Million-Dollar Solopreneurship with Justin Welsh (Classic)

This episode delves into the world of successful solopreneurship with guest Justin Welsh, exploring his journey of running a million-dollar business as a one-man operation.

1. Solopreneurship can be highly lucrative without expansive teams if systematic approaches are applied.
2. Personal health and well-being are crucial and can directly impact business decisions and success.
3. High business margins are achievable through strategic planning and minimal external dependencies.
4. Embracing self-awareness and personal limits can guide successful business strategies.
5. The importance of content diversification and systemization in maintaining and scaling business operations.

1: Introduction to Justin Welsh

Justin Welsh is introduced as a successful solopreneur who has impressively scaled his business while maintaining full control and high profit margins. Noah highlights Justin's approach to content and system management which allows for frequent vacations and a balanced life.

• Noah Kagan: "Today we are rerunning one of our awesome episodes with the legendary Justin Welsh."

2: Deep Dive into Justin’s Business Model

Justin breaks down his revenue streams and discusses his operational costs, revealing a meticulously managed business that maximizes efficiency and output.

• Justin Welsh: "My business does about 1.7 million in revenue per year and I have a team of one."

3: Impact of Personal Experiences on Business

A significant panic attack led Justin to reshape his work life, emphasizing health and control over his work environment, which profoundly influences his business operations.

• Justin Welsh: "I don't want anything that puts me out of control. I am the owner of every part of my business."

4: Philosophies on Growth and Control

Justin discusses his philosophy on not scaling his business beyond what he can manage alone, focusing on the value of personal fulfillment over financial gains.

• Justin Welsh: "I live a pretty awesome life. I have a house. I live where I want. I have a great wife."

1. Embrace Systemization: Systemize daily tasks to improve efficiency and reduce time spent on repetitive activities.
2. Content Diversification: Utilize one piece of content to create multiple smaller pieces to maximize reach and engagement.
3. Prioritize Well-being: Regularly evaluate your health and well-being to ensure they are not compromised by work demands.
4. Maintain Control: Consider the benefits of minimal external influence to retain control over business decisions.
5. Assess Financial Health: Regular investment in personal and business growth can lead to long-term security.

My company AppSumo is running an insane giveaway right now, where we are giving away a Cybertruck! Go to http://appsumo.com/sumoday/ to enter

Today we’re re-running our awesome episode with Justin Welsh! This guy is so IMPRESSIVE, and was one of our most popular episodes last year so we thought we’d put him in your ears once again. He runs a one-person business that does $1.7 million dollars a year, spends ZERO money on ads, and operates at a 94% margin! That’s right. He keeps most of the money.

What’s amazing is that some solopreneurs like to hire freelancers and virtual assistants, but Justin does everything himself. And he still has time to go on vacations frequently.

In this episode, you’ll enjoy 3 BIG things:

How to turn one idea into multiple pieces of content

The importance of being self-aware and accepting who you are

How a panic attack influences the way Justin runs his business

I had a lot of fun talking to Justin, so go check him out:

On Twitter – @thejustinwelsh

And his newsletter – justinwelsh.me/

If you’ve ever wanted to learn about running a one-person business and scaling it using systems, then you’ll love this episode…. AGAIN!

If you dig this episode and want to hear another successful Solopreneur story, go back and check out the conversation we did with Dan Koe, that’s 288 in this feed.

And if you enjoy listening to the podcast, I would really appreciate it if you left a review on Apple Podcasts to help more people find out about it. I might shout you out in the next episode!

People

Justin Welsh, Noah Kagan

Companies

Justin D. Welsh LLC, Appsumo

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Justin Welsh

Content Warnings:

None

Justin Welsh
Every day on social media, someone tells me the same thing, which is, you could grow ten times faster if you did x, you could add five more million if you did y. If you just did z, your business would scale. Like, I don't give a shit. I don't want anything that puts me out of control. I am the owner of every part of my business.

I don't want a publisher involved, I don't want a partner involved, I don't want an investor involved. I don't want anybody involved except for myself, because I'm accountable to myself. I can go on vacation when I want. I don't answer to anybody, and I no longer have the fear of losing that control. And that's what solopreneurship, to me, is all about.

Noah Kagan
What is up, you sexy bastards? It is your boy papi, aka Rabbi can't lose, aka Noah Kagan. Today we are rerunning one of our awesome episodes with the legendary Justin Welsh. This guy is so impressive, and he was one of our most popular episodes ever, so we thought we'd put him back in your ear lobes again. He runs a one person business that does $1.7 million a year, spends zero money on ads, and operates a 94% margin.

