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2:11

slash jclaus. That's my full name,

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2:16

jclaus, J-A-Y-C-L-O-U-S-E.

2:20

We all stop to read something 100 times

2:23

a day, and we're so busy that we

2:25

never stop and actually ask ourselves, why

2:27

of all the things that I just saw,

2:30

what caught my attention about this?

2:46

Hello, my friend, welcome back to another episode of

2:49

Creator Science. My guest this week doesn't

2:51

need much of an introduction. I'm speaking

2:53

with Justin Welsh. Justin is

2:55

known as one of the leading voices in the solopreneurship

2:58

movement. And as a solopreneur himself,

3:01

he's generated more than $5 million

3:03

in revenue since 2019. Both

3:05

his Twitter and LinkedIn accounts reach nearly

3:07

half a million people, which is crazy.

3:10

His newsletter, The Saturday Solopreneur,

3:12

goes out to nearly 200,000 subscribers as well. And

3:16

he was a guest on the show back in July of 2022 on

3:18

episode number 109, where

3:21

we spoke a lot about business as

3:24

a game. That was one of the most popular episodes

3:26

of this show. So if you enjoy this

3:29

round two, I encourage you to go back to that episode

3:31

and give it a listen as well. I'll

3:33

link to it in the show notes. So

3:35

I had Justin back on the show this week to discuss

3:37

two things. First, I wanted to

3:39

talk about his recent rebrand. Justin

3:42

released a brand new website. The whole

3:44

look of his online presence has been upgraded,

3:46

and we chatted about that process, the

3:49

risks involved, and why he decided

3:51

to take it on. Now, I want to know, we

3:53

had this conversation before he formally

3:55

rolled it out. So you'll hear us kind of talking in

3:58

future tense, but you can You can see it live

4:01

now at his website, JustinWelsh.me.

4:04

Second, I wanted to dig into his approach to social media.

4:07

I mentioned that we had previously spoke about business

4:09

as a game, but I think Justin is exceptionally

4:12

good at treating social media like a game

4:14

and winning it. Winning it by a

4:17

lot. So, we cover a lot of ground here, including

4:19

Justin's approach to relationship building. So,

4:21

this episode is chock full of incredible insight

4:24

and a few surprises as well. It's

4:26

the idea that maybe fast growth isn't actually

4:29

what you want. Building a movement

4:31

takes time. I think you're exactly

4:33

right. I actually have a slide in a product of mine

4:35

where I say like 90% of the time fast growth is

4:38

actually a hindrance. And then

4:40

there's this comment that I really wasn't

4:42

expecting. I don't have social media on my phone.

4:45

You don't have social media on your phone at all?

4:47

No. So, sit back.

4:50

I hope you enjoy this full episode and

4:52

I'd love to hear what you think about it. Contact me on

4:54

Twitter or Instagram at JClow so you can tag

4:56

Justin as well at the Justin

4:59

Welsh. Let us know that you're listening. Let us

5:01

know if you want a round three. But

5:03

now, let's talk with Justin.

5:11

All right, friend of the podcast, Justin Welch back

5:13

here with us today. I am excited

5:16

to talk about your rebrand

5:19

because one,

5:20

I think rebrand is really interesting and

5:23

usually for the better. Two, they don't go without

5:25

some level of risk. So, I'd love to hear

5:27

from you. What pushed you over

5:30

the edge to say, hey, I want to put more thought

5:32

into the Justin Welsh

5:35

universe? Yeah, yeah. It's

5:37

a great question and great feedback, Jay. So

5:39

good to talk to you, man. I

5:41

think it was a combination of a few things.

5:44

I think number one,

5:45

as my brand has grown

5:48

online and I've been associated

5:50

more and more with

5:52

one person businesses, solo printership. I

5:55

didn't feel like my current website, which was designed

5:57

and written by me on Kajabi.

6:00

I just built it using a template. I didn't think that was

6:02

capturing the essence of a lot of the things that

6:04

I was talking about. And second, I'm

6:06

just design blind. Like

6:08

I just, I don't know what colors go

6:11

together. I don't know how fonts work together. You

6:13

can see I'm sitting in a pretty empty room here, like

6:16

not a whole lot of design going on in this room

6:18

in my house. And so I wanted to like upgrade

6:21

or professionalize the brand. That

6:23

was sort of the thing that was driving that. So

6:26

as my audience expands off of social media

6:28

and people are discovering me organically via

6:30

Google or through a podcast like this, I

6:32

wanted their very first impression not to be, oh, that looks

6:35

terrible. But instead to be like, oh,

6:37

this is a really well done professional

6:39

production. Those were sort of the two drivers

6:42

of thinking through that. And then as I think about

6:44

my brand long-term, I think

6:46

about things like books, I think about things like

6:48

YouTube series. And

6:50

I want those to live in a place that I'm

6:52

proud of. And I wasn't super proud

6:55

of my brand and can't wait to get the

6:57

new one launched. What types of fears

7:00

or uncertainties did you work

7:03

through in this process? There's

7:05

like two common fears, right? So one common

7:07

fear is like customer facing, where it's like, I roll

7:09

it out and customers look at it and they say, this

7:11

sucks, we hate it. We liked your old branding

7:14

better. I don't like these colors. This doesn't feel right. This

7:16

doesn't feel like you. There's a lot of like worry

7:18

there. I've kicked

7:20

the project around to enough people that

7:22

I trust to feel like we're moving in the right

7:24

direction and that we landed on something that

7:26

really captures me. And I think the second thing,

7:29

obviously is from a revenue perspective, which is I

7:32

make most of my living off of selling products on my website.

7:35

And I know how those landing

7:37

pages and pages convert and at what

7:39

rate and about how many sales I can expect each day.

7:42

And redoing that entirely is

7:45

very nerve wracking. And I told the team

7:47

that I outsourced this to, I said,

7:50

best case scenario, revenue goes up. There's

7:53

a payoff for investing in this brand.

7:56

An okay scenario is that I invest

7:59

in the brand. I get it. get professionalized and

8:01

product sales stay about the same. Worst

8:04

case scenario is I spend money, the

8:06

brand gets professionalized, but revenue drops

8:09

significantly. And so if that happens,

8:12

at the end of the world, we'll just have to go back

8:14

to the drawing board and figure out what's driving that. And

8:17

so it'll be an iterative process over time. And

8:19

at the scale you're operating at, that's like non-trivial,

8:21

right? If you're doing seven

8:24

figures of digital product sales, then

8:26

a decline in performance,

8:29

that's like a scary thing. So

8:31

how do you think about monitoring that

8:34

and taking action afterwards? Because

8:37

there's the rip the band-aid and completely revert

8:39

to what it was solution. And

8:42

there's probably a whole spectrum of other things you could do. So

8:44

how are you thinking about it? I mean, the

8:46

first thing we're thinking about is, okay, we launch

8:48

it and like, let's give it some

8:50

time. Because I made a move

8:53

over to the platform that I'm on now before this

8:55

rebrand two years ago. And I went

8:57

from selling products on a card website that

9:00

was integrated with Gumroad to Kajabi,

9:02

which is all in one. And the first week

9:04

I flipped over, like sales dropped. And

9:07

I was like, oh my God, what a terrible mistake, I've got to revert back.

