Justin Welsh [00:00:00]:

We all stop to read something a 100 times a day, and we're so busy that we never stop and actually ask ourselves, why of all the things that I just saw, what caught my attention about this?

Jay Clouse [00:00:26]:

Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. My guest this week Doesn't need much of an introduction. I'm speaking with Justin Welsh. Justin is known as one of the leading voices in the solopreneurship movement. And as a solopreneur himself, He's generated more than $5,000,000 in revenue since 2019. Both his Twitter and LinkedIn accounts reach nearly half a 1000000 people, which is Crazy. His newsletter, the Saturday solopreneur, goes out to nearly 200,000 subscribers as well, and he was a guest on the show back in July of 2022 on episode number 109 where we spoke a lot about business as a game.

Jay Clouse [00:01:04]:

That was one of the most popular episodes of this show. So if you enjoy this round 2, I encourage you to go back to that episode and give it a listen as well. I'll link to it in the show notes. So I had Justin back on the show this week to discuss 2 things. 1st, I wanted to talk about his recent rebrand. Justin released a brand new website. The whole look of his online presence has been upgraded, and we chatted about that process, the risks involved, and why he decided to take it on. Now I wanna know we had this conversation before he formally rolled it out.

Jay Clouse [00:01:36]:

So you'll hear us kinda talking in, future tense, But you can see it live now at his website, justinwelsh.me. Second, I wanted to dig into his approach to social media. I mentioned that we had previously spoke about business as a game, but I think Justin is exceptionally good at treating social media like a game And winning it. Winning it by a lot. So we cover a lot of ground here including Justin's approach to relationship building. So this So it is chock full of incredible insight and a few surprises as well. Like, the idea that maybe fast growth isn't actually what you want.

Justin Welsh [00:02:10]:

Building a movement takes time. I think you're exactly right. I actually have a slide in a product of mine where I say, like, 90% of the time, fast growth is actually a hindrance.

Jay Clouse [00:02:19]:

And then there's this comment that I really wasn't expecting.

Justin Welsh [00:02:23]:

I don't have social media on my phone.

Jay Clouse [00:02:24]:

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

Justin Welsh [00:02:26]:

No. What?

Jay Clouse [00:02:29]:

So sit back. I hope you enjoy this full episode, and I'd love to hear what you think about it. Tag me on Twitter or Instagram at Jay Clouse, you can tag Justin as well at the Justin Welch. Let us know that you're listening. Let us know if you want a round 3. But now let's talk with

Justin Welsh [00:02:49]:

Justin.

Jay Clouse [00:02:51]:

Alright. Friend of the podcast, Justin Welch back here with us today. I am excited to talk about your rebrand because, One, I think rebrands are really interesting and usually for the better. 2, they don't go without some level of risk. So I'd love to hear from you. What pushed you over the edge to say, hey. I wanna put more thought into the Justin Welsh universe?

Justin Welsh [00:03:16]:

Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question and and great feedback, Jay. So so good to talk to you, man. I think it was a combination of a few things. I think number 1, As my brand has grown online and I've been associated more and more with, you know, 1 person businesses, solopreneurship, I I didn't feel like my current website, which was designed and written by me on Kajabi. I just built it using a template. I didn't think that was capturing the essence of of a lot of the things that I was about.

Justin Welsh [00:03:45]:

And second, I'm just designed blind. Like, I just I don't know what colors go together. I don't know how fonts work together. As you can see, I'm sitting in a pretty empty room here, like, not a whole whole lot of design going on in this room in my house. And so I wanted to, like, upgrade or professionalize the brand. That that was sort of the the thing that was driving that. So as my audience expands off of social media and people are discovering me organically via Google or through a podcast like this, I wanted their very first impression not to be, oh, that looks terrible, but instead to be like, oh, this is a really well done professional production. Those were sort of the 2 drivers of thinking through that.

Justin Welsh [00:04:23]:

And then as I think about my brand long term, you know, I think about things like books. I think about things like, you know, YouTube series. And I want those to live in a place that I'm proud of, and I wasn't super proud of my brand and can't wait to get the, the new one launched.

Jay Clouse [00:04:38]:

What types of fears or uncertainties did you work through in this process?

Justin Welsh [00:04:45]:

There's, like, 2 common fears. Right? So so one common fear is, like, customer facing, where it's like I roll it out and customers look at it, and they say, this sucks. We hate it. We liked your old branding better. I don't like these colors. This doesn't feel right. This doesn't feel like you. There's a lot of, like, worry there.

Justin Welsh [00:04:59]:

I've I've kicked the the project around to enough people that I trust to feel like we're we're moving in the right direction and that we landed something that that really captures me. And I think the second thing, you know, obviously, is from a revenue perspective, which is I make most of my living off of selling products on my website. And, I know how those landing pages and product pages convert and at what rate and about how many sales I can expect each day, and redoing that entirely is very nerve wracking. And I told the team that that I I outsourced this to. I said, best case scenario, revenue goes up. There's there's a a payoff for for investing in this brand. You know? An okay scenario is that I invest in the in the brand. I get professionalized, and, you know, product sales stay about the same.

Justin Welsh [00:05:43]:

Worst case scenario is I spend money, you know, the brand gets professionalized, but revenue drops significantly. And so if that happens, you know, it's not the end of the world. We'll just have to go back to the drawing board and figure out what's driving that, and so it'll be an iterative process over time.

Jay Clouse [00:05:58]:

And at the scale you're operating at, that's, like, nontrivial. Right? If you're if you're doing 7 figures of digital product sales, then a decline in performance that's like a a scary thing. So how do you how do you think about monitoring that and taking action afterwards. Because, like, there's the there's the rip the Band Aid and completely revert to what it was solution, and there's probably a whole spectrum of other things you could do. So how are you thinking about it?

Justin Welsh [00:06:25]:

I mean, the the first thing we're thinking about is, okay, we launch it, and, like, let's let's give it some time. Because I made a I made a a move over to the platform that I'm on now before this to rebrand 2 years ago. And, like, I went from selling products on a card website that was integrated with Gumroad to Kajabi, which is all in one. In the 1st week, I flipped over, like, sales dropped. And I was like, oh my god. What a terrible mistake. I've gotta revert back. And then, like, gave it some time, and suddenly things tick back up.

