Links Mentioned:
Timestamp:
00:00 Justin Welsh's Success
00:39 Justin's Journey to a 2 Million Dollar Business
01:10 Building and Scaling Online Courses
02:11 Recurring Revenue and Newsletter Strategy
03:19 Differences Between LinkedIn OS and Content OS
05:06 Effective Branding and Social Media Strategies
07:40 Relatability and Solving Audience Problems
11:11 Conclusion and Opportunity to join the Productive Insights Membership Program
Ash Roy and Justin Welsh's Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):
Justin Welsh:
It all adds up to about 2. 25 million annually this year I think
Ash Roy:
That's my friend, Justin Welch. He's built a one person business, which does over 2 million a year with over a 90 percent profit margin. And in this short video, he's going to share with us the roadmap that he followed.
Justin Welsh:
And my goal was to sort of disconnect from that and build something that was a bit more automated.
Ash Roy:
The difference between his two courses, content OS and LinkedIn OS.
Justin Welsh:
The difference between the two courses is pretty simple.
Ash Roy:
How he guided his wife. What is it that you told Jennifer? Yeah, you know,
Here's Justin, let's do this!
You are doing outstanding profit. I mean, we're talking 90 plus percent margin, a one person business with 2 million annual turnover.
Talk to us a little bit about how you managed to make that happen.
Justin Welsh:
I can give you sort of the roadmap, which was, you know, I, I built a successful consulting and advising business, which was probably doing about 750 to 800 grand in my maybe second year.
I can't remember exactly, but that sounds about right. And when I was doing that, I was spending a ton of time coaching, mentoring, advising, consulting. I was always on zoom meetings and my goal was to sort of disconnect from that. That reality and build something that was a bit more automated. As I grew on LinkedIn in 2019, I released this like little piddly $50 course and I had like 30,000 followers and I sold 75 grand of it in 18 months, which is not what I wanna make as a person who makes the money in my household.
But it was cool to see that I'm made 75 grand from that course and I just kept building and building and building and building my LinkedIn audience, and then I rereleased it as a new, more modern course, you know, in 2021 at $150. And I started doing about 50 grand a month with that course. While my second course, which I released is more kind of focused on Twitter users and things like that. Newsletter writers that got up to about, you know, 70, 80 grand a month.
And between the two courses, I think on average, I probably do. Today's steady state, maybe 160 to 170. And so I was like, Oh, this is really good revenue. And so I was like, how can I make more, maybe some recurring revenue to add a new and unique revenue stream because I have so many followers, I have so many students in my courses, and now I have a one click upsell on my course that 25% of people activate, which is a subscription for $9 a month, where they get an email from me with social media tips and tricks.
That is a $24,000 MRR business. That is me sending one email. It doesn't matter if it's one subscriber or a million subscribers, it's still just one email. So that started to add some recurring revenue to my revenue stream. Then I built my newsletter up using my top of funnel audience to over a hundred thousand subscribers.
And pretty soon when you have a hundred thousand subscribers, you can make five, six grand an issue in sponsorships. So then I was getting paid to write my newsletter. I had the recurring revenue subscription. I had two courses and then every once in a while here and there, I might fill little 30 or 40 minute blocks of my time with, you know, one on one coaching, consulting, or advising.
So that is how the business has added up. And then you throw in affiliate deals and things like that. You know, it all adds up to about, I have a run rate of about 2.25 million annually this year. I think
Ash Roy:
Now you have two courses, LinkedIn OS and Content Os. Full disclosure, I'm an affiliate on both. If you wanna know more about them, just go to productiveinsights.com/linkedinos or productiveinsights.com/contentos.
What's the difference between the two courses, and I know Content OS touches on Twitter a little bit more. A related question is, do you think Twitter is still viable because I'm finding very little engagement on it.
Justin Welsh: Yeah. I mean, I think Twitter is super viable. I enjoy it. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure it out and I think I've done a pretty decent job of figuring it out.
So I, I like it. I use it differently than I use other social media platforms. I consume a lot more there than I do on other platforms, but the difference between the two courses is pretty simple. The LinkedIn course is not really a LinkedIn course. It's a branding course, it's about how to build a brand for yourself.
LinkedIn just happens to be the vehicle that I'm most familiar with. And so I wrapped it in a LinkedIn shell and there's some tactical stuff that is, you know, relevant only to LinkedIn more so than to other social media platforms. But all in all, you can take the course and you could apply what you learn and use it on Twitter or YouTube or Instagram.
It's a branding course. It's how to, it's how to sell yourself, right? That's basically what it is. The content OS is a bit more tactical. So the content OS is solves the number one problem that I hear from people on social media, which is how do you come up with so many ideas? How do you publish so much content?
How do you not miss? How do you stay consistent? So the Content OS was born from that challenge. And so what I teach in that is essentially a 9-step system that I use to start with a big idea, get it into a long form piece of content, chop it up into 6 to 12 smaller pieces of predictable content, and then push those through templates that that generally work.
To get engagement. So that's that course. Whereas the LinkedIn course is more of a high level, strategic branding course.
Ash Roy:
Okay. Question about your LinkedIn strategy. You talked about the branding thing. When you started in 2018, you forged a new path and you that you now follow, which several other people are now following, including me.
Would you say that is correct? And if so, if you were starting again today with. Justin Welsh already who's forged this path, would you follow these steps and would you get the same results? I guess what I'm trying to say is you stepped into the stream back in 2018. The stream has changed now, the algorithm has changed.
