2017

Customer

B2B & B2C

Founded By
Brett Williams: Monthly Revenue
$145K: Days To Build
3: Score
95

Founders
1: Employees
0 (est.): Profitable
Yes: Days To Build
3

Year Started
2017: Customer
B2B & B2C

Who is Brett Williams?

Brett Williams is a senior UX/UI Designer and the CEO and Founder of Design Joy, a productized design agency. Prior to starting Design Joy, Brett worked as a creative director at Transdev North America, where he Oversaw the UX/UI of all digital tools.He studied international business at College of the Ozarks.

How did Brett come up with the idea for Design Joy?

Brett had started with sharing his design works on social media (even the scrappiest ones). With time, he was able to refine his skills more and more, and fast forward to today he runs this agency with 50 clients as a solo designer and has 10x'd his prices from when he started.

How did Brett build the initial version of Design Joy?

Over a single weekend in 2017, Brett came up with the packages he wanted to offer, wrote some copy, and built his initial website.

Initially, he offered two plans: $449 a month for the most basic package and $849 a month for front-end design — app and website design.

His MVP allowed clients to request only one design task at a time and would turn that request around within two days. Design tasks could range from single email templates to entire landing pages with unlimited revisions.

He further broke down larger projects into chunks and delivered each new piece every two days.

A Snapshot of Design Joy landing page from 2020

How did Brett launch Design Joy and get initial traction?

A week after coming up with a subscription offering, he posted his landing page to Product Hunt, a platform for people interested in new tech products that work on an "upvoting" system similar to Reddit’s, as a soft launch.

His project gained popularity fast, and made it into the top four products on the homepage. He had 40,000 unique visits to his PH page within the first day of launching.

What was the growth strategy for Design Joy and how did they scale?

Brett regularly shared his progress on indiehackers.com, a well-known community for indie makers (who happen to also be his target persona). He replied to questions, shared insights from his own journey, and created a narrative that people loved, as well as a service that people needed. He also remains active on Twitter, and has over 40,000 followers on the platform.

Screenshot of Brett's Twitter Profile

What's the pricing strategy for Design Joy?

Brett's course "Productize yourself" is priced at $150 USD, and his agency generates the rest of the cash flow, with monthly plans at $4995.

A Screenshot of Design Joy Pricing as of June 2024

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