Megan vs. Casey:
A Tale of Two Squarespace Designers
This is a story about two Squarespace designers who have been in business for the same amount of time, with the same skills, serving similar clients.
One is stuck on a plateau she can't seem to break through. The other turned the corner and her business finally started compounding.
Their names are Megan and Casey. And you might be one of them right now.
Meet Megan
Megan has been doing this for four years.
She's not a beginner. She's past that. She's got a portfolio she's proud of. She can design circles around most people.
But here's what nobody sees:
She has no idea where her next client is coming from.
Some months she's slammed. Others are dead silent. When work dries up, she panics and says yes to everything that comes in—even the projects she doesn't want.
She's answering client texts during dinner. Again. Her "quick morning email check" turns into three hours of revisions before coffee. She hasn't updated her own portfolio in two years because she's too busy updating everyone else's sites.
She's got a folder called "Quick Tweaks" — little customizations, setup help, template modifications. Somehow this folder is bigger than her "Real Projects" folder. She prices these low because they feel easy. And when the pipeline is empty, she's grateful for them.
But those big projects? They're exhausting. Scope creep. Endless revisions. Clients who ghost halfway through and resurface three months later expecting her to pick up where they left off like she's been sitting there waiting.
Megan can't tell what's actually working.
She gets clients, but she doesn't know why. She's tried "niching down" three times. Each time, she gives up after a few weeks because it feels like she's turning away money she might need.
She posts on Instagram because she feels like she should, but has no idea if it's doing anything. Her posts feel random. Like she's just adding to the noise.
The worst part? Last year feels exactly like this year. Same hustle, same stress, same December panic, same January "this year will be different" promises.
She's been "about to raise her rates" for two years.
When she's honest with herself — scrolling through business advice at 11pm after saying yes to another project she doesn't want — she knows this isn't sustainable.
She's got 14 browser tabs open: "how to scale your design business." She gets a thousand conflicting answers. Raise your rates. Build a course. Hire a VA. Go upmarket. Productize. Templates. Retainers.
She's drowning in options and can't see which one is actually HER path.
She loves the work. She's good at it. But she's starting to wonder: Is this it? Is this just what it looks like forever?
Here's what Megan doesn't realize:
Taking another design course won't fix this. Building a better portfolio won't fix this. Being better at design won't fix this.
Megan's problem isn't her skills—it's that nobody knows she exists.
Marketing isn't a separate job. It's just making visible what you already know: capture the patterns, develop them into content, expose them strategically.
Meet Casey
Casey used to be exactly where Megan is now.
Same late-night scrolling. Same "quick tweaks" folder overtaking her life. Same December panic. Projects were fine. Clients were happy. But she had no pipeline. No visibility. No idea where the next client was coming from.
She knew she "should" be posting more. Creating content. Being visible.
But she hated it.
Not because she was bad at it. Because it felt like a completely separate job she didn't sign up for.
She became a designer because she loved DESIGN. Solving problems. Creating solutions. Working with clients.
Marketing felt like... something else. A performance. A chore. A necessary evil to get to the work she actually wanted to do.
So she avoided it. Or she'd force herself to post something and it felt hollow. Random. Like she was just adding to the noise.
Then one night, she was reviewing her past projects.
Looking for patterns. Trying to figure out what was actually working.
She noticed something while scrolling through old client texts:
Every panicked "HELP" message came from the same type of person. Wellness practitioners launching online courses.
And they all hit the same wall: Right before launching something big, they'd realize their DIY site looked like... a DIY site.
She'd solved this exact problem 15 times. Each time, the transformation was the same: they went from avoiding sharing their URL to confidently sending it to potential partners.
And then it clicked:
"Wait. This pattern I'm seeing... this IS the content."
She didn't need to "come up with content ideas." The content was already sitting in her client work. She just needed to document it.
So she posted: "Signs your DIY site is costing you opportunities."
Three DMs that day: "This is exactly what I'm dealing with."
She posted: "That moment when you realize your website is holding you back (usually right before a big launch)."
Five inquiries that week.
She wasn't performing. She wasn't trying to "do marketing." She was just making visible what she already knew.
That was the shift.
But knowing the pattern and turning it into a consistent system were two different things.
She needed a framework: How to spot these patterns in every client. What to document. How to turn observations into posts that actually attracted the right people. How to do it consistently without it taking over her life.
That's when she joined The Lab — not for design skills, but for the system she'd been missing.
Here's what changed:
Within six months, her $3K months became $8K months. Her calendar filled three months out instead of three weeks. She raised her rates 60%, and clients still said yes. She could actually say no to projects.
By December, she turned down three "quick tweak" requests without a second thought. No panic. No last-minute scrambling.
Same design skills. Just visible now.
Here's What Megan's Missing
You already have everything you need.
You know your best clients intimately. You know their problems. You know the transformation you create. You know when they realize they need help.
You just haven't documented it.
And here's what Casey figured out that Megan hasn't:
Marketing isn't a separate job. It's extraction: capture what you already know about your clients, document it, share it.
That's not hard. It's just systematic.
But without a system, you'll keep doing what Megan's doing: avoiding it, forcing random posts, wondering why nothing's working, watching the calendar stay empty while you stress about money.
While you're figuring this out alone, designers with a system are filling their calendars.
Next December will be exactly like last December. Unless something changes.
Imagine This
Imagine knowing exactly where next month's clients are coming from. Not hoping. Not panicking. Just knowing.
Imagine opening your calendar and seeing projects booked out for the next three months.
Imagine saying no to "quick tweaks" without guilt because you have better work lined up.
Imagine December without the panic.
That's what a system does. And you already have everything you need to build one.
Monthly mentorship for established Squarespace designers who have the skills but not the visibility—and just need a system to extract what they already know.