#177 Brett Williams – The Solopreneur Behind a 7-Figure Design Empire

Designjoy really in general has sort of shattered the ceiling in terms of the income that a designer can make Two to three X more than doctors , if you're in my scenario right .

There's a large subset of companies out there who do know what good design looks like and they do want that and they're willing to pay for it , but they don't want to run the risk of hiring the wrong person and dealing with the consequences of that .

So a client just signed on my 5001 Design Subscription Plan . Their first request was to convert all of their designs to auto layout and create figment components . Out of everything . I refunded their payment . I'd rather watch grass grow . Why did that expect so much controversy ?

But it's sort of what I've preached since day one of running DesignJoy and playing to my strengths and not taking on things that I'm not good and quick at . And so for me , if I were to take on that job , I mean it would have incurred a lot of stress , it would have prolonged other client projects and it wouldn't have satisfied me .

At the end of the day it wasn't worth the money . I have 50 other clients who wanted the door at DesignJoy , so shooing away one is not an issue for me , and I think it seemed maybe a little arrogant on Twitter .

If you got told by your previous employer to go and make this stuff , what can you do about it ? So I think there's that kind of like bias that people have that , oh , whatever work you get , you have to take , which is not the reality .

I mean , in that case right , I'm talking about me specifically . I'm not saying you should drop a $5,000 job if your client requests the sciences .

When I said , I did , given the circumstances that I'm under , and I think I come under a fire quite a bit under those lines , and I think people need to consider the context and consider what I have on my plate and the fact that I don't need a client like that .

I mean , each platform has their own personality . Like I get eaten alive on Reddit , twitter I sort of get eaten alive on . Some platforms are more favorable towards what I'm doing than others . Twitter has been fairly friendly but and I've met a lot of dope people got a lot of clients from Twitter grown an audience on there .

So I mean , all in all , it's been a huge blessing .

You're just happy to work on design , joy , chill out with your family , like that's what you kind of want to do .

Did you ever find that to be maybe a conflict over the past year of writing ?

example , if I were to say , like I'm making a lot of money , you know , doing this new business model that no one's ever heard of , that doesn't mean as much or won't strike someone's interest as much as hey , I'm making $100,000 doing X , right , so that's what I've done since day one .

That's how I've gotten to where I am is talking about money and how you know , productized services and design joy , really in general , let's sort of shatter the ceiling in terms of the income that a designer can make . I mean , you can make more than doctors , or two to three X more than doctors if you're in my scenario , right , and so it's important .

That's the angle that I've chosen to go after and that's what gets people interested the most . It's , you know , anything money related on Twitter , and other people who do the same thing will tell you that that stuff goes far , and it's not that I'm being fake or anything , it's just I just know that that's what pulls people in .

And it's a little bit of a balance too between , like , serving and talking to my audience and then growing my audience , because those are the tweets that grow my audience versus , if you follow me , you're gonna probably get tired of me eventually , and that's okay .

When I read those tweets , it's motivating , right For someone who has an agency that inspires me to think Jesus , I need to productize my service , I need to get better , I want to get better when I push . I want to be like Brett . I want to get better . However , some people would look at it then and be pissed off , disgruntled by it .

So again , it depends on your perception going into this , which is why I think that whole Twitter space is quite interesting , because it's like it acts on its own . It's like its own beast in itself , right ? What would be your kind of perspective on the whole money Twitter space ?

So it's weird to me that we put so much of our I mean we put 90% of our life is working away for money , but yet it's a taboo subject to talk about . I get it in certain circles , but on Twitter , I think . Had I not taken that approach really , I mean , productize services in general probably would be nowhere where they are today .

There certainly wouldn't be 5,000 , 10,000 designers out there building productize services . Had I not taken that approach to sort of sharing my numbers and that sort of thing , it would just would have never taken off . It wouldn't have had the legs .

So I encourage people to talk about money because if you don't , if you're not making a lot , it helps people relate to you and feel like they're not alone . If you're making a lot , it can inspire people . So I don't think that you can do any wrong by talking about money .

