Design Agency Income Milestone

Andrew Wilkinson shares how he built his design agency from a barista job to making over $1M per year by age 23.

"I was working making coffees every day, and there were these 2 guys that would come in every single day. They'd roll in looking like they just got out of bed at 10 in the morning, about 24-25 years old. They would sit on their laptops all day drinking espresso after espresso.

One day I asked them, 'What do you guys do? Don't you have jobs?' They said, 'Oh, we're web designers. We just walk into random businesses, ask if they have a website, and say we'll make one for $500.'

That day I decided I didn't want to make espresso anymore - I wanted to be drinking the espresso like these guys. So I bought a book on web design. A couple days later, I walked into a place and sold a guy a website. Within a couple weeks, I'd quit my job.

Over time, I discovered online job boards where Silicon Valley startups were posting for freelance designers. I got this project designing an interface for an ad manager. I did a really good job, and it was $2,000 for basically 5 days of work. The client asked if I could do JavaScript work. I said yes even though I didn't know anything about it. I went to my friend who was in computer science and asked how much he'd charge me to do it. He said $500. I charged the client $1,000.

That was when I realized I could sell other people's time. I started hiring more people, built processes, and within a few years I was making over $1,000,000 a year personally at age 22-23. I got a BMW, started dressing nice - I could do all the stuff I wanted to do."