#267 – The Path to $3M in 3 Years as a Solopreneur with Justin Welsh
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That's one of you.

I got this gigantic omni directional tread mill for my metal quest. Like this like virtual reality tremail like yeah me .

ah yeah so you like walk on IT and then you walk in whatever game you're playing yeah yeah .

you basically people should look IT up. It's called walk c two plus I mean, it's like, what's that ready player one movie I never actually seen yeah but apparently people say it's like the ready player one hey.

what's up? Justin is standing is just telling me about his army directional VR tread mill that he just but IT takes .

a half of my room and I have a gem. And I like, basically, I can't use anything in my gem. You put IT down. It's like this three hundred and sixty degree tiny little bow.

And it's got these shoes that you are, these special shoes that that are effectively mouse pads on your shoes and that connects to your media sts, like the VR headset in a way where when you walk on IT, it's basically like moving the joystick foregone back. So where in games, the whole, the whole idea is if you want to do VR is like to to be in this immersive situation. But it's obviously not very immersive. If you know you have like the glasses on, you have the visuals around.

you have the to stand in there.

And yet till like move you have to move thun up down, right?

So how is IT like that? Does that feel like watch a review .

of the trade now thing I did not like twice um all the review say like your brain has to adjust to IT. So for me it's it's extremely difficult you answer this wedding like every like three big fans pointing at you. It's sucks but but it's also crazy and interesting in good.

But the one interesting thing i'll say about VR and like part of the reason why I would buy some crazy shit like this is, for the most part, people that get virtual reality headsets get them to play games like, it's like this fun, oh, I want to go on like do a shooting up. I want to do like a role playing game. But for me, the reason why i'm really interested in IT is because i'm really interested in like the innovative, grown up shit that VR can help me do.

So for example, I had an idea. I was like, well, it'll be really cool if there were some VR APP that helps you with public speaking, right? I know a lot of people before they give speeches, like they go and stand in front of a mirror, they going to talk into a closet and they were hearse.

But that's like, super know, separated from what the actual experiences is like. I'll be cool if you could, like, stand on a VR stage and have like a VR audience and then practice your speech or whatever IT is there. Turns out that exists.

It's called virtual speech. These other other stuff to i'm not going to get too much into IT like i'm into meditation. They have this out called trip, which like, just completely immerse you to this weird, like, you know, basically sort of made for meditation APP.

That's really dope. They have, like i'm into these things called memory palaces, where you sort of mentally simulate walking through an environment. And that helps you to remember things Better. I think there are some there's some show where that was like popular ized.

And I just like this whole power was memory policies.

There is an APP called librarian and it's like literally a memory pass game for V R. So like there's all these kind of things, and that's kind of like what I use IT for, for the apple pink. I love in night.

I play table tennis. I play regular tennis. I like I got one last year and I haven't figured out all of its capability yet. I was spending a lot of time playing IT just as like we have a gym in our house. So I I go to the gym here and we have a gym that we belong you where we live. So I don't need you more exercise stuff, but I do like like the sabor game that gets you move in around and that's lot of fun and yeah like I like the most simply list c user of V R. But I can't wait to see how I learned to use IT more in the coming, I guess.

months and years. So glad I am going to get your user name and ping pung IT up.

so I want to see something I could just watch. I probably introduced you. We're already live in recording.

You are Justin welsh. You are a very popular solar energy. Very inspirational as well under twitter bio.

Actually, you say you're reading about the process of building a portfolio of one person businesses to five million dollars, which is an awesome goal. And and you're not just waiting about about you're doing IT like lesson november. I think you cross line three million dollar mark.

So I have a tonic questions about this. First, why five million dollars? Like how do you pick that that number?

Yeah, it's it's a really great question. I have a really poor answer, which is just like at when I got started IT seemed um very out of reach IT seemed like extremely improbable to me at the time that I decided on that. And I I sort of come from the sas world.

I was a former executive of the sas companies, ple of sass companies, and did sixteen years, I think, in technology. And so I was used to like creating OK s and so I was used to saying, okay, you know, shoot for a big goal. If you get seventy percent of the way there as an OKR, you've done well.

And so I thought, well, if I do five million, that's probably never gone to happen. So seventy percent of the way there would be three and a happy and that would be pretty cool. So that that was like the science behind picking that. And I feel like, you know, it's it's more achievable than I thought yeah.

aim for the stars and if you fall short of the moon.

at least what's whatever order that goes and I can never remember which once further away. So yeah.

exactly aimed for the moon. And if you miss, you'll be among the stars. Is that five million dollars like you imagine that is being cumulative? Like in total, you want to hit that?

Or is that like you want that every year? No, no. When I started IT was cumulative that that's how I was thinking about IT because when I started, I never had the intention of working for myself forever.

I thought of IT is like a cool proving ground because I like a lot of people that do this. I don't know how to code and I don't know how to build products in the traditional sense of how you might think about products. So I thought that this was not going to be something that I would do for a long time.

So I was like if I can go out and just cumulatively earn this money again, money doing mean everything, but it's like it's a good indicator that i'm doing something right. Um but as my business is growing, I think there's an opportunity for me to do that on an annual basis based on on some of the things i'm doing. Um I don't really want to shoot for a monetary go. My goals are more like a work to income ratio that i'm trying to achieve is a much more important goal than I think total income of revenue.

