How Brett Williams built a $1.8M solo design business

Executive overview

Most service businesses stall because founders trade time for money and never escape that loop. Brett Williams solved it by treating his productized design service as a product, not a job.

He used underpricing to build momentum fast, strict boundaries to stay solo, premium client selection to protect margins, and digital products to generate income that doesn't require his time.

Starting cheap on purpose is a growth strategy, not a failure.

Demand-based pricing

• Launch at a price too good to refuse — Brett started at $449/month for unlimited design
• Speed of first customer beats maximising early revenue
• Use early reps to become world-class, then raise prices as demand grows
• Price ladder: $449 → $1,000 → $3,000 → $5,000 → $8,000/month
• 16 clients at $5,000/month = ~$1M/year with no employees

Boundaries that protect output

• Clients submit requests asynchronously via Trello — no calls, no meetings
• One active request per client at a time; changes blocked until delivery
• Constraint forces clients to think requests through, reducing total volume
• Boundaries exist to protect working hours, not to frustrate clients
• Clients who reject the model self-select out; a better fit remains

Choosing $5,000 clients, not $500 ones

• $500 clients: frequent refund requests, high churn, low-value work
• $5,000 clients: pay reliably, low friction, multi-month retention
• Target companies for whom a $5,000 invoice is trivial
• The alternatives these companies face — a $200K hire, a $30–40K agency project, or an Upwork search — make Brett's flat fee an obvious choice
• Positioning as a subscription (cancel anytime) removes perceived risk

Picking a high-demand, low-touch service

• Revenue requires a service companies are willing to pay a premium for
• A great website is high-stakes for startups — companies pay to get it right
• Expenses stay near zero because Brett is the only cost
• Website and branding work is built once and rarely revisited — low ongoing touch
• Bookkeeping or video editing would be less profitable: lower demand, higher fulfillment cost

Building once, selling forever

• In 2019, Brett spent six hours creating Scribbles — a $4.99 design template pack
• Downloaded 25,000+ times — zero marginal time per sale
• Later created Productize Yourself, a course for designers starting their own service
• Info products now account for 29% of total income
• Diversified income reduces dependence on client work and enables fewer hours