9:10

And then I gave it some time and suddenly things ticked back

9:12

up. Whether it was just like, you know, it

9:14

just happened to be like that, I think is

9:16

probably coincidental more than anything. So the first

9:18

thing I want to do is I want to give it a lot of time. The

9:21

second thing I want to do is kind of a quantitative

9:24

and a qualitative analysis of why it's happening. So

9:27

using some tools that we've installed on the website to see

9:29

how users are spending their time. Why are they clicking

9:31

away? Where are they clicking? Are there any spots that

9:33

we're missing? That'll be just some data

9:35

that we can look at. And then I'm

9:38

not shy about reaching out to people and saying, what

9:40

do you think? Are you more likely to buy, less likely

9:42

to buy? I saw, you know, you asked

9:44

me a few questions about this product via email

9:47

and you didn't end up buying. Was there something that was missing? I

9:49

think it's going to be a lot of just talking to prospects and

9:51

customers and trying to get an understanding of why they

9:53

don't buy or do buy. So those are a few

9:56

things that we'll do. Yes, ripping the

9:58

band-aid off, like going back to... of the old platform

10:00

would be a disastrous waste of time and money. But

10:03

I do think there's a middle ground where we look at the

10:05

new design, make sure it's conversion

10:07

friendly. And if we're finding that conversion goes

10:09

down, it's like, how can we start slowly

10:12

over time backtracking to a more familiar

10:14

or similar design and structure? Because

10:17

changing colors and fonts shouldn't really

10:19

have that big of an impact. Changing the structure of

10:21

a landing page might. So it's like we can

10:23

backtrack within the design to get back to

10:25

a relatively similar structure as before. But

10:28

everything that I'm doing this year to invest in

10:30

my brand and this is the first year I'm really making

10:32

a big investment are things that should work.

10:35

There are five or six things that I'm doing that should pay

10:37

off. So if they don't, I would be pretty surprised.

10:40

But I've been surprised before. And I'll just

10:42

go through and with a fine tooth comb and find

10:44

out why it happened.

10:45

Yeah. I mean, it's just hard to separate

10:48

variables, right? Even the time of year

10:50

that you launched this could have an impact

10:52

on this. Macroeconomic conditions could have an impact

10:55

on this. It's so hard to figure out, OK, we

10:57

know that conversion is up or

10:59

down, but we don't know why. And it's

11:02

so hard to isolate the why. And so

11:04

making a lease like this, I think it's

11:06

a good idea to say there's a bigger reason why

11:08

I'm making this change. Like you're making this

11:11

upgrade, not because you're just focused

11:13

on increasing conversion. You're saying I'm into professionalized

11:15

brand. There are other motivations here

11:18

at Play.

11:19

Yeah, this is a 10-year move.

11:22

And I'm in a fortunate position where I

11:24

don't have a board or investors or anyone to

11:26

report back to on what happens. It's

11:30

just me. So if sales

11:32

fell by 50%, that would suck. It

11:34

wouldn't be the end of the world. Whereas

11:37

if a company makes an investment like this and they're backed

11:40

by massive VC money and it fails, well, then

11:42

there's a lot of people to answer to. But I answer

11:44

to my wife. Same. You

11:46

mentioned a minute ago that you are design blind,

11:49

is what you said. And so a lot of

11:51

the Justin Welch brand, as we've come to know it,

11:53

is black and white. And I

11:55

wanted to call that out for folks, because one, I

11:57

think it's a really smart approach to take.

12:00

If you feel like you are design blind go with

12:02

black and white maybe one accent

12:04

color to the downside

12:06

is it's made Your look

12:09

and feel easy to imitate. Mm-hmm

12:11

a little bit. Is that part of the the

12:13

brand decision as well? Yeah,

12:16

maybe more subconsciously though and like

12:19

me choosing black and white by the way It was like

12:21

I'm not the originator of that I'm sure I stole that

12:23

from somebody along the way right that I saw there's Jack

12:26

butchers of the world doing it very beautifully long

12:28

before I did anything in black and white. So

12:30

so credit to guys like that. But sure you

12:33

see a lot of like similar design

12:35

similar colors You

12:37

know, it's mysterious. I think it's like

12:39

a lot of people use it to get like very

12:41

complicated and complex and I'm

12:45

not that brand like I'm

12:47

not like big complicated Philosophical

12:50

and the ball Rava can't die. I'm Practical

12:53

right I try and give practical guidance

12:55

to help people grow their one-person business And so

12:58

that black and white I think doesn't really come

13:00

off in a way that I I want it

13:02

to and so We're gonna come

13:04

with something similar I just think

13:06

it's gonna be more beautiful at the same time

13:09

more friendly more welcoming more simple

13:11

And I also wanted to build assets

13:14

that are different than everybody. So like

13:16

if you log on to

13:18

Twitter or

13:19

X whatever you want to call it right now You're

13:22

gonna see a lot of like pictures of like

13:24

people holding their back with that You know big

13:26

hurt spot that all the fitness guys use

13:29

like 11 exercises to fix your back Like

13:31

everyone just looks the same and so

13:33

like I want to bring something wildly different

13:35

to to that platform if you go on LinkedIn,

13:38

it's like Everybody's doing either

13:40

Twitter carousels, which by the way, I'm guilty of

13:43

or or you know carousels that they've designed

13:45

in Canva that Spending a lot of time on I

13:47

want to do something different than that I don't want to be the same

13:50

the guy doing the same thing So I'm working

13:52

with that team to really think through like what do

13:54

some Crisp great assets look

13:57

like and I've started to drip those out in the feedback

13:59

so far has been overwhelmingly awesome

14:02

and positive. Yeah, I've seen some blue

14:05

hues in that content. It seems

14:07

like blue is a part of the new

14:09

brand. The color spectrum

14:11

is huge. How did you start

14:13

thinking about, well, what color or colors

14:16

do I want to introduce into the Justin

14:18

universe? I didn't. I started

14:20

working with a designer that

14:23

came recommended to me, and he ultimately didn't

14:25

end up being the right fit. And

14:27

I was kind of sitting around thinking, OK,

14:29

well, I want to move forward with this design.

14:32

Originally, I had had a project that I thought I was going

14:34

to kick off. I ended up not kicking it off. So there was

14:36

some urgency behind it. And on Twitter,

14:38

there was a guy, Andy Kennedy,

14:41

who reached out to me cold on

14:44

DM and said, your brand,

14:47

the way it is today, isn't doing you justice.

14:50

And here's how I would rebuild

14:52

your brand from the ground up. And

14:54

it was a good enough write up for

14:57

me to take a meeting. And he impressed

15:00

me with everything that

15:03

he told me, his discovery, his attention to

15:05

detail. And so I entered into

15:08

that relationship. And I essentially

15:11

became the interview subject to guinea pig. And so

15:13

I spent a lot of time with him and his team getting interviewed,

15:16

talking about what I saw the future of the brand looking

15:19

like. And we just went through an iterative process

15:21

where round one, round two, round three, round

15:23

four, it happened the same

15:25

way it does with every designer. He came with design

15:27

one. I hate this. And he's like, that's cool. That's

15:30

part of the process. And over time, it got

15:32

better. And then I got really good. And I was

15:34

like, dude, I love what you've extracted out of me here.

15:36

And to the point where my wife and I both

15:38

looked at each other and we were like, hey, this is awesome. This

15:41

looks really, really good. And this represents my brand

15:43

in a clean and in a way that I can really appreciate.

