How To Start A $5,000,000 Business With Zero Stress | Justin Welsh

Justin Welsh 0:00 I burned out immensely. Classic signs of burnout, right? So overeating, overdrinking, not sleeping enough. You know, I wasn't a good husband, I wasn't a good friend, I wasn't a good son during that, that time. Had my very first panic attack. I was hallucinating, I was screaming, I was down on all fours gripping the ground, yelling. Like, it was a pretty bad day. And my wife called 911, the am- you know, the ambulance came, all the paramedics hooked me up. That day was the day that I knew I needed to do something different. It wasn't be a creator or start a one-person business, it was just do something different.

Calum Johnson 0:30 Before we get into the episode, if you really enjoy this podcast and you wanna be the first to see when we drop an episode, please subscribe to the channel. It helps us immeasurably. Road to 100K. I wanted to read your pinned tweet-

Justin Welsh 0:44 Yeah

Calum Johnson 0:44 ... because I think it kinda sums up where you're at. So here's how it goes. "Today my little one-person business crossed $5 million in revenue. That was my goal when I started on August 1st of 2019. It took 1,548 days. I ran zero ads, and I operate at a 92% margin." Okay. Here's where I wanna start because I think to a lot of people listening, that sounds like an absolute dream-

Justin Welsh 1:11 Mm

Calum Johnson 1:11 ... the one-person business. And before we kinda get into the how-to and how you've been able to do it and what these last 1,500 days or so have been like, I wanted to start with the context. What was happening in your life August 1st, 2019, around this time where you were like, "I wanna start a one-person

Calum Johnson 1:31 business"?

Justin Welsh 1:32 Yeah. Yeah, great question. I, I don't, I don't know that I approached it thinking that I would start a one-person business. That wasn't, that wasn't how I thought this world was gonna work for me, being a creator. In fact, I didn't have intentions of being a creator for more than six months. In fact, being a creator wasn't really even what I wanted to do. But to give you some context, uh, I spent 10 years in high-growth startups. So, uh, I was here in Manhattan, a early sub-10 employee at a company called ZocDoc in 2009. Spent five years there. Extremely difficult place to work. Everyone got fired all the time. Like, people were leaving constantly. It was high-pressure, high-growth. I lasted for five years and, and worked my way up the rank by working really hard and really long hours, moving across the country four times. Uh, after five years there, I became the VP of sales and the chief revenue officer at a company called PatientPop in Santa Monica, California, and spent five years growing that team from its very first person up to 150 people on the sales and marketing team, its first dollar in revenue to $70 million, and it was an awesome experience. The problem was that after doing that for 10 consecutive years at two companies, I burned out immensely. Um, classic signs of burnout, right? So overeating, overdrinking, not sleeping enough. Uh, you know, I wasn't a good husband, I wasn't a good friend, I wasn't a good son during that, that time. And on December, I think it was 16th of 2018, uh, I had my very first panic attack. I've since had a, a second one. And I don't know if you've ever had one, but it's, it's a pretty wild experience where you kind of feel like you're dying. Like, I was hallucinating, I was screaming, I was down on all fours gripping the ground, yelling. Like, it was a pretty bad day. And my wife called 911, the am- you know, the ambulance came, all the paramedics hooked me up, told me I was fine. Took me maybe six to eight hours to kinda work my way out of that. That day was the day that I need, I knew I needed to do something different. It wasn't be a creator or start a one-person business, it was just do something different. Um, so it, I put in my, my notice. It took me another, I think, seven months to leave the role. I was running a team of 150 people. Um, and I decided that I was gonna try to work for myself, but I figured I would just do it for six months and then go get another job being a VP of sales or a chief revenue officer. But that's what kickstarted this whole movement for me.

Calum Johnson 3:51 Hmm. You know what? It's, um, it's interesting how it goes in life where I feel like during the course of our life we have, like, these wake-up calls. We have these moments where something happens where it's like, okay, that's an inflection point.

Justin Welsh 4:05 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 4:05 It's a turning point. Something needs to be different after this. I'm curious, like, that day when you had the first panic attack, what was, what was even happening in the lead-up? Like, were all the signals clear, or was it like everything was normal, you're just living life as-

Justin Welsh 4:25 Yeah

Calum Johnson 4:25 ... you normally would, and then all of a sudden this just happens?