All by doing it himself as well. That's right. He keeps most of the money. What's most amazing is that some solopreneurs hire freelancers and virtual assistants. But Justin does everything himself, and he still has time to go on vacations frequently.

In this episode, you're going to learn three gigantic things. Number one, how to turn one idea into multiple pieces of content. Number two, the importance of being self aware and accepting who you are. Man, I need that advice again. And number three, how a panic attack influences the way Justin runs his business.

I had so much fun talking to Justin, so go check him out and give him some love. His newsletter is Justinwelsh me. That's Justin Welsh. Dot me. And on Twitter, he Justin Welsh.

If you've ever wanted to learn about running a one person business and scaling it using systems, then you're gonna love this episode again. If you dig this episode and you want to hear another successful solopreneur story, go back and check out the conversation we did with Dan Ko. That's 288 in this feed. My company, Appsumo, is running an insane, literally insane giveaway right now for a Tesla Cybertruck. Yes, a brand new Tesla Cybertruck.

No joke. You can win one for completely free. Go to appsumo.com sumo day. That's appsumo.com. Sumo sumo day to enter.

Also, special pre show shout out to listener Lee 8845 furiously taking notes on every episode. I am so grateful to Noah and his team for this fun, action Packed podcast. Thank you Lee 8845. I love you and every other one of you gorgeous listeners. If you want a shout out in a future episode, take 30 seconds.

Go leave a review on itunes or Spotify. We check every single one of them. It helps more people find out about our show. Check every single one of them.

Justin Welsh
My name is Justin Welsh and my business doesn't have a real fancy name. It's just my name. Justin D. Welsh LLC. Soon to be Justin D.

Welsh s corp. And my business does about 1.7 million in revenue per year and I have a team of one. It's just me. I used to have a virtual assistant. I don't anymore.

My wife definitely helps in supports, but in terms of employees, it's just this guy. No ghost writers, no, no support team, no nothing. The whole thing is you. Yeah, the whole thing. People don't believe it.

They literally never believe it. They just find that to be. They think I'm being deceitful, but I'm not. I write everything. I create content, I write my newsletter, I do all my customer service.

I had a virtual assistant for a while, but no longer. I probably should. So a lot of questions in there. Are you not sleeping? No, I sleep a lot.

I just have a really structured, I come from a tech background. So before I was doing what I do today, whatever you want to call that, I'm a creator, I have knowledge products, I sell subscription services, I do a lot of different things. But prior to this I was an executive at a SaaS company and I was a part of two unicorn companies over the last ten years. So early employee of both CRO at the last and I think what I've been able to bring to this one person business that I think a lot of other people struggle with in terms of scaling and staying small is just systems. So everything that I do from writing all of my content, writing my newsletter, doing my subscription email, doing any coaching, which I don't do, everything is systematized.

So like I never sit down and wonder what I have to do each day. I sit down and each day is very, very orchestrated and that's super helpful. Can you break down the 1.7 million like where that comes in from? Sure. Yeah.

Let's see. So here is how my business breaks down. It looks like I'll do about 1.3 million in courses. I'll do about 144 to 150,000 in coaching, 108 to 120 in sponsorships. This is guesses because there's still nine more days left.

About 100 to 103 in subscriptions, and then around 24 to 30k in affiliates. I gotta ask, what's the cost of this? What was the cost to you of running this business? My business costs about $623 a month, plus 2.9% to stripe plus $0.30. I'll be incorporating.

So I run it about. I think I have to do the math, but I think it's something like 94 or 95% margins. And I'll be incorporating some more expensive tools next year, so that'll decrease a little bit, but those tools will certainly help the business be more automated. What do you do with all the money I invest? My wife is.

She runs a very similar business to me, but for the financial space, she's not certified, she's not a financial planner, she's not an advisor, she's none of those things. Her dad was a stockbroker. She's super educated. And so we invest a lot, and we just bought a new house here in the mountains in New York, and we do a lot of fun things. We like to travel.

We're childless by design, so we eat at a lot of nice restaurants, and we travel a ton to Europe and Asia, and that's how we like to spend our money. But we love investing. We're trying to build a pretty big nest egg. For whom? I don't know.

I guess for ourselves, but that's how we spend it. And the course that you have, that's the majority of the revenue. What is the course for people who don't know? It's called the operating system, and it's essentially used to be called the LinkedIn operating system. Until LinkedIn found out about that, I had to change it to the operating system on launch day, which was really fun because the website got shut down and all that.