15:45

So that was where the colors came from. Something

15:48

that lodged in my mind years ago, David

15:51

Perrell really took off on Twitter. He

15:53

was one of the early using Twitter

15:55

as a thought leader for people.

15:58

And at some point, he changed his profile. and

16:00

he published like how fearful he

16:02

was about changing his headshot

16:05

on Twitter because often when you're scrolling

16:07

the feed, the thing that stops you is

16:09

a recognizable photo of someone

16:11

that you like their content. Are

16:13

you, is your rebrand gonna play

16:16

through to even your headshot? No,

16:18

because I'm older and fatter.

16:21

So, no,

16:23

I went out to get that headshot.

16:27

You know, that headshot was taken in 29 years.

16:32

And I really worked hard to source

16:34

the right photographer and the right background and the right

16:36

feel and the right look and I got that and like, I

16:38

was probably 38 and I'm 42 and it was like, maybe

16:42

someday when I'm a little more confident in that

16:44

one, but like for now that headshot seems

16:46

to have done well for me, so I'm gonna go ahead and stick

16:48

with it. I think it's a good

16:50

move. Yeah, it's an underrated,

16:53

scary thing. Like

16:57

when I see people make headshot decisions kind

16:59

of quickly, I'm just like, ugh, like

17:01

you really, if you're gonna do it, you really wanna do

17:04

it infrequently, I feel. And

17:06

I've done it and I think it's been a decision for the better, but

17:09

when I did it most recently, I had a gradient

17:11

on the background that stayed. So there was like some

17:13

visual element that was similar. After

17:16

a quick break, Justin and I dig into his approach

17:19

to social media, so stick around. We'll

17:21

be right back. Imperfect

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Action hosted by Steph Taylor is brought to

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you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the

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18:17

And now back to my conversation with Justin

18:19

Welsh. Well, I want to talk about

18:21

social media generally because back

18:25

on the last time you're on the show, we had a little

18:27

bit where we talked about business as a game

18:30

and that really resonated with listeners. And

18:32

I'd love to think about and talk about social

18:34

media as a game a little bit because what

18:37

I've seen from you is an ability to

18:39

set your sights on a platform

18:42

and just make it happen

18:45

pretty quickly. And so what I want to get at is

18:48

when you are looking at a new platform or

18:50

a new opportunity, if you want to lay it out that way, how

18:53

do you plan an approach

18:56

to be so surgical, it

18:58

seems, in finding a result?

19:01

Yeah, I feel like the number two has been consistent

19:04

in this for me so far. But like, there

19:06

are two pieces that I think are really important.

19:09

One piece, and I talk about this a lot in

19:11

some of my content is like, find

19:13

somebody who's really good at it, right? I

19:17

went out and I started looking at like, who are

19:19

the 30 best people on this platform?

19:22

So to mention him again, when

19:24

I was living in Nashville in 2020, I

19:27

came across Jack Butcher who was really he was crushing

19:29

it on Twitter at that time. I think he still is. I

19:31

just doesn't talk about the same stuff anymore. And so

19:33

I don't come across it as often. But he was crushing

19:35

it back then. And I went to his website

19:38

and I'd never heard of him. And he

19:40

had a 90 minute call for 1500 bucks. And

19:43

I was like, great, done. I wrote

19:45

the call with him and then he wrote me a note and was like, I'm

19:48

in Nashville. And I was like, I'm in Nashville too. So went out

19:50

and did the meeting at like a coffee shop. And

19:52

essentially spent 90 minutes just asking him what worked,

19:54

right? Find somebody who knows what they're doing and ask them

19:56

a bunch of questions. So I paid to

19:58

like skip the line a little. bit and to get some

20:00

of that knowledge that was going to be really helpful. But

20:02

that knowledge is only helpful up to a point, right?

20:05

Like knowledge is just a collection of

20:07

what's worked for somebody else. It's pretty meaningless

20:09

until you take action on it to figure out what works for

20:11

you. And so the second thing that I did was on October

20:14

25th of 2021, I was

20:16

like, okay, I'm gonna start tweeting. So I tweeted

20:18

on October 25th of 2021. I had tweeted

20:21

before but like very, you know, like once

20:23

a week or whatever once a month. And I

20:25

haven't missed since that date. So

20:28

I've tweeted now like whatever it is, 700 some

20:31

days in a row. And so the

20:33

second part of that was just finding what worked for me. And

20:35

like if you go back and look at like late 2021, as I'm getting

20:38

started early 2022, a lot of it

20:41

is like some of the stuff that you see with a lot of people who are

20:43

getting started a statement like a bullet

20:45

point list that gets longer, like very

20:47

simplistic stuff, very thread boy

20:50

driven stuff, like all the things that

20:52

I saw working from other people. And

20:54

like, I started to get a hang of

20:56

what worked for other people and also

20:59

worked for me. And there was a good sort of crossover

21:01

there. But as I got more confident

21:03

in my writing, I started testing

21:06

out styles that I felt comfortable

21:08

with and then I thought were more authentic to

21:10

me. And then I just started machine

21:12

gunning. Like that was maybe the third third thing

21:15

where I was tweeting three or four times every single day,

21:17

then retweeting those things nine hours later using

21:19

hype theory. So it was just like constantly

21:21

at the top of everyone's leaderboard. Every time they logged

21:24

in, I wanted to be at the top of people's feed. And

21:26

that started really accelerating. But like

21:29

nothing overly complicated. Ask

21:31

people who know what they're doing, what's working for

21:33

them, and then just get after it and

21:35

put in a ton of action. The data,

21:39

that's maybe the last thing is like I break

21:41

down my data a lot. I look at a lot of my tweets,

21:43

what works, what doesn't what topics resonate,

21:46

what days and times are best what opening lines are

21:48

best, what structures are best, I just kind of keep a

21:50

running tally of things I discover. To

21:52

give you an example, today I wrote a tweet,

21:55

and it bombed like so badly

21:57

and I couldn't figure out why it bombed

21:59

so badly. And I read through

22:02

and I had mentioned made a mention of Twitter threads.

22:04

And I realized that threads, which is now the competitor

22:07

is a word that is likely banned,

22:10

you know, in this new free speech platform

22:13

that we're on. And I was like,

22:15

Oh, make a mental note to like, walk

22:18

through every tweet that I tweet or x or

22:20

whatever you want to call it in the future and make sure

22:22

that it doesn't have any words that

22:24

could be like Instagram or YouTube or threads

22:27

or or anything that can be misconstrued

22:29

as a competitor to the platform. And so that's just

22:31

like another learning I'll chalk up put in my notion

22:33

board and just like, you know, it'll be another process

22:36

checklist, you know, I want to unpack a

22:38

little bit more of this, this idea and this phrase

22:41

of what's working for other

22:43

people, because people may be hearing that and

22:45

intuiting it differently, because there's a world where

22:47

you look at the landscape right now, and you say, Okay, what's

22:49

working is AI,

22:52

I'm going to change my entire content strategy to just

22:54

talk about AI. And I don't think that's exactly

22:57

what you're advocating for. So when you're looking at what's

22:59

working, what does that mean to you? Correct, really

23:02

good. Dig in there. So

23:05

to me, what's working is based on the outcome of

23:07

the individual. So for example, if

23:09

you want to be popular for the sake of being popular,

23:11

because you get a lot of dopamine,

23:14

you get a rush from that dopamine, or like,

23:17

go AI, right, go talk about AI, that's hot.