And then we were building , we're building the team and they've kind of seen that development over time and that's how it comes valuable right . It builds the audience , it builds like your super fans , it builds a tribe and , fundamentally , it helps other people . That's the whole purpose of my podcast .

It's been to help younger people come true and it shows them that this is real . It's not just make believe shit and I think that's the reality of it . So I want to get into design joy and I want to go back through your journey a small bit , because you've gone from zero to 100,000 , but it's been over six years .

First , you want to start off with a quote from yourself Don't judge the success of your startup for your first two or three years . If you believe in what you're doing , keep pushing , because you might just be on the brink of something great . Talk me through that .

it's my story . I mean there are several points in time where I could have easily given up on design joy . I was , I think . I think I was fortunately wise to keep my full time job as long as I did .

Otherwise I would have probably let go of design joy a long time ago , because I mean anybody that knows my story and has been following my monetary update since day one knows that for the first three years , I mean I really wasn't making much at all For design joy and there was a period of time where I wasn't making anything .

I stuck with it for three years because I could , I kept my job and was financially okay . And then that third year things just absolutely kind of went to the moon . But I think most people would have let it go I mean there was plenty of time to do so and kind of riding on the wall that it was a little too early , but luckily I stuck with it .

And do you think you'd be able to speed it up with a combination of maybe outreach or the ads or teaming up with people Like what do you think ?

So I did some cold emails , launched on Product Hunt , got some free , organic traffic and clients that way and didn't really have anything to do beyond that . So I mean , like I've written about plenty of times , product Hunt was that first thing that got me out there and it pretty much happened instantly .

And then beyond that , I mean I just sort of let clients come in the door however way they could , but I really wasn't doing any sort of outreach or marketing or nothing , nothing paid . And so I pretty much ran DesignJoy in the dark for three years before building an audience and getting it going .

So even the months where I wasn't making anything I mean I had a full-time job and the months that I was making something , it was fantastic side income for me and that's all I ever really envisioned it being so . No , there's several things I could have done , but I didn't have the desire to or need to .

How did that kind of play out ?

So I , yeah , I hit 80 , I actually hit $80,000 a month and then finally had that feeling in my gut that like , all right , I've got something here . It has legs Worst case scenario if it fails , like what do I do ? Okay , I've got that figured out , let's go like headstrong into it full time . But it allowed me to build design joy zero .

I had zero risk at all building design joy . I was under no pressure whatsoever . I could build it my way at my pace and that job just provided me that clarity and space to be able to do that without any sort of pressure at all .

I wasted many years doing this , making it all up as a lot as I go , so I put everything together in a very seamless and easy to follow course for you guys to follow and just learn exactly how to do it .

So if you want to bypass a lot of the mess with your podcast , check out the links down below the podcast university and we'll show you exactly how to launch and scale your own podcast . Yeah , and I think that's the area of the internet that guys forget about . Right , when you see 21 year olds on Twitter , they're like oh , fuck , the nine to five .

As in , I worked on nine to five . I did a software engineering degree . I spent four years on like finance and tech and it gave me like clarity , as in when I was building my own thing . Because it's like , right , do I want to build an info product ?

Maybe not , not right now , If we want to build this I had like a leeway , I guess , and I think that's what's very undervalued is that you get time right and then when you build a capital , you can leave and then have the capital .

So you're going to have time or money and in the beginning you have no money , so use your time and then , vice versa , you can swap over . But I think this is very underrated . So , like , what would be your advice for people who are like that ?

Because a lot of guys that listen to this podcast have jobs and they look down on the fact that they have jobs and they don't appreciate it and they want to go build something on the side .

I never looked at my job as something that was eternal or going to be long lasting . But it filled in those gaps and again it allowed me to fund my startup .

