From ‘Failed Entrepreneur’ to $10M in ARR in 3+ Years

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In 2014, Russ Perry considered himself a failed entrepreneur.

His previous company, an agency, had folded after, in his words, “doing things wrong for so many years.”

His wife, two daughters, and debt owed from his failed business would’ve made it easy to scramble for short term opportunities to pay bills. But what Russ really wanted was for his next idea to be both profitable and a source of personal fulfillment.

He picked up a few consulting jobs, a lot of simple design jobs he facilitated, but mostly, he had a lot of time to think.

He read Dan Noriss’ The 7 Day Startup and became inspired by the parallels he saw between his design consulting and WP Curve’s business model of subscription WordPress updates.

Russ thought, “I wonder if I could make subscription-based graphic design work?”

That was his eureka moment.

Design Pickle launched in January of 2015 as flat rate, unlimited graphic design help.

A little over three years later and they’re on pace for $10M in revenue in 2018.

Russ loves to talk about Design Pickle, but he wanted to tell the whole story, starting with the failure of his previous business and why it didn’t work out…

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