Starter Story - The $2M Solopreneur Playbook

Keep reading to learn how to

1. 10x your prices and actually work less.
2. Create a system to stop being flooded by clients' requests.
3. Find clients who'll happily pay you $5,000/month.
4. Design a crazy profitable business.
5. Unlock additional revenue streams effortlessly. 

How it all started

Brett starts out like any normal guy, working an average 9 to 5 for years.

He’s a graphic designer working on landing pages, logos, brand designs, etc. Simple work that pays the bills.

But like any aspiring entrepreneur, deep down, he’s thirsty for something more. 

Something he could truly own.

Then, one day, everything changes when he comes across a peculiar website.

It’s a subscription service offering “unlimited graphic design” for businesses.

Instead of charging by the project or by the hour, this agency charges a monthly recurring subscription fee for unlimited graphic designs.

And by the looks of it, they’re doing really well.

They even have a brick-and-mortar location with a few employees.

And this is the moment that Brett gets his business idea.

He decides he’ll do the same thing.

He’ll start his own agency, but instead of charging clients by the hour, he’ll just charge them a subscription fee.

And instead of getting on sales calls with clients, they can instead purchase his services directly on his website.

But most importantly, instead of building a whole team, he’ll just do it himself as a side project to earn some extra income.

12 hours and $29 later, Brett puts up a simple landing page and calls it DesignJoy.

And within just 24 hours, he gets his first paying client.

That’s pretty fast, right? 

Well, that’s the first key step in Brett’s genius playbook.

Step #1: Demand Based Pricing

The hardest thing to do in business? Get your first paying customer.

For most people, it takes months to finally get one person to hand their money over to you.

And honestly, most people quit before they even get this first customer.

But Brett skips this whole problem by making one key decision. 

He GROSSLY undercharges for his service.

When he throws up that landing page, he sets his price at $449/month.

Yes, you heard that right. Unlimited design requests for 449 bucks.

The price is too good to be true, but guess what, it gets him his first customer in less than 24 hours.

And that’s the genius behind it.

Of course, this business is not scalable at that price point.

But Brett understands the power and speed and momentum.

And instead of waiting around for months for someone to pay him $5,000/month, he throws himself into the fire.

This is where Brett succeeds, whereas most others fail.

He’s willing to put his ego aside to put in thousands of reps - even though he’s basically working for free.

And these reps are the ones that eventually turn him into a world class designer.

His niche starts to notice, and then his services become more in demand.

And when demand increases, then he does the obvious.

He raises his prices!

He goes from $449 to $1,000 per month.

Then from $1,000 to $3,000 a month.

Then from $3,000 to $5,000 a month.

And now, he even charges $8,000 a month.

Today, he only needs 16 clients paying $5,000/month to make about $1M/year.

And this is all because he was willing to undercharge for his service and willing to do the work.

That brings us to step #2 of Brett’s solopreneur playbook.

Step #2: Boundaries

If I could sum up Brett’s success in one word, it would be this:

Boundaries.

Let me explain.

So at this point, Brett’s put in the reps, he’s raising his prices, and now he has customers coming out of his ears.

But this is actually a problem because Brett is a one-man band.

He finds himself working 16-hour days on the verge of burnout.

The solution? Hire more people, right?

But Brett doesn't want to hire people. He wants to be a solopreneur.

So… he comes up with a creative solution.

He decides to break the rules… by creating 2 rules.

1. Clients must submit design requests asynchronously via a Trello board, and

2. Clients can only have 1 design request at a time.

Everything must go through this Trello board (real example from one of his clients):

No calls. No meetings. All client requests must be defined in writing.

Once the client has submitted an active request, they’re not allowed to change it, or submit another one.

This gives Brett a few days to deliver the work; once completed, the client can submit another request.

Because of this, clients spend more time making sure their requests are fully fleshed out and complete.

Which actually leads to them sending fewer requests.

And it saves both of them countless hours of meetings.

This is what I call boundaries.

He doesn't do this because he's an asshole. He does it because he has to.

Brett creates these boundaries to protect his precious time - so he can spend it doing what he loves: creating designs.

Without these boundaries, he wouldn’t be able to make over $1M/year with zero employees.

And he’d probably would lose his sanity and burn out.

Many clients probably don’t like these boundaries, but that’s fine.

There are many that actually do, and those are the ones he works with.

And that brings us to the next key move from Brett’s playbook.

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Step #3: The $500 Client

There are two types of clients:

$500 clients and $5,000 clients.