So and I always tell people like there's people out there like Brett we talked about that I was on the podcast with , like he did YouTube and that from like day one , like right out of college , actually in college , I like admire that sort of tenacity and independence , like beyond anything I could say , and I think it's amazing when people can do that .

But if you're not like that and you're you're a little bit more risk adverse , like I am there's nothing wrong with the job .

Like I said , you can leave it anytime you want to and the way that people work nowadays from home and there's so much opportunity to build , build things on the side and and get things going , whereas otherwise , you know , five years ago would have never been possible working in an office all day long .

So I'd say , take advantage of opportunity , build something on the side , whatever it is , whether it's a product or service or something else , and you can always leave your job at any time .

I could just eat chicken and rice every day if I needed to , but I knew I had like roughly like 11 months , and I know you've a family and you've a child as well , whereas for me it was a lot different , right , just me and that's it right .

So , obviously , different circumstances and that's what's important here , as well as like circumstances are so important when you're telling people to go and do this and go and do that . And I think we need to be a bit more realistic , a small bit , to be like all right , what's the bridge ?

Because for me , I was going from tech to media , so what's the bridge in doing this right , and how can I walk my way across from it ? And I think that's very interesting to observe . When you did move , how did you observe , like even yourself , how did you change ?

Because I think that's very interesting like how I think entrepreneurship can expose someone's personal insecurities . Like I became super anxious . I was like I need to do sales and need to do it to America and need to do fulfillment . I kind of people talk and shit about me . So it kind of exposed that Like did you ever feel that was kind of tendencies arise ?

It was like the greatest weight lifted off my shoulder , the coolest feeling ever to leave a job and go straight into something like that . That's doing so well that I was pretty much doing 90% of my time anyways . But that extra 10% made a huge difference , which we might get into , but no , for me it was .

I've obviously had moments post leaving my full time job going over there that I thought things could dissipate and what that would mean for me . But things have been just so so , so crazy since then that I haven't even had time to worry about anything . To be honest .

Up until today which is funny I haven't really expanded on . I don't really have , like I've yet to make a marketing plan , yet to make a roadmap , yet to do any sort of anything other than just doing the design work that's on the table .

On a particular account I'm very mindful of as we've grown , how do you ensure that quality has been there so you've better systems effectively , as you went from zero to 80 km a month even before you left your job ?

It just happened to be the case that a lot of things I was doing back then was what allows me to do what I do today . I'd say the biggest change , the biggest thing that's allowed me to do what I do , is charging more and getting better clients .

Because of that , and that's allowed me , I've had as many as 50 clients at a time , which was just total hell on earth . To now I manage around 20 . But those are 20 , like super solid , easy to work with , very trusting clients , and that's a world of difference from working with 50 really needy , really difficult clients . It's just a world of difference .

So that's provided me a lot of time , which time equates to quality in a lot of cases . So that's the way that I've managed to get better and better , but yeah .

I did it very quickly , though , did it very early on and , yeah , you close a fraction of what you would have previously closed at 2,500 , but you don't want to , right ? The goal isn't more clients , the goal is more revenue . So I think that's switching people's minds . So it's very difficult to articulate right .

It's like , okay , who's going to pay me $5,000 for designs ?

To some people that's extremely , extremely cheap , but for the clientele that I was targeting , which was really kind of just people just building stuff out of their garage and funding it themselves , that was quite a bit of money to spend on a subscription of any kind . So I was at the higher end of those that I was targeting when I moved to 5K .

Now I'm into a whole other sphere of clients that I'm now on the cheap end , because you know senior level designers in my case you know , earn 100 to 120 a year . But in my case I'm designed to cost you $60,000 , $70,000 a year . So now I'm all of a sudden on the cheap end of working with really good clients .

So the demand for the service has only increased as my prices have gone up .

There's a lot of things you can do , so you could pay us 50k a year and then , as a result , you know we're getting , you know you're getting what you want .

You have a 30 day Breakthrough if you want to get out of a contract right , and , as a result of doing this , you don't have any of the headache , you don't have any health care , you don't have any overheads . So I think that's how we should reframe .