23:19

And then when something new happens, which will probably happen

23:21

in two or three months, like, be the guy

23:23

or gal that talks about that thing. That's

23:26

like what's working in this particular

23:28

example. For me, working

23:30

is based on the context

23:33

of my outcome, which is I wanted to build

23:35

a tribe or a fan base that was really

23:38

focused on being part of a movement. So

23:40

even friends of mine, like, like Sahil, right, he's

23:42

kind of more broad, he talks a lot, I mean,

23:45

he kind of falls under productivity and living a

23:47

great life. And so he's not super broad. But like, he talks

23:49

about things that are applicable to lots of people.

23:51

So he can build a very broad, huge 1

23:54

million plus audience. That's not really

23:56

my goal. My goal was to build like a big

23:59

but tight. audience who are who want to be

24:01

part of a movement. So I went out and I started

24:03

looking at people who I thought were creating movements.

24:06

Again, Jack Butcher is a great example. David

24:08

Perel is a great example. He was building a movement

24:10

around writing. And so like anyone who I could

24:12

find who like had this tribe of people that

24:14

were following them to say like, we

24:17

want to go on this journey with this person together.

24:19

That those are the people that I was studying.

24:22

Because to me, I want to make sure that

24:24

I'm not just tweeting about 15 different

24:26

things in a way that's popular. And

24:29

so I get a bunch of followers who like find me entertaining

24:31

or interesting. What I really want to do is I want to

24:33

get a bunch of followers who believe in solar pernership in

24:35

the same way that I do. So all of my tweeting was

24:37

focused on creating a movement. I think

24:40

initially, I've heard you say you were looking at

24:43

the format of tweets quite a bit.

24:45

You know, you had maybe still have the product

24:48

that gives people like some templates to

24:50

start from. Is that still an effective

24:52

strategy today? I wouldn't call that a

24:54

strategy. I would call that a tactic

24:57

inside of a larger strategy. So like, you

24:59

know, the first thing you have to do is you have to figure

25:02

out like, are you creating a movement? Are you being interesting?

25:04

Are you just having broad appeal? Like what is your are

25:06

you latching on to something that's trending like

25:09

AI? That's sort of the first question. The second

25:11

thing is like, what kind of information do

25:13

I want to share? Do I want to help people? Do I want to entertain

25:15

people? Like, do I want to inspire people

25:17

motivate people? You know, do I want people

25:19

to empathize with me or empathize with them, whatever

25:22

it might be? That's sort of like the next thing that you want to figure

25:24

out. Last and in a small

25:26

slice of this entire pie is like, okay,

25:29

how do I take those two things I just talked about

25:31

and deliver them in a vehicle that

25:33

works really effectively. And so to

25:35

me, it's not just like, Oh, this structure

25:38

works. So hammer hammer this away. It's

25:40

like I have this really cool, you know,

25:42

sort of thing that I'm this movement

25:44

that I'm trying to create around solar pernertia, because

25:46

that's what I believe in. And then I have a lot of great

25:49

information up here in my head around how to do

25:51

that, right? So now it's like, if I'm

25:53

creating a movement that I truly believe

25:55

in, if I've got a lot of information that is, I think,

25:58

extremely valuable, it would suck if I

26:00

couldn't get that to the biggest number of people

26:02

possible. And part of that, again,

26:04

not the whole thing is like, what

26:07

gets people to stop and pay attention in a

26:09

lot of that is how you architect, you

26:11

know, your writing. And so when

26:13

I'm trying to figure out how to best architect that

26:16

one overlooked thing that I think a lot of people fail

26:18

to do is we all stop to

26:20

read something a hundred times a day, and we're

26:23

so busy that we never stop and actually ask ourselves

26:26

why of all the things that I just

26:28

saw, what caught my attention about

26:31

this, if you can do that 10 times

26:33

a day and make notes of that, pretty soon

26:35

you're going to be like, Oh, there are some buckets

26:37

here that all of these reasons fall

26:39

into, and then you can just reverse engineer

26:41

and say, I want to re architect

26:44

those those emotions in people

26:46

when I when I tweet or when I find the structure.

26:48

And so I think about it from a very systematized

26:51

perspective, because that's just how I was trained in my

26:53

previous, you know, life.

26:55

I love that. At one point I had, you know,

26:57

those like labels that you can print

26:59

out of a printer and then slap on an envelope, your address

27:01

or whatever. They're like a sticker. I

27:03

had one of those on my wallet and I wrote on it. Why

27:05

are you buying this? And like one had a good

27:08

effect on budgeting. But what really

27:10

had a good effect on was realizing

27:12

what's going on in my brain right now that's convinced

27:14

me that I'm going to spend money on something.

27:16

And it was so enlightening

27:19

to say like, okay,

27:20

I just pulled out my credit card.

27:22

Why? What what about this

27:24

is happening? Is it that I feel a need? Is it that

27:27

I feel convinced of something? So

27:29

I love this idea of even pausing and having

27:31

that reflection on things that capture

27:34

your attention generally, because spending

27:36

attention is spending. Yeah,

27:40

I actually did the same for products that I bought.

27:42

So there's a reason that four

27:44

years into this journey and you know, we talked

27:46

a little pre show about how this might be changing.

27:48

But four years into this journey, like I've

27:50

never been big on email automation. Like I don't

27:53

do email nurturing. I don't do drip campaigns.

27:55

I don't try and sell product

27:57

or service using like a long

27:59

form. email right that like seven emails

28:02

over 21 days or whatever it might be that

28:04

doesn't mean it doesn't work by the way I'm sure

28:06

it does I think there's a lot of data to back

28:08

the back the fact up with that that works But

28:11

I started selling my products and services

28:14

in a way that made sense to me From

28:17

how I bought in the beginning the first thing

28:19

I ever bought online was Daniel Vassallo's Twitter course

28:21

like two and a half Years ago three years ago

28:24

and I was like, why did I buy this? Like what what

28:26

caused me to buy this and I thought well I've been

28:28

following this guy on Twitter for a long time. I like

28:30

his takes I don't agree with all of them, but I generally

28:32

like what he has to say. He seems pretty

28:34

trustworthy It's relatively well priced.

28:36

It's got a money-back guarantee Like there's

28:39

there's no reason I shouldn't buy this and

28:41

so when I want to build my first products I

28:43

was like, let's do all those things Let's

28:46

let's be trustworthy. All right, let's be transparent

28:48

Let's build an audience that people will say

28:51

I know I've been following Justin for a long time And now

28:53

he's got something to sell I want to buy that and so

28:55

I didn't I didn't choose to do email marketing or things

28:57

Like that out of the gate. I just did what

28:59

I knew and did what worked on me And so

29:02

I think we fail to stop and ask ourselves

29:04

those questions as often as we should

29:06

I'd love to stay here for a second and jam on the idea

29:08

of Trustworthy when

29:11

it comes to being online and

29:13

creating content. It's the question I get a

29:15

lot which is well, how do I build trust? What

29:17

is it about my content that

29:19

engenders trust that makes people feel that they can

29:22

trust me How do you think about trust when

29:24

it comes to your content and the relationships

29:26

you build online? I think it's not

29:28

just trust. It's trust expertise and authority

29:31

and I think those three things are similar

29:33

but different I've never really sat down

29:36

and actually thought to break them all down, but maybe

29:38

we'll do just do it But they're lying.