Justin Welsh 4:28 No. No. It was totally clear, especially looking back now. What is that? Uh, five, six years ago, right? Five years ago, I guess. So it started by how I coped with the growth of PatientPop as a startup. Uh, I was a 32-year-old VP of sales, um, given their first shot. I thought I was gonna get the company to, like, a million in ARR or three million, and then they would go find a guy or gal who had done this for 10 or 15 years and, you know, gray hair, been there, and come in and, like, take over, and I would kinda be relegated. That didn't happen, and that's great for my career. Like, growing that way is excellent. But once we hit, like, five and then 10 and then 20, suddenly the company changes. The team changes. The growth changes. And a lot of people are, are very specific to their stage. They'll work at, you know, $1 million startups, so they get it to five or they'll get it to 20 or they're good from 20 to 50. One to 70, the company looks so different across so many different phases. And the reason I'm telling you this is because what happened was I didn't overwork myself, although I, I did, but that wasn't the leading cause of burnout. It was loss of control. Suddenly the problems started stacking. Like, and if you can't solve them fast enough, they stack one on top of another on top of another. Everything becomes urgent. Everything becomes a priority. Important and urgent, that quadrant was everything. And as that starts to happen, you start to break down. And the way that I coped with that, as I kinda mentioned before, was, like, classic ways of coping, right? Go home, drink a bottle of wine, eat a hamburger, eat fries, sleep for four hours. Uh, not take care of myself physically. Like- You can see it in 2018. I was 240 pounds. Um, you know, I'm like 210 right now, so I was 30 pounds heavier, um, and just treating myself poorly. And it was har- it's, like, hard to look back and see, to be quite honest.

Calum Johnson 6:20 Yeah. You know, um, I'm, I'm hugely into sports. At, at the minute I'm watching a lot of, like, NFL football, right? An incredibly physical sport. The reason that I say that, I think when you're reaching, like, physical burnout or physical exhaustion, the signs are easier to spot-

Justin Welsh 6:40 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 6:40 ... right? You feel the pain in your muscles. You feel the soreness. What's actually far more dangerous and far more difficult to track is the mental fatigue because it's not, it's not as apparent. And a lot of the times you can kind of get into these ways of operating, the, you know, "Let me just have a few drinks after work."

Justin Welsh 7:01 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 7:01 You know, "Let me just ... I deserve to have, like, a double cheeseburger-

Justin Welsh 7:05 Yeah, d-

Calum Johnson 7:05 ... after this long shift." And it just gradually stacks up and stacks up and stacks up. And I feel like there's so many people that are living their life burnt out-

Justin Welsh 7:17 Mm

Calum Johnson 7:17 ... and have no idea. And I'm

Calum Johnson 7:20 just curious about, like ... I think one of the most powerful things in life that you can do is get specific.

Justin Welsh 7:25 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 7:26 It's like truly understand what the problem is, truly understand, like, why are you doing what you're doing. I'm curious, what was that process of you ... 'Cause at this point you seem very specific with exactly where it was, what was happening, what was compounding against you. But was it like that at the time? How did you get specific on that? Okay, so we are in upgrade season. This is about upgrading your work, upgrading your pay, all of those things, and that brings us to the sponsor of today's show, Free Agency. Free Agency represents and manages talent in the tech industry. They provide you with a dedicated talent agent that helps you find and win top-of-market roles. So if you're looking to build your dream career today, check out Free Agency. Go to the link in the description. Thank me later.

Justin Welsh 8:17 No, it wasn't. It's like, um, it's like almost anything. It's kind of like aging, right? Like, if you look at yourself in the mirror every single day, you're like, "Oh, I, I look the same as yesterday and the day before that and the day before that." But in reality you're aging, right? And if you look at a gap between, you know, a picture or two pictures that are 10 years apart, it becomes very apparent that you're aging, right? Um, but for me, every day felt the same. Suddenly feeling like shit became the norm, right? So you wake up, you feel like shit. You go to bed, you feel like shit. That became the norm. And it's like you can't remember what it was like to feel good. And that's, that's what, that's what the beginning ... I think to, to, to kind of backtrack on that just a second, I think if I would've stopped and paused and said, "Hey, have I always felt this shitty? Have I always slept this little? Have I always eaten this much? Have I always felt this out of shape?" I think candidly I would say no, right? But I was too busy, too urgent. Everything was too fast. Um, there wasn't a moment to pause and reflect. What happens with a panic attack is it causes you to pause and reflect. It happens and it's so violent. Um, and by the way, like when I, when I hear panic attack I was like, "Well, well, what do you ... You get ... What do you get anxious? Do you get worried?" No, it's, like, pretty intense [laughs] and, like, it causes you to react, and you have to stop and be like, "Do I ever want that thing to happen again?" And the answer for me was no. And I just took that as a sign. Um, you know, I think there were other parts of me that were ready to, to move on, but I took that as a sign as, like, now or never. And I had to be cognizant of leaving the team behind, so that's why I stayed for a longer period of time, and I had a great relationship with the CEOs and all of that stuff, but I had to make a change. And before I left, the seven months leading up to, to me leaving, I lost, I think, 40 or 50 pounds, maybe even more. I got super healthy. Like, I approached this next chapter of my life with a more, a, a new vigor, right? Completely reinvigorated.

