How Niching Down as a Web Designer Took Stacy From $500 to $2,400 Projects
Every so often I get on a call with a student and by the end of it I'm just sitting there thinking: this is exactly why I do this. That's Stacy.
Stacy came to one of my free workshops last April already circling something — she just didn't have the framework for it yet. Within a year, she went from charging $500 for a full website, logo, and brand identity — yes, all three, for $500 — to running a fully booked Squarespace business built entirely around one specific, tight-knit community: Enneagram coaches, therapists, and business owners.
I loved this conversation because it answers two questions I get constantly, back to back. Is niching down too risky? And is this industry too crowded to break into? Stacy's answer to both, in her own words, is below.
Prefer to watch? Catch the full interview below, or keep reading.
From a nonprofit's "nightmare" Squarespace site to catching the design itch
Before any of this, Stacy was working behind the scenes at a nonprofit, helping out with their social media. They needed a new website, so she built it — from scratch, on Squarespace, back before the 7.1 platform rolled out. "It was kind of a nightmare, to be honest with you," she told me. But that project is where she caught the itch.
Then COVID happened, and she leaned further into graphic design, taking courses just because — in her words — there's something about design she loves. In 2022, she left the nonprofit job entirely. Her plan wasn't web design, though. It was to become an Enneagram coach, full stop. Her husband was, as she put it, "super, super supportive," and she quit her job to pursue it.
She trained to be an Enneagram coach. She became a web designer instead.
Stacy signed up for a professional Enneagram certification track and found, in her words, "a community that I belonged in." Somewhere in that process, something shifted. She realised coaching wasn't actually for her — what she loved was talking to other Enneagram business owners about their businesses. She already had the background for it: a degree in promotional communication, plus everything she'd picked up building her own thing online. So she pivoted, and started calling herself a marketing consultant for Enneagram professionals.
Here's the detail I want you to sit with, because it's the whole story in one line: every time she told someone — even casually, in everyday life — that she was a marketing and business consultant, the first thing people said back was, "Oh, do you do websites?"
Nobody was fishing for a designer. It just kept happening. That's the kind of organic signal I tell students to watch for when they're stuck wondering whether this industry is too saturated to break into. Stacy's lived experience says otherwise — the signal wasn't subtle, and it kept repeating.
The workshop that landed at exactly the right time
By this point she'd built a couple of sites on the side. One for her husband's business, on the newer 7.1 platform — easier this time. One for a friend inside the Enneagram community, done for free. "I hated what I made for her," she admitted. Something was still holding her back from taking it seriously.
Then a client found her. A real one, paying her, needing a Squarespace redesign. And that project is where it clicked. "I actually took the time," she said. "I got to perform for her" — a very different feeling from doing favours for family.
Around the same time, an email landed in her inbox from someone else she followed, mentioning a workshop I was running last April. Do you want to be a web designer? Join this workshop. "I'm like, okay, I'm in. This is like me." Squarespace-specific mattered to her too — she'd dealt with WordPress before and, in her words, wasn't a fan. She went through all five days of daily assignments and was, by her own admission, waiting for the exact day the course went live to buy it. "I couldn't wait for you to open the doors. I want to do it now."
Why the business course mattered as much as the design one
Stacy enrolled in both Square Secrets™ and Square Secrets Business™ — design and business, together. The design side filled in the technical gaps. But it was the business course that produced the real turning point.
Up to that point, she'd been marketing herself as a marketing consultant and business coach — broad, vague, easy to scroll past. The business course is what got her to narrow it all the way down to one specific title: website designer, for Enneagram businesses. And that's when things actually took off. The two-week website process she teaches inside the course is still the exact process Stacy runs with clients today.
Finding clients entirely through one tight-knit community
Her first client after the course came from the same certification community — a woman who needed help with content and reached out directly. From there, it's been almost entirely word of mouth. "I'm already in this community of Enneagram lovers," she said, "so it was almost like just letting people know that I was doing this."