Like how we look at like , getting clients right is the fact that , yeah , it's costing you money , but so will anything because you're running a business right . Oh yeah , I think it's funny how you said you access the clients right for me , like it's , like you know , series a , series B and and beyond for you .

I think you mentioned white combinator beforehand people that are venture backed .

And I think there's a lot of misconceptions around what , why , why that is and why people would possibly pay $5,000 a month for design work and whatnot . But you mentioned some of them and there's there's a lot of reasons for that . But and then that's what's partially why they're blowing up right now .

Do you ever feel that kind of dependency that people are like oh , it's just a cost , it's not generating more revenue . Does that ever come into conversation ?

You know there may be e-commerce clients who share a lot of those AB test results and that's that's great . But for the most part I mean I'm totally in the in the dark about what my At what my work is actually contributing to the business , because there's just not that level of involvement in collaboration between me and the client .

But they don't want like you mentioned earlier , they don't want to run the risk of Hiring the wrong person and dealing with the consequences of that or working with sort of shady freelancers or very , very expensive and slow agencies .

And so design joy really kind of filled the gap where you could get this like it's like , really it's like Fiverr on steroids , where you could sign up instantly and get access to you know , insane design quality in just a couple of days and it may just be in it for an MVP or it may not be , but you can just get it done quickly and you don't .

You you're very trusting of that , of that designer , so you're not gonna sit there and nitpick things . You just want something that really looks good and functions good and so , yeah , it's sort of like I got . It says like fiverr , but like premium .

right , guys . One short little update for Vox . I want to give a short overview about my own company , my media company called Vox . So if you are a company or you are an enterprise looking to grow your brand and looking to grow your podcast , feel free to reach out to work with us at Vox .

What we do is a fully fledged end-to-end management of your podcast . We take care of the strategy , the consulting . We take care of the growth , the management . We take care of all the editing , all the boring stuff , so you can focus on creating good podcast and create and growing your brand .

If you want to grow your podcast and get to new Users , if you want to grow your business , generate more revenue and all that good stuff , check out the links down below to Vox . You can follow through to schedule a call with our team or else you can fill out the application form to see if you qualify to work with us .

Thank you , and that's the beauty of when you hire someone . Great right is that you're trying to get someone who you don't want to manage . You're probably familiar with Cody Sanchez . He's very big on Twitter .

Yeah , she made a video video recently about Warren Buffett and it was like Warren Buffett's work like 150 billion , and the main thing he contributes it down to is that when he hires someone , he doesn't do the barking for them . So if you got a dog , you don't get a dog to do the barking for them . You let them do the barking right .

So when you hire yeah that , when you hire design joy . You're not saying all . I want this box to be like this . I want to change this . The goal is that you do the work and I think I guess I've been fortunate with that with hiring employees , that I've hired people who are just fucking rock stars .

They just get it right there autonomous , they're clear , they're concise in what they do , so I don't have to do the barking for them effectively , I can just tell them what's happening and they know exactly how to run with it . So that's the beauty of why we're trying to do this .

But I feel like that's another blurred line of people saying like , oh well , I wouldn't pay 5,000 because I want to be involved in it , or it's like you pay 5,000 because you're not involved with it and that's how yeah , exactly , and I'm not shy .

You know the lack of communication , the lack of structure . All these things are very contrary to how and they can either choose to move forward with that or they can go another direction . And so my the clients that sign on to that , they subscribe to that way of working and it ends up working out great .

But if you don't do that gatekeeping up front , then you get a lot of clients in who have really false Expectations and it's gonna be a terrible , terrible quality of service for them . But yeah , I'm , I don't shy away from . I don't shy away from how , how I do things very , very differently and it makes my life a lot easier .

I was already running designed by that time , but that I'm like that's actually what I do and that's why it works . I just didn't know that actual metric existed . I never viewed it that way . But , yeah , that's like .