29:40

So yeah, so so trust

29:42

to me is a Consistent

29:45

source of information without

29:47

an aggressive ask. So so for example,

29:50

it's cliche But it's like that person

29:53

who constantly provides value without

29:55

being like buy my stuff buy my stuff buy my

29:57

stuff So for example, you never see me ask

30:00

people to buy my stuff. Like I just I don't write

30:03

hey flash sale or hey, get the

30:05

new product or the old product for 20% off today

30:08

and today only like those

30:10

just aren't things that I do. I try and get

30:12

on every social media platform that I'm

30:14

active on every day and do one of

30:16

four things. Motivate people,

30:19

challenge people, teach people

30:22

or empathize the people situations. And

30:24

so by doing that consistently without having an aggressive

30:27

ask like I believe that's building trust,

30:29

which is different than expertise. And expertise

30:32

is I think where you show off that,

30:35

you know, you're not just a good writer on Twitter

30:37

or LinkedIn or wherever you you're not just a good

30:40

picture taker on Instagram, like you

30:42

actually have knowledge that backs

30:44

up, you know, this skill of getting

30:46

attention. Some people can get a lot of attention

30:48

to have no deliverability. They have no skills

30:50

they can actually deliver on their work sucks, right?

30:52

They're good at getting attention. You start working with them, you're like,

30:54

Holy cow, this is a mess. So I think

30:57

expertise is just like, oh, this guy is really

30:59

good at Twitter or LinkedIn. And now I'm working

31:01

with him one on one or I bought one of his products. And this stuff

31:03

is like really, really great, right? So you're

31:05

kind of showing your expertise. I do that, I think

31:08

through longer form tweets through a lot of the LinkedIn

31:10

content through my newsletter to the articles and

31:12

guides that I produce. And then authority

31:14

is probably a more difficult one to

31:16

unpack. But I think authority doesn't

31:19

really come from me or from from

31:21

the person saying it comes from other people.

31:23

So it's like, great, I trust this guy because he's been

31:26

bringing value consistently. He's

31:28

got expertise because everything I read of his is like

31:30

detail oriented, value driven,

31:33

tactical, practical, and then like authority

31:36

is I log on to a platform on

31:38

social media and every single day I can't stop

31:40

seeing this person's name. Because people are like,

31:43

bought this guy's product work with this guy one on one unbelievable

31:46

incredible transformational, like so those

31:48

those three slices of the pie if you can nail

31:50

those things. I mean, it's hard to

31:53

lose. And so that's how I

31:55

think of trust, expertise and authority.

31:57

I like to relate things back to real life interaction.

32:00

interactions. When I started thinking about, how do you

32:02

create trust online? I started thinking, well, how

32:04

is trust created offline?

32:05

What's happening between me and somebody

32:07

else that makes me trust them? And

32:10

it's basic stuff. Like they

32:12

show up when they say they're going to show up.

32:14

Every experience I have with them

32:16

is in alignment with my expectations.

32:19

Usually that they have set. I'm not hearing

32:22

questionable feedback about this person

32:25

from other people, you know? Really,

32:27

just anything that we do online, I feel like can

32:29

be extrapolated from, oh,

32:32

how is that done offline? Which we've done

32:34

for

32:35

centuries.

32:37

But it takes a little bit of extrapolation

32:39

and thinking in that way. A lot of it also, I

32:41

think, is just time. The longer you

32:43

know somebody and have a positive relationship

32:46

with them, the more you're going to trust them. So

32:48

you can't just start today and

32:50

have a ton of deep trust

32:53

with people who don't know you yet.

32:55

Yeah,

32:58

it's you write this biography of yourself

33:01

over the course of your, maybe it's an autobiography,

33:03

I never did the difference, but you write one

33:05

of those two things about yourself over

33:07

the course of your career. And

33:10

in one day, you can screw it up.

33:12

Totally.

33:13

I have written or said

33:15

things online many times

33:18

that I wish I hadn't. Right. And so, if

33:20

I make a mistake, I apologize. If

33:24

I rub someone the wrong way, I try and learn

33:26

why that happened. If I get into an argument

33:28

with someone on social media, which I almost never do,

33:30

like, I try and learn from that, you know?

33:33

But it's like, all you got to do is show

33:36

up and root for the people

33:38

that you, you know, all these people

33:40

claim to have these followers they care about. And

33:43

if you don't root for them, and if you don't show up when they're

33:45

succeeding, like I go around Twitter and

33:48

LinkedIn, try and find people who are growing

33:50

their side hustle or building their online business

33:52

or becoming that sole opener that they've been really interested

33:54

in doing and like sharing in their victory

33:56

and their success and their growth. And I think, you

33:59

know, we can't do it. it for everybody because obviously

34:01

it just doesn't scale. But when you see

34:03

an opportunity, like you got to participate in that.

34:05

After one more quick break

34:08

for our sponsors, Justin and I talk

34:10

about his approach to relationship building

34:12

and I think you're really going to want to hear this. So stick around.

34:14

We'll be right back.

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And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation

34:50

with Justin Welch. Oh and my dogs get

34:52

involved here briefly as well. So sorry about

34:54

that. Can you talk about that as

34:56

part of your strategy or time allocation?

34:59

How you're connecting with other people

35:01

on your own posts, on other people's

35:03

posts because you go and

35:05

look at something you tweet or something you put on LinkedIn and you

35:07

look at the people that are commenting and it's like holy crap, these people

35:10

are really well known

35:13

admirable people in their own right. How

35:15

did Justin build these relationships?

35:17

I'd love to hear more about that. There's

35:19

a bunch of different things that go into building

35:22

successful relationships with creators

35:24

that are popular or well

35:26

known or successful. One

35:29

is, and I've always talked about this, if you

35:31

want to build a great network, be

35:33

an interesting person and attract interesting

35:36

people. So a lot of

35:39

networking is not like chasing. It's

35:41

actually just attracting. And so I spend a

35:43

tremendous amount of my time trying to show my

35:45

expertise, trying to show that I do

35:47

know what I'm talking about and that I do have value

35:50

to add to the ecosystem. So

35:52

that acts as like,

35:54

there's like a two pronged attack built

35:56

in there. One is when you do that

35:58

you go out and you attract people. a lot of followers,

36:01

right? People start to follow you and your numbers

36:03

get bigger. But also the likelihood

36:05

that somebody who's wildly successful sees

36:07

that stuff just increases. And the

36:10

more followers you get, the more impressions

36:12

you get, the more that likelihood goes up until

36:15

you kind of reach this like imaginary

36:17

threshold. And for me, it

36:20

was 70,000 followers on Twitter, where like out

36:22

of the woodwork, all of these big

36:24

names started reaching out to me

36:26

and saying, Hey, man, I saw your

36:28

content. I really like it. I'm really digging it.

36:30

Like we should get to know each other. You know, Hey,

36:33

man, we I comment on your stuff

36:35

all the time. And I see you comment on mine, like, let's

36:37

take this relationship offline and jump on a zoom.

36:39

I don't I don't remember exactly how

36:41

we first chatted offline, but more

36:43

than likely probably something similar to that.

36:46

But that's how it happened with guys like Sihill Bloom

36:48

and Greg Eisenberg and Dan go and Dan Co.