Yeah, I think most people when they're thinking about making money or really thinking about like making time for themself, at some degree of that, I want my financial freedom, which means I want have enough money to support me doing whatever the hell I want in life. That's saying out with my family more going evictions or even just making more time to do other work, that's more interesting. I think that's a pretty common approach. And so if you have like this this ratio in your mind of like work to income, you know, and it's high enough income to work. And I think that's it's .

prety awesome. What the public often sees is someone putting a revenue number up. There is a guy who's really am sorry that to mention his name, but he's making a killing financially.

He does some consulting work, but he works like twenty four seven around the clock. High stress in the situation where you see the number, you see the revenue. And a lot of people are like, now they go, why die? And they go, I want that too. But if they saw what that was attached to, they would be like .

to know you talking about bread from design, like doing two million year and venue of my, you know, my agency. And I was like, i'm also working eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. I have myself insane.

I have friends like that. And their businesses are booming. Three million doll businesses for million.

Our businesses mostly service based. So tons of time, tons of projects like marriages are suffering. Physical and mental health. They are suffering.

And like, I get this thing, and I read about this other day, you know, a traditional word is shiny objects syndrome. I get like shiny outcomes syndrome, where I feel like the outcomes of other people. And immediately I get wide and macos a, if that I can do, that, I can do IT.

And then it's like way to minute hold on what is that person sacrificing and during to get that thing. And if I don't want to do that and don't make that the outcome that you're shooting for, like you you can, you can get tied into that. It's super.

People don't broadcast what they are paying to get the revenue number. No one like I made six and just say first for yeah .

yeah totally.

totally so you you're doing a lot of things, right? You've got a huge email us to seventy thousand people wanted you do coaching, you do consulting and you've got product businesses that are generating recurring revenue, which is really cool because you like you're not software engineers. So like pretty right to have that. What's like you're break down in terms of revenue?

Like how much of that is coming from different sources? Yeah, I have two sort of flagship products, Better information products. So i'm like i'm a knowledge entrepreneurs when I am like I I have knowledge based products.

Um seventy percent of my revenue comes from those products and fifteen percent comes from recurring revenue from what I would call like a subscription email that you pay for. Um and then there's a smattering of coaching and consulting, which I i've stopped doing completely actually as of about three months ago because and thank you, want to reinvest that time to something else. There's newley sponsorships, there's a file, there's all these other like little things.

But the bulk my business comes from my information products in the way that my subscriptions work as I think of my information products as trojan horses for subscriptions. So it's you know get a lower cost, high quality information product, put IT in front of people that want to learn. How to do something, get them into the product and use the product to sell the subscription.

So put put them through modules that are interesting and then say, hey, like we can go advanced on this module. I actually send a monthly y email that i'll take you a little bit deeper and then roll those folks into a recurring revenue email subscription, which is like doesn't matter of one persons describes to IT or twenty thousand people subscribe to IT. I just work right one email, it's just the same month and IT scales pretty well, just like a test product without all .

the there's this there's just concept of the latter of alth creation says blog was ruined by Nathan where if you read IT.

I have not read IT even though I know Nathan quite well, but I should yeah .

it's a it's a good one if you're .

of doing exactly what he talks about that and that post. So you sort of start off trading time for money, right? You were an exact about a couple of high grow startups. I think one of them you help take from like zero to fifty million dollars and and your okra revenue, but that's your time you go to work every day.

If you stop going to work, you get fired and you're no longer making any money and then you eventually build up to like the higher and higher latter's where you were selling you know, a service business like you did. Consulting and coaching is still time for money, but at least you not working for somebody else. And now you've stopped to doing that and used like you know the money in the the connections you've through that to like basically sell these info products and tell you news that which is much more scalable.

I want to walk through like all of these steps because I think a lot of other people sure want to emulate what you've done. Maybe we start the very beginning. You had this this awesome job.

Yes, that was going well at the end of IT. You were burned out so badly that you had, like a massive panic attack. I think of, as a way you described in the end, hackeris form. And you rote about this. And we had to call nine one one what LED to that level of burnout because that I had to even get to that to that place.

I think a lot of people think that's like my founders story and a lot of a lot of crap. It's actually like the most true story, like I going to give you the background, which was when I when I got hired at patient pop, I I had done at five year stint at sock doc, which was a big new york city company kind of back two thousand nine, two thousand fourteen. I was real early higher there, ended up working for the CEO over five years.

And that was a tough place to work. And so you come like, forge a good work ethic and high performance. And I turned that into my first executive job.

At thirty two. I was the V. P. S. Sales at a company called patient free revenue garden zero to fifty. And what happened was someone wrote tweet about this, and I I can never remember who, but always remember what he wrote.

What happened was every day, like I thought, was going be there for one million, three million, five million and occurring revenue, and they may go get some older, more experience, Better and hire over me. And i'd like take on another role that didn't happen. I kept going and going and going and going.

And I got to a point where, like every day was a new dollar, every day was a new employee number that was like unforeseen. I had never done that before. So every day was a new chAllenge. And burnout doesn't come from working really hard because I can work really hard forever and at least less so as I get older.

But what burnout comes from, my opinion, is loss of control, where it's like this stacking of problems that I could not figure out, I did not to solve them, I didn't know how to solve the problems that we were happening the business. And when you start to work on one problem that another one stacks, and then another one stacks and then another one stacks, pretty soon you start coping in ways that are pretty common. right? That's what I did.

I, I cope in ways such as over reading, over drinking, no sleep, lack of exercise. I was two hundred and twenty five or two hundred and thirteen pounds, drinking in a bottle wine every night, eating a ton of know, hello, our brothers take out in L. A.

