1. What’s your background and what business did you start?
Hi, I am Justin Welsh and I was a Sales guy for over a decade at one of the startups in Los Angeles. I was struggling with the stress and was having unhealthy habits as well which I often use to get panic attacks.
One day, I reached a breaking point and realized that I wanted a change. After leaving my corporate job, I set out on a path of self-discovery and reinvention.
7 months before leaving my corporate job, I started publishing content on Linkedin. It was 2019, and LinkedIn was not widely utilized for sharing personal insights and experiences, making my content stand out among the crowds. Over 7 months, my followers grew to 20000, and was getting a lot of traction from them.
While growing my online presence, I took a bold step to launch my new consulting business on LinkedIn and then closed the very first client for $40,000 on the very first day of launch.
The consulting business took off but then I started getting messages on how I write content on LinkedIn, how to grow followers organically and how to make followers buy our products, etc.
By seeing the demand, I launched a course soon after that which was “The LinkedIn OS”. I have also launched “The Content OS” and these courses are doing pretty well which helps me to generate around 75-80% of total revenue.
2. How did you develop this idea and what market research did you do?
The idea of selling courses was not fully formed from the beginning. At first, I started a consulting business and thought of finding high paying clients on LinkedIn.
When I announced that I had closed a client for $40,000 annually I started getting a lot of inquiries on how do I convert the followers to paying customers, how to write LinkedIn posts, and how to increase the traffic organically then I realized that there is a huge knowledge gap among everyone and this needs to be fulfilled.
My market research was my followers who were texting me and commenting on my posts. I used to gather all the questions and check what was common in them. I realized everyone was asking the same questions which I mentioned above. And then I decided to create a course.
3. How did you build your first product for your business?
I decided to build the flagship course which was The LinkedIn Operating System. My only goal while creating the course was to bring a unique business model into the education space. Instead of referring to other creators, I followed a hypothesis based model.
Hypothesis 1: The course was self-paced learning then it should not be priced higher.
I did not want to create some courses that had high ticket value. I wanted a course that even a student can afford to buy and also I did not want to waste time convincing customers that how my course is so much beneficial to them.
So instead of keeping the price at $1499 or $1990, I priced it at $150. This price point will attract a large number of buyers to try my course and even I can also generate some good revenue at this price.
Hypothesis 2: People are more likely to finish a course when it’s shorter.
I have often noticed that the creators usually create long-duration courses for about 10 hours or 15 hours. Before creating my course, I purchased a few of the courses and I realized that it was too long and I couldn’t finish that course.
So I decided to create a course which is less than 2 hours so that people are more likely to complete my course. The average online course completion is around 13% but mine was 54%.
4. What is the process you followed to launch your business?
By growing my audience on LinkedIn, I knew that there was a demand for his expertise in social media and content creation so I seized this opportunity to diversify my offering.
I was continuously bragging about my course on LinkedIn and also on my NewsLetter and the day finally arrived in 2021 when I was going to launch my very first digital course.
I created a normal landing page using Carrd that was used to tell people what I have to offer in my product. It was easy for me to set up a landing page using Carrd and I had become really good at it. Even today I recommend Carrd to everyone if they want to create the landing page quickly with minimal effort and at a low cost.
I had quite good email subscribers at that time and upon launch, I just sent an email to all of my email subscribers. I was also continuously posting three times on LinkedIn and was informed about my course to my audience.
The results came out to be awesome and I had sold the courses worth $75,000 within the first few days of my launch. I also launched another course which was called “The Content Operating System” where I shared behind the scenes for creating the content, writing the weekly newsletter, and writing 10-15 pieces of high-quality content in just a few hours.
Over 10,000 students have been enrolled in this course which was priced at $150 and it generates an average revenue of $60,000 a month.
I have also recently launched “Creator MBA” course where I reveal everything about starting, building, and sustaining a profitable internet business where 30,000+ students have already enrolled.
5. What strategies have you found effective in attracting and retaining customers?
I need to work every day to get new customers and retain old customers. I am a content creator and I need to create content every day to get the eyes of everyone daily.
However, I have always had four strategies that helped me grow my business year on year.
Strategy 1: Growing LinkedIn following
After sharing 1 piece of content there, I started sharing twice every day from 2022 which got me more than 600 posts a year. I started getting a lot of traction there and my engagement rate was also increased. My followers started to rise and I was getting better results.
Strategy 2: Growing Twitter Following
I started on Twitter in September 2021 to diversify my LinkedIn followers as I thought sticking to one platform could be risky. I have now posted there for about more than 40 months now and since then I am grown my following from 5k to 520k followers as of 2024.
Strategy 3: Growing my NewsLetter
I launched the NewsLetter from the very beginning when I started creating content. It’s called The Saturday Solopreneur. I usually send one piece of content each week to my email subscribers and often monetize it with sponsorships. Usually, I convert that 1 piece of Newsletter content to various short-form content so that I can distribute it on other channels. This process helps me to make my followers sign up for my newsletter.
6. How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
I have multiple income streams which help me to earn money while I sleep which has helped me to generate more than $7 million so far.
Here is a quick breakdown of my income streams:
i) Courses & Digital Products: My biggest income comes from selling the courses to my followers/subscribers. It helps me generate about 75-80% of my total income.
As of now, I have a total of 3 courses which are
- LinkedIn OS: As of now, more than 22,500+ students have enrolled in the course which has helped me generate more than $2.3 million in revenue.
- Content OS: For this course, I have around 10,000 students enrolled which has helped me generate more than $1 million so far.
- Creator MBA: This is the new course that was launched by me in early 2024 where I give knowledge about starting, building, and sustaining a profitable online business.
ii) Sponsorships: I am a chunk of money from sponsorships for my Newsletter. The current rate is $3500 per issue and is usually booked for the next 6 months. Plus, I accept 2 sponsors per week so it’s $7000 a week.
Roughly I make $7000 x 52 weeks = $364,000 / year.
iii) Subscription: When you purchase the LinkedIn OS course then there is an option to get the monthly templates for $9/month. It is super helpful for creators who are just getting started on LinkedIn and Twitter. Usually, 5k-10k people have signed up for this monthly template which results in an average revenue of more than $50,000 a month.
iv) Affiliate Marketing: I usually include the links of my favorite tools using which people can sign up and I get a commission for it. Usually, it’s the smaller portion of my income and counts not more than $30,000 a year.
7. What platforms/tools do you use for your business?
Website: Webflow
NewsLetter: Convertkit
LinkedIn Publishing: Taplio
Twitter Publishing: Hypefury
Web Analytics: Fathom Analytics
Brainstorming/Docs: Notion & Google Drive
LinkedIn Analytics: Shield
Testimonial Software: Testimonial.to
Integrations: Zapier
8. Which books, podcasts, or other resources have been the most influential for you?
i) The Minimalist Entrepreneur by Sahil Lavingia
ii) It Doesn’t have to be crazy at work by Jason Fried
iii) Zero to Sold by Arvid Kahl
9. What advice would you give to entrepreneurs who are just starting out or looking to get started?
My advice for anyone who is getting started is not to do complex things, keep it simple. The first step is to create a personal brand around the topic which you know well.
You don’t have to be perfect before getting started, you don’t need a perfect landing page or perfect logo for your business. Just getting started is the crucial thing in business.
You won’t get results so fast, you might get slow growth but you need to keep going. Income might be less at first but don’t forget that everything gets compounded. Once you build trust and authenticity, your audience will buy your products from you.
10. Where can we learn more about your product and services?
Also Read stories of other Founders:
How Sahil Bloom grew his 8 figure business on Twitter
How this man went from drug dealer to $100 million company founder