What is your advice to someone starting today? What should they do? Should they just follow LinkedIn OS? Will that work for them?
Justin Welsh:
Generally? It's like I said, it's a branding course. So like, I think there's a really important distinction here. It's a great question. And I think there's a really like classic distinction, which is the courses that I build in the knowledge that I share is not algorithm specific.
So very rarely will you, I mean, every once in a while, I might say like, Oh, here's something interesting. I learned, right? Don't do this. The algorithm seems to hate it. I won't suggest that I've never said that I'm certainly have, but for the most part, it's not like. Hey, what worked in 2021 is that significantly different than what works in 2023.
It's about branding and selling yourself, It's about becoming a person. That's interesting that other people want to follow. It's not about how many slides go in my carousel or what time should I post at? Or do I leave a comment here? That's all piddly wink stuff. Right? Like that stuff doesn't make or break a big brand.
A big brand is made through strategic decisions, Understanding the modern, you know, personal brand on the internet, understanding how to find your tribe, acquire your audience. Those are all the things that I want to teach in the course. Not, you know, Do I post at 8:15 or 8:18, right? Which is like the number one kind of question I get from people.
What tool should I use? What time, what image, none of that stuff matters. Learn how to become a holistic brand and like get to all the tactical, minuate stuff that might give you a half percentage point improvement down the road. So to answer your question in a very long winded way, yes, I would follow the same branding strategy because I believe most branding principles are pretty timeless.
If you take a look at. My wife, right? Use her as an experiment. Yeah. Started, last year. I think in January, like I was like, Hey, you should just go on the internet and talk about personal finance cause you like that. And you know, 12 months later, she had 130, 000 followers was a LinkedIn top voice that was following, you know, my guidance.
And so I look at her and, you know, thousands of students that I have, I got 30 LinkedIn top voices in the course who have been students and gone on to become top voices. So, I like to think that I'd follow the same path.
Ash Roy:
So what is that sacred sauce. I mean, Why are you so followable and what is it that you told Jennifer?
Justin Welsh:
Yeah, you know, there's so many different things, right? Branding is not just like, Oh, what's the lever that you pull and become like a really big brand. It's more than just one big thing, but you know, a couple of things stand out for me. I think one of them is your unique value proposition. So for example, Jennifer comes at it from a very unique perspective.
She's not a financial advisor, she's not a doesn't have a series 7 or whatever it's called. She's just a woman who had a lot of credit card debt when she was younger, made every financial mistake possible, learn from her financial mistakes, dug her way out of debt and became a success story that in and of itself is interesting to most of her target audience, which is usually women who find themselves in a similar situation, right?
so she's relatable, right? Being really relatable, I think is really important. Financial advisors are not relatable in general, I'm sure there are some that are relatable, but most of them are mechanical and, you know, very automated and very rigid. Whereas Jennifer tells stories, so she's relatable.
That is a big part of being a brand. Your audience needs to see themselves in you when you're telling stories, talking. I think the other thing that separates sort of a followable person from someone who isn't, is there's a lot of platitudes on the internet. Right work smart, not hard. Sure, I've said that before, but, like, in general, work smart, not hard.
Be a great person. All these just worthless platitudes and cliches that we've heard 1,000 times over. Whereas if you go and read my content, generally, I will teach you how to do something pretty tactical in a matter of 2 minutes, so you can read my stuff and then you can apply my stuff and you can fix a problem that you otherwise had been unable to fix.
That is pretty, if you mix relatability with solving your audience's biggest problems, it's really hard not to grow a following, but people are so interested in cliches, platitudes, tear jerking stories got to solve people's problems at some point in time.
Ash Roy:
Dude, I gotta say. I had to say you had a USP. I would say it would be that.
Your succinctness, your preciseness and your usefulness. The content, it reeks of that. And I couldn't agree more. There's a lot of "Me Too" content out there. And I do see you putting out very actionable stuff. So kudos to you for that. Sorry, you were going to say something.
Justin Welsh:
Oh, no. I just said, thanks. That's my goal.
Like it seems easy, but I realized that it is a trained muscle, much like riding a bicycle. It's like, if you don't know how to ride a bike, riding a bike seems hard. If you do, it seems pretty easy. One thing that I've gotten into the habit of doing is when my audience asks me a question on a comment or on a tweet, or they reply back to the newsletter, like, I store that as a nugget and say, I know how to solve that problem that they just asked about.
And if I know how to solve it, what is the easiest way to solve it? What is the most basic most Oh, I think everyone knows this. The, the trick is they don't all the things that seem easy to you or easy to me are very complicated to somebody else. That's just because we've learned them over time. Much like riding a bike seems easy to you or me, but to someone who doesn't know how to ride it, it's very complicated.
And so teaching them the basics comes across as like succinct or easy or simple when really it's just everyone else is so focused on getting complicated and complex. And I'm just like, Oh, here are the three easiest things you can do to solve that problem. And people say, well, that was really helpful.
And so I just keep doing that for lack of a better description, you know?
Ash Roy:
So let's talk a little bit. If you'd like to access the full conversation right now, you can do so by heading over to our membership community at productiveinsights.com/membership.
Join while the prices are relatively low.
We don't plan to offer these prices again. Be sure to subscribe because we'll be dropping another few gems from that conversation I had with Justin Welsh in a future episode on our YouTube channel. If you enjoyed this video, check out this video with Justin where he talks about how his revenue breaks down and shares some more absolute pearls that you can implement right away.
If you found this useful, share your thoughts in the comments and share this video with somebody else who you think might benefit.