And like, everything just came crashing down at one point. IT was december sixteen and twenty eighteen. I woke up, my fingers got real.

Num, we are going to get some food. Me in my wife, my fingers got real numb. And I started having this really weird feeling. And that went to a full blown panic attack, illustrating, didn't like screaming, screaming bloody burger for like two hours had have emt come thought I was dying like they hold up all the wires told me I wasn't dying and that's when I started to kind of go down but that's what started at all honestly. Yeah sucked.

Reminds me something. Um you going to see IT you here, Justin but I just bought this book called stress without distress and it's by a guy name hn cela. No one knows who he is, but the word stress comes from him.

He's the guy that coin that term. And the other thing that people don't know is he coined actually two terms, distress, which is obviously negative bads stress. And then u stress.

E. U. Stress, which means good stress and whatever we have, negativity, bias. So we've kind of let that second term fall like out of use. But he specifically goes into the differences, and like in a pretty much maps directly under what you have said. I mean, if you don't have feel that you have control, if you don't feel that you have like autonomy over the situation that are in, then like me, a totally different set of like neural transmittals and form moes that that go into your your your nervous system and if anything, it's so funny because like that, exactly what changes if you start to work for yourself as opposed to, you know, you find yourself in this situation where you you're constant trying to meet the demands of something outside of yourself that you know you can't anticipate you aren't pressing like the you know next chAllenge button um you're just kind of getting yanked .

around yeah IT IT culminated in in that right like that that's how my my body reacted. And to answer courland's question, not to kind of push aside how do this all start and kind of what were some of the steps, but IT was that point in time that I realized I was cool that that happened, not obviously not because that happened, but I was forced. I didn't have choice like I couldn't just keep doing IT.

And I think a lot of people are afraid to like jump into their own thing. I really didn't have a choice. So like, I got on a program.

I saw a therapist. I started healthy drinking. I cut out alcohol for like, ninety straight days. I was like, thirty pounds. That was pretty crazy. And like, I knew that I was leaving my job, I left August first of two and eighteen, negotiated that with my CEO. But this is where all this journey started, where I was going to have to go out on my own.

And I was like, I don't want to do that, and I don't know who's going to pay attention to me, and I have a decent network. But like, why do I get some attention? And I saw everyone using twitter.

And twitter, to me, was like how I got my news. I didn't think of IT is like a promotional channel. And I was like, what if I did what everyone does on twitter? But I do that.

I'm lincoln, where all of my customers were like a consulting business would be, an advising business would be, and no one used IT like that at the time. I like to think that I was one of the first few guys to use at that way. And so I started like writing promotional stories.

How do you build a team? How you build sdr programs? How do you, you know, by for cate, your needs? How do you do all these things that I had done IT the startup? And because no one was using IT like that, I got twenty thousand followers right away. And when I announced that I was leaving the business on August first, I had a pipeline filled with people who wanted to hire me as a consultant and advisor for their .

business like that. The idea that you had an exit date for when you're going to quit your job and but he was set, you know, exactly that is going to be. But before that, you're already building an audience on linkin because I think a lot of people, when they go into that audience building phase, people who want to take that step feel a lot of pressure because like, well, i'm burning a hole in my pocket.

I'm like spending money just to survive. I don't have a job because they are audience building like after they've quit. But you had that sort of buffer period was really cool. yeah.

I'm fortunate to not come from a product background like I think IT comes from a sales background in marketing mentality where it's like I know my weakness. I know my weaknesses is like I don't know how to code and build but I do know that i'm pretty good at selling and marketing and talking about myself without making IT hopefully you to nauseating um so I was like i'm going to go to use use that that that thing that I do well and start doing that um because I knew that I couldn't just rely on like building some great product that everyone was gonna suddenly find and start buying.

Why did you think this would work? Like, did you have people you looked up to her inspirational to you have have some sort of path in your head of a you know, i'm going to go and start building audience and then that's going to be a step two and three and four after that. Like, did you have a master plan?

No master plan. I had a short term plan. My short term plan was like, go work for myself, keep getting back in a Better shape, get a mental health, be hanging out with my wife. Like, we lived in L A.

We at a house in la was expanding time in the sun, relax and then my plan must go back to work, find another I love early stage strops I like like seed serious A I hate like seriously ioua ly it's it's too late for me um so like I was like, oh, go find another series a and then I started to consulting and advising. I was like kind of making the same money that I was making as an executive. Was I don't think i'm charging enough.

Maybe I could charge twice as much and I am charging now instead of working the same in making twice as much, what if I just charged twice as much and I work half and then I, like made the same of money, but I had more free time. And this really weird thing happened, which is like, I started doing that. And as I had more free time, I started spending more time on social media.

And the questions that I got on linked in became different, instead of being like, how do you build sdr program or what would you do with this outbound lee or how do you hire sales managers, I would go through my dm. And all the questions were like, how do you write? How do you get attention? I see you're getting a lot of engagement.

How did you learn how to write copy? You like all these different like interesting questions about linton and I want to be like a lindon guy. I still but I was like, oh, what if I put together like a little product that teaches people how to use link dance? I built a fifty thousand force back in two thousand and twenty and sold seventy five grand worth of IT. That was like the start of knowledge based products for me.

You obviously had a terrible situation with the job you you're at with burn out and what not. So you needed to get out of that. But I still has to be scary jumping out of that and into something else if you don't have a precedent in your mind that that can work. Or that the examples and something that you mentioned that I picked up, picked up is you saw something happening on twitter and you're like, well, maybe I can do that on unlinked in. And I have to ask, like a number one, did you see people who are succeeding at whatever IT is, right?