It is essentially a two hour course on how to use LinkedIn effectively because my whole creator journey didn't start on Twitter like most people. It started on LinkedIn back in 2018 when no one was using the platform that way. I saw an opportunity to use it like people use Twitter. I just basically walked people through in 2 hours. Like, how do I think about building a following that matters?

So not like, yay, I got clicks and likes and virality because I shared a fun story or a sentimental story, but, like, how do you build a business on the platform? And that's my major course. I love that it's 2 hours. That's crazy. How much does it sell for?

$150. My average revenue per user of this business on the core side is about $130.25. And so it's a high revenue, high margin business, but low ARPU. So it's, like, pretty interesting. It's quantity.

Unknown
Yeah. I mean, to sell a million, 1.3 million at $130 is, what, 10,000 people? Yeah. 10,000 courses a year. And I think that's fascinating as well.

You're clearly the leader of this. Sure. And I think people think with courses or some of this stuff, it's like, it's got to be all this stuff. But really, it's like, okay, what's the goal they're trying to have or the outcome? And what's the quickest way I can get them to have a successful result?

So I love that it's 2 hours. That's awesome. Totally. What I did before building my course was I bought a bunch of courses, and I was like, let's watch these and see what I don't like about them personally. And so I, like, opened up a course, and I was like, oh, this is 8 hours.

Justin Welsh
I don't have 8 hours. I don't want to do that. I want to get point a to point b to achieve outcome in, like, give me it in 45 minutes or 60 minutes or 90 minutes. Let me speed up the videos. Just, I don't have to learn everything.

Just give me the very specific outcome that I came for. And that's what I intend to do with all of my courses. So that's how I built them to please myself, I guess. Good for you, man. So how did you go from $0?

Unknown
I think that's a lot of the audience out there wants to have a solopreneur, one person business that's doing seven figures. Yeah, but how did you go get that first? Like, thousand or $10,000? Like, walk us through that. Yeah.

Justin Welsh
Very differently than I do now. So it's been a phased approach. So back in 2018, I knew, like, late 2018, I knew that I was going to leave my job. I've talked about it before on podcast, but for a quick context, like, I had a really, really bad panic attack that required, like, 911 and all this different stuff. And I knew that, like, just working this executive role was going to eventually burn me out or kill me.

And so I was like, I'm going to quit my job in mid 2019. So I did what a lot of people do when they become solopreneurs is I did consulting. So I said, okay, I've worked in healthcare tech on the sales and marketing side for a decade. Both companies that I've been in have been valued at over a billion dollars. I'll just roll right into consulting and advising for other healthcare technology companies that want to grow their sales and marketing revenue.

So that's what I did. And I made money that way, the way that I make money now and what I talk about now in solopreneurship and social media, that was never the intention. Never. So I went from being SaaS advisor and consultant and fast forward four years. I've not necessarily burned the boats, but for lack of a better description, I kind of walked away from that life, and now I do something completely different.

Unknown
How much were you making as an executive before you quit? 550,000. What? Yeah. Is that more or less than you expected?

That's a lot of money. Yeah, it was great living. I thought maybe I was underpricing myself horrifically or something when I saw your reaction. No, my reaction is, holy shit. I think what people miss out.

When I worked@mint.com a long time ago, I made 100k. It was the first time I made six figures. And I thought they were stupid for paying me so much. And then I realized I probably made them millions and millions of dollars. I think most of us don't recognize that you should get paid some percentage of the value generated, not necessarily just a salary.

And so im guessing as an executive, you were probably doing a lot of Im assuming valuable things to get that level of compensation. Yeah, I mean, I came on as the vp of sales of one person with zero revenue. And so by the time I left five years later, the company was at $71 million and recurring. So youre getting underpaid, is what youre saying. Yeah, I felt like it was a worthwhile deal for the company.

Justin Welsh
You know, it was really stressful and all that stuff, but, yeah, it was a great living, I think back on it, and I don't envision that I'll ever go back to doing that, but I certainly enjoyed, enjoyed the run. I've got a shelf life of like five years. So it's like, whether it's companies or industry or whatever it might be, it's like, at five years, I'm just like, I don't want to do this anymore. Let's go do something different. And so I'm in year four of this, so who knows?

A year from now, like, maybe I'll build a brewery. I don't know. One of the things to highlight there that I think I struggle, and a lot of us struggle with that. I think it's awesome. You're calling it out is just accepting.

