How do you actually double your revenue once you've hit a ceiling?
I've spent the past year asking one question:
How do you actually double your revenue once you've hit a ceiling?
I’ve been asking it two ways: coaching designers who hit the plateau, and testing changes in market, offer, and positioning to see what actually shifts revenue.
Here's what I've found:
The biggest lever is the market you're in.
In other words, the buyers you’re regularly in front of (and their norms: budget, urgency, authority).
Everything else is downstream.
Why the market matters first
A market is just a place where buyers and sellers meet. If your buyers don’t have urgency, authority, and budget, you’re in a market that will keep you capped.
The market you’re in determines three things:
What feels normal. If everyone around you charges 3k, charging 10k feels like a stretch. If everyone around you charges 25k, 10k feels conservative.
Who you meet. You usually don’t strategize your way into serving law firms from your home office. You bump into them somewhere. The market is the access mechanism.
How you see yourself. When your “next level” is someone else’s normal, it stops feeling like a fantasy.
This is what most designers miss. They think their ceiling is a skills problem. It’s usually a market problem.
Placement: the logic behind the market
Not every market is worth entering.
The right market is one where demand is already outsized — higher stakes, real budgets, urgency baked in. Usually because the website touches revenue directly.
For Squarespace designers, outsized demand usually shows up where:
the website is a revenue engine, not a brochure
a broken or underperforming site means real money lost
retainers and ongoing support are expected
the buyer has authority and budget
The market is the move. Placement is the insight that tells you which market to choose.
You’re not networking randomly. You’re relocating to where demand already exists.
The questions that tell you what to do next
Ask yourself:
Can I see buyers who would happily pay 2x what I currently charge? Not hypothetically — can you name them, or name where they gather?
Am I in regular conversation with people already operating at that level? Not following them online. Actually in dialogue — in a mastermind, a slack group, a coaching program.
If the answer to either is no, you don’t need a new logo.
You need a new market.
What this looks like in practice
Last year I worked with a designer who'd been stuck at 120k for three years.
Great portfolio. Strong skills. Repeat clients.
She served wellness coaches and course creators — personal brands, mostly solo, watching every dollar.
Projects were 3–5k. She was working constantly. And she liked her clients. They felt like her people.
Then she mentioned a website she'd just finished for a law firm.
They paid 12k without negotiating. Wanted ongoing support. Sent referrals.
"That was different," she said. "They just… get it."
I asked, "What if you did more of that?"
She got uncomfortable immediately.
"I can't just drop my current clients. These are relationships. They trust me."
I didn't push it.
A few weeks later she called me back.
"I looked at my numbers. Most of my time goes to clients who barely move the needle. And I realized — I keep calling it loyalty, but it's also keeping me small. I'm just… staying small."
She didn't abandon anyone.
But she made one real change: she changed the market she was in.
She started showing up where higher-stakes buyers already gathered — a professional services mastermind, chamber of commerce events, circles where law firms and financial advisors were already in the mix.
Everything else followed from that. She raised her floor to 8k. She told existing clients her rates were changing for new work. Those weren't separate strategies — they were downstream of being in a market where 8k was normal.
Four months later her pipeline started shifting. Some old clients fell off naturally. A few upgraded. New clients came in at the new level.
Within six months her average project size had doubled, and her year was trending toward 180k.
Same skills. Same tools.
Different market.
In Part 2, I'll show you how to tell whether you actually have room to double from where you are — or whether you need to move first.
If you read this and felt a little too seen, I’m opening a new Double Your Squarespace Business cohort soon.
If you want first notice (and first shot at seats), get on the waitlist below.