Like the sort of being copy gurus or marketing gurus on twitter and and and then you wanted to sort of replicate that because immediately, what I think of is the trend over the last couple of years where there's someone who in there twitter username has like the copy guy, right? And then there's like the marketing guy, there's the mental models guy. Is that sort of what your copy pasting over?

No, I think what what have happened as two things were happening at once. Someone gave me, and I don't remember who so apologized. IT was who member was listening this, but somebody gave me one of Russell bronson's books and I was like, oh, this is like, crazy.

Amazing that you can build all these automated funds and webinars and like, you know, make money. Like, I thought that was pretty crazy. That number one, in the number two on twitter, there was a guy named Chris Johnson, who was like, making a goes by, like wealth squad, Chris, or something now.

And like, I had met with the CEO of gum, rob sahl levene in L. A. Just randomly.

He, he had moved there when I lived there, and I SAT down with him and got coffee, and I was like, is this can make as much money as he says he makes on this platform? This is a lot of money. And he was like, yeah, like, really successful.

And I was like, man, between this book that i'm reading and this guy that i'm following, like I think that I can figure out how to weave that into my consulting business with the idea that someday, like training court and maybe that someday I might have an information product. But doing what i'm doing right now was nowhere in the plan. So um I just started learning about how to translate knowledge into information and then attention into purchases. And that took a really long time and is still an ongoing sort of education .

feel yeah I like this this process that you first started doing, you're got a link down. You're just like sharing as much knowledge you can show is like kicking up sand and seeing like if any treasure, any gold coins float out. And they don't, they don't.

But if they do, maybe they do. And I think that contrast with how a lot of people start. A lot of people started.

They say crap. And on o'clock, have you got six months to make a profit? I need like a strategy.

This is what i'm going to do and i'm going to build something. And they don't have as much of an exploratory like people. They're just playing around.

And the good thing about just going around and just seeing what happens is like a lot of opportunities that would never occur to you just show up like you tweet about this in your thread about getting to three million dollars a year, you said that you created a lot of noise, and you look at the attention as kind of your friend. You wrote content every single day on linked in, and then you home in on signals. What were those signals that you found that allowed you to start consulting? Like what what kind tragedy you kick up.

pretty simple ones right? Like um there's this analogy between content creators and farmers or it's like um when farmers don't grow good crops, they don't yellow the crops. You know like these crops suck.

It's like, no, you suck as a farmer and so like when I create content, I would create IT. And if I didn't do well, you know, the inclined for most people are the algorithm. So it's water socks linked in socks tall again, buba bo IT doesn't work.

And so I was like, okay, i'm going to write a bunch of things and then whatever doesn't work, i'm going to stop writing and whatever does work, i'm going to write more of that that that was an easy one. So it's like impressions, like all all that, all those things that are not people come vanity metrics and maybe in some way, shape and form, they are vandy metrix. But there are also indicators of attention and whether or not you're resonating with people.

And I don't think we should throw them in the trash. So that number one. But number two, what was really interesting for me, when ceos would reach out from my sort of ideal customer profile, early stage, healthcare specific CEO would say, like you wrote something about a getting through to a doctor on outbound phone call, and that is a huge problem that we have in our company.

And I I D love to talk to you about coming in and working with our outbound team to start refining our messaging. I'm like, okay, cool. I should expect that if I write something like that, that is a pain point amongst right founders of health care, ask companies.

So keep writing about that. If you like those assignments, then write about some many differently. If that resonates, you get dms from that.

So is mostly like impressions, like things like that. He was web traffic and then I was like straight up dms, uh, in my inbox. That were the biggest indicator of whether I was writing .

things that resonated. I used to work as sort of a consulting software engineer. I've just right software for companies.

You needed somebody like me, so a specialist to come in and build a particular aper something and had a very similar process, but also very different. I never really wrote content. I wasn't on social media.

I would just build things that I liked, and then I try to get press about the things that i'd built. So I built these little gmail, wigs and all sorts of things. And reliably, the same thing would happen.

I would get emails from ceos are people who like, hey, I saw what you created. That's really cool. We have that same problem on our company.

We talk to you about coming and building the same thing for us. And then I was able to negotiate like really high rates because they needed like not just anybody needed me to this exact particular job. That sounds like exactly what happened to you when you .

guys started consulting totally and it's one part you said there is especially true, which is I wasn't like, um hey, this is hard. Need help with the set sales IT was like getting through the doctors when you're selling a product like a marketing solution. So it's like folks can have means said we also sell the doctors. We also sell like a marketing solution and you vote at doctored and patient pop to the biggest sort of giants specific needs.

So okay, what are you going to do? You going to hire a guy who charges two hundred and fifty box an hour, who has generals as experience? Or you're going to pay me two thousand box an hour because I know exactly the problems you deal with and exactly how to solve them in a quick amount of time with the right solution.

So that's why I targeted part of that tweet threats that you're reading is I widdle down over time. I started with like A S sales marketing. And then over time, I got really specific around health care customers.

I could help them. They wanted my specific help. I could charge a premium, and I knew how to do all the work. I loved the intersection of, like, I know how to do this, and you've very desperately need this specific help. And that was what made my consulting business a high rate business.

I also love the the focus you have on as being so consistent with your content. I get a friend the other day was asking in a group chat, the cade wants to work out, out, put on a muscle, like, what can you do? And like the first thing that me in a couple of different set misick, are you going to the gym consistently? Because there's a million articles about lic.