Who we are totally. And accepting that doesn't mean you can't go beyond five years. But you're like, hey, I know this is what my thing is, but I think we have this internal conflict and resistance to what we maybe know, and then that creates the chaos or confusion versus be like, hey, five years, cool. For people out there that are saying, hey, I want a $1 million solopreneur business. And they weren't maybe an executive, maybe they're unemployed now, or they got fired, or maybe they're a designer or a freelancer, I guess.

Unknown
What would you recommend them to make their 1st $10,000? How would you explore that today? Well, there's a couple of different things. The easiest one out of everything that people can do is identify what they were really good at at their job, build a portfolio of services that mirror the outcomes that they were able to achieve for their company, and go out and find other companies that are doing those same things or want to do those same things. And I think that's generally the easiest way to get started.

Justin Welsh
The other option that you have if you don't want to do that or you don't have that experience, is to find something that you're obsessed with. Anything, anything that's going on that you want to learn more about. Building great landing pages, writing effective copy, growing on social media, starting an agency, something that you just want to learn about. Go out, pick somebody who's done it really successfully, study the living hell out of them, and then go on your own journey. And when you go on your own journey, you might get to the same outcome as the people that you emulated, but you'll get there through a different path, a different journey.

Not everyone's journey is the same. And then go find people who want to do the same thing and then take them on that journey. So that's like a second option if you don't want to use the skills that you identified in your workplace. What was the panic attack like? And then, what's it like now being a solopreneur?

It's funny, I think when I tell that story, I always assume that people will be listening on the other end and saying, how bad could a panic attack be? It really was terrible. Like, I thought I was dying. I was hallucinating. I was screaming at the top of my lungs.

My wife didn't know what to do. We lived in LA at the time, and so we called 911. The paramedics came out and hooked a bunch of wires up to me and told me that I wasn't dying. And when they told me that I wasn't dying, that was my first opportunity. It lasted, like, 2 hours.

It was pretty wild. Your fingers go numb. It's just a really wild experience. And having talked to other people who have had panic attacks, they can kind of all confirm a lot of these same things. Started with the fingers going numb, which was really kind of an obvious sign of you're having one.

So that was really terrible. The first thing that I did, and this has gone into how I live now, was I cut alcohol for 90 days. Because part of what I think brought this panic attack on was I was working 16 to 18 hours days, and I was going home, and I was numbing myself with alcohol, drinking a bottle of wine, eating a bunch of really terrible food. And so I cut alcohol, I improved my diet, and my wife and I started walking 10 miles a day, and I lost 60 pounds, maybe. And so I'm not as sharp or good as I was during that period of time now, but my lifestyle is certainly much healthier.

Unknown
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Do you think work was causing the panic attack? Yeah. Work is the foundation. It's hard to blame on work, right? I've worked my whole life, and I can work really hard.

Justin Welsh
Like, I can go for a long time and not quote, unquote, burnout or have a panic attack. To me, that's not what burnout or panic attacks are all about. To me, it's loss of control. So it's when you work really, really, really hard, and with each effort that you put in, things get worse instead of better. And I'm a big, huge control freak.

And so I told you. I started in this company, zero revenue. Vp of sales, like, executive by title only. And then as the team grew, it went from one person to ten people to 50 to 150, and the revenue went from 1 million to 10 million to 50 to 70 million. And every new day and every new dollar and every new teammate was something I had never seen before.

Right? It's like exploring a new universe that you've never seen. And as fires started popping up, I did what I had always done, tried to solve them, got into the weeds. That doesn't work when you have 150 people. It works when you have ten.

And so I didn't know how to fix it. And as I failed and failed and failed to fix it, revenue targets kept growing, and I kept hitting them somehow, but everything felt out of control. And I think at one point in time, I had just worked too long, drank too much, eaten too poorly, gained too much weight, and it all just came crashing after, like, a Christmas party. I had a panic attack the morning after our Christmas party at the company. How do you think that's influenced how you run this company?

It's basically helped me create the backbone of this. I'll give it to you. In this short story, which is every day on social media, someone tells me the same thing, which is, you could grow ten times faster. If you did x, you could add five more million. If you did y, if you just did z, your business would scale.

Like, I don't give a shit. I don't want anything that puts me out of control. I am the owner of every part of my business. I don't want a publisher involved, I don't want a partner involved. I don't want an investor involved.

I don't want anybody involved except for myself, because I'm accountable to myself. I can go on vacation when I want. I don't answer to anybody, and I no longer have the fear of losing that control. And that's what solopreneurship, to me, is all about. Why did you choose not to hire full time people?

