Nobody taught you the business part.
You learned the craft and you’re super creative.
But the pricing, positioning and pipeline…the part that actually decides what you make…you were left to guess at. The Design Business Mastermind is that part: a four-month mastermind that installs the business underneath your design work, in the right order, all taught by someone still doing the work.
12 years running my own studio
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500+ designers taught
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$30,000 average project today
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12 years running my own studio 〰️ 500+ designers taught 〰️ $30,000 average project today 〰️
Here's what I know is actually going on in your day to day. Not the version you post. The real one.
You work harder than anyone can see.
A client sends over a website for "inspiration" — you clock it immediately as a custom build with a budget ten times theirs — and you don't say that. You just quietly spend your weekend getting them 80% of the way there for free, because saying “no” feels harder than the extra twenty hours and you want them to be happy.
You've been "about to raise your prices" for a while now
You've said it out loud. You know you want to charge more and should be charging more. Meanwhile it seems like the clients with the larger budgets never find you and you’re afraid that you won’t book anyone if you ask for more.
Marketing is always on your to-do but always takes a back burner
The internal conversation goes something like “I really need to post more to social media” → “Ugh that post took me all day to create” → “And it didn’t get me anything, no inquiries. No comments. No follows.” then that turns into working on the referral client you got instead and the vicious cycle continues.
You're not the problem here and I need you to actually hear that, because you've been running the investigation with yourself as the only suspect.
Your work is good. The business underneath it needs to be built. Those are two different things — and only one of them was ever supposed to be based on talent.
I’m not describing you from the outside. I quit my 9-5 and started my design business in 2015 then I stayed stuck at $2K months for years…
I had done the math and thought I’d be making back my 9-5 wage easily so I went ahead and put my 2 weeks in. But I wasn't tracking anything really and I was never taught how to run a design business. I had no idea what to charge so I set prices by looking at what other designers were doing then started making brand boards for clients. My strategy was simple – look at what other people did, try to reverse engineer it, fill in the gaps by guessing. A true trial and error approach.
As time went on, I got into a routine of find clients however I could, take two or three clients at a time, say it would take 6 weeks, then keep working until the client was happy. There was no line I wouldn't quietly cross for free to make them happy. It felt like devotion to making the best work possible but it was actually a $2,000 project eating months of my life. Then I’d go through slow periods where I had no clients at all.
By 2017, I quit. Closed it down and got a job at an agency. Then another agency. Two years working for someone else again because my own thing wasn't working and I couldn't see why.
I came back in 2019 and charged $5,000 for a full brand and full website, strategy included, which felt like a step up. I started making $3,000-$5,000 months but quickly capped out again. Two years later, I made a huge shift in how I was thinking about my business and everything changed. I started booking $9K and $20K projects. I hired a team. And I haven’t looked back since.
I tell you this because I’m not a prodigy. I was not the most talented designer in my circle. The shift wasn’t me trying harder. It was understanding the business strategy underneath the services being delivered that actually made the difference.
And the good news? That can be easily taught to you.
The Diagnosis
If this were a talent problem, getting better at design would have fixed it.
You get better every year. Your current portfolio would embarrass your old one but your income has roughly stayed the same year after year.
Here's what's actually happening:
You think you have a client problem – “if I could just get more clients or attract clients with bigger budgets then everything would be great.”
But you actually have a margin and positioning problem.
I know you want more clients. I know you want better clients. I hear you, and I can help you with that. But the order matters and working in sequence makes the “getting clients” part easier.
Almost everyone starts their business and skips straight to step three — pipeline. Marketing, visibility, where do I find clients. It feels like the obvious problem, because clients are the thing you can see you don't have.
But the order of events matters. Skip the first two steps and you build a business that hemorrhages money and time underneath you — prices set by comparison instead of math, scope with no edges, over-delivery baked in as a personality trait. Then better clients finally show up, and you're surprised when you’re making the same amount of money as you did before. More water into a leaking bucket is still a leaking bucket.