Justin Welsh [00:06:52]:

Whether it was just like, You know? It just happened to be like that, I think, was is probably coincidental more than anything. So the first thing I wanna do is I wanna give it a lot of time. The the second thing I wanna do is is kind of a a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of why it's happening. So using some tools that we've installed on the website to see how users are spending their time, why are they clicking away, where are they clicking, like, are there any spots that we're missing? That'll be just some some data that we can we can look at. And then, like, I'm not shy about reaching out to people and saying, what do you think? Where are you more likely to buy, less likely to buy? I saw you know, you asked me a few questions about this product via email and you didn't end up buying. Was there something that was missing? Like, think it's gonna be a lot of just talking to prospects and customers and trying to get an understanding of why why they don't buy or do buy. So so those are a a few things that we'll do. Yes.

Justin Welsh [00:07:37]:

Ripping the Band Aid off, like, going back to the old platform would be a disastrous waste of time and money, but I do think there's a middle ground where we look at the new design, you know, make sure it's conversion friendly. And if we're finding that conversion goes down, it's like, how can we start slowly over time backtracking to a more familiar or similar design and structure. Because changing colors and fonts shouldn't really have that big of an impact. Changing the structure of a landing page might. So it's like we can backtrack within the design to get back to a relatively similar structure as before. But everything that I'm doing this year to invest in my brand, and this is the 1st year I'm really making a big investment, are things that should work. Like, There are 5 or 6 things that I'm doing that should pay off. So if they don't, I would be pretty surprised, but I've been surprised before, and I'll just go through and with a fine tooth comb and find out find out why it

Jay Clouse [00:08:25]:

happened. Yeah. I mean, it's just hard to separate variables. Right? Like, even the time of year that you launched this could have an impact on this. Macroeconomic conditions can have an impact on this. It's so hard to figure out, like, okay. We know that conversion is up or down, But we don't know why, and it's so hard to isolate the why. And so making leaps like this, I think it's I think it's a good idea to say there's a bigger reason why I'm making this change.

Jay Clouse [00:08:49]:

Like, you're you're making this this upgrade not because you're just focused on increasing conversion, and you're saying I want to professionalize the brand. There there are other motivations here, at play.

Justin Welsh [00:08:59]:

Yeah. This is this is a 10 year move, and I'm in a fortunate position where, like, I don't have a board or investors or anyone to report back to on the on the what happens? Right? It's just me. So, like, if sales fell by 50%, that would suck. It wouldn't be the end of the world. Whereas, you know, if a company makes an investment like this and they're backed by, you know, massive VC money and it fails, well, then there's a lot of people to answer to, but I answer to my wife.

Jay Clouse [00:09:25]:

Same. You mentioned a minute ago that you are design blind is what you said. And so a lot of the Justin Welch brand, as we've come to know it, is Black and white. And I wanted to call that out for folks because, 1, I think it's a really smart approach to take if you feel like you are design blind. Go with black and white, maybe one accent color. 2, the downside is it's it's made your look and feel easy to imitate a little bit. Is that part of the the brand decision as well?

Justin Welsh [00:09:55]:

Yeah. Maybe more subconsciously, though. And, like, me choosing black and white, by the way, was like I'm not the originator of that. I'm sure I stole that from somebody along the way, right, that I saw. There's Jack Butchers of the world doing it very beautifully long before I did anything in black and white. So so credit to guys like that. But, sure, you see a lot of, like, Similar designs, similar colors. You know, it's mysterious, I think.

Justin Welsh [00:10:19]:

It's like a lot of people use it to get, like, very complicated and complex, And I'm not that brand. Like, I'm not, like, big, complicated, philosophical, Naval Ravikant guy. I'm practical. Right? I try and give practical guidance to help people grow their 1 person business. And so that black and white, I think, doesn't really come off in a way that I I want it to. And so we're we're gonna come with something similar. I just think it's gonna be more beautiful, at the same time, more friendly, more welcoming, more simple. And I also wanted to build assets that are different than everybody.

Justin Welsh [00:10:55]:

So, like, if you log on to Twitter or x, whatever you wanna call it. Right? Now you're gonna see a lot of, like, pictures of, like, people holding their back with that, you know, big hurt spot that all the fitness guys use, like, 11 exercises to fix your back. Like, everyone just looks the same, and so, like, I wanna bring something wildly different to to that platform. If you go on LinkedIn, it's like everybody's doing either Twitter carousels, which by the way I'm guilty of, or or, you know, carousels that they've designed in Canva that they're spending a lot of time on. I wanna do something different than that. I don't wanna be the same the the guy doing the same thing. So I'm I'm working with that team to really think through, like, what do some crisp, great assets look like? And I've started to drip those out, and the feedback so far has been overwhelmingly, awesome and positive.

Jay Clouse [00:11:42]:

Yeah. I've seen some blue hues in that content,

Justin Welsh [00:11:46]:

so it

Jay Clouse [00:11:46]:

seems like blue is a is a part of the the new brand. The color spectrum is huge. How did you start thinking about, well, what color or colors do I wanna introduce into the Justin universe?

Justin Welsh [00:11:59]:

I didn't. I started working with a designer that came recommended to me, and he ultimately didn't end up being the right fit. And I was kinda sitting around thinking, okay. Well, I wanna move forward with this this design. And, originally, I had had a project that I thought I was gonna kick off. I ended up kicking it off. So there was some urgency behind it. And on Twitter, there was a guy, Andy Kennedy, who reached out to me cold, on DM and said, like, your brand, the way it is today isn't doing you justice.

Justin Welsh [00:12:29]:

And, like, here's how I would rebuild your brand from the ground up. And it was a good enough write up for me to take a meeting, And he impressed me with, you know, everything that he told me, his discovery, his attention to detail. And so I entered into sort of that relationship, and I essentially became the interview subject, the guinea pig. And so I spent a lot of time with him and his team getting interviewed, talking about what I saw the future of the brand looking like, and we just went through an iterative process. We're, like, round 1, round 2, round 3, round 4. It it happened the same way it does with every designer. Like, you came with design 1. I was like, I hate this.

Justin Welsh [00:13:08]:

And he's like, that's cool. That's part of the process. And, like, over time, it got better, and then it got really good. And I was like, dude, I love what you've extracted out of me here and to the point where, like, my wife and I both looked at each other, and we were like, hey. This is awesome. This looks It's really, really good, and this represents my brand in a clean and and and way that I can really appreciate. So that that was that was where the colors came from.