Calum Johnson 10:14 Mm. You know what? It's like, um, what you were saying actually reminds me of this quote, which is, "The universe whispers before it yells."

Justin Welsh 10:23 Oh, that's, that's good.

Calum Johnson 10:24 So there's a lot of things that are happening. They're like little whispers. The signals are there, and increasingly it's like we ignore it, we ignore it, we push it aside, we push it aside. And then it's, like, literally yelling in your face.

Justin Welsh 10:36 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 10:37 And that's the, that's the panic attack, right? You know what? I think one of the things you said was so important, which is if you had just had a moment of kind of stillness, a moment of space, and I think, like, things would've been different. And it's so difficult I feel like with our lives. We're so distracted.

Justin Welsh 10:57 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 10:58 There's so much kind of demands and pulls on our time. It's so difficult to get that space. So before we actually get into kind of the one-person business and, and everything that happened after, I'm curious, like, what is your advice in terms of, like, if I have a job and there's all these demands on my time, and I'm getting pulled into meetings, and people are giving me more responsibilities, and things are just escalating and escalating, but I can feel, like, I can feel that I need the space. How do I even go about-

Justin Welsh 11:32 Yeah

Calum Johnson 11:32 ... getting that bit of room? Like, how did you get that wiggle room where you could even just step back?

Justin Welsh 11:37 Yeah. I didn't. That was the problem, right? And I think if I could do it again, I would find ways to get that, and some of the ways that come to mind are some things that I do now to ensure that I'm not burning out in my, in my new job, which is essentially writing is a great way for me to put how I'm feeling on pen and paper, right? So I journal every single day. I don't always write in, uh, in a piece of, on a piece of paper. Sometimes I type it into Notion or I put it on my computer or whatever, but generally I'll say, like, "What's going well? What's going poorly? What am I grateful for?" Like, uh, "Is there any indicators that things are going down the wrong path?" Like, just being cognizant and finding the time to be cognizant is to me a, a huge win. You do that by building a business that supports your life, right? Your life should come first, your business should come second. If you build your life that way and you build a business that supports your life, you build in free time, you build in breaks, you build in observations, you build in opportunities to be cognizant of what's going on. That, to me, is like step number one. So it's building your life first and your business second. It's taking that opportunity to sit down. It doesn't have to be journaling. It could be, you know, leaving a voice note on your phone. It could be whatever method or, or means that you like to record yourself or get your thoughts down, I think is really helpful. And then the third thing that I would suggest is, like, surrounding yourself with peers who have been there. So I was promoted into this role when I was 32, as I kinda mentioned before, as a VP, and most of my friends at that age were still, um, managing teams. They... Some of them had become directors. I didn't have a lot of peers who had jumped into the VP level or the C-suite, and so I didn't have a lot of friends to share, like, the, the, both the, the trials and the tribulations, the triumphs, all the things that were going well, but also going poorly. And, um, not having that peer sort of support group, uh, was pretty disastrous, I think. And, you know, my CEOs were older. They had built businesses. They trusted me a lot, and so they didn't, they didn't hold my hand, right? And I, I don't expect

Justin Welsh 13:30 them to. Um, but I was kinda operating on an island. And I, today, you know, I have a Slack group, I have Discord groups full of guys and gals that are, you know, on my team, basically. They're not literally on my team, but we're all doing the same stuff at the same time. Having that sounding board has been just hugely beneficial for me.