Time to value is really what you could contribute Probably 75% of my success to , and what that means in in in relation to what I do is you have , as a company and you , you need design help .

I mean , you have several options , all of which consume a lot of your time up front and then post hire , but it's like it's it's like signing up for Netflix , essentially so you can sign up for design joy and literally 30 seconds or less , it takes you less time to buy a t-shirt online than it is to sign up for design joy and then You're instantly getting

access to the platform and then literally 40 hours later , you have a request done . So Contrast that to like hiring and a different type of agency where you're maybe three or four months in before you even start with high fidelity work . That that time to value is is huge for clients who need , who need to move fast and a lot of clients need to move fast .

A lot of Sometimes don't . They don't have months to sit around waiting for brand work . That ultimately looks the same as if you give me just a couple of days , which was another hot button topic on Twitter , but yeah .

So that's like , again , 24 to 48 hours We'd have a draft going and then we would start editing and working on your podcast straight away as well , because , like , we can just get up and going once you're on board .

So it's funny to hear that , like , some people would even want to delay that period because you would want to do the best for your clients , right , and get this work up front . But I guess there's so much processes that they have that are outdated that leads to these being delayed .

never be in a position to gain in that shorter period of time . So I apply all that to what I do and I don't need , you know , three days to design a landing page .

At a certain point , you get diminished returns on the time that I spend on a project , because what I do in two hours versus four hours , you're probably not going to be able to tell the difference and it's probably going to perform Just the same when it comes to conversion , if it's a landing page or did you know , display ads or whatever , or an email

template , and if there was , and I would spend the extra time doing that . But yeah , it's a lot of people . Again , it's all all comes down to your experience . Obviously , if you don't have the experience , it's going to naturally take you a lot more time .

So that's that's where a lot of people pick , pick me apart , as they they don't look at the context of the situation .

Oh yeah , I lose opinion , but when it's like a random person on internet , you I know you're not meant to think about it , but people do right . So like what's kind of your advice there to to block out that bullshit ?

For example , I mean there are there are times where Somebody was connected to me that I got negative feedback from and it did affect me . One was a client on Twitter that made a big thread that I , you know , back when I had COVID and sort of dropped the ball for a little bit , made a big thread , went viral , like that that did .

I did feel very sorry about that , felt ashamed , felt embarrassed and that that sort of feedback by somebody that's actually knows what they're talking about , has personal experience working with me , it means a lot more than some random on Twitter who just thinks that I'm cheap in design work and and you know that sort of thing it does .

It just bounces off of me and it doesn't affect me at all .

right , but like , look at these agencies out there , these design agencies like unfold , for example , which was , you know , arguably one of the most successful design agencies in the world had , you know , I forget how many employees they went under . Right , it doesn't like having employees is not equate success or anything like that , or the health of a company .

So , yeah , I could maybe get back my time , but that would introduce other factors in my life that I really don't care to deal with , and that's , you know , managing people , worrying about profitability .

All of a sudden , I have to have a marketing plan , allegiant funnel , like all these things , because I have people on my payroll that if it's just me , I don't have to worry about any of those things . I don't . I don't even check analytics . I don't check Google analytics .

I don't see where I'm getting referrals from , what the traffic's like , I don't you know ? I check MRR a couple times a month , like I don't have to worry about those things because I have no one relying on me other than myself .

I didn't have , I didn't have a lot of time to like figure out a lot of these tools and set Up these complex systems and processes and automations right , and it just worked from day one . So I really haven't changed anything .

Every single time I increase my prices I've gotten more clients and I just incrementally do that until well , I can't say I do it until a plateau is because design joy is far from plateauing , but it gets . I get to the point where I'm comfortable .

I feel like I'm providing the value that I'm selling the service for and not having to stress about overworking or overachieving to provide more value at that higher price point Like 5K for me is like I sleep comfortably at night and feel good about the work that I do and the volume of it .

And it's fine . I mean , if they became a problem for me and they took up a lot of time , obviously I would change that , but they haven't , so it hasn't been a problem .