Jay Clouse [00:13:28]:

Something that lodged in my mind years ago, David Perrell, like, really took off on Twitter. He was one of the early, like, using Twitter as a thought leader People. And at some point, he changed his profile photo, and he published, like, how fearful he was about changing his headshot on Twitter. Because often when you're scrolling the feed, the thing that stops you is a recognizable photo of someone that you like their content. Are you is your rebrand gonna play through to even your headshot?

Justin Welsh [00:13:57]:

No. Because I'm older and fatter. So, no. I, I I I went out to get that that headshot. You know, that was that headshot was taken in 2019, And I I really worked hard to source the right photographer and the right background and the right feel and the right look, and I got that. And, like, I was probably 38, and I'm 42. And it's like, Maybe someday when I'm a little more confident in that one, but, like, for now, that that headshot seems to have done done well for me, so I'm gonna go ahead and stick with it.

Jay Clouse [00:14:29]:

I think it's I think it's a good move. Yeah. It's it's it's, underrated, scary thing. Like, when I see people make headshot decisions kind of quickly, I'm just, like, Like, you really if you're gonna do it, you really wanna do it infrequently, I feel, and I've done it. I think it's been a decision for the better, but When I did it most recently, I had a gradient on the background that stayed, so there was, like, some visual element that was that was similar. After a quick break, Justin and I dig into his approach to social media, so stick around. We'll be right back. And now back to my conversation with Justin Welsh.

Jay Clouse [00:15:07]:

Well, I wanna talk about social media generally, because Back on the last time you're on the show, we we had a little bit where we talked about business as a game, and that really resonated with listeners. And I'd love to think about, and talk about social media as a game a little bit because Yeah. What I've seen from you is an ability to set your sights on A platform and just make it happen pretty quickly. And so what I wanna get at is when you are looking at a new form or a new opportunity, if you wanna lay it out that way. How do you plan and approach to be so surgical, it seems, in in finding a result.

Justin Welsh [00:15:48]:

Yeah. I feel like the number 2 has been consistent in this for for me so far, but, like, there are 2 pieces that I think are really important. 1 piece, and I talk about this a lot in in some of my content, is, like, find somebody who's really good at it. Right? Like, I I went out and I started looking at her, like, who are the 30 best people on this platform? So to mention him again, You know? When I was living in Nashville in 2020, I came across Jack Butcher who was really he was crushing it on Twitter at that time. I think he still is. I just he doesn't doesn't talk about the same stuff anymore, and so I don't come as often. But he was crushing it back then, and I went to his website, and I'd never heard of him. And he had a 90 minute call for $1500.

Justin Welsh [00:16:30]:

And I was like, great. Done. Booked the call with him, and then he wrote me a note and was like, I'm in Nashville. And I was like, oh, I'm in Nashville too. So I went out and did the meeting at, like, a coffee shop and essentially spent 90 minutes just asking them what worked. Right? Like, find someone who knows what they're doing and ask them a bunch of questions. So I I paid to, like, skip the line a little bit and to get some of that knowledge that was gonna be really helpful. But that that knowledge is only helpful up to a point.

Justin Welsh [00:16:51]:

Right? Like, knowledge is just a collection of what's worked for somebody else. It's pretty meaningless until you take action on it to figure out what works for you. And so the second thing that I did was on October 25, 2021, I was like, okay. I'm gonna start tweeting. So I tweeted on October 25, 2021. I had tweeted before, but, like, very you know, like, once a week or whatever, once a month, and I haven't missed since that date. So, I've tweeted now, like, whatever it is, 700 some days in a row. And so The second part of that was just finding what worked for me.

Justin Welsh [00:17:22]:

And, like, if you go back and look at, like, late 2021 as I'm getting started, early 2022, A lot of it is like some of the stuff that you see with a lot of people who are getting started, a statement, like a bullet point list that gets longer, like, very simplistic stuff, very thread boy driven stuff, like, all the things that I saw working from other people. And, like, I started to get a hang of what work for other people and also work for me, and there was a good sort of, crossover there. But as I got more confident in my writing, I started testing out styles that I felt comfortable with and that I thought were more authentic to me, and then I just started machine gunning. Like, that was maybe the 3rd the 3rd thing where I was tweeting 3 or 4 times every single day, then retweeting those things 9 hours later using HypeFury. So it was just, like, constantly at the top of everyone's leaderboard. Every time they logged in, I wanted to be at the top of people's feed, and that started really accelerating. But, like, nothing overly complicated. Ask people who know what they're doing, what's working for them, and then just get after it and put in a ton of action.

Justin Welsh [00:18:24]:

The data, That's maybe the last thing is, like, I break down my data a lot. I look at a lot of my tweets, what works, what doesn't, what topics resonate, what days and times are best, what opening lines are best, what Structures are best. I just kinda keep a running tally of things I discover. To give you an example, today, I I wrote a tweet, and it bombed, like, so badly. And I couldn't figure out why it bombed so badly. And I read through and I had mentioned made a mention of Twitter threads, And I realized that threads, which is now the competitor, is a word that is likely banned from you know, in this new, free speech, a platform that we're on. And I was like, oh, make a mental note to, like, walk through every tweet that I tweet or x or whatever you wanna call it, in the future and make sure that it doesn't have any words. That could be like Instagram or YouTube or threads or or Anything that can be misconstrued as competitor to the platform, and so that's just like another learning I'll chalk up, put in my Notion board, and just, like, you know, it'll be another process checklist.

Justin Welsh [00:19:23]:

You know?

Jay Clouse [00:19:24]:

I wanna unpack a little bit more of this this idea and this phrase of what's working for other people, because people may be hearing that and it differently. Because there's a world where you look at the the landscape right now, and you say, okay. What's working is AI. I'm gonna change my entire content strategy to just talk about AI, And I don't think that's exactly what you're advocating for. So when you're looking at what's working, what does that mean to you?

Justin Welsh [00:19:48]:

Correct. Re really good, dig in there. So, To me, what's working is based on the outcome of the individual. So, for example, if you wanna be popular for the sake of being popular because you get a lot of dopa you get a rush from that dopamine or, like, go AI. Right? Go talk about AI. That's hot. And then when something new happens, which will probably happen in 2 or 3 months, like, be the guy or gal that talks about that thing. That's, like, what's working in this particular example.