Calum Johnson 13:47 Yeah. You know, okay, you know what? Let's, let's, let's get into the, into the one-person business. Let's get into the good stuff. Um, I think one of the things, actually, and I'm just thinking about it, is there's a shift when you go from working for a company to working for yourself. And I think a lot of the hesitation that people have is, like, first off, like, what am I even gonna do? And even the thing that you said about, like, uh, life first and then the business second, l- I think intuitively it sounds and it feels so correct, but it's like I don't even know what I'm gonna do, let alone figuring out how to build breaks into this money-making operation. Like, I don't even know how I'm gonna make money. So what is the step one? Like, how does someone even start out in this?

Justin Welsh 14:40 Yeah. I still think step one is thinking about your life. It doesn't mean that you can construct it from day one, right? It's not like, "You know what I want my life to be? I wanna work four hours a day and I wanna make a million bucks." Like, that's a bad plan from day one, right? But what you should be thinking about are what are the things that you like to do and that give you joy, right? But also, what are the things that you don't wanna do? Now, you can't build a life where you don't do anything you don't like to do right from the start, right? But you can try your hardest to avoid things that you dislike and build a long-term plan to gradually eliminate things that you don't like doing, right? So I think planning that way effectively, what does your, what does your best life look like every day, week, month, year, decade when you're living it? I think having that in the back of your mind, it leaps-- at least helps you directionally as you go to build your business. The second thing that you have to do is just figure out what you're good at, right? And there's a pretty easy framework for figuring out what you're good at. Doesn't mean you'll arrive at the right answer right away, but it's pretty general, right? What are the skills that you've learned during your experience at work? That's, that's number one, right? Number two, what's something that you're so obsessed with, you're so interested in, you learn about so much on a daily basis, that you could talk about it and educate people about it for hours? That's number two, right? Number three is what are, what do people come to you for help for? So we all have something that people come to us for help with continuously, all the time, right? And often what they come to us for help for intersects with our previous business experience or the thing that we're obsessed with, so there might be some intersection there. And lastly is, like, what's something that you've solved for yourself? I see that a lot with fitness coaches, right? So you go online and you see someone who say, "I used to be 250. You know, I was in terrible shape. I was smoking and drinking, and now I'm a lean 175, six-pack abs. Recreated my life, recreated my journey, my nutrition, my diet." Like, they fixed a problem for themselves. So the fourth kind of part of that framework is what's something you fixed for yourself? It's likely if you fixed something for yourself because you had a problem that other people will want to fix that same problem. They're just further behind you on the journey. So I think it's really honing in on what are those skills, and that's a good four-part framework. Doesn't mean it's what you're gonna do long term. My advice to people is always get out there and start talking about something. When I started, I talked about SMB SaaS companies in the healthcare technology space. Five years later, I talk about something wildly different. But going out and learning how to promote your business, learning how to land customers, that's all gonna help you on this very, very long journey.

Calum Johnson 17:12 Yeah. You know, um, I remember h- listening to, uh, hearing this quote from Alex Hormozi. I thought it was so good. He said that, um, when you're trying to kind of reach, like, a different, like, that kind of next income tier... Like, maybe you're earning, I don't know, 5,000 a month, but you wanna earn 10,000 a month. Maybe you're earning 10,000 a month, you wanna earn 100,000 a month. He said the two things that are separating you from doing that, it's either skills or belief. I think everyone always thinks about skills, right? Like, oh, I need to be better at sales, or I need to get better at marketing. The belief component

Calum Johnson 17:50 and the, especially, like, the limiting beliefs, is something that we don't think about as much. And it's interesting something that you said, which is, like, it's just about getting started. It's just about starting to, to talk. And I think so many people, they don't have any voice when it comes to the internet. They don't-- They, they consume content, but they never produce it. They never put it out there. Can you kind of ... What was kind of even your journey with that where, like, you developed a confidence in, like, "Okay, here's where I'm gonna show up. Here's how I'm gonna show up." Like, even deciding which platforms you're gonna go to and all of these things. [page flips] Quick break. Something that I say on this podcast again and again and again, the thing that's holding you back from reaching where you wanna be is one of two things. Typically, it's either belief or skills. And the skills part, let me bring in the sponsor of today's show, which is Skillshare. Skillshare, it's in the name. They have courses, over 25,000 courses on the platform. Some of the best creators, entrepreneurs, experts, educators teaching you skills that will meaningfully grow you and your business, whether it's photography, web design, video. I did a s- Skillshare course by Ali Abdaal on productivity. So many things on Skillshare, it's really gonna take you to a whole new level. And that's not it. I've hooked you up. Use the link in the description below. You'll get a seven-day free trial to use Skillshare. Thank me later. [page flips]

Justin Welsh 19:26 I, it wasn't confidence, right? Like, I would love to say I was, like, super confident.