$500 clients are cheap. They’ll waste your time with nagging requests, ask for refunds, and they don’t make much money themselves.

$5,000 clients are rich. As long as you deliver, they won’t bother you much. You’ll always get paid, and they won’t churn after 1 month.

When Brett starts his business, yes, he attracts $500 clients.

But once he pays his dues, he quickly moves to $5,000 clients.

And you're probably wondering, who are these clients that are paying him $5,000/month?

The answer? Brett’s customers are businesses that wouldn’t blink twice if they saw a $5,000/month invoice.

The clients DesignJoy attracts see Brett’s service as a steal.

Here’s why:

When looking for graphic design talent, these clients have a few options:

1 - Hire a $200k/year graphic designer on payroll (it’ll take months to hire, and they might be lazy).

2 - Spend big money on a fancy agency that will charge a per-project fee that might be in the range of $30-40k (and they’ll take weeks to do it).

3 - Sort through hundreds of cheap web design freelancers on platforms like Upwork or Fiverr and find a needle in a haystack.

Or, they could hire Brett, a proven graphic designer, who will turn around work in 48 hours, all with the simple click of a button.

At $5,000, this is a no-brainer.

Plus, they can cancel the service whenever you want, just like a Netflix subscription.

Hiring a great designer is an annoying problem, and Brett provides a simple solution that companies are clearly willing to pay for.

But… it’s not just about the type of clients Brett attracts, and that brings us to our next step:

Step #4: High Demand / Low Touch

Productized services are amazing, right? You get paid for your output rather than your time.

Because of this, everyone and their grandma is starting one.

But the truth is that productized services will not work for every kind of service.

And this is the reason why Brett makes millions when most other people make nothing.

And it has to do with one word: profit.

As you know, the profit equation is: revenue minus expenses equals profit.

But let’s double-click on what these look like for DesignJoy:

On the revenue side, Brett’s doing well.

And that’s because Brett provides a service that is high impact.

A website is often the first impression that a customer will get of a startup.

And a really beautiful website might be the difference between success and failure - for example, getting funding or not.

Companies must make sure they get this right, and that’s why they’re willing to pay Brett a ton of money for his service.

On the expenses side, Brett is also doing well.

Brett has almost zero actual dollar expenses because he’s a solopreneur: his only real expense is his time.

But Brett only works 6 hours/day - which isn’t bad considering he has over 16 clients at any given time.

And that’s because website design and branding are relatively quick to fulfill.

Brett can turn around a world-class landing page in a couple hours.

That’s mostly thanks to his years of experience.

But website design is one of those things that you build once and do not really touch for a while.

And that is actually the secret.

That is the reason he is so profitable.

He picked a service that is both high demand but also low touch.

I don’t think this works as well for other services.

For example, a productized bookkeeping or video editing service would not be as profitable. 

Because these services are both less in demand and more costly and time-consuming to fulfill.

And that brings us to our final point:

Step #5: Build Once, Sell Forever

The only problem with a productized service…

No matter what, you’re still essentially trading your hours for dollars.

And if you want to truly get rich, you need to find a way to scale those dollars without scaling your time.

And this is the final key move of Brett’s playbook.

In 2019, he spent 6 hours putting together a product called Scribbbbles.

It’s a downloadable collection of templates that other designers can use to spice up their projects.

He prices it at $4.99, and it gets downloaded over 25,000 times.

But… why is this a genius move?

Brett’s been spending years building up his bank of knowledge and experience.

Both on how to design amazing websites and how to build a great business along the way.

And Brett finds a way to monetize this.

He turns his knowledge into a purchasable product that other designers can use to improve their own business.

Then a few years later, he takes it to the next level.

He creates a course called Productize Yourself that helps other designers start productized services.

(and he charges a lot more than 5 bucks for this one)

Today, these infoproducts make up 29% of his income.

But he doesn’t have to trade his hours for these dollars. He’s already put in the work.

This has diversified his income and allowed him to work less and probably sleep better at night. 

But what I love about Brett is that he didn’t just sell courses.

He continues to build his business, serve clients, and put in the reps on DesignJoy.

A Playbook You Can Replicate 

It's not luck or coincidence that Brett is one of the highest-paid solopreneurs in the world.

Whether he realizes it or not, he put together a genius playbook that I think everyone should study.

I spent hours researching his business, talking to Brett, and putting together this playbook.

I hope you learned something you can apply to your own business.

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