Unknown
Or why did the, like, the virtual assistant didn't work out? The virtual assistant was great. She just left the company. And the replacement, I didn't like and so I just took it back upon myself to be my own virtual assistant. I don't want to hire people.

Justin Welsh
I don't want to manage anyone. I don't want to. It has nothing to do with margins or. It's all about me, none of that. It's just I don't want to worry about anybody else other than myself and my wife.

My courses are all automated. My customers have everything they need inside it. They generally don't need any handholding or customer service. Every once in a while, I get a question on email. I go ahead and answer it, but I didn't want to worry about taxes for folks or benefits or hiring or firing or any of those things.

It's just what I did for ten years, and it's almost like I have flashbacks. I use PTSD, obviously, knowing that that's not what it is and that's a serious thing. But that's how I think about it, is I've been there and done that, and I don't want to do it anymore. It's funny, last night, it was 08:00 we were about to have dinner, and I get a message, like, oh, this guy just quit. And I'm like, we just paid him a lot of money, and da da da.

Unknown
And it's just like, yeah, this whole video that we're doing about solopreneurs definitely makes me real jealous. Makes you real jealous? No, there's trade offs to all of it. Right? Like, I feel lucky that I have team.

Noah Kagan
So maybe. Maybe for you, like, what are the trade offs? Yeah, that. Because I think somebody's gonna hear you and be like, well, never hiring a person again. Yeah.

Unknown
But I don't know if that's always the full picture. Yeah, I think about it every day, so it crosses my mind. Every single day, I get shiny outcome syndrome. Not shiny object syndrome. I'm like, oh, this person's making 10 million.

Justin Welsh
This person's making 15 million. If I just did x the same thing those people tell me on social media, then I could be like them. I get that every single day. I feel that, right? And I'm like, maybe I should hire a person to help me write my newsletter.

Maybe I should hire a person to help me write my content. But I don't. And the trade offs are this. I spend a lot of time doing the creative work, doing some customer service, when I probably could be doing more strategy. I could be building more products, I could be delivering more services.

If someone was doing the writing or the creative work, I like doing it, and it keeps me from being maybe able to get from 1.7 to 3.5 or five. But, like, what do I need that for? I live a pretty awesome life. I have a house. I live where I want.

I have a great wife. We can travel anywhere we want. We can eat what we want. We can do all the things we want to do. I'll tell you this, when I lived in Brooklyn and made 100 grand, my life was no less happy than it is today.

And I assume that if I made twice as much as I make now, that my life would be no happier. So this seems to work pretty well. Yeah. One gentleman we met, Bret from Designjoy. We were interviewing different types of solopreneurs.

Yeah, cool. I know designjoy, he's a great guy. But he did say he had a comment about going on vacation was hard. I guess he's a little bit more of a service business. And yours is a little bit more of a digital.

Yeah, it's still not simple. Right? The one thing about running the business I run is a short shelf life on what drives revenue. So I have to get up every day and create on social media. That's what drives impressions on my content, drive visitors to my website, drive purchases.

So, like, it's a short, you know, it spikes, and then the social media runs out. You got to create again. Social media runs out, create again. So you're always much like a job, somewhat on a hamster wheel, but I like writing. I love writing.

I've always loved writing. I haven't always been very good at it. So when I go on vacation, I have to wake up in the morning, sometimes in the evening, depending on where I'm on vacation, and take an hour to an hour and a half to do the things that keep my business going. But I'll take that as a trade off for being able to leave and go where I want, spend as much time as I want there, and not have to worry about anybody quitting, like you said, when I'm there. And so, yeah, there are definitely trade offs, but I love the 100% ownership and accountability that it comes with.

Unknown
Yeah, they're definitely trade offs, and it's not better or worse. I guess it just depends on what you like and where you're at and what. Just preferences. Like, you could go, you did it the other way, you're trying it this way. I'm curious to hear more about your system.

So we try to schedule with you, and you're like, I can meet this time next week on a Thursday. And I like stuff like that where because there's clearly some system going on. Maybe can you share a little bit more about how that looks? Yeah, totally. So first, like my calendar, I guess I would call like a system, which is I schedule.

Justin Welsh
I do things when I'm best at them. So for example, people are like, oh, you should go to the gym at the end of the day. It's not crowded. I stink at going to the gym at the end of the day. I'm just like, if the day's already gone by, I'm like, I'll just skip today.