Justin Welsh [00:20:16]:

For me, working, is based on the context of my outcome, which is I wanted to build a tribe or a fan base that was really focused on being part of a movement. So even friends of mine like like Sahil. Right? He's kinda more broad. He talks a lot I mean, he kinda falls under productivity and living a great life, and so he's not super broad. But, like, he talks about things that are applicable to lots of people. So he can build a very broad, huge 1,000,000 plus audience. That's not really my goal. My goal is to build, like, a a big but tight audience who are who wanna be part of a movement.

Justin Welsh [00:20:49]:

So I went out and I started looking at people who I thought were creating movements. Again, Jack Butcher is a great, example. David Perell is a great example. He was building a movement around writing. And so, like, anyone who I could find who, like, had this tribe of people that were following them to say, like, we wanna go on this journey with this person together. That that those are the people that I was studying. Because to me, I wanna make sure that I'm not just tweeting about 15 different things in a way that's popular. And so I get a bunch of followers who, like, find me entertaining or interesting.

Justin Welsh [00:21:19]:

What I really wanna do is I wanna get a bunch of followers who believe in solopreneurship in the same way that I do. So all of my tweeting was focused on creating a movement.

Jay Clouse [00:21:26]:

I think, initially, I've heard you say you were looking at, the format of tweets quite a bit. You know, you you had maybe still have the product that gives people, like, some templates to start from. Is that still an effective strategy today?

Justin Welsh [00:21:40]:

I wouldn't call that a strategy. I would call that a tactic inside of a larger strategy. So, like, you know, The first thing we have to do is you have to figure out, like, are you creating a movement? Are you being interesting? Are you just having broad appeal? Like, what is your are you latching on to something, You know, that's trending like AI. That's sort of the first question. The second thing is, like, what kind of information do I wanna share? Do I wanna help people? Do wanna entertain people. Like, do I wanna inspire people, motivate people? You know, do I want people to empathize with me or empathize with them? Whatever it might be. That's sort of like the next thing that you wanna figure out. Last in in a small slice of this entire pie is like, okay.

Justin Welsh [00:22:15]:

How do I take all those 2 things I just talked about and deliver them in a vehicle that works really effectively? Fully. And so to me, it's not just like, oh, this structure works, so hammer hammer this away. It's like, I have this really cool, you know, sort of, thing that I'm this movement that I'm trying to create around solopreneurship because that's what I believe in. And then I have a lot of great information up here in my head around how to do that. Right? So now it's like, if I'm creating a movement that I I truly believe in, if I've got a lot of information that is, I think, extremely valuable, it would suck if I couldn't get that to the biggest number of people possible. And part of that, again, not the whole thing, is, like, what gets people to stop and pay attention? And a lot of that is how you architect, you know, you're writing. And so when I'm trying to figure out how to best architect that, one overlooked thing that I think a lot of people fail to do is we all stop to read something a 100 times a day, and we're so busy that we never stop and actually ask ourselves, why of all the things that I just saw, what caught my attention about this? If you can do that 10 times a day and make notes of that, pretty soon you're gonna be like, oh, there are some buckets here that all of these reasons fall into, and then you can just reverse engineer and say, I I wanna rearchitect those those emotions in people when I when I tweet or when I find the structure. And so I think about it from a very systematized perspective because that's just how I was trained in my previous, you know, life.

Jay Clouse [00:23:41]:

I love that. At one point, I had you know those, like, labels that you can print Out of a printer and then slap on an envelope your address or whatever. They're like a sticker. I had one of those on my wallet, and I wrote on it, why are you buying this? And, like, one, it had a good effect on budgeting, But what really had a good effect on was realizing what's going on in my brain right now that's convinced me that I'm I'm going to spend money on something. And it was so enlightening to say, like, okay, I just pulled out my credit card. Why? What what about this is happening? Is it that I feel a need? Is it that I feel convinced of something. So I love this idea of even pausing and having that reflection on things that capture your attention generally, because spending attention is spending.

Justin Welsh [00:24:26]:

Yeah. I I actually did the same for products that I bought. So there's a reason that 4 years into this journey and and, you know, we talked a little preshow about how this might be changing, but 4 years into this journey, like, I've never been big on email automation. Like, I don't do email nurturing. I don't do drip campaigns. I don't try and sell product or service using, like, a long form email. Right? That, like, 7 emails over 21 days or whatever it might be. That doesn't mean it doesn't work, by the way.

Justin Welsh [00:24:52]:

I'm sure it does. I think there's a lot of data to to back back the fact up that that that works. But I started selling my products and services in a way that made sense to me from how I bought in the beginning. The first thing I ever bought online was Daniel Fasallo's Twitter course, like, two and a half years ago, 3 years ago. And I was like, why did I buy this? Like, what what caused me to buy this? And I thought, well, I've been following this guy on Twitter for a long time. I like his takes. I don't agree with all of them, but I generally like what he has to say. He seems pretty trustworthy.

Justin Welsh [00:25:21]:

It's relatively well priced. It's it's got a money back guarantee. Like, there's there's no reason I shouldn't buy this. And so when I went to build my first products, I was like, let's do all those things. Let let's let's be trustworthy. Right? Let's be transparent. Let's build an audience that people will say, you know, I've been following Justin for a long time, and now he's got something to sell. I wanna buy that.

Justin Welsh [00:25:41]:

And so I didn't I didn't choose to do email marketing or things like that out of the gate. I just did what I knew and did what worked on me. And so I think we we fail to stop and ask ourselves those questions as often as we should.

Jay Clouse [00:25:53]:

I'd love to stay here for a second and jam on the idea of trustworthy when it comes to being online and creating content. It's the question I get a lot, which is, well, how do I build trust? What is it about my content that engenders trust, that makes people feel that they can trust me? How do you think about trust when it comes to your content and the relationships you build online?

Justin Welsh [00:26:14]:

I think it's not just trust. It's trust, expertise, and authority, And I think those 3 things are similar but different. I've never really sat down and actually thought to break them all down, but maybe we'll do just do it because of time. So, yeah, so so trust to me is a consistent source of information without an aggressive ask. So so for example, it's cliche, but it's like that person who constantly provides value without being like, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. So for example, you never see me ask people to buy my stuff. Like, I just I don't write, hey, flash sale or, hey, get the new product or the old product for 20% off today and today only. Like, those just aren't things that I do.