You need to perform this lift and exactly this motion and this exact supplement, and do all these different electrics, same as social meter. You need to tweet at this time of day with using these words and do these types of threads. But like if you you aren't actually doing IT daily, the none of these tricks matter and somehow you knew that like I don't know how that occur to you, but like the very first thing you did or just start posting consistently and constantly and then you focused .

on on strategy yeah I am i'm lucky to come from that background like part of being an early stage executive in the sales and marketing side for companies is you try a lot of things. You go out and you have to be you have to have some framework for experimental. You have to understand fail fast metrics.

You got understand how to try a bunch of experiments without figuring out, without losing sight of which sort of thing that you're doing is actually making the impact. So I took a lot of what I learned at master companies that, that I was working out and just applied those to content creation, which to me seems like common sense. But I also recognize that a lot folks don't come from that same background.

So like the idea of getting out and creating non stop, and then sort of analyzing what happens, doubling down on what works, cutting what doesn't, may not seem. Like common sense, but it's the easiest way to do almost anything, right? I I always say like especially with building knowledge businesses, everyone wants to learn everything they can about knowledge businesses.

We'll do anything to learn about a knowledge business other than start one. And so if you really want to arn how to build one, start one, you learn a one. Yeah exactly. Ate this .

audience and I mean, court and I specifically have a lot of experience on twitter. You are going to pop open twitter and look and look look at like you know start up twitter and andy hackers twitter and see people's formula um for writing viral threads or threats that is engagement. It's really is very formulaic, but I don't have the first clue how to do anything. Get engagement unlinked then and that seems to be where your mastery is at this point. So what are .

some your learnings from that? Like what yeah .

teach us how to use. Like then we don't use for that. Teach IT. The first thing that I did was something that a lot of people do, which was I bat a book. I bought a book called the copywriter ers bible by josh factor.

He's commonly referred to as the guy he started like linton poetry, right? But I didn't know what else to do. So I just bought a book that someone recommended to me.

And instead of buying that book and then thirty other books, I just read IT and then did what I said in the book, which is a very uncommon thing to do novaes, which is like crazy reading and applying versus like, look at me. I read a hundred book this year, so I got the book and I read IT. And then I started copying how he wrote because I didn't know how to write.

And as I did that, some things felt authentic, some things felt inauthentic. And as I started to get a little more traction, I started to become more and more authentic. I was more comfortable being myself, but I figured out that that linked in is a little bit different than twitter.

First of all, IT is a safer space to write. It's more empathetic. You know, people aren't there trashing one another because IT has a professional lean to IT, right? Your company name is generally attached to your profile.

So it's it's a safer place to get started. And each post, because there are three thousand characters in a post, is similar to a twitter thread. When you go into twitter, you read a whole.

As you score your timeline, you read whole tweet, and then you come to a thread. And what you get, you get the first part of the thread, which is commonly referred to as the hook, right? The thread hook.

Every links didn't post is like a witter thread, because there is a certain amount of characters above the fold before the sea more button, and then you have to hook them to get them to click the sea mall button. And when you do, you are rewarded with their attention through the full post. And so I often think about writing posts on linked in.

And can everyone does this now? Because I I got twelve thousand students in the course. And so IT IT goes across ldn.

But I think the post in three parts, the first part is the meat, which is just like, what do you want to teach someone? What's the stuff? Like, what you? What are you teaching today? What are the steps? right? What's the information? So like, I always write that first.

What's the stuff I want to get across? Then I go and I write the hook. And the hook is generally less than three hundred characters. It's very similar to a twitter hook.

How do I get people into the meat right? And then the end is just Normal. Cdc called a conversation like, why should somebody participate in this? But the easiest way to write a good call.

The conversation on linked dance, since posts are longer, is instead of just saying participate or what do you think it's quick recap so they don't have to scroll back up, reread before they can engage, given something that they can engage on right away. So it's like hook meat called a conversation summary engage. And I started doing that and that worked really, really effectively.

And then I started weaving in some other things, which are helpful. Typical copywriting formulas, pain agitate solution, right is is a common one. I i've added that to be pain agitation in tried positive future and solution. So I do have some formulas for how I tell stories and things like that. But the real thing is learn how to write a good twitter thread and translates very well to linked in and just show up, show up every day.

You are treating IT like a job. You're a professional. You're not just like falling around and like then you are reading books about copywriting, reading articles about copywriting and experimenting and .

taking IT very seriously. You I people at all time like i'm good at IT because it's much job.

There is something that I want to unpack there, which is you said the simple thing called a called a conversation and anyone who builds a website has a landing page or I mean often even writes like a twitter thread. You know about cta, a call to action. But that's really interesting. That sounds like you're trying to get people to engage with a comment. Do you have like an ultimate place in the fund that you want them to go or you ultimately looking to get them to like you sort of join a core or to go somewhere else? Or do you see them like writing a common as a like a fundamental first step that you want to get people to take?

Yeah, at a latter. I want, I think, of linked in in twitter as discovery. So my game is money ball. I want to be out there every single day, same face, same name, same style of content. I want you to see me every day and I want you to start to get a flavor for our fuel, for the flavor of my content.

What do I talk about everyday? What can you come to expect um each morning when you see my face I I wanted to be relatively predictable um my one of my very good friends is an eighty year old new york's best selling author and he said people of shows because of the predictable emotional experience they get with the characters it's not necessarily each episode, just a predictable emotional experience and so I want to give a predictable emotional experience to my audience every morning and that's why they come back and so that's discovery and discovery to me does nothing more than wide my top function. And then twenty percent of the time when i'm Normally being discovered, i'm actively deep platforming into trust, authority, expertise.