So every day is built in the morning where I go to the gym or I go on a walk or I do something physically exerting. Then I come home, I shower, and I carve out the morning for creative time. So part of my system is managing my calendar. Things that I want to do like this or like a coaching call or a meeting with somebody are generally done in the afternoon. It's not today because it's during the holiday season, but generally in the afternoon.

So my calendar is one thing, but I think the big system that keeps my business running is my content system, which generally starts with a core piece of content, which is my newsletter. And I have this very specific way that I go from idea to research to creation to then ripping it all apart and turning it into 15 pieces of content that can be delivered consistently and on time across two social media channels over two weeks. I can do all of that in less than 3 hours in one day. Write a newsletter, create 15 pieces of content, schedule everything. And that's because it's literally a plug and play system.

I never, ever, like I mentioned before, open up a blank piece of paper and say, what should I write my newsletter about today? It's templatized. It's systematized. It's like following a paint by numbers book is how my business is built. Can you share a little bit more about that?

Unknown
I think that's probably in your course as well, but at a higher level it is. But I'm happy to share it. I've talked about it in many places. For example, I'll take 45 minutes or an hour, or I'll take 230 minutes blocks. It just depends on how my week is looking, and I'll set aside time to ideate.

Justin Welsh
And ideate is really simple. I subscribe to a bunch of curated newsletters. I subscribe to a bunch of YouTube channels that are all relevant to what I talk about. Solopreneurship, digital courses, marketing. A lot of the things that I talk about on social media every day.

And I'll spend 230 minutes blocks looking through those things. Is anything that anybody is talking about interesting to me? So I'll try and note six to ten things during that block that are interesting. And I just keep a running tally in notion. So it's a tally of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of ideas, right?

There's no new idea. Like, I'll see someone how to grow on Twitter to 5000 followers. Well, cool. He has his way. I can talk about the same topic and show my way, right?

How would I do it? So I run through a list of ideas. On Monday around noon, I pick an idea, whatever stands out to me that day. And then I do quick research. I'm looking for one quote, one tweet, one book, and one article.

That's what I want. And so I'll do maybe 15 minutes of research to find something that either backs up what I'm saying or maybe disagrees with what I'm saying so I can talk a little bit about it. So now I've got my idea, I've got my research, and then I open up my newsletter template. In my newsletter template I've created, and it's essentially the same template every week. Doesn't matter because it helps the reader.

It's, here's a big problem my readers face. Here's how most of my readers try and solve the problem. Here's why that doesn't work. Here's how I would do it instead. Action.

Action. Cheers. The end. And so I have a template of like, in this sentence, say this. In this next paragraph, describe this.

And then in this follow up paragraph, describe this. It's all very systematized, so I can write the newsletter quickly. Title, headlines, body. Done. I can usually do a newsletter in less than 45 minutes.

And then I have a system where I look in the next step. Step four. Next step is editing. I ask myself four editing questions, and then step five becomes writing, which is like, how do you turn this into a story? Pain.

Agitate. Intrigue. Positive. Future. Solution.

Story. Done. What's an observation about this thing that I just wrote about? What's a prediction I have for the future about this thing that I just wrote about? What's a contrarian viewpoint that I have about the thing that I just wrote about?

And I'll just run through them again. So I have six prompts, and by the end I'm done with six, with twelve pieces of content. And then I stagger those twelve pieces of content across two weeks. And then I write the pre newsletter CTA the Post newsletter CTA and I'm done. Yeah, I'm on your newsletter.

Yeah. Cool. It's the same newsletter every week. It just talks about a different problem. It's always kind of a story too, which I like.

Thanks. Some of them I've liked more than others, but it's. I guess that's. I'll assume that will continue. Yeah.

Unknown
Yeah. What other tools do you use and what other systems do you use? I use notion, I use hype fury, I use kajabi. Hosts most of my stuff for my business. I'm gonna be using convertkit here soon.

Justin Welsh
Systems. Let's see. I have a really interesting system that I use for Twitter threads, which is. I'll give you an example. If I had to write a Twitter thread about what makes a great landing page for selling things, I have the information here.

I know what makes a great landing page. If we sat down and talked about it for ten minutes, I could probably remember more and more and more things. It's just really hard to get that stuff from here into organized fashion in an orderly fashion for a thread. A lot of writing a thread is trying to organize the pieces, and it can take an hour. So I love just picking one of my ideas.

I'll go into chat GPT-3 and say, what are ten steps for doing this thing? And they'll be like, here are ten steps for a great landing page. And it's like, those are writing prompts. I'm like, oh, I like this one. Yeah, of course.