Justin Welsh [00:26:58]:

I try and get on every social media platform that I'm active on every day and do one of 4 things, motivate people, challenge people, teach people or empathize with people's situations. And so by doing that consistently without having an aggressive ask, like, I believe that's building trust, which is different than expertise. And expertise is, I think, where you show off that, you know, you're not just a good writer on Twitter or LinkedIn or wherever you you're not just a good picture taker on Instagram. Like, you actually have knowledge that backs up, you know, this skill of getting attention. Some people can get a lot of attention and have no deliverability. They have no skills they can actually deliver on. Their work sucks. Right? They're good at getting attention.

Justin Welsh [00:27:40]:

You start working with them, and you're like, holy cow. This is a mess. So I think, expertise is just like, oh, this guy is really good at Twitter or LinkedIn. And now I'm working with him 1 on 1 or I bought one of his products, and this stuff is, like, really, really great. Right? So you're kinda showing your expertise. I do that. I think through longer form tweets, through a lot of LinkedIn content, through my newsletter, to the articles and guides that I produce. And then authority is probably a a more difficult one to unpack, But I think authority doesn't really come from me or from from the person saying it.

Justin Welsh [00:28:09]:

It comes from other people. So it's like, Great. I trust this guy because he's been bringing value consistently. He's got expertise because everything I read of his is, like, detail oriented, value driven, tactical, practical. And then, like, authority is I log on to a platform on social media, and every single day, I can't stop seeing this person's name because people are like, bought this guy's product, work with this guy 1 on 1. Unbelievable, incredible, transformational. Like, so those those 3 slices of the pie, if you can nail those things, I mean, it's it's hard to lose, and so that's how I think of trust, expertise, and authority.

Jay Clouse [00:28:44]:

I like to relate things back to, real life interactions. When I started thinking about, well, how do you create trust online? I started thinking, well, how is trust created offline? What's what's happening between me and somebody else that makes me trust them? And it's Basic stuff, like, they show up when they say they're going to show up. Every experience I have with them is in alignment with my expectations, usually that they have set. I'm not hearing questionable feedback about this person from other people, you know. Really, just anything that we do online, I feel like Can be extrapolated from oh, how does that how is that done offline? Which we've done for, you know, centuries. But it takes a little bit of extrapolation and and thinking in that way. A lot of it also, I think, is just time. You know, the longer you know somebody and have a positive relationship with them, the more you're gonna trust them.

Jay Clouse [00:29:35]:

So you can't just, like, start today and have a ton of deep trust with people who don't know you yet. Like, just takes time.

Justin Welsh [00:29:44]:

Yeah. It's you write this biography of yourself over the course of your maybe it's an autobiography. I never knew the difference, but you you you write one of those 2 things, about yourself over the course of your career. And in one day, you can screw it up.

Jay Clouse [00:29:59]:

Totally.

Justin Welsh [00:30:00]:

I have written or said things online many times that I wish I hadn't. Right? And so, if I make a mistake, I apologize. If I rub someone the wrong way, I try and learn why that happened. If I get into an argument with someone on social media, which I almost never do, like, I try and learn from that, you know, but it's like all you gotta do is show up and root for the people that you you you know, all these people claim to have these followers they care about. And if you don't root for them and if you don't show up when they're succeeding, Like, I go around Twitter and LinkedIn, try and find people who are growing their side hustle or building their online business or becoming that solopreneur that they've been really interested in doing and, like, sharing in their victory and their success and their growth. And I think, you know, we can't do it for everybody because, obviously, it it just doesn't scale, but when you see an opportunity, like, you gotta to participate in that.

Jay Clouse [00:30:53]:

After one more quick break for our sponsors, Justin and I talk about his approach to relationship building, and I think you're really gonna wanna hear So stick around. We'll be right back. And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Justin Welsh. Oh, and my dogs get involved here briefly as well, so sorry about that. Can you talk about that as part of your strategy or time allocation? How you're Connecting with other people on your own posts, on other people's posts because you you go and look at something you tweet or something you put on LinkedIn. You look at the people that are commenting. Like, holy crap. These people are really well known, admirable people in their own right.

Jay Clouse [00:31:31]:

How did Justin build these relationships? I'd love to hear more about that.

Justin Welsh [00:31:35]:

There's a bunch of different things that go into building successful relationships with creators that are popular or well known or successful. One is and I've always talked about this. If you want to build a great network, like, be an interesting person and attract interesting people. So a lot of of networking is not like chasing. It's actually just attracting. And so I spend a tremendous amount of my time trying to show my expertise. Right? Trying to show that I do know what I'm I'm talking about and that I do have value to add to the ecosystem. So that acts as like But there's, like, a 2 pronged attack built in there.

Justin Welsh [00:32:13]:

1 is when you do that, you go out and you attract a lot of followers. Right? People will start to follow you, and your numbers get bigger. But, also, the likelihood that somebody who's wildly successful sees that stuff just increases. And the more followers you get, the more impressions you get, the more that likelihood goes up until you kind of reach this, like, imaginary threshold. And for me, it was 70,000 followers on Twitter. We're, like, out of the woodwork, all of these big names started reaching out to me and saying, hey, man. I saw your content. I really like it.

Justin Welsh [00:32:46]:

I'm really digging it. Like, we should get to know each other. You know? Hey, man. We I I I comment on your stuff all the time, and I see you comment on mine. Like, let's take this relationship offline and jump on a Zoom. I don't I don't remember exactly how we first chatted offline, but more than likely, probably something similar to that. But that's how it happened with Guys like Cy Hoe Bloom and Greg Eisenberg and Dan Go and Dan Coe, and it came from creating something of value and attracting them, you know, to my my profile. The other thing that I do is kind of the reverse of that, which is I see a lot of people making noise who I think will be future superstars.

