Rebuild DesignJoy's $1.5m system in Zapier

How’s $125,000 per month sound? 

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Does it sound like sweet waves cascading on the beach? Why yes. Yes it does, doesn’t it.

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Unless it’s actually 14-hour days and complete chaos. 

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But for Brett Williams of DesignJoy, it’s sweet waves. He built a design subscription agency that offers unlimited designs, one at a time, for a soothing $5,000/month.

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How does he service ~40 design clients and make that much money?

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You guessed it—he built a solid system.

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He uses Airtable, Trello, and Zapier (and maybe Memberstack?). But he doesn’t know the secret of Zapier Tables and Interfaces.

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You will, though.

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Today, I’ll show you how to build DesignJoy’s entire client operations all in Zapier. You’ll consolidate tools, simply operations, and be able to scale your way to more clients and (hopefully) more revenue. 

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DesignJoy’s process

Brett has openly shared his entire process online (thanks, Brett!). It goes like this:

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• Zapier creates a Trello board and sends it to client
• Client adds brand assets, finds links to manage subscription, and learns how the process works
• Client adds new requests to the backlog list
• Client drags one request at a time into the “Active” column
• Brett works request and manages it in Airtable
• Client gives feedback or approves the final design by dragging it to the “Approved” column

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That’s it. This is the system that brings in $1,500,000 per year. 

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I don’t know what he pays for all the software subscriptions. But what I do know is that if he built it all in Zapier, his automated workflows wouldn’t count as Zapier tasks.

This is because Zapier products don’t count as tasks when they are used in a Zap. 

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He’d also consolidate tools and simplify the process.

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Let’s see what things look like in Zapier.

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Building blocks

Let’s find the Bones-Skin-Brain behind DesignJoy’s system.

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Bones (Tables)

You only need one table. Hello, free plan Tables! The table has all the requests, all the branding assets, and all the onboarding and subscription management links for every single client. 

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The agency owner can use different view in Tables to look at active requests, branding for clients, and however else he wants to slice and dice the table.

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Skin (Interfaces)

We need one interface that has managed users so that each client can log in and dynamic filtering so that each client can only see their requests. Both of these features require the Advanced plan at $100/month.

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Brain (Zaps)

Only three automated workflows run the core of the system. One is for the agency owner to send a client update message from a button in the table. The second is to update the internal status of a request to “Feedback received” when a client adds a comment. And lastly, when a client moves a request to “Active,” a Zap records the date. 

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You could also automate the onboarding process for a new client by triggering when payment is received and then automatically creating the user for the interface and the specific onboarding cards with client links.

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The finished client portal

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Each client logs in and learns how the process works. They’ll see a table component with their design files and subscription details specific to them. 

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Each record holds the client email address and we filter everything you see so that the email address must equal the current logged-in user’s email address.

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A client scrolls down to upload branding files that will help the agency with future requests. 

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The “Requests” page shows a form for adding new requests to the Backlog and allows for dragging cards from column to column in the kanban. The client can click into each card to see the details, the deliverable, and leave comments.

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The greatest benefit

“So I can make $1,500,000 a year with this?!”

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Let’s be real. You probably can’t make that much money with this. You have to do a lot more than just build a great system (like have years of actual experience delivering professional work).

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But here’s what you can take away from today:

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• A simple system can do a lot of work
• Fewer tools can mean a simpler process
• With Zapier you can have a client portal, admin management table, and automation that can extend to any of your existing apps as you need it to

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That’s all for this week!

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Happy Building,

Bryce