I would have remembered that. Put that here. I disagree with that one. Take it out. Yes, I like this one.

But I would say it differently. So put it in here. And by the time I'm done, I have an outline. I never use it. No copy pasting.

It's not compelling, it's not interesting, but at least it gives me a writing outline. And then I'll just fill in the body with what I actually believe. But at least they've sort of helped me organize my thoughts. And that allows me to do Twitter threads in, you know, less than 20 minutes now, which is great cause those drive a lot of my growth on Twitter.

Unknown
I think I talked no into something ridiculous for you guys giving away this truck. Originally, I tried to get it for me, but he said no, he's only giving it to Appsumo links people to sign up for this deal because they have this crazy day called Sumo day. It's like the biggest sale of the season, and they give away a cyber truck for anybody who basically just gives them their email address, which is wild. So I guess if you guys, like me want one of these and maybe even a laundromat, you should sign up here. You don't actually get the laundromat, those are mine.

But the cybertruck you could buy or you could get it from Noah for free and take all this money. I like this better.

It's so interesting about this. Yeah, I love all these different systems and things you do. $600 a month. A lot of the things we used to have to hire people for can be done through like a zapier, be done through like, you know, a software tool that could even be free. Like you can use notion for free.

You can use some of these tools for free. And it's so cool. Totally. Here's something that is interesting that's automated, that drives another revenue stream, that's a recurring revenue business that has almost zero lift, right? Which is I'm getting 10,000 students a year into my courses.

Justin Welsh
And inside of both of those courses there are modules. And so I thought to myself, what's something that I do for myself that is relevant to these courses that I'm already doing that I could sell to other people? So there's no additional lift. I'm already doing it for myself. And so like one thing that I do is I create little social media templates that are helpful for people trying to figure out how to write social media style content for the first time.

And I was like, all right, I'm creating these templates for myself. So I just started storing them in an ocean doc. And then I don't sell them. I use my courses as sort of a Trojan horse into the subscription business where it's like, you can buy a course here and you can buy a course here. Both are going to talk about social media at some point.

And so I use an automation. When you go through the copywriting thing over here and you go through the social media thing over here, you open up your inbox and it's like an email from me which is like, hey, I just saw you just took the copywriting. If you want to expedite your copywriting. Did you know I have five templates for $9 a month? And so out of those 10,000 course purchases, 2000 people have enrolled in the $9 a month business, making it a $18,000 a month MRR business by doing something that I'm already doing for myself.

Now I make money on it. I like that if someone's out there and their dream in life is to make a million dollars. They're like, I want to, you know, in their entrepreneurship journey. What advice do you have for them? Well, yeah, I mean, I guess there's probably a lot of advice, but I would say the first thing is don't quit your job and go all in.

Maybe that works for some people. It wouldn't work for me. So the first thing that I would say is kind of use your job as investment capital for your idea, right? Everyone's got an idea. It's like, consider your salary like an investment in this side project and try and find 60 to 90 minutes a day.

And I know it's hard. I know people have kids, I know people have busy lives. But try and find some free time where you can work on this side project. The second thing that I would say is try and find the service that you can use first. I think selling services is the easiest thing.

I already do this thing at work. There are other clients who look like what I do at work. They need the same help. Go out and service them. Right?

Service them on the weekends. Service them a little after hours, a little before hours. And try and make some sort of hourly rate. Whatever your rate is, whatever you make it work, divided by 2080 times three, that's a great place to start, right? It gives you an hourly rate.

What will happen is over the course of servicing all of these people, you will find two things to be true. The first thing that you will find is you love working with a very specific type of customer. And the second thing is that you hate working with a very specific type of customer. Those two things are generally true. Go to the customers you like and ask them what they wish they could get more of from your business, from your service.

When you find the intersection of people you like to service and things customers want from you, you can generally raise your rates. That is the easiest way to start making more money doing a service business. So now you've got happy customers, customers you like working with and a higher outlet rate. The next thing you want to look for inside of these customers that you kind of threw to the side is like, how can you service them in an automated way? Since you don't really like working with them on a service business, go back and talk to all the customers you no longer work with.

What did you like working with me? What did you wish you could get more of? What are the most common problems these people all had? Package that up, put it into a digital product. So now you've got two different types of offerings.

You've got high ticket service offering, you've got a lower ticket product offering, and sometimes the people you like working with won't need your services so they can buy the digital product. And now you've got two things. Once you do that, you go out and create a little more attention for yourself on social media. You talk a little bit more to your customer and you'll probably grow that business at some point. If you can get 60% to 70% of what you made in your current job, go all in.