Calum Johnson 19:30 Yeah.

Justin Welsh 19:30 I was, like, so confident when I started. I wasn't. I was ... I, I had ... I'm still not that confident, like, to be, to be quite frank. Um, it wasn't confidence. It was I had no choice, right? I was gonna quit my job. And sh- could I have taken a six-month break? Yes, right? But my goal was to see if I could make this thing work. I assumed it would not work 'cause I had never made a dollar online. And I was like, "How do I make money online? I have no idea how to make money online." Um, but I decided, okay, I have to get started with something. And what most people do is they buy 10 books on how to create social media, or they read 100 blogs, or they join a community, or they buy a course, or they do whatever, and they watch and watch and watch and read and read and read, and they never start. Because it feels like they're starting because they're learning. They're, they're getting educated, and it feels good. It checks a box, but they're not, they're not really doing anything action-oriented. So I bought one book. I read it, and I went onto, of all places, LinkedIn. Why I chose LinkedIn was because I was afraid of Twitter. I knew it was mean. I knew that people w- you'd get canceled. I, like, I use it for news. I didn't even consider going to use it for content creation. So I went to LinkedIn. It was safe. It was professional. And, like, nobody was treating it like Twitter. I was like, "Oh, there might be an opportunity here." Read a book, logged onto LinkedIn, was like, [clicks tongue] "What am I gonna share?" Well, I'd just built a startup from its first dollar in revenue to 70 million in recurring, right? There's a lot of lessons in there. So I just started writing about that. Here's how I built an e- built an SDR team. Here's what I think about when it comes to inbound marketing. Here's how I worked together with the VP of Marketing. Here is how we set up customer success in the early days. There were a million lessons that I had learned. You just have to start. If you don't start, you'll never learn. Start, then learn. Sahil Lavingia says that from Gumroad. I love that. Start, then learn. Don't learn, then start. Just get started, and watch how the journey unfolds. Five years later, I have nothing to do with healthcare technology, nothing to do with SAS companies. I've pivoted three or four times, and it's been a lot of fun figuring out what I'm really passionate about.

Calum Johnson 21:25 Yeah. I think, I think that that belief of just get started is so important. And, you know, this is, this is what I did and I've seen other people do, which is I think we live in a world ... Because we're so aware of what everyone else is doing, we try and perfect

Calum Johnson 21:40 every single move. So before even doing anything, I'm gonna watch 10 YouTube videos about the difference between doing TikTok versus Instagram Reels versus YouTube Shorts versus LinkedIn versus Twitter. I'm gonna try and perfectly plan out my first move, where it's like you're just wasting time. Like, you're just wasting time. You just need to get started, and start with what's easy. I think that's the thing is, like, LinkedIn was just the easiest thing for you to get started with.

Justin Welsh 22:09 Least amount of friction.

Calum Johnson 22:10 Yeah.

Justin Welsh 22:10 Right? Like, people always ask me, "What platform should I choose?" What do you like? Like, pick the one that you like because in the, in the beginning and really throughout the journey, consistency and persistence are the two most important traits. Like, doing it daily is important. So if you don't like to write but you like to record podcasts, record podcasts 'cause you're more likely to do it every day. If you like writing, write every day. If you like being on Twitter, use Twitter, right? Of course, there are different platforms that are better for certain customers. Like, all of that stuff is true, right? You have to be strategic. But if you try and be perfect, you will never get started. I talk to people all the time that say, "You know, I ... The last two years I've been trying to decide between these three things I really like doing." What a waste of two years. Like, pick one and get started. If six months later you hate doing it, great. You've eliminated 33% of the problem. You got 66% left. Move on to the next one. Get started there until you find something you like doing. Like, waiting around is never going to be the right strategy.