36:50

And it came from creating something of

36:52

value and attracting them, you know, to my

36:55

profile. The other thing that I do is kind of

36:57

the reverse of that, which is, I see

36:59

a lot of people making noise, who I

37:01

think will be future superstars,

37:04

right? They're, they know a lot, they seem to be really,

37:07

they speak my language, which is like, they're kind,

37:09

they're empathetic, they're not mean, they're not divisive, they're

37:11

not polarizing, they're just like good people

37:14

doing good work online. And

37:16

I spend a lot of time reaching out to those people. So

37:18

like, in the last week, I've probably

37:20

reached out and surprise, you know,

37:23

quote unquote, like surprised five

37:25

people who don't have huge followings and been like,

37:27

you're awesome, we should jump on a zoom call and get to know

37:29

each other. And like, I hope to

37:32

be that person, like

37:34

people have been to me that have

37:36

been an accelerant in their journey. And

37:39

I feel like if you're doing both of those things, you're,

37:42

you're being interesting and attracting big creators, and then

37:44

you're, you're sort of nurturing and helping those those

37:46

smaller creators who are just kind of earlier in

37:48

their journey, you've kind of set up an ecosystem

37:50

where it's hard not to be

37:52

well regarded or liked or thought of.

37:55

And that is, you know, that's my goal. Yeah.

37:57

And that really adds up if you did five this week. Oh

38:00

boy, public math. That would be 260,

38:02

you know, 260, yeah. You're

38:05

like, let me do this for you, Jay. 260 is

38:07

the answer. 260 people per year,

38:10

and you've been doing this for years now, so that adds up really, really

38:12

quickly, especially if these are targeted

38:15

relationships where you believe in this

38:17

person and their work, and some significant

38:19

number of those people continue to go on, and that's

38:22

something that I feel like I have really missed

38:24

in my own journey, because I've been so focused

38:27

on publishing. And

38:29

you're right, as you find

38:31

more and more success with your own content,

38:34

you get more people coming to you, and as

38:36

an introvert, it gets really easy to be like, that's my

38:38

strategy now. I'm just gonna wait for people to come to me. And

38:41

I think that is a big, big

38:43

miss. Yeah, that is,

38:46

I would say, the majority of my

38:48

strategy, right,

38:49

from a sheer

38:51

volume standpoint. I'm certainly

38:53

creating more content than I am sending out

38:55

invites, but the invites that I send

38:58

out are pretty powerful, because

39:01

I think if we think back into our own lives, we all

39:03

have a coach, a mentor, a peer,

39:06

a colleague, a parent, a family member,

39:08

who was the guy or gal that believed

39:11

in us before other people did. And

39:14

the more I see

39:16

people that I think are talented and reach out

39:18

to them early on and say,

39:21

I think you're going somewhere really good, why don't we jump

39:23

on a quick Zoom call and get to know each other

39:26

a little bit, and see if I can be helpful

39:28

to you in your journey. You become

39:30

that person, and that person

39:33

is easy to remember. And to be very

39:35

clear, it's not strategic

39:38

transaction. It's not like, oh, I'm gonna reach

39:40

out to this person because someday down the road, this

39:42

karmically will come back to me. That's not the reason.

39:45

The reason is I've been raised that way by my

39:47

parents to help people. If

39:50

you see someone who has a lot of talent and they're not

39:52

getting what they deserve to boost

39:55

them, to lift them up on your shoulders. And

39:57

so it feels great. I was taught

39:59

that.

39:59

But

40:00

in the end, like, of course, it

40:02

comes back to you, right? You give a lot, you get a lot.

40:04

And so I think it's a win-win-win all the way

40:06

around for people, you know, who choose to do that. Yeah,

40:09

I think it's easy.

40:10

When we look at creators who are having the success

40:13

that we want on whatever platform we're looking at,

40:15

it's very easy to see like, okay,

40:18

this person got comments from these people,

40:20

and those people are also getting comments from those people. And

40:23

the easy conclusion is to say, well, that's just strategy,

40:26

that's what matters, is building these relationships

40:28

and just commenting on each other's stuff. And

40:31

I'm wondering how much of that is the

40:33

intentional strategy versus the outcome

40:35

of doing the work. You know what I mean?

40:38

Totally. And I'd be lying if

40:40

I said it wasn't both. It's definitely both, right?

40:42

It's like, if you pick up an Adam Grant

40:45

book or you pick up a book by, you know,

40:47

James Patterson, the same authors,

40:50

right, the reviews on the

40:52

back, right? Like, there's a gang, basically,

40:55

for lack of a better word of people that support one

40:57

another. It's not like they just all got together

40:59

over a cup of coffee at a diner and was like, let's

41:01

all be authors, right? And

41:04

that just didn't happen. What happened was one

41:06

of them wrote a book and then another wrote a book, and then they

41:09

said, your book was pretty great, oh, your book was pretty great, too, and then

41:11

became friends, and then they recruited other friends, and like,

41:13

it just, that happens when you produce good

41:16

stuff, right? And I get that a lot from

41:19

people on the internet. They're like, oh, I saw that Dan

41:21

Go commented on your stuff, that's really,

41:23

really helpful. It's like, sure, but I didn't know

41:25

Dan when I had 4,000 followers and was

41:28

pushing out a bunch of tweets that were getting three engagements.

41:32

It's not like that was the strategy from the beginning. That's

41:34

just part of what happens over time and

41:36

is part of the compounding that goes into

41:39

producing a lot of good content. And I think a lot

41:41

of people look around and they see these groups,

41:43

these gangs, and they're like, man, if I could only

41:45

get invited into that group,

41:48

but that's probably the wrong approach, I

41:50

would guess. Totally the wrong, totally the wrong approach. The

41:52

approach is creating it and building it together. Yes, totally.

41:56

I tell people this all the time. It's like, if you have

41:58

a short term mindset,

41:59

you're.

41:59

your goal becomes like, how do I become

42:02

friends with these five people?

42:05

And so you start to reach, you start to have this

42:08

objective of trying to create

42:10

as much noise as you can. And

42:13

often, once those people get a certain number of followers

42:15

or have a certain amount of success, it's not that

42:17

they're mean, they're just busy. They

42:20

just get busier and that's just human nature. Whereas

42:22

the best thing that you could do is find five to seven

42:24

of your friends and be like, let's go

42:27

create our own gang. Let's

42:29

go take each thing that we all do separately because

42:31

we all have different competencies and let's start writing about

42:33

that stuff online. Let's start supporting one another and

42:36

let's start meeting other smart people and

42:38

doing collaborations. That's

42:40

what I would do if I were starting

42:42

again is I didn't even

42:44

do that from the beginning. I wish I did. I

42:46

didn't have a group or friends

42:49

online. I didn't have

42:51

anyone except for myself. I

42:53

guess Austin Belsack was my first internet

42:56

friend back in the day. So I've

42:58

been fortunate enough to meet a lot of really cool people,

43:00

but if I could do it again, I would architect

43:02

that intentionally from the beginning.

43:05

Something I think you're really good at is

43:07

continuing to innovate and figure out

43:10

from a platform perspective, what's

43:12

gonna give my content, my

43:14

idea, the best chance of

43:16

reaching people? Things that were

43:19

working from a tactic standpoint

43:21

years ago work less now and

43:24

maybe even get less interesting. And so what I think

43:26

you're really good at is identifying when the

43:28

time has come to change things

43:30

up and then figure out what

43:32

will work now. Can you talk about your

43:35

approach to figuring that out? Yeah,

43:37

I wish I had a really cool sexy

43:39

answer about how it was really regimented, but

43:42

I think it starts with knowing

43:45

who and what I don't wanna be online.