Justin Welsh [00:33:21]:

Right? They're they know a lot. They seem to be really they speak my language, which is like they're kind, they're empathetic, they're not mean, they're not divisive, they're not polarizing. They're just like good people doing good work online. And I spend a lot of time reaching out to those people. So, like, in the last week, I've probably reached out and, you know, quote, unquote, like, surprised 5 people who don't have huge followings and been like, you're awesome. We should jump on a Zoom call and get to know each other. And, like, I hope to be that person like people have been to me that have been an accelerant in their journey. And I feel like if you're doing both of those things, you're you're you're being interesting and attracting big creators, and then you're you're sort of nurturing and helping those Those smaller creators who are just kind of earlier in their journey, you've kinda set up an ecosystem where it's hard not to be well regarded or liked or thought of, and that is you know, that's my goal.

Jay Clouse [00:34:13]:

Yeah. And that really adds up. If you did 5 this week, oh, boy, public math, that would be You know, 260 yeah. You're like, let me do this for you, Jay. It's 260 is the answer. Yeah. 260 people per year, and you've been doing this for years now. So that adds up really, really quickly, Especially if these are targeted, relationships where you you believe in this person and their work and some significant number of those people will continue to go on, and That's that's something that I feel like I have really missed in my own journey because I've been so focused on publishing.

Jay Clouse [00:34:45]:

And you're right. Like, as you As you find more and more success with your own content, you get more people coming to you. And as an introvert, it gets really easy to be, like, that's my strategy now. I'm just gonna wait for people to come to me, And I think that is a big, big miss.

Justin Welsh [00:35:01]:

Yeah. That that is that is, I would say, the majority of my strategy. Right? From a sheer, like, volume standpoint. I'm certainly creating more content than I am sending out invites, but the invites that I send out are pretty powerful. Because, like, I think if we think back into our own lives, we all have a coach, a mentor, a peer, a colleague, a parent, a family member who was, like, the guy or gal that believed in us before other people did. And, like, the more I see people that I think are talented and reach out to them early on and say, like, I think you're going somewhere really good. Why don't we jump on a on a quick Zoom call and, like, get to know each other a little bit. I'll see if I can be helpful to you in your journey.

Justin Welsh [00:35:45]:

Like, you become that person, and that person is easy to remember. And to be very clear, like, it's not strategic trans transaction. It's not like, oh, I'm gonna reach out to this person because someday down the road, this karmically will come back to me. That that's not the reason. The reason is just, like, I've been raised that way by my parents to, like, Help people. You know? If you see someone who has a lot of talent and they they're not getting what they deserve to to boost them, to lift them up on your shoulders. And so it feels great. I was taught that, but in the end, like, of course, it comes back to you.

Justin Welsh [00:36:19]:

Right? You give a lot, you get a lot. And so I think it's a win win win all the way around for people, you know, who choose to do that.

Jay Clouse [00:36:25]:

Yeah. I think it's easy. When we when we look at Creators who are having the success that we want on whatever platform we're looking at, it's it's very easy to see, like, okay, this person got Comments from these people, and those people are also getting comments from those people. And the easy conclusion is to say, well, that's just strategy. That's what matters is building these relationships and just commenting on each other's stuff. And I'm wondering how much of that is the intentional strategy versus the outcome of doing the work. You You know what I mean?

Justin Welsh [00:36:54]:

Totally. And and I'd be lying if if I said it wasn't both. It's definitely both. Right? It's like if you pick up an Adam Grant book or you pick up a book by, you know, James Patterson? The same authors. Right? The the reviews on the back. Right? Like, there's a gang, basically for for lack of a better word of people that support one another. It's not like they just all got together over a cup of coffee at a diner and was like, let's all be authors. Right? That just didn't happen.

Justin Welsh [00:37:22]:

What happened was 1 of them wrote a book, and then another wrote a book. And then they said, your book is pretty great. Oh, your book is pretty great too, and then became friends, and then they through to other friends. And, like, it just that happens when you produce good stuff. Right? And I get that a lot from people on the Internet. They're Oh, I saw that Dan Goe commented on your stuff. That that's really, really helpful. It's like, sure.

Justin Welsh [00:37:41]:

But I didn't know Dan when I had 4,000 followers and was pushing out a bunch of tweets that we're getting 3 3 engagements. Like, it's not like that was the strategy from the beginning. That's just part of what happens over time and is part of the compounding that goes into, you know, producing a lot of good content.

Jay Clouse [00:37:57]:

And I think a lot of people look around, and they see these groups, these gangs, and they're like, man, if I Only get invited into that group. Yes. But that's probably the wrong approach, I would guess.

Justin Welsh [00:38:07]:

Totally the wrong totally the wrong approach.

Jay Clouse [00:38:09]:

The approach is creating it and building it together.

Justin Welsh [00:38:11]:

Yes. Totally. I tell I tell people this all the time. It's like, if you have a short term mindset, your goal becomes like, how do I become friends with these 5 people? Right? And so you you start to reach. You start to have this objective of, like, trying to create as much noise as you can. And, like, Often, once those people get a certain number of followers or have a certain amount of success, like, it's not that they're mean. They're just busy. Right? They're just, like they just get busier, and that's just human nature.

Justin Welsh [00:38:39]:

Whereas the best thing that you could do is find 5 to 7 of your friends and be like, let's go create our own gang. Right? Let's go, like, Let's go take each thing that we all do separately because we all have different competencies, and let's start writing about that stuff online. Let's start supporting one another, and let's start Meeting other smart people and and doing collaborations, like, that's what I would do if I were starting again is, like, I didn't even do that from the beginning. I wish I did. Like, I didn't have a a group or friends online. Like, I just I didn't have anyone except for, you know, myself and, like, I guess, Austin Belsack was, like, my 1st Internet friend back in the day. And so I've been fortunate enough to meet a lot of really cool people, but if I could do it again, I would, like, architect that intentionally from the beginning.

Jay Clouse [00:39:21]:

Something I think you're really good at is continuing to innovate and figure out from a platform Form perspective, what's gonna give my content, my idea, the best chance of reaching people? You know, things that We're working from a tactic standpoint years ago, work less now, and maybe even get less interesting. And so what I think you're really good at is identifying when the time has come to change things up and then figure out what will work now. Can you talk about your approach to figuring that out?

Justin Welsh [00:39:53]:

Yeah. I wish I had, like, a really cool, sexy answer about how it was really regimented, but I think it starts with knowing who and what I don't wanna be online. So I I don't consider myself to be much of a follower. Like, I try not to have my content sound or look like other people's. I, when I was in in in SaaS and tech before this, like, I was generally in a position of leadership. Right? Sales manager, director of sales, eventually VP, and chief revenue officer. Like, I always wanted to be the leader. And so it starts with being like, I don't wanna be like these other people.