When you have 40 hours of work back, you can invest in the service and the product business and start to find a way to get more traffic to the high ticket. And find a way to get more traffic to the lower ticket. By doing that, you can scale these up slightly and hopefully hit a million dollars. That was the most exact thing I've ever heard, which was awesome. One thing I think people will ask is that if they don't have a following or they don't have an audience, how would you recommend them getting a few of their first clients or audience to be potential clients?

I'd recommend they start building something. Building an audience. I think that's a recommendation. Of course, there are other ways to do it. There are lots of folks who have no social media audience who make a lot of money freelancing and doing those things.

A lot of people do. Cold outbound, I don't know much about that. I don't recommend doing cold outbound. I've never done it. I'm not an expert at it.

I don't want to pretend that I am. The first thing that I would do is I would start sharing the journey that you're going on. People try. They jump on Twitter, they jump on LinkedIn, they jump on whatever platform they want to use to try and grow an audience. And they go out and they find the people who have the most following and they see all the things they do, and then they copy all those things.

And then they're really surprised to find out when what works for naval Ravicant doesn't work for, you know, a guy with one follower. Right. And they're really surprised to do that. Instead, take all the people that you love following and reverse engineer their journey. Go find Dan Coe, go find Dickie Bush or whomever, right?

Noah Kagan, whomever you want to find, go out and go back in time using advanced Twitter search and find their journey. Watch their writing. See when they got their first piece that started to resonate and go back and try and reconstruct, and you kind of back that journey. That's what I did when I started on Twitter, is I went back in time to, like, 2019, and I found all the stuff that Sahil Bloom first wrote. I found all the stuff that Dickie Bush first wrote, and I said, what is it about this stuff that people like?

And so I just broke it all apart and started using it in my early journey. And then over time, your style will change, you'll evolve, and you'll find your own voice, and pretty soon, people will follow you for your own voice. And then when you have an audience, you have leverage, you have optionality, you have so many different things that you can do with that attention. And so that would be my recommendation. Last thing, what areas are categories?

Unknown
Like categories, ideas, business ideas, are you most excited about? And then I do have one other question to that. Sure. I think, I don't know that it's a business idea, but I'm excited about it. So maybe it is.

Justin Welsh
Which is, of all the people connected to the Internet, we think about the people mostly, at least here in the states, as the people in the states. And I think there's a massive amount of Internet connected users in India, Africa, all these sort of places that are really getting into social media, getting into technology. And I think there's a way to start to help those folks make dollars. And I think that that is significantly more life changing than me making a couple extra bucks. And so what I'd like to figure out how to do is take what I do, and the majority of my customers are in America and UK and things like that, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, things like that, and spread that to some of the areas that are like India, like Pakistan, like Africa.

I think there's a business there. I just don't know what it is. But I'm interested to find out. That's part of what I want to do in late 2023, early 24. And then last thing.

Unknown
What is the american dream? To me, it's to do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, and do very little of what you don't like doing. How do you think you're doing on the american dream? Okay. What you see on social media that I write is like what you see on social media that everyone writes.

Justin Welsh
Part of it is true, part of it is a facade. We're all struggling in the background. I think no matter what numbers you see, no matter what people say about their productivity or there's a lot of bullshit out there, and I tend to share a lot of the things that are going well, and things are going well for me and for my family. We have plenty of struggles and problems and challenges that we hope to overcome. But I'm on the journey to achieving what I set out to achieve, which is where I'm currently at.

Unknown
Good for you, man.

Noah Kagan
That is a wrap. I hope you loved the episode as much as we did making it for you. Check out Fivetaco.com dot. It is the easiest and best way to find software for solopreneurs, from productivity tools to the latest AI tech to help you run your business. That's fivetaco.com.

My company, Appsumo, again, is running an insane giveaway. Go to appsumo.com. Sumoday. We are giving away a Cybertruck. Yes, you heard me write ace Cybertruck.

Go check that out. Next, text a friend. You love him. Yo, dog, let's go on an adventure. Together in that cybertruck.

Before you go slide in my DM's, let me know what you think about the show a Kagan. Finally, a couple of shout outs to the amazing team. Thank you to jason, odcasttech.com dot. Thank you to Jeremy, Cam, Sylvie, Jay, Diego, and memo from the dork team. For all the magic, y'all do have a perfect day.

What's your favorite board game, minus chess?