43:48

So I don't consider myself

43:51

to be much of a follower. I try not

43:53

to have my content sound or look like other people's.

43:56

When I was in SaaS

43:59

and tech before this. It's like I was

44:01

generally in a position of leadership, right? Sales manager,

44:03

director of sales, eventually VP and chief revenue

44:06

officer. I always wanted to be the leader. And

44:08

so it starts with being like, I don't

44:11

wanna be like these other people. So

44:13

I would go on and see like top 10

44:16

books, top 10 movies, top 10 ads, best 99%

44:20

of people don't know how to use Twitter. Here's

44:22

a picture of Elon Musk and I'm gonna name- Twitter's a free

44:24

university. Yeah, Twitter free university. These 10

44:26

books will give you more than an MBA. I

44:29

just didn't wanna be this guy who like had

44:31

a lot of sizzle but no steak. And

44:33

by the way, I failed sometimes. There are some

44:35

times where I've like fallen victim

44:38

to that, right? You

44:40

do something that's out of character for you. So I'm

44:42

certainly not impervious to making

44:44

a ton of those mistakes. But I think first

44:47

is a long winded way of saying, what don't I

44:49

wanna be? And it's like, okay, well, if you don't wanna

44:51

be those things, like what

44:54

else is left? And it's like, well, authenticity,

44:57

being genuine, writing in your own style. So

45:00

here's the sexy part. It's throwing

45:02

a bunch of shit against the wall and seeing what sticks.

45:05

Like I tweet four to five times

45:07

every single day. I try a bunch of different

45:09

styles. I try different images. I try different

45:12

things. And I think what I've noticed about

45:14

a lot of creators, especially the bigger their

45:16

get is when they have like a quote unquote

45:18

flop, they delete it. And

45:21

so they're so fast to delete something.

45:23

And instead, like, I don't know, I keep this running

45:25

tally of like, I have this historical Twitter

45:28

feed of everything I've ever tweeted. I haven't made, I'm

45:30

sure I've deleted a few things here and there that I wish I didn't say

45:32

or things like that. But like, I have this historical

45:35

feed. So I can go back and look at my analytics

45:37

and export my stuff and say like, cool,

45:40

there are some trends here of what is starting to

45:42

work for me. And then that

45:44

is really my entire style. Is like,

45:47

try a million different things. Also be

45:49

cognizant of like we talked about before,

45:51

what's getting me to stop? What am I seeing working

45:54

that I think, is in

45:56

my authenticity wheelhouse. So

45:58

that's really it. But as

46:01

a reminder to everyone listening and even

46:03

as a reminder to myself. This is my full-time job

46:06

I have the benefit of being

46:08

able to do this 10 hours a day if I want

46:10

to

46:11

whereas people who work a full-time job

46:13

They're kind of just flying by the seat of their pants.

46:15

They don't have that that luxury But

46:18

if I could give any piece of advice in the beginning it'd be

46:20

formed that little group because there's some really good feedback

46:23

that you get from your friends, but also

46:25

I'll Keep a running tally

46:27

of all the things that you say and do on the internet

46:29

that like Cause a ruckus and in a good

46:31

way and try and repeat those things as often

46:33

as possible as long as they're leading To the right outcome.

46:35

What's your relationship to Instagram right

46:37

now? I? Don't

46:40

love Instagram I've

46:43

tried it a few times. I don't

46:45

want to get sucked into that I don't

46:47

do a lot of consumption there because it makes me feel

46:49

icky like it's a lot of like, you know

46:52

It's the stuff you see on Twitter But with

46:55

really good looking people looking like they're

46:57

living the best lives humanly possible

46:59

I don't want to do that to my mental health But

47:01

I do believe that there's an opportunity

47:04

to spread my message to a

47:06

larger group of people that haven't seen it before So

47:09

for that I have started creating

47:11

there and then I stopped I started creating

47:13

stopped started creating stopped and like

47:16

Mistakenly grew to 24,000 followers

47:19

if I'm gonna do it again, which I probably will

47:21

someday Want to have like a strategy.

47:23

I want to do it the right way I want to approach

47:26

it the same way that I've approached LinkedIn and

47:28

Twitter and I haven't had

47:30

that conversation with anyone yet Who's

47:32

like really good at it? So the first thing that I got

47:34

to do is find like a friend of mine who's excellent

47:36

at it and isn't like super Much

47:38

younger than me. I had a conversation with

47:41

a creator who's younger than me and he's like, okay So you want

47:43

to like pull open your reels and then you want

47:45

to do that? I'm just like, I don't know what any of that stuff means.

47:47

I'm like Super super stupid

47:49

when it comes to Instagram, I cannot figure out how to use it So

47:53

I think it's like getting really educated on it talking

47:55

to somebody who's really smart about it can explain it to me Like I'm

47:57

a kindergartner and then making a

47:59

go of it when I'm ready.

48:02

What about threads?

48:03

I got bored.

48:04

Got bored? Yeah, I got bored and like,

48:07

I don't know, it just seemed like, could

48:09

I just copy and paste everything? Sure.

48:11

But like, if I'm not going to participate in the conversation,

48:14

didn't feel right to do. It's probably

48:16

a similar answer to Instagram where it's like, when I'm

48:18

ready to take it seriously, I will. But I'm not

48:20

just going to like dump a bunch of content in there and

48:23

then like not hang around. That's just not

48:25

my style.

48:25

You strike me as a desktop person

48:28

rather than a mobile person. Am I reading that right? Well,

48:31

laptop, but yeah, yeah, 100%. I don't

48:33

do anything on my phone. I don't have social media on my phone. You

48:35

don't have social media on your phone at all?

48:37

No. What? I'm sure that's surprising a lot of

48:40

people right now. Yeah, like if I had social media on my phone,

48:42

I'd never get off my phone. Is this a new thing or

48:44

has this been the way this way for a while? It's

48:46

probably been that way for eight or eight or 10 months. So

48:49

I keep social media apps off my phone.

48:51

I put my phone and do not disturb 24 hours a day,

48:53

seven days a week, except for my wife and my

48:55

mom. Yeah, I do everything on

48:58

a computer. Like I don't know how to

49:00

design emojis

49:02

on Instagram. I'm probably not even saying this

49:05

stuff right. I don't know how to use Instagram stories. I

49:07

don't know how to use Instagram reels. If that's a thing,

49:09

I think it is. People are like, get this

49:12

share and share that. And like, I'm just

49:14

like, I don't even know how to stitch together all that stuff. Like

49:16

I'm, I'm so dumb when it comes to Instagram. And

49:18

so I don't just want to show up and like do

49:20

something in a mediocre fashion. I'd rather

49:23

like really study it, talk to people, but I

49:25

hate being on the phone, man. I hate mobile

49:29

internet. It's so frustrating trying

49:31

to take the speed of your thoughts and then

49:33

replicate that speed with your thumbs. I can't

49:35

do it. I need all 10 fingers. I can't pipe. Like

49:38

I literally can't type on it. I often

49:41

tell my wife, like if, if there was a made up

49:43

scenario where like someone had a gun to

49:45

my head and they were like, you have to type Justin

49:47

Welsh and get every letter right. And

49:50

I was staring at the keyboard. It would come

49:52

out like jerk and worse. It's

49:54

just, it's incredibly frustrating

49:56

how poorly, how poor I type on a phone. And

49:59

so I do everything on my life.