Justin Welsh [00:40:30]:

So I would go on and see, like, top 10 books, top 10 movies, top 10 ads, best, 99% of people don't know how to use Twitter. Here's a picture of Elon Musk, I'm gonna do

Jay Clouse [00:40:40]:

Twitter's a free university.

Justin Welsh [00:40:41]:

Yeah. Twitter's a free university. These 10 books will give you more than an MBA. Like, I I just didn't wanna be this guy who, like, had a lot of sizzle but no steak. And and by the way, I failed sometimes. There are sometimes where I've, like, fallen victim to that. Right? Because you're not getting the engagement you want, and you do something that's out of character for you. So I'm I'm certainly not impervious to making a ton of those mistakes, but I think first is a long winded way of saying, what don't I wanna be? And it's like, okay.

Justin Welsh [00:41:07]:

Well, if you don't wanna be those things, like, what else is left? And it's like, well, authenticity, being genuine, writing in your own style. So here's the sexy part. It's throwing a bunch of shit against the wall and seeing what sticks. Like, I tweet 4 to 5 times every single day. I try a bunch of different styles. I try different images. I try different things. And I think what I've noticed about a lot of creators, especially the bigger they get, is when they have, like, a quote, unquote flop, they delete it.

Justin Welsh [00:41:37]:

And so they're so fast to delete something, and instead of, like, I don't know. I keep this running tally of, like, I have this historical Twitter feed of everything I've ever tweeted. I have made I'm sure I've deleted a few things here and there that I wish I didn't say or things like that, but, like, I have this historical feed. So I can go back and look at my analytics and, you know, export my stuff and say, like, cool. There are some trends here of what is starting to work for me? And then that is really my entire style is, like, try a 1000000 different things. Also, be cognizant of, like, we talked about before. What's getting me to stop? What am I seeing working that I think, you know, is is in my authenticity wheelhouse? So that's really it. But as a reminder to everyone listening and in in and even as a reminder to myself, this is my full time job.

Justin Welsh [00:42:22]:

I have the benefit of being able to do this 10 hours a day if I want to. Whereas people who work a full time job, they're kinda just flying by the seat of their pants. They don't have that that luxury. But if I could give any piece of advice in the beginning, it'd be form that little group because there's some really good feedback that you get from your friends, but also, like, keep a running tally of all the things that you say and do on the Internet that, like, cause a ruckus in in a good way, and try and repeat those things as often as possible as long as they're leading to the right outcome.

Jay Clouse [00:42:52]:

What's your relationship to Instagram right now?

Justin Welsh [00:42:56]:

I don't love Instagram. I've tried it a few times. I don't wanna get sucked into that. I don't do a lot of consumption there because it makes me feel icky. Like, it's a lot of, like you know, it's it's this the stuff you see on Twitter, but with really good looking people looking like they're living the best lives, humanly possible. I don't wanna do that to my mental health, but I do believe that there's an opportunity to spread my message to a larger group of people that haven't seen it before. So for that, I have started creating there, and then I stopped. I started creating, stopped, started creating, stopped, and, like, mistakenly grew to 24,000 followers.

Justin Welsh [00:43:35]:

If I'm gonna do it again, which I probably will someday, I wanna have, like, a strategy. I wanna do it the right way. I want to approach it the same way that I've approached LinkedIn and Twitter. And I haven't had that conversation with anyone yet who's, like, really good at it. So the first thing that I gotta do is find, like, a friend of mine who's excellent at it and isn't, like, super much younger than me. I had a conversation with a creator who's younger than me, and he's like, okay. So you wanna, like, pull open your reels, and then you wanna do that. I'm just like, I don't know what any of that stuff means.

Justin Welsh [00:44:04]:

I'm like, Super, super stupid when it comes to Instagram. I cannot figure out how to use it. So I think it's like getting really educated on it, Talking to somebody who's really smart about it can explain it to me like I'm a kindergartner, and then, making a go at, of it when I'm when I'm ready. What about threads? I got bored.

Jay Clouse [00:44:21]:

Got bored?

Justin Welsh [00:44:21]:

Yeah. I got bored and, like, I don't know. It just seemed like, could I just copy and paste everything? Sure. But, like, if I'm not gonna participate in a conversation, didn't feel right to do. It's probably a similar answer to Instagram where it's like, when I'm ready to take it seriously, I will, but I'm not just gonna, like, dump a bunch of content in there and then, like, not hang around. That's just not my style.

Jay Clouse [00:44:42]:

You strike me as a, desktop person rather than a mobile person. Am I reading that right?

Justin Welsh [00:44:46]:

Tremend well, laptop. But yeah. Yeah. A 100%. I don't do anything on my phone. Don't have social media on my phone.

Jay Clouse [00:44:51]:

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

Justin Welsh [00:44:53]:

No. What? I'm sure that's

Jay Clouse [00:44:55]:

surprising a lot of people right now.

Justin Welsh [00:44:57]:

Yeah. Like, if I had social media on my phone, I'd never get off my phone.

Jay Clouse [00:45:00]:

Is this a new thing, or has this been the way the this this way for a while?

Justin Welsh [00:45:03]:

It's probably been that way for 8 or 8 or 10 months. So I I keep social media apps off my phone. I I put my phone on do not disturb 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, except for my wife and my mom. Yeah. I do everything on a computer. Like, I don't know how to design emojis on Instagram. I'm probably not even saying this stuff right. I don't know how to use Instagram stories.

Justin Welsh [00:45:23]:

I don't know how to use Instagram Reels if that's a thing. I think it is. People are like, get this share and share that, and, like and I'm just like, I don't even know how to stitch together all that stuff. Like, I'm I'm so dumb when it comes to Instagram, and so I don't just wanna show up and, like, do something in a mediocre fashion. I'd rather, like, really study it, talk to people, but I hate being on the phone, man. I hate mobile

Jay Clouse [00:45:45]:

Yeah. Same.

Justin Welsh [00:45:45]:

Inter Internet.

Jay Clouse [00:45:46]:

It's so frustrating trying to take the, like, the speed of your thoughts and then replicate that Speed with your thumbs. I can't do it. I need all 10 fingers.

