448 - Brett Williams

Brett Williams, aka Brett @ Designjoy on Twitter, is the founder of Designjoy. Designjoy is a $1M one-man design agency that allows clients to submit unlimited requests for one monthly fee.

Since starting in 2017, Brett has become the face of "productized service" businesses.

This led to him also creating Productize Yourself, a course that teaches you how to make $25,000 per month by productizing what you’re good at.

Brett's Workspace Tour

Workspace Items

• Autonomous Desk
• (not a) Flamethrower
• ROOM Phone Booth
• IKEA Alex Drawer
• Edifier Speakers
• Apple Display XDR
• Plants

What's the most useful item in your workspace?

Easy answer - my XDR display. The 32" inch size makes it a productivity workhorse, and the quality of the screen is unlike anything I've ever seen, making it an absolute joy to design on.

What has been the most rewarding part of pioneering the one-man design agency? The most frustrating?

The freedom to do what I want, when I want is priceless. I can be insanely flexible, adjust things on the fly, and not have to account for how it might the rest of the team. As for the most frustrating? It has to be the fact I can rarely ever take a break, let alone a vacation. Sick? Too bad. Burnt out? Oh well. Not feeling creative today? Get it together. The constant feeling of having to show up everyday, given the workload on my plate, can definitely feel overwhelming at times.

What does your typical day look like?

I'm not an early riser. I wake up around 8am, and I usually run out to grab a quick bite to eat for breakfast before finally settling down at my desk by 10am.I'll work for a few hours, eat lunch, and spend another few hours finishing work. After that, it's family time. I have 3 little girls. I like taking them out to eat at the Chilis outside our neighborhood, so we do that quite often. I usually end the night with about an hour of video games with some friends and some light reading.

How do you handle context switching while working with so many clients at once?

Practice, practice, practice. Working for agencies in the past, it was good experience as far as context switching goes, though Designjoy is on a much greater scale than what I previously experienced. At this point, it just feels natural, and keeps things interesting. I actually really enjoy it.