So to me, I want people to trust in me, not trust me like i'll watch their house when they are gone, but trust that I know what i'm talking about, that I am have expertise and authority in my specific niche. In what I do there is i'll bring them from linked dinner twitter to my website, but I won. Ask him him to buy course.

I won't ask him doing. Just like here's an issue that you should read. If you want know more about this, here's a free guide that I wrote.

If you want to learn how to stop procrastinating here, here's an article that I read about IT. And I just want to get people on the habit of discovery trust. Discovery trust I almost never sell.

Scrolled to my lincoln. Scroll to my twitter. No, by my course. no. Here's what someone said about IT to me, after ninety days, there is a big, huge improvement in the number of people who will buy something for you, because trust has been built.

So my goal is to get to come back every day and finally go a man. The best courses are only one hundred and fifty books. Like, I have enough trust in this guy. I ve learned a lot enough. He's showing me enough if I can pull that trigger first is charging twenty five .

hundred dollars for something that's amazing you you're I mean directly living up to a couple of ideals that uh eh goin this marketing guru frequently talks about. The first one is he says that you want to write content or you want to have a presence that ryans and that's kind of what you're mentioning with, you know sort of you want to be recognizable, you want yourself self to be familiar, like you want your brand to kind of take in people's minds that they they understand what you are associated to associated with.

And then he has something else that that he says that what you just said resonates with me, which is you're not like pulling and like you don't have like a muscular approach. We're like every time you see someone you're trying to like sort of a force them into the next step and and force them into into the next step, you just you can have all the stuff there. And if you ring the any given person, like they know where to click down and and go and find the next thing and they know where to find the course.

And the analogy that he uses sad garden users for that I love is that you're consulted is blowing on a deadline, right? You're putting stuff out there and there. There's way too much noise and there's way too much complexity with like how you might resonate with any individual person among like the thousands that are reaching, right? But if again, the content that you're putting up, rimes and its high quality, you can feel assured by just thinking to the inputs and being consistent with the inputs like you was boning the dealer and the pedals are going to land wherever they, wherever they land.

what does he mean by rhymes like not literally rimes? What does he mean to .

put out content that right is just like thematic, right? What we would do to rime as we run into hackers, right? We deal with, you know, start up content, people trying to attain their freedom from being tethered to some company that they work for, right? I also in a second life i'm working on a novel and yeah like a if my toy feet is like a random idea from a fiction story that i'm writing and then then I write something about like startups over here and then I like say something about politics unlike you know saturdays then people who come across my content. They're going to be far less likely to see my face, see my name and think ah I do have to go pick up that like you know good guide on how to get my business started.

Yeah so you're talking about like that predictable emotional experience that just just talking about which is bring so true like everything like I love anemia uh there is a predictable emotional experience that I want when I watch enemy, I want to see the main character grow from nothing to become a bad as, and have everybody respecting and admire them. And that happens over and over over. And so after show I never get tired of IT. And I know that's what I want. And so I guess your readers just have a similar thing they want from you like a dose of inspiration, uh, those of education, like there's something that they know they can get from you after a while.

That's right. And it's never like, hey, here's something you can do if you're building a one persons knowledge business and then like tomorrow, like my favor pizzas margarid never I never and like some people like, oh, you're very robotic like you don't really show behind the scenes of your life and everything is like, not not what I do.

I just every day I I tried out a little value to somebody who has come for that predictable motion experience. My favorite creator on the internet is Harry mac. He's a freestyle rapper on youtube. I love and like he's got brazillian you know followers.

I love him ah every friday he comes out with A A new video and I like patiently wait for and I watch IT because I know that the people who aren't expecting him to be any good are going to be blown away. And that's a cool experience that I can't stop watching. And so that's how think about providing my audience with an experience.

So let's get into the the details of like your your info products because getting good on on social media, a whole skeleton of itself. But I like actually creating something that's valuable to people is not easy to do and then like selling IT to them even if you have a big audience like that conversion.

You said you sort of deep platform people in the trust, expertise in authority, a slow grip from your social media into, you know, signing up for your news letter and maybe eventually buying your products. How did you think about that process once you hit on this signal that like, hey, this is a particularly thing that i'm talking about. That's a pain point for others.

I can write a guide to link down. I can write a guide to particularly something, how did you strategize going through that and being successful? Because there is a lot of ways to fail if you're trying to dollar product and salad.

Yeah, I think I was cognition about how I buy. So just because I buy a certain way, doesn't in everyone else does. But I think like to think of a decent proxy for, like how people who are motivated by on the internet.

And i've entered five hundred plus email funds, we downland lead magnet, and you daily drips trying to get you to buy a product. I don't think i've ever bought a single product that way. And so I didn't want to do that.

I didn't want to like, here's my free guide. Now i'm going to just bang emails in your inbox until you on subscriber by my product. I just didn't think about that way.

I bought a product, one of my first products from Daniel solo, when he did his how to build twitter audience course. And I I said, like why would I buy that? So I was like kind of deconstructing why I bought IT.

I thought, well, I show up every day and I like what he writes. I think he has a generally decent viewpoint um I said, okay, he gives me a predictable emotional experience. He never really wavers from what he talked about, at least not at that point in time.

And when he position the course, he told me exactly what I get, how to grow twitter. Following he made the affordable IT was like ninety box that was like, okay, I like this stuff. I trust him.