Calum Johnson 23:11 Mm. You know what? I, um [clicks tongue] this is actually how I think about things now is like ... Because I, I know Naval says this thing where, like, you wanna do, uh ... You wanna focus on things that feel like play to you but work to others. And one of the things is like, I think is difficult, is the things that feel like play to us, it comes so naturally you're not aware of it. Like, you don't even ... You think everyone loves it. Like, "Oh, doesn't everyone love football?" [laughs] You're like, "Everyone loves this. It's not just my thing." And so I think it's like what are you already doing? You already spend like five hours a day on YouTube. You spend ton of hours on Twitter. Like, that's your place. Like, why are you gonna go to TikTok? You already spend time on, on these platforms, and that is ... feels more intuitive. Like, what are you already spending your time doing?

Justin Welsh 24:02 T- totally. And I, I also think when he wrote that, I think he's misinterpreted. Maybe he's not, right? I, I can't speak for him. But the way that I think about work feeling like play is not that my work is gonna be fun every day in that it's like, uh, you know, football players generally enjoy playing football. I, I would bet that practice every day isn't fun I would bet that there are aspects of the game that is, that isn't fun, right? Or aren't fun. Um, for me, it's, it's about what's interesting. So figuring out how to build this one-person business to certain revenue milestones, to help a certain number of people, to unlock certain things that I never thought I'd be able to do with my life, that's interesting. And often it's fun, but it's not always fun. So in the beginning, pick something interesting. You'll do a lot of fun shit. You'll do a lot of stuff that's not fun, but if it's interesting, you're more likely to continue to do it, to stay consistent, to show up every day. What I can't stand is when I see people pick things that they're not interested in, because then it's never fun. So you might as well find the thing you're most interested in and get started.

Calum Johnson 25:07 Yeah. You know what it is? I, I think it's like you just wanna get the foundation right.

Justin Welsh 25:12 Totally.

Calum Johnson 25:12 And when you pick the thing that you're not interested in, doesn't matter how far you take it, the foundation is off from the beginning. Like, everything else becomes more difficult. Staying consistent, which is what everyone tells you in content, right?

Justin Welsh 25:24 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 25:24 Becomes nearly impossible to do that when you just don't enjoy the thing. You know what? I wanted to give, um, I wanted to give some pushback 'cause I can already, I can already hear people saying this-

Justin Welsh 25:35 Sure

Calum Johnson 25:35 ... which is, like, when you started and you were thinking about, like, "Okay, what am I gonna write about?" The thought process was like, "Well, I've already built this business from zero to 70 million."

Justin Welsh 25:47 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 25:47 Like, I was chief revenue officer at this startup-

Justin Welsh 25:49 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 25:49 ... and I did this thing, and so I have a high degree of confidence that I can speak to this. And here's what people are gonna say. They're gonna say, "Well, I haven't built a business to 70 million."

Justin Welsh 26:01 Sure.

Calum Johnson 26:02 Like, I don't have that thing which, like, if you look at my resume, if someone was just looking at my life, they could look at it and just be like, "Oh, okay. That's, like, spectacular." Like, that's something that he can instantly speak to. What do you say to that person that's like, "I don't have that thing. Like, I don't have that level of expertise"?

Justin Welsh 26:21 Yeah. Develop it, right? The easiest way to become an interesting creator or to build an interesting online business is to do interesting things in real life, right? That's how you get started. If you have no skills, which by the way, I think almost everyone has skills, right? If you have no skills and no experience and no business experience at all, it's gonna be hard, right? I also think as you look around at the different creators making moves, making headway, they don't all have my background, right? So it's easy to kinda glob onto my background and say, "He did it, but," right? But for every, every me, there's lots of people who are 24 who don't have a whole lot of life or business experience going out and monetizing their passions. But the first thing that you have to do is you have to become good at something. The easiest way to teach other people how to become good at something is to become good at it yourself. So whatever that thing is, right? Whether it's something that is common in the workplace, so marketing, building landing pages, doing SEO, those are classic examples that I can think of off the top of my head, or whether it's something that you have a hobby in, photography, exercise, you have to be good at it, right? That, that is part of the game, and I think what people are saying when they say, "Yeah, but," is they're saying, "I don't wanna do that." And so I would push back on those folks and say, "If you wanna build an online business, it pays to be good at something," right?

Calum Johnson 27:48 Mm-hmm.

Justin Welsh 27:48 So go out and become the best at something specific and then show everyone how you did it.