After 12 years in my own creative business and 500+ designers taught, I see the same pattern every time. The people who set their business up in the right order from the beginning — or who are willing to go back and fix the foundations — go on to book $30,000 projects. The ones who don't, stay capped. Not because of talent. Because of sequence.
Case Study – Courtney
Courtney was charging $5,500 for brand projects that took four to six months.
Read that again slowly. Four to six months of her life, per project, for $5,500.
Today she charges $10,000 for brand projects that take two to three months. Websites went from $8,500 to $15,500 starting. She also built a three-week option at $3,200 for smaller scopes.
Price nearly doubled. Delivery time cut in half. Both at once — because the problem was never the price alone. It was the structure the price was sitting on.
"This mastermind transformed my business from the inside out. I was constantly working and not understanding why I wasn't seeing a bigger return on all the work I was doing. Jenna helped me reimagine my offer suite and way of working to bring real profitability to my business — not only from a revenue perspective, but from a time one too."
— Courtney Rutledge, Palmetta
The 4 P’s Mastermind Method
1. Profit
We find the money leaks first. What your projects actually cost you to fulfill so you can start making more money right away. Where the silent over-delivery lives. What real margin looks like in a design business, and how to price from your numbers instead of from someone else’s Instagram. You also learn how to sell like a real studio owner, non-sleasy, so you can charge premium prices. This is where most of the change happens, and you feel it fast.
"I was able to double my prices. I could see that I was undervaluing myself, and that pricing should always have a clear process that accounts for revenue margins. Pricing no longer feels like a struggle. I went from $2,500 to $5,000 for a branding project."
— Dominic Ayuso, Libelula Brand Studio
2. Position
You're already doing the work of a studio. Now we make you look and sound like one so you’re perceived as a business, not a freelancer — the offer suite, the brand around the work, the language, how the work is presented and sold, agency level brand strategy — so premium clients recognize you as the obvious choice instead of one of four quotes to negotiate down. Proposals that sell the outcome and your studio as a unique option.
"Before the mastermind I was charging maybe $2,500 for a brand. In May I booked a $37,500 project. I've decided on a floor of $10,000 and I'm not willing to take on projects lower than that anymore."
— Sirah Mora, Sacred Hive
3. Pipeline
Now we talk about marketing. Real marketing — not referrals-plus-hope, not a Pinterest board and good intentions, not the post you polish for two hours and never publish. Visibility that actually works for you, content that feels good, and inbound built on top of a business that can hold the demand. This is the step everyone wants to start with, and it's the step that only works third.
"I completely changed my business name, found my target market, and rebuilt the business. I went from freelancer mindset to CEO mindset. We hired two more designers and an operations manager, and completely filled our books by October."
— Sofia Hill, Locket Studio
4. People
The part where it stops being all you. Contractors, a first hire, systems, handoff — including the blocker nobody admits: letting go of control of the design itself without letting go of the quality. How to become the creative director instead of the bottleneck so you can feel freedom inside your business. This is being able to take a vacation without having your business come to a halt or working 20 hour weeks while still bringing in a full time income. It’s where you don’t have to hold the weight of your entire business on your own anymore and your business becomes better because of it it.
"Thanks to Jenna's profitable pricing structure in blocks, I booked my first $20,000 project."
— Natalia Ibarcena, Studio Nika
Two Starting Points
This program is built for two people, and I've been both of them.
Same blueprint for both, because it's the same missing foundation. One of you gets to build it right the first time. The other gets to go back and fix it — which is exactly what I had to do.
If you’re worried you’re not far along enough for this:
"My biggest hesitation was that I wasn't as far along as some of the other businesses. But once I joined, that fear disappeared quickly. Even though some businesses were larger, we were all working through the same core challenges. I never felt behind."
