He Runs a $2M/Yr One-Person Business - Here's How You Can Too

Product Growth Podcast

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He Runs a $2M/Yr One-Person Business - Here's How You Can Too

No team. No meetings. Just one guy, a trello board, and $2M/year in revenue. Brett from Designjoy is showing you exactly how you can do the same without any gatekeeping.

Aakash Gupta

Jun 07, 2025

Transcript

Check it out on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.

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Today’s Episode

This story is wild.

Brett Williams (better known as Brett from DJ on X) built a design business over a weekend, scaled it to $80K/month… and still didn’t quit his job.

Now he has, and he runs a $2M/year one-person business.

In today's episode, he helps you steal his playbook:

How he created his offer
His unique 'no meetings' model
The workflow he uses to go viral

He even redesigns my website in 30 minutes!

Check It Out

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The Story: How Brett Built a $2M Business by Accident

Brett didn’t set out to build a company.

He had a stable corporate job, a steady paycheck, and a nagging sense that he wanted something more…

But no real plan to make it happen.One weekend, he decided to try something. He built a service from scratch on a Friday night, launched it on Saturday, and by Sunday... it had customers.

That was the start. But even as the revenue grew, $10K/month, then $30K, then eventually $80K/month! Brett didn’t quit his job. In fact, when he finally got laid off, he still wasn’t ready. He applied to over 60 jobs.

Not because he needed the money, but because part of him thought this was a fluke. That it might all disappear. That he wasn’t “a real founder.”

He eventually landed another full-time job even while pulling in more revenue than most funded startups. And only after hitting consistent revenue for months, with no signs of slowing, did he finally say: “Screw it. Let’s do this.”

Today, he runs a $2M/year one person agency business. A productised agency.

He’s still going solo but now with full belief in what he’s built.

What is a Productized Offer and How to Turn Your Skills Into One

You need to productize yourself.

This is when you take a skill — like a type of PM, growth, or marketing — and turn it into a clearly defined, repeatable offer with:

a fixed price
a consistent process
and a clear outcome

It’s not custom work. It’s not hourly billing. It’s not a retainer that drags on with vague deliverables.

It’s closer to SaaS than services, something people can subscribe to, understand at a glance, and trust to deliver fast.

How Brett Did It

Brett didn’t start with a complex stack. He didn’t build software. He didn’t hire a team.

He used what he already had - design skills, speed, and clarity - and built a one-person system around it.

Here’s how he structured his offer:

Fixed pricing: $5,000/month
One task at a time: Clients can request one thing at a time via Trello
Fast turnaround: ~48 business hours for most requests
No contracts: Clients can pause or cancel anytime
No meetings: All communication is async

So… How Can You Build One?

1. Pick a skill you’re better + faster at than 99% of people.

You don’t need to be good at everything.

You need to be great at one thing.

Start here:

Are you a great fractional 0 to 1 PM?
Are you a strong first head of product?
Are you great at helping teams make their first AI product?

Pick one sharp, outcome-focused skill.

2. Turn it into a fixed-scope, high-trust offer.

Here’s the two keys to productize it:

Create a simple pricing structure: Brett’s started at $500/mo, but now is $5000/mo
Create a simple intake system: Brett allows 1 request, submitted via Trello

3. Make it frictionless to buy and manage.

No one wants to “hop on a call to see if it’s a fit.”

Use async tools to run everything:

– Typeform or Notion for intake
– Stripe for payment
– Google Docs or Loom for delivery
– Trello for status updates if needed

He ran a $2M design business using just Trello and a landing page.
You don’t need a client portal. You need a working system.

4. Start lean. Price low. Let demand guide the price.

Your first offer might be $500. That’s fine.

If people keep saying yes, you raise it to $1,000. Then $2,500.

Then $5,000.

This is demand-based pricing: the same system Brett used to go from $450/month to $5K/month.

5. Niche your service, not your audience.

You don’t have to target “Series A B2B SaaS with 20–50 engineers.”

Instead, target a pain.

Solve a recurring problem, for any team that has it.

For example:

– “We don’t have a roadmap.”
– “We’ve never written a proper PRD.”
– “Our onboarding is full of holes.”
– “No one owns GTM.”

Focus your offer around those gaps. Don’t make them guess what you do.

Why Brett Can Design in 30 Minutes (And Most Teams Take 3 Weeks)

In the podcast, he even designed my entire website live in under 30 minutes.

No prep. No back-and-forth. Just opened Figma and started building.

And I was really shocked to see how he did it all.

But then everything made sense:

→ He’s spent years studying & building great design and spotting patterns.
→ He doesn’t wireframe, he one-shots.
→ He doesn’t explore 10 options, he picks one and builds with conviction.

Here’s what I’ve Learned From This…

Mastery doesn’t come from memorizing frameworks, it comes from recognizing patterns.

And the only way to do that is by studying great companies, how they build, how they launch, and how they grow.

Now, this might sound like a shameless plug…

But I genuinely believe there’s no better place to learn that than this newsletter.

What I love most is the range of topics we cover: from deep product thinking to landing AI PM roles, mastering product launches, and everything in between.

If you want to become a sharper, faster, more decisive PM…

The kind who leads with clarity and executes without getting stuck in meetings, consider going paid.

We’re sharing real systems, repeatable playbooks, and behind-the-scenes lessons from world-class builders so you can level up without waiting for permission.