I've read a book of of things I been following for a long time. He told me that i'm going to get for something I want to get. And IT was affordable.

Those things are like my marketing strategy to a tea. So my my thought was like, no drips, no e mail campaigns. I don't do any.

No, no email funnels, no email automation, nothing. It's just like come to my site and if you want to buy my course, great and go out there and replicate that. But when you build the course, make IT affordable.

So as many people as possible can buy IT because it's a quantity game. I want everyone saying great things about my course every day online. I want people talking about IT on twitter and link in so much so that I use purchase power parody.

So if you're in an india, pakistan is three, five dollars, right? If you're in mexico, it's like forty bx. So like I want the whole world talking about IT and I want them saying great things about IT somewhere in mind that every day. So it's like make IT affordable and then blow socks off, like have them book booted up and think hundred and fifty.

Of course, I gonna be nothing given fifteen thousand dollars worth the value, and have them be so surprised by the value they get inside of IT, that as part of your install base, they are highly likely down the road to buy something else, even if this is twice as or three times more expensive. It's like give them that one hundred experience. And that just comes from being a consumer.

I hate when I buy things and they let me down. When I build products, I want them to be perfection. I want them to be so good that people can't give you anything except for a five star. I I know that not like a really complex model, but it's just how I think about IT.

There's a really good book writing by rob. This, Patrick k. Is the author of another grape that called the mom test.

He writes these like very short books that are like, you know, like ninety pages, one hundred pages. And like this is what this book is going to teach you to do. That's IT. And it's short into the point and they're great. And with the mom test, he basically wrote the book.

And most books like you write them, you do like this sort of media blitz, the sales peak, you know, in the first six months to a year, and then they go down over time. There was a mom that I spent the opposite, you know, there was no huge peak and every years made more, more, more, more, more money. Because people just keep recommending IT kind of the same way that you're talking about. You want your courses to be perceived when he rote another book about how he did that called right, useful books. And one of his, have you read really yet?

It's great in my coffee table right now and i'm i've read through about half of IT.

It's great. It's awesome. And I love the the sort of point he makes early on. That's really kind of intuitive. That's how I have thought about things and that's how I have done things.

But i'm trying to get more in this mindset, which is that if you want people to recommend what you do to others, it's not only about the quality or the quality is huge, but is all these psychological factors right? How are they going to look to their friends when they recommend you to others? And I was going to make them and their friends and their colleagues feel right? Is it's specific enough that they that there will be problems, the encounter where they can recommend what you're saying.

And so I think this this process of you write in this course with the goal in mind of making sure that not only can people afford IT, but they will talk about IT is its only my sort of tRicky sta strategy of of thing through and like be successful and clearly, it's worked. Mean, courses have been I think you said you made seventy five thousand dollars from the very first info product, and I think ten thousand of that was in the first week or two. Yeah pretty huge reception.

yeah. And that that product may maybe seventy five years of like eighteen months. So IT wasn't like I was gonna ve off of IT, but my newer courses have been growing months over month.

Every single month, they might have been a drop maybe one one month or so, I don't know, but they're consistently growing. And part of that is everyone online will say, oh, it's just as easy to sell to twenty five hundred dollar products as IT is two hundred and fifty product bullshit. It's not IT sounds great, but it's not true.

And even if IT was true, it's a lot harder to recommend a twenty five hundred dollars to a friend who's going around to their friend like k ba, you should buy this thing. Is twenty five hundred box like no, it's easier to say, hey, you should buy this thing. I got a lot of value out of IT was one hundred and fifty dollars like, yeah, still not.

I know not everyone can afford that, but it's more affordable. And so that was my thought. Process is already created. I created eighteen months ago. What do I care? Every person who buys IT is a win for me.

Is there a strategy to how you like layout your product offering on your site so that you know people are more likely to start by finding the like cheaper products that going to be quick courses? Or do you kind of just have everything there? And then whatever people are interested in, and they can go and they can find whatever solves are the latter.

I kind of leave IT open and say, like, hear the things that I offer. Uh, now I could probably do that Better. And I think as I rebuild my my next website, I probably guide people to what I think is the right product based on something they've clicked on or something like that, right?

I I don't have any of that today. Have no automation like that. The only thing I do is when people buy the course, there is a module in each course that corresponds to a subscription email, so it's most relevant to the value they get in the description email.

So for example, when you go into my content Operating system, which is just like how do you write a newsletter and fifteen pieces of content every week in less than ninety minutes. And so they go through course, and they learn little bit about basic copywriting. And then at the end of that module, this is the only email automation I have today, though.

I just get an email from me after the modules marchers complete. That said, hi, I saw that you completed this module. Um you just learned a lot about copyright.

Did you know that I also have a subscription email that goes out that shows you how to structure high quality social media posts using five examples each month. Would you like to set up for that for nine dollars? That's IT.

And so um I let them come to my site, shop around by the course. And the course is the trojan horse for the subscription business. And since I have about fifteen thousand or sixteen thousand students between the two courses, two thousand of them have opted in to the nine dollar month subscription. So it's in eighteen K M R R business of sending one email.

How many of these sub ript newsletters .

do you have?

One just one OK one point to dual .

each yeah corresponds to a module in each trip the courses. And then I have a free news letter that goes out to about seventy .

one thousand people that so right .

got and you ve got two different video courses so you linked in about content. I've got four, three guys that looks like how to choose a profitable nih a it's said those are awesome.