— Summer State
You want to start a design business
You're designing for someone else from nine to five and taking freelance projects at night. You’ve run the numbers and are saving up a security net. You know that you can make it work if you can prove to yourself that you can find clients consistently. You’re watching all the business tips on Instagram. Trying to reverse engineer what other designer businesses are doing to figure out the best way to start.
Under it all, you're waiting to feel ready, you want to do business right the first time and avoid years of mistakes. This step feels scary but you want the life on the other side of it. The one where you have more flexibility in your schedule and freedom to do what you want.
You're at $3K–$8K months and it won't move.
You have clients but you feel like you could (and should) be doing more. The months land at the same income number over and over no matter how hard you work or what you try. You’re on the rollercoaster of one high month followed by $2K and $3K months and it’s getting old.
You're already doing agency-level work. You're just not getting paid like it. This is the wall I sat at for five years, and the entire reason the 4 P’s method starts with Profit instead of Pipeline.
The part I normally don’t tell people
By the time I had a team, I thought I'd made it. Employees. A real studio. I was doing everything the industry says to do — posting constantly, chasing potential clients, losing sleep over content ideas at midnight — and I'd even paid a coach a lot of money to help me get consistent clients.
And I couldn’t make payroll.
I had to sit down with my project manager and tell her I couldn't pay her. I had to restructure a full-time employee into a freelancer and have that conversation too. I had a baby, 2 toddlers and a husband at home. I was working weekends for a return that didn't justify a single one of them.
I was doing all the marketing but what I wasn't doing was understanding my own numbers. I had skipped step one, and the bill for that arrived at the worst possible time and I had to pull from personal savings to cover it.
That's where this framework comes from. Not a theory. The specific experience of building the thing I wanted, finding out it couldn't hold weight, and rebuilding the underneath while it was still running.
I fixed it in the order you're going to build it and now book $30K projects as a result.
Is this just another course?
I asked the last group what they were afraid of before joining. Five of nine said the same thing without being prompted
"I feared the Mastermind would be just another course with no real impact."
— Dominic
"My biggest fear was thinking — is this person inside the program who she says she is outside the program when she's marketing it. Do they walk their talk."
— Sirah Mora, Sacred Hive
"Will this be like all the other courses I've done?"
— Natalia
Here's the honest answer. The thing that surprised people most wasn't the course content. It was that I was actually there.
"There was absolutely nothing she swept under the rug. That was incredibly refreshing and helped build trust."
— Juniperfolk Designs
"I felt like you weren't gatekeeping info from us. Often in courses you can't get real, raw, honest advice from the course creator. When we asked you questions, you'd break it down and ask us why we felt that way and work backwards to find the root cause."
— Chantelle Richardson, Capri & Rome
"Sometimes the word mastermind can be associated with something that isn't worth it, or is just fluff."
— Juniperfolk Designs
"That Jenna was actually available in Slack, and she responded thoroughly to all of our questions. I've been in similar courses in the past but the instructor was inaccessible most of the time."
— Dominic Ayuso, Libelula Brand Studio
I'm not selling you a video library with a coach's face on it. I'm a working studio owner who's in the Slack, who will tell you the real number, and who has no reason to gatekeep anything.
Designers stuck on the rollercoaster of 1-2 higher months with mostly lower $2K-$5K month averages
Designers who want to start (or are seriously thinking about starting) their own creative business
People still in a 9-5, cutting back hours, building the exit on purpose instead of on hope
People who are done setting prices by looking at other designers' Instagram
People who want adopt a design business strategy that has been proven to work
Who this is for
You want a done-for-you funnel. This teaches you design business strategy but it won't run it for you.
You want to be handed one rigid model and copy it. I don't force a single way of working — several members said that's exactly what they valued, and it's also why this won't suit someone who wants a copy/paste solution.
You're looking for the fastest option. While students do see quick wins in the first 1-2 months, this isn’t a sprint course. I care much more about the longevity of your business and building studios with staying power. No one can promise you clients overnight, however, the principles inside work if you commit to them and the results compound over time.