The IndieHacker community on IndieHackerscom has been like a source of inspiration for me . Being involved in that community and seeing others build services , similar design joy and not similar , but all kind of in the same boat . Paul Jarvis , who wrote Company of One , has been a big influence to me .

If you haven't I don't know if you've probably never read that book , but fantastic book Totally is basically what I do but said way better than I can say it . But yeah , that's really about it .

His famous saying is I want to do what I want when I want with whoever I want , and that's like a perfect way to put it right . He's not scaling to a certain degree because he wants his time back , which is funny , but that's kind of interesting from your perspective because , as you bring on more people , you are still working a lot , though .

Right , I know you've gotten it down to very small amount of hours per week , but it had that intensity over time .

And it took me four years to realize that money wasn't everything it was cracked up to be . And once you make enough for so long it just becomes . It means less and less to you and isn't as much of a driving force as it once was . And then you know , you realize that time is ultimately important .

So , like trying to strike that balance between , like , making a lot of money but also having time to enjoy yourself and I have three girls and a wife , so for me it's enjoying my family and having some like , some space to like be free from work and to think about other things . So , yeah , it took me .

It took me a good five , four and a half five years to get there , going through hell and back to get to this point .

It's going to be expensive , but at the same time , there's that other aspect of life that you need to have , like your health , your freedom , your happiness , that people often forget in pursuit of the goal right .

Right , you make a lot of money , otherwise you're going to be some bum who's you know . You know , if you don't have money , you can't , you really can't achieve those other things that you ultimately want in the day . So my , my end goal with design joy is no longer it once was , but is no longer to just make a lot of money .

It's to provide me enough money to do the things that I want to do that are ultimately , like , more fulfilling than that . But yeah , don't get me wrong , making a lot of money is fun . I mean , I still , I still make good money , but that's not , that's not the end goal anymore .

And then I started getting into one on one calls and those , those slots would fill up so quick and I realized how much people would pay and how much people value talking through these things , and so I did enough of those and those were , you know , one to two hours a piece and back to back to back , and they were .

They were fun and fulfilling but totally exhausting . And so the course , the course was like yeah , do you do you do them at all ?

You know , and they were just , they're exhausting , and so the course was naturally a way to take that at scale , I guess , and and spread it to , you know , thousands of people all at once , versus doing it individually .

I mean I had gotten to the point where I had made enough money for design joy and had been successful for long enough to where I'm , like I Feel like my duty now is to make this Model known to the world and to share like a behind-the-scenes , all-inclusive , organized way of how I run these things , because I do feel , I truly do feel like it can be

replicated to some degree by by many , many designers out there . Not maybe not to the scale that I , that I've built it to and exactly like it , but like I knew that this , there was something here for not just me but for other people , and I mean it . Let's be honest , it's a way to make more , more money too , I mean everything that I do .

A design joy is tied to time , and so the course was the first thing that I built in quite a while . That did not have any any sort of tie to my my time in my work

.

So I just had a client yesterday a new client and I was like you know , why do you want to start a podcast ? And he said , well , we've built this agency to a million a year , 1.2 million a year , and now it's time to . I don't feel fulfilled from it . I want to help other people and I thought I was very interesting .

So he was like true , a podcast , true , like a learning platform , I get that touch . And I was like dude , that's what I stare . I started with the podcast and then I built the business . Yeah , because I just enjoy doing it right . It makes fuck all money , because that's why I have the business right .

But so , exactly , it's like , at some point Everyone does that and it's interesting to observe , because maybe that's why people who work in really good jobs , who are like super unfulfilled , can't do that , because , like , what can you do right if you're a VP in Google ? Like what the fucking you do ? Teach people to be VPs .

You can't right , so it's like right . You have that Leverage be able to help people now and have that element of fulfillment which I think is fuels design joy and your course is really effectively .