What's interesting is how far that referral chain has actually travelled. She picked up an author client last year, referred in by someone in the Enneagram community. She built a site for a marriage coach who also happens to be an Enneagram coach — and his wife, a therapist, liked the work enough to hire Stacy for her own site too. Her niche is Enneagram coaches and therapists specifically, but the work keeps spilling sideways into adjacent people who simply trust the referral. "Even if your website is very tailored to one thing," Stacy said, "people will still get in touch — my friend had a good experience, and if she could build a website for them, she can build a website for me."
From $500 for everything to $2,400 — and the course paid for itself in six months
Let's talk numbers, because Stacy was refreshingly honest about hers. That very first paying client — the one who unlocked everything — got a full website, a logo, and complete branding for $500. "Looking back, I'm like, ugh, I could have charged so much more," she said.
She's not there anymore. Her current pricing:
→ VIP day: $1,000
→ Two-week Squarespace website: $2,100
→ Branding, standalone: $600
→ Website + branding bundled: $2,400 (a small discount versus buying separately)
She was on a payment plan for the course, and it took a handful of projects — around six months — before she emailed my team to ask if she could pay off the remaining balance early. "It was nice for multiple reasons," she said. "It's great for you, it's great for us."
What a working week actually looks like now
Stacy works from home, which she says is the biggest shift from her old 9-to-5. She has two kids, and if an appointment or school pickup comes up, she can just go — no asking permission. A typical day starts with getting her son on the bus, then a workout or a walk to ground herself, then email, then project work.
Her two-week process breaks down unevenly on purpose: the first week is intensive, the second week is lighter, which frees up time for her own content and admin. She's tracked roughly how long a build actually takes her — "definitely less than 40 hours, maybe even half that, maybe 20" for the initial design, before editing. She's found she needs full, uninterrupted focus to work this way, so she blocks off specific days — Tuesdays or Thursdays — as pure build days, nobody bothering her, until it's out the door.
She's also started offering VIP days for redesigns, split across two half-days rather than one full day. "I feel like when I'm in the design process, sometimes I'm too into it and I have to step back," she said — a piece of self-awareness that shaped the format itself, not just her schedule.
Redesigning her own website without ever taking it offline
Here's a fun contradiction: Stacy says she hates working on her own website, but will happily do it for a client all day long. When she finally sat down to redesign hers — a project that ran from September through several months of chipping away — she never took the live site down. Not for one minute.
Her method: duplicate the page she's rebuilding, build the new version in the "not linked" section of Squarespace, and only drag it into place once it's finished. She redid the colour palette that applies sitewide and the logo first, then worked page by page, linking each one into the site and the footer only when it was ready. Her resources and freebies page, for instance, sat unfinished for weeks because she wanted to record a YouTube video to go along with it — so it simply waited its turn while the rest of the site went live around it.
Her longer-term goal is to become a genuine hub for Enneagram business people — which, she pointed out with a laugh, means eventually finishing her own website properly, the thing she avoids more than anything else.
Squarespace is enough — even for a niche she says isn't "intricate"
One fear I hear constantly from students is that clients will demand WordPress, or that Squarespace won't be able to keep up. Stacy's experience says otherwise, at least for her corner of the market. Her clients need informational sites — who they are, what their services are — and she hasn't run into anything that needed more than Squarespace can do. "I always recommend Squarespace," she said. "It's super user-friendly." After handoff, she sends tutorial videos, and from there, most clients can manage the site themselves without needing her back.
Her advice, if you're on the fence
I asked Stacy what she'd say to someone who isn't sure the course is worth it. Her answer didn't hedge: do it. Especially, she said, if you're already noticing small signs stacking up — someone at church asking if you build websites, a friend mentioning they need one, the same question surfacing again and again in casual conversation. "If those things are adding up and then this opportunity comes along, you should take it. Just go all in."
The payment plan made the cost manageable, and paying it off within six months made the return obvious in hindsight. "I'm so much happier now than I was a year ago," she said, "before taking it."
A year ago, Stacy was the designer who charged $500 for a website, a logo, and full branding. Today she's booked through a community she built almost entirely by being specific about who she serves. If you're sitting on a niche you've been talking yourself out of, take that as your sign.
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