49:59

laptop. All right,

50:00

last question for you, Justin. I'm especially

50:03

interested in your answer to this because like I was saying, I think you're

50:05

really good at innovating on things. So

50:07

what is, what is a hunch that you have right

50:09

now in terms of what's working or

50:11

where things are headed that you don't

50:14

quite have data to support, but

50:16

you're, you're still

50:18

operating under?

50:19

Well, there's maybe a couple of punches and I

50:22

think we're starting to see one. I don't have

50:24

any data behind it, but I

50:26

think we're going to move from sizzle,

50:29

which is like, if you see a lot of like the stuff that

50:32

was working a year ago or a year and a half

50:34

ago on Twitter, where it's like really

50:36

sizzle threads, big, huge

50:38

promise in the hook and then like

50:41

mediocre content as you went through it. I

50:44

think people are tiring of that. I

50:46

mean, I just know it anecdotally from what I see. And

50:48

I think we're going to start seeing a lot more authenticity

50:51

first on Twitter, at least in like

50:53

the creator space, right? Like in the political space

50:55

and sports space and all that. I don't

50:57

know. I don't play there, but like in the creator space, I think we're

50:59

going to see a lot of like behind

51:02

the scenes building in public

51:05

wins and losses, real

51:07

time, like what's happening in my business

51:09

kind of stuff. I think the future of building businesses

51:11

is going to be a lot like what Andrew Gazdecki

51:14

is doing at acquire.com where it's like,

51:16

it feels like every customer who makes a sale

51:18

is featured there. Like levels

51:21

is doing that where he's constantly sharing the things that

51:23

he's working on, what's working, what isn't like, those

51:26

are the people who I think are going to continue

51:28

to grow organically really well. I think

51:30

that that's a hunch that I have that is, again,

51:32

I'm hearing anecdotally and I think

51:34

the data will back up. I also think

51:37

platforms like LinkedIn are getting

51:40

inundated, inundated

51:42

with two things, carousels and

51:44

selfies, right? Paracels,

51:47

here's a carousel. And like, here's a, here's

51:49

a random selfie that is irrelevant to

51:51

the post. And

51:53

people are like, I'm winning. I'm winning.

51:55

I'm winning. My engagement is going up. My engagement

51:58

is going up. My engagement is going up.

51:59

If you're on social media and you're spending 10

52:02

hours a day on social media and you're not

52:04

making money or building a business, you

52:06

are creating an absolute disastrous

52:09

life for yourself. Social media, for

52:11

the most part, it can be really fun. You

52:13

can meet great friends. There's a lot of benefits to it. But

52:16

being addicted to social media is poison. And

52:19

so if you find yourself just

52:22

being addicted to likes and

52:24

comments for the next 10 years of your

52:26

life without turning it into something meaningful that

52:28

supports your family or turning it

52:30

into something where you're meeting 10

52:33

really great friends all the time and doing really

52:35

interesting work together, I actually just

52:37

think you're poisoning yourself. And

52:40

so it's great to see these

52:42

selfies and these carousels because they've

52:45

replaced quality

52:47

marketing.

52:48

They've replaced creating a movement,

52:51

being valuable. It's more about catching

52:53

attention. But what I see, and this

52:55

is maybe a third hunch and it kind of transitions

52:57

really well into this third hunch, is

52:59

like I know personally

53:02

a lot of people who have built big

53:04

followings, 400,000, 500,000, a million,

53:07

more than me, doing things

53:09

like beautiful carousels, taking

53:11

a lot of selfies. But when I ask

53:14

people or I ask, first of all, they're making almost

53:16

no money. They don't have a good, thriving

53:18

business. And when I ask people, what

53:21

do you think about when you think about X person?

53:23

They're like,

53:24

they can't really tell me. They

53:26

can't really tell me the thing that person does.

53:29

And if you just want attention and like that's all, if

53:31

you're just after vanity, I

53:34

think 10 years from now, you're going to be living in a really depressed

53:36

state. Whereas if you're building a business and making

53:38

a ton of friends, I think there's at least

53:40

meaning behind some of that dopamine and

53:43

what I think is actually poison. I think about

53:45

this a lot because I agree with you, it is poison, especially

53:47

if your engagement is based on your face or your

53:49

appearance. What happens when engagement goes down? How

53:51

are you feeling about yourself? But the other

53:53

thing is, I think there's actually

53:56

a big risk to growing your following too

53:58

quickly

53:59

because If you don't have something to back it

54:01

up, and then you've reached your

54:03

total addressable market or close to it, when

54:06

you do find your thing and you're trying to get attention,

54:08

you might have, your account,

54:11

we'll say, might have already kind of peaked.

54:13

And it might be hard to get that attention back

54:15

from the people that clicked follow at some point but

54:17

have stopped paying attention. And your

54:19

stuff may not actually be getting seen by anybody

54:22

anymore. I've been really comforted

54:25

lately by being happy

54:27

with staying on the come

54:29

up for as long as I can. Because

54:32

that's like an exciting place to be when

54:34

things are slowly but

54:37

surely moving in the right direction. Because

54:40

I feel like I don't even have everything

54:43

on the back end where I want it to be if

54:45

I was suddenly thrust into the spotlight

54:48

of some kind. That's right. Building a

54:50

movement takes time. I think you're

54:52

exactly right. I actually have a slide in a product

54:54

of mine where I say 90% of

54:56

the time fast growth is actually a hindrance.

54:59

Where it's like, you see these guys and

55:01

gals, right? They come on, they're like, I grew the 600,000

55:04

followers in six months. It's like, okay,

55:07

what was the outcome of that? So what

55:09

now? What do you have for that? Besides,

55:13

you can tell people about that. Whereas if

55:15

you grow really slowly over the course of time and

55:17

you eventually become big, you can feel

55:19

pretty confident that that movement

55:22

is spreading word of mouth. That

55:25

movement is people telling other people. Is

55:27

it your content's getting dramatically better over time? I

55:30

just always think it's almost like startups,

55:33

right? Growth at all costs comes

55:35

with a lot of downside. Slow,

55:37

sustainable growth, profitable growth over

55:39

time comes with a lot of upside. I

55:42

would encourage people to think about it that way. People

55:44

are always like, how do I get to 100,000 followers? I'm only at 10,000. I'm

55:47

like, do the things that got you to 10,000 and do

55:49

them 10 times longer. That's how you get there.

55:53

I hope you enjoyed this conversation

55:56

with Justin. much

56:00

as I did. If so, tag

56:02

us both on Twitter and let us know that

56:04

you enjoyed it and that you'd like to hear around 3. You

56:07

can tag me at JClaus and Justin

56:09

is at the Justin Welch. If

56:12

you want to learn more about Justin, I recommend you sign

56:14

up for his newsletter, the Saturday solo for Noor,

56:16

at JustinWelsh.me. You

56:18

can also find him on Twitter at the Justin Welch

56:20

tour on LinkedIn by searching for Justin

56:23

Welch. Thanks to Justin for being on the show.

56:25

Thank you to Nathan Tonhunter for making this episode

56:27

of In Emily Klaus for creating our artwork. If

56:29

you enjoyed this episode, please leave

56:31

a review on Apple Podcast. It goes so

56:34

far. It goes such a long way in helping the show

56:36

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56:38

of those reviews. Please leave a review on Apple Podcast

56:40

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56:43

leave a review on Spotify. It means

56:45

a lot as well. Thanks for listening.