TL;DR - 21-year-old entrepreneur, ran semi-successful business, faced burnout, got diagnosed with ADHD, seeking advice on a 'service as a product' design business, and need to validate it so I don't waste money that my father wants to lend me to run ads.
I’m 21yo entrepreneur with a bit of an unusual journey and I need advice.Long story short, traditional education system didn’t suit me, so I was always learning stuff on my own. Even thought I come from lower working class, I was always into entrepreneurship, literally selling YouTube banners for 0.5$ when I was 12.
After huge success with my Discord development agency last year, my journey took a turn for worse is when I experienced severe burnout, leading to a year of inactivity. There wasn’t a single day where I didn’t think about how I’m wasting time. Few days ago, I got diagnosed with ADHD. I decided to take meds and it was like putting glasses on for the first time, so without missing a beat I jumped right back.
Now I’m at a crossroad. I have an idea for a “service as a product” design business, I made the MVP on the freelancing site I ran my last business on, since I have a bit of past clients to try to contact there. Problem is, all the money I’ve earned is gone and I literally had to ask my dad to lend me some money to run ads from his saving budget. He agreed to lend me a bit to get started, but I need to validate my idea to him. I definitely feel bad asking him for money and would feel even worse if I at least can't get assurance this is something that could work.
This is where I need your opinion and advice if this is something viable (of course any advice in general would make my day):
- General idea is that a client can make unlimited design requests for a flat monthly fee, instead of having to work with multiple freelancers or pay in-house designer (which can be costly, especially at times when they don't have work for them)
- Do you think this is something viable?
- Do you think there is a market out there for this?
- What would be the best way to promote this?
- What would we the best way to communicate the value to potential clients?
I always try my best to give advice to people when they need it, so I really hope you guys can give me guidance this time 🫶
As an agency owner I’ve been wondering: what’s stopping me from using a service like yours for $500 to $1000 a month or whatever, and sending ALL my design requests to you? We’d make $30k a month and put your business under. Or push it to its limits.
Are the requests truly unlimited?
Or is white labelling not allowed and that’s how these businesses avoid this problem?
Or is it not a problem? Even though we’d be making 10X what you charge, it would be all good?
Of course then there’s the question of whether the work is actually any good.
From everything I’ve seen, these services only work for low end B2C marketing where the design is generic and cartoony.
There’s a lot of experience and strategy and thought and discussions with clients to produce the work we do. I don’t see how that could work with a $500 a month unlimited model.
We’ve had clients on retainer in the past (much higher rates though) and I didn’t like it. I prefer to just charge by the hour.
To answer your actual question, show your dad the competitors. But make sure you can prove they’re profitable. And how you’re going to be better than them.
I think it could be done with the right creative director at the helm. The design I’ve seen from design pickle and the like is ass so it wouldn’t be hard but you have to make sure you can find good offshore talent.