Beginner designers. This course won’t teach you design skills or programs, it assumes you’ve already got that nailed. This is a business strategy mastermind for designers that were never taught how to run a business and want something more than hourly freelance work.
Who this isn’t for
What you actually get
You’ll get lifetime access to the self-paced course content and 4 months of bi-weekly live group coaching and daily message support
(13+ hours of high-impact trainings you can return to anytime covering everything from agency level systems, processes, brand strategy, marketing that brings in $20K opportunities, and more!
✔️ Lifetime access to the mastermind course library
✔️ 4 months of live, bi-weekly group coaching calls
This is where your questions about your specific agency and situations get addressed, where you have direct access to Jenna and where the course content is brought to life through real life examples and applications. No more hypotheticals or having to figure it out alone.
✔️ Direct access to Jenna for agency-specific guidance
Together we can tackle pricing, team building, systems, client expectations and structure for your specific studio, goals and intentions. You have unlimited, direct access to Jenna’s brain in Slack.
✔️ Templates, tools, and SOPs from White and Salt
Get an inside look on White and Salt’s working systems and processes and download the templates we use daily in my agency (includes a 45+ page brand strategy template, client questionnaire, proposal template, creative direction template, SOP’s, call scrips, and real sales call examples)
✔️ Private Slack community
For a community of like-minded individuals and ongoing implementation support between calls. You also get access to our Alumni Slack channel for continued support after your mastermind experience has come to an end.
What you leave with
Proposals that sell one outcome and your studio as the unique solution
Scope that ends on a date instead of when the client runs out of opinions
The end of silent overdelivery — boundaries priced in instead of donated
Positioning that reads as a studio, not a freelancer with a nice grid
A marketing system that doesn't depend on referrals showing up
A plan for the first hire — including how to let go of the design without letting go of the quality
The math to know, in advance, whether a project is worth taking
The Receipts
Investment
Pay in Full
1 payment of $3,500
Bonus 30 minute 1-1 Strategy Call with Jenna
Payment Plan
4 monthly payments of $895
Have questions? Book some time with Jenna
I want to be straight with you about your investment, because I've been on the other side of it. I once paid a coach far more than this to help me get consistent clients, and I did not get what I paid for.
So here's the math instead of a pitch. One project priced correctly covers your full investment (which is why we work on Profit first).
Courtney's brand projects went up $4,500 each. Dominic's went up $2,500 each. Sirah's floor moved from $2,500 to $10,000. You don't need a $37,500 project for this to make sense. You need one repriced project — and then every project after that increases too.
“Once I got in and saw the course content and everything the program covered, it was easy to stomach the investment. It ended up being very affordable for what was provided."
— Juniperfolk Designs
Frequently Asked Questions
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Yes — we start with your understanding numbers, not a rate hike. Natalia never raised her prices and booked a $20,000 project by restructuring how she packaged the work.
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We will absolutely work on marketing together. There is an entire section dedicated to it and I am ready to give you all my strategies. But better marketing alone doesn’t fix a broken business strategy. We could get you all the eyeballs but they would either not convert if your positioning was weak or they would book a package that wasn’t profitable which would cause stress and the hamster wheel feeling.
Two people in the last group joined specifically for the marketing modules and told me afterward that what actually changed their situation was their pricing, their niche, and their processes.
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You're the person who gets to skip the expensive detour and understand business strategy from the beginning. I spent five years learning this the slow way. The mastermind exists so you don't have to.
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I have an exercise that I will teach you in the beginning that is designed to help you free up space to work on your business. If you have a busy schedule, I always suggest starting there so you can free up bandwidth to step into your CEO role. It is simple, effective and works whether you are busy with clients or with your 9-5.
Beyond that, the content is yours to keep, calls are recorded, and you set the pace. What matters is that you're building on purpose. -
Since you gain instant access to all the content, no refunds are given.