Like , yeah , I could work on the dark and design joy and build up my 401k and all that sort of stuff and then and do that . That's fine , that's , that's fun . But like giving giving people the power to do that themselves and making money from it , it , I mean that's .

You know I get a lot of hate from selling a course , but there's really nothing , nothing more satisfying than that .

So it's almost like a way for you to get better is you're actively learning by teaching other people .

I mean I was fortunate to build a community of people to actually Be able to voice things to me and into each other , and so I learned quite a bit , not only going through the process of spelling out everything that I do , but also the feedback that I got from clients being like , hey , why do you do it this way , not this way , and I've I've adjusted things

sort of that have greatly impacted my bottom line , my Efficiencies . All of that just based on what I've gathered from people you know giving feedback on the course . So , yeah , it's really kind of a no-brainer .

And now , before we finish up , when I ask you on that , on the product service in terms of how it can apply to any business , like , how would you have pitched this to different types of businesses to try product as your service ?

There are other type of services that will not look exactly like design , joy , let's say copywriting , for example . Like , you need to have a deeper understanding of what they're trying to convey . That may , that may incorporate you having more real-time Communication with them , or is design .

I can take a design , brief and kind of design , something kind of an isolation and Siloed out and provide it back to you and it's good to go . But the way that the advice that I get people is like take , take what you already do today , whether it's copywriting , whether it's development , whether it's , you know , marketing or pod , even podcast me .

There's a lot of podcasters and podcast editors doing this sort of thing . Take just the thing that you're really really good at , not the things that you're like semi-good at and you can do and you're you know enough to be dangerous . Like , take the things that you're just very , very good at , even it's one thing , and focus on that thing .

You got to be good and fast . It's my , that's my two rules that I repeat all the time Create a package around it for some parameters . For me it's like you know , one request at a time and that sort of thing , and unlimited brands .

Like create a package for it , put a price to it , bake , crank out a landing page , don't spend a lot of time , don't spend a lot of money on it and put it out there . If you've got an audience , great . Otherwise , you may have to go the traditional route of getting clients , and well , that's what all my other competitors have to do .

But it's truly like the type of model where , like , once you become aware of it , it is a game changer for you , like you're . You're kind of mind-blown , like clients all the time share that with me , like they had no clue a model like this existed . It was just a matter of getting it in front of their faces . That then sold them on it .

So if you can do that , which is pretty easy to do , easy to do nowadays then you could be successful at it .

point . So how do you work through like that kind of packaging process ? So you're like the name , the title , the web page , all going back to that one key area that you're good at . So you describe it .

I mean , when I launched design joy I'd kind of do anything for everybody and those sorts of things like once you open yourself up to that , like you you have to be , you have to move through requests quickly , because people are paying a lot of money and they expect results very quickly . I mean , that's , that's what I spell out .

I spell out a 48 hour turnaround time . So if I take on work that I'm not good at , not efficient at , that not only Prolongs that project but then it has a trickle down effect to all my other clients . That affects them too .

So you have to be very selective , very Protective of that , and I've gotten over the years just very up front and stern and kind of like this calculated confidence around what design joy is good at and if it doesn't fall under that , under that umbrella , that's fine .

I'll help you find an alternative route to go and get that source , whether it's , you know , another agency or whatever , but just being very confident in what you offer and being okay that you're not gonna be a one-stop shop for everybody in every use case saying Noah's so Important there , right , but it builds confidence .

So , of course , six years into , the yeah , you know an extra yeah .

So you have to say yes before you can say no . But you're saying yes to figure out what you want to say no to , right . That's kind of how I think . Yeah , yeah .

At this point , I'm not really adjusting my prices , so that's really the only way that I continue to optimize design joys by continuing to , to be more selective with what I do , which ultimately has , you know , impacts , impacts everything and impacts the client experience and impacts my day .

But yeah , you know it's easy , easier said than done when you're not in my position , but it is a it's a very nice thing to be in my position where you can say no to those things you just don't either enjoy or you're not good at .