We should put those on any hackers actually and get out um you doing so many things, what you what do you like the most about what you're doing and what do you do not like because there's something that really like, you know, I can't wait like you stopped consulting in coaching, for example. That was like a sort of temporary step. The other stuff, what is your favorite part of what you're doing?

Yeah well, there are two sides to my favorite part. My favorite part of my customers is access.

So in a world of master classes that are generally out of reach for folks who are um deal in developed countries, who don't come from a household that has a lot of extra money, um who are in a difficult situation, who have lost their job, I like the fact that they can get what I think is premium information, that I think we will help their situation at a cost of doing break the bank. I was raised by very philaner pic parents. And part of what I love is like, I love to go to mexico.

So I did a lot of mentoring of, like, let american starts through five hundred startups. I like hearing from people in small towns and villages and mexico w they are like got a linked to Operating course. I'm starting to right linked and content like that super dote like a lot, a lot of people can say that.

So I love that part. That's on the customer side. I think that's a lot of fun in getting all those messages because I have some these students is really cool. It's good when you're having A A study day. Then on my side, I like the fact that it's relatively automated.

It's i'm getting a lot of time to spend my wife in my forties and i'm forty one years old and I wanted use this prime of my life, which I I hope IT is to spend time with my family before my parents are here and you know hanging out with my wife. I love that part of my business. Things I don't like are there are two ways.

There are many ways to grow traffic, but two primary ways are social media, which is like up down, up down, up down, and organic, which like grows over time. Search change optimization, things like that. I'm mostly tethered to the the former.

So having to always have fresh new content is difficult. And you know, sometimes you feel like a slave to social media. And yeah, that sucks.

I know that feeling.

So you know, that sucks sometimes. But every time that I feel that sucking, I try and build a new system that like makes IT easier.

You like chaining, chanting, the king of systems to keep himself going.

even when the going get stuff.

Do you have like a road map of the next, you know, copywriting model that you want to do? Or the next, you know, is there a long list of like all the topics you want to cover? Or do you kind of have to go back to the drawing board?

And more broadly, how do you grow from here? You ve got courses are killing IT. You just charge every more money for those courses. You make new courses like what's that's next?

I don't give anything. No, I never charged with money for those courses. I won't ise the Prices.

I used to consider IT and I thought about IT and I even wrote me email saying I I might do that so I hope I didn't come like some urgency grab but I had thought about that at one point but I don't think I will. Um if anything, i'll reduce them in Price. I think for me, it's starting to build more specific courses.

One thing that i've learned over time is people don't want to learn everything about a specific topic. Generally, they want to earn to get from point a to point b. And so it's really starting to home in on what those point is are across my audience to ecosystem and say who's struggling, get the point be where and how can I solve that, that problem in a fast and efficient, affordable way.

So I think it's almost building like a marketplace of of information products could be a step in the right direction for me. But I also like have this theme in my life for IT, about five years I stopped doing whatever I do. So like five years a dog dog.

Five years a patient pop, i'm going on my fourth ear. Here is a creator. Like, I might burn boats and build like an, like a bed breakfast. Like I have no idea. Like I think it's really fine.

I have a lot of confidence in myself and I think one of the most fun things in life is like doing things you don't know how to do and so who knows, but I don't have like a really good long term plan other than I woke up yesterday morning. I had a really cool idea for a new micro business. So I started building IT yesterday and like i'll test that out. And if that works, maybe I go on that rabbit hole .

as someone who has um lived a life doing sort of text stuff online and running in being a solena and then transition a little bit and started an airbnb. I can highly recommend IT. It's really fun.

It's really cool. It's a totally different business. And I think with your mind, you would absolutely crush IT because you're going to be competing mostly locally with people who aren't going to be that thoughts, and it's very different.

So I like the the variety approach to doing things to wrap up here for a bit and will let let you go. Obvious is a this, a ton of ini hackers accepting to this a lot of aspiring in the hackers who eavenly done anything, you who have troubled taking the leap from wanting to do this to actually doing IT. And here you are, you know, devoting a ton of knowledge and stuff.

It's like helpful and vary, but not necessarily helpful until people get to certain point. What do you think people who are listening and who in that situation can take away from your journey or anything that you've learned? Any helpful advice that can help people get going who are stuck? And I just waiting to get started.

Yeah I kind of paint this picture a very true picture um i've been reading the hackers for a long time like I come on and browse the articles i've read like all my favorite heroes like are on the website, right like and i'm very envious people who can build things using codes. So those are like my heroes, the guys and gals that I want to be like.

And so for many years i've been sort of somebody who just read from a far and looked up at the hackers and other other forms and thought, never ever will I be featured on something like that in four years of just like doing small incremental steps every day. The aggregate total of that action. Now i'm on the podcast like that's that's cool.

And what I would tell them is the easiest way to get started is just putting their thoughts into the ecosystem on a regular basis. When I started writing in twenty eighteen, I sucked. I created at everything that I look at from twenty eight, twenty and and so like, if you can get started anyway, if you like me and you have knowledge, just talk about IT.

If you want to hear three steps, improve yourself. Take notes, share them. That's IT. If you do, if you do those three things, you're off to a good start.

Love IT. Improve yourself. Take notes and share the notes. Justin welsh, thanks to time for coming under the index forecast, i'm glad you finally got here to you reading about your heroes. Um where can people go to find you online and then to find out about your courses in your writing, in your guides?

Yes, they can go and look around at my website, which is Justin. Well, stop me. It's Justin. W E L S H dot M E.

awesome. right? Thanks again.

Jason.

for come on the share. Thanks guys. I appreciate IT.