Justin Welsh [00:45:53]:

I can't type. Like, I literally can't type on I I often tell my wife, like, if if there was a made up scenario or, like, someone had a gun to my head and they were like, you have to type Justin Welsh and get every letter right. And I was staring at the keyboard. It would come out like jerks and worse. It's just it's incredibly frustrating how poorly how poor I I type on a phone, So I do everything on my laptop.

Jay Clouse [00:46:17]:

Alright. Last question for you, Justin. I'm especially interested in your answer to this because, like I was saying, I think you're really good at innovating on things. So what is what is a hunch that you have right now in terms of what's working or where things are headed that you don't quite have data to support, but you're you're still operating under?

Justin Welsh [00:46:36]:

Well, there's maybe a couple of hunches, and I think we're starting to see 1. I don't have any data behind it, But I think we're gonna move from sizzle, which is, like, if you see a lot of, like, the stuff that was working a year ago or a year and a half ago on Twitter where it's, like, really sizzle threads, big huge promise in the hook, and then, like, mediocre content as you went through it. I think people are tiring of that. I mean, I just know it anecdotally from what I see, and I think we're gonna start seeing a lot more authenticity first on Twitter, At least in, like, the creator space. Right? Like, in the political space and sports space and all that, I I don't know. I don't play there. But, like, in the creator space, I think we're gonna see A lot of, like, behind the scenes, building in public, wins and losses, real time, like, what's happening in my business kind of stuff. I think The future of building businesses is gonna be a lot like what Andrew Gazzdecchi is doing at acquire.com, where it's like it feels like every customer who makes a sale is featured there.

Justin Welsh [00:47:36]:

Like, Levels is is doing that where he's constantly sharing the things that he's working on, what's working, what isn't. Like, those are the people who I think are gonna continue to grow analytically really well. I think that that's a hunch that I have that is again, I'm hearing anecdotally, and I I think the data will will back up. I also think platforms like LinkedIn are getting inundated inundated with 2 things, carousels in selfies. Right? Carousels. Here's a carousel, and, like, here's a here's a random selfie that is irrelevant to the post. And people are like, I'm winning. I'm winning.

Justin Welsh [00:48:12]:

I'm winning. My engagement is going up. My engagement is going up. My engagement is going up. If you're on social media and you're spending 10 hours a day on social media, and you're not making money or building a business, you are creating an absolute disastrous life for yourself. Social media, for the most part, it it it can be really fun. You can meet meet great friends. There's a lot of benefits to it, but being addicted to social media is poison.

Justin Welsh [00:48:35]:

And so, like, if you find yourself just being addicted to likes and comments for the next 10 years of your life without turning it into something meaningful that supports your your family or turning it into something where you're meeting, like, 10 really great friends all the time and doing really interesting work together. I actually just think you're poisoning yourself. And so it's great to see these selfies and these carousels because they've they've replaced, like, quality marketing. They've replaced, like, creating a movement, being valuable. Right? It's more about catching attention. But what I see, and this is maybe a 3rd hunch, and it kinda translates real transitions really well into this 3rd hunch is, like, I know personally a lot of people who have built big followings, 400,000, 500,000, a million more than me doing things like beautiful carousels, taking a lot of selfies. But when I ask people or I ask first of all, they're making almost no money. They don't have a good thriving business.

Justin Welsh [00:49:36]:

And when I ask people, what do you think about when you think about x person? They're like, they can't really tell me. They can't really tell me the thing that person does.

Jay Clouse [00:49:45]:

Yeah.

Justin Welsh [00:49:45]:

And if you just want attention and, like, that's all it's if you're just after vanity, I think 10 years from now, you're gonna be living in a really depressed state. Whereas, if you're building a business and making a ton of friends, I think there's at least meaning behind some of that dopamine and what I think is actually poison.

Jay Clouse [00:50:01]:

I I think about this a lot because I agree with you. It is poison, especially if your engagement is based on your face or your appearance. What happens when engagement goes down? How are you feeling about yourself? But the other thing is I think there's actually a big risk to growing your following too quickly because If you don't have something to back it up and then you've reached your total addressable market or close to it, when you do find your thing and you're trying to get attention, you might have Your account, we'll say, might have already kind of peaked, and it might be hard to get that attention back from the people that click follow at some point, but have since stopped paying attention, and your stuff may not actually be getting seen by anybody anymore. I've been really comforted lately by being happy with Staying on the come up for as long as I can because that's like an exciting place to be when things are Slowly, but surely moving in the right direction, because I feel like I don't even have everything on the back end where I want it to be if I, like, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight of some kind.

Justin Welsh [00:51:05]:

That's right. Building a movement takes time. I think you're exactly right. I actually have a slide in a product of mine where I say, like, 90% of the time, fast growth is actually a hindrance, where it's like you see these guys and gals. Right? They come on. They're like, I grew to 600,000 followers in 6 months. It's like, okay. What was the outcome of that? So what now? What do you have for that.

Justin Welsh [00:51:29]:

Besides, like, you can tell people about that. Whereas, if you grow really slowly over the course of time and you eventually become big, you can feel pretty confident that, like, that movement is spreading word-of-mouth, that movement is people telling other people, is it your content's getting dramatically better over time? Like, I just always think it it's almost like startups. Right? Growth at all costs comes with a lot of downside. Slow, sustainable growth, profitable growth over time comes with a lot of upside. I would encourage people to think about it that away. People are always like, how do I get to a 100,000 followers? I'm only at 10,000. I'm like, do the things that got you to 10,000 and do them 10 times longer. That's how you get

Jay Clouse [00:52:14]:

I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Justin as much as I did. If so, tag us both on Twitter and let us know that you enjoyed it and that you'd like to hear around 3. You can tag me at jklaus, and Justin is at the Justin Welch. If you wanna learn more about Justin, I recommend you sign up for his newsletter, the Saturday solopreneur, at justinwelsh.me. You can also find him on Twitter at the Justin Welsh or on LinkedIn by searching for Justin Welsh. Thanks Thanks to Justin for being on the show. Thank you to Nathan Tonhunter for mixing this episode and Emily Clouse for creating our artwork. If you enjoyed this episode, Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

Jay Clouse [00:52:49]:

It goes so far. It goes such a long way in helping the show climb the charts. I mean it. I see every one of those reviews. Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts if you are on Ios. If you're not on Ios, leave a review on Spotify. It means a lot as well.