Calum Johnson 27:53 Mm. Okay. I love it. I love it. Okay. So let's, um, let's fast-forward it. So I have my thing that I have the degree of certainty, I have the degree of confidence, like, okay, I'm good at this.

Justin Welsh 28:05 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 28:05 I'm starting to talk about it online. I'm starting to publish my thoughts-

Justin Welsh 28:09 Yeah

Calum Johnson 28:09 ... which is kinda step two to it. Where does the first dollar come from?

Justin Welsh 28:13 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 28:13 Like, where, where, where does that happen?

Justin Welsh 28:15 Yeah. I think the easiest way to kinda make your first dollar is tied to how I think you should get started creating content. And by the way, just 'cause I say I think this is how you should get started does not mean it's the right answer for everyone. I'm sure there are people who have done it a multitude of different ways, right? But if I were to advise someone who has never created content and wants to make a dollar online or $100 or $1,000, first thing that I would do is teach. So don't try and be contrarian. Don't try and be super humorous. Don't try and be... Like, are there people who do that and do it well? Of course. But the majority of people, if you wanna be successful, go online and start teaching. Share what you've learned. Share the journey. Share the lessons, the mistakes, the wins, the losses, right? Once you've done that, a small audience should gather if you're doing it effectively. If they don't, maybe you're a bad writer. Maybe you're a bad podcaster. Maybe you're a bad video creator. Get better at the thing you're doing, at the medium you're using to spread your message, right? Don't just say, "This doesn't work." Look internally and say, "What's going poorly," right? So once you get the medium right, once you get the message right, and once you get a small audience going

Justin Welsh 29:20 around, the easiest way to figure out how to make a dollar is to figure out what specific challenges people have in your audience group. And there's no better way, and it's hard, right? No better way than to talk to them, right? When you s- when you write a piece of content and you explain step by step how to do something you've learned, if you have even a small following, you might get two or three questions. "Hey, Jim. I'm just trying to get some clarity around what you meant on this." Awesome. "Can I just jump on a quick Zoom call with you, 10 minutes? Wanna make sure I understand exactly what you're asking, why you're asking it, so I can give you the best advice possible." All of those questions, all of those clarifying questions are, are openings to learn about people's specific challenges. And if you can learn about common challenges that lots of people have that they can't figure out how to solve, that's a very easy way to make a dollar, right? And if you're going down that journey, if it's in your skill wheelhouse, if it's in your area of expertise, all you gotta do is go study exactly how to solve that specific challenge. More than likely, you've probably already solved it. That's the, that's the good news, right? Then it becomes saying, "Great. Uh, you have that problem," right? "What have you tried?" How did it work? What's it costing you? What does that mean to you personally? How big of a priority is this? Why so big? What date do you wanna solve it by? How long do you think it'll take to solve? Great. Sounds like you wanna solve it in the next 60 days. We think it's gonna take anywhere between 45 to 50 days to solve. That means in the next 10 to 15 days you need to make a decision on whether you wanna solve this. I can solve it for you. Sounds like it's costing you $30,000 a year. I can solve that for four grand over 40 hours, right? I'm just making an example up. If you can put together a solution where you cost less than the cost it takes them to actually f- keep that problem around, then you have a business, right? If, if I say I can solve a $30,000 problem for $4,000, that's a business. And the problem that, the, the reason that people don't do that, I think, is it's uncomfortable to talk to, talk to customers. It's hard to do discovery. I have 15 years of sales experience, so I know how to do that kinda with one eye, one eye closed at this point in my life, but it's part of the game. It's part of the skill set that you need to generate if you wanna go out and build revenue for yourself.

Calum Johnson 31:40 Yeah. You know what I think is, um, I, I, I just love the way of thinking, which is like we've done about 80 episodes of this podcast-

Justin Welsh 31:48 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 31:48 ... so far, spoken with a ton of really successful entrepreneurs, and you start to see these patterns with how they approach building companies. Which is the first thing they're trying to do, it's almost like they're looking for signal.

Justin Welsh 32:01 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 32:02 They're trying to find, like, what's the problem that people have? Like, what's the unique problem that people have that I can uniquely solve? And so when you go on social media and you're posting, and I thought what you said was interesting, which is, like, basically the classic thing that Gary Vee says, which is almost like, "Document, don't create."

Justin Welsh 32:21 Yep.

Calum Johnson 32:21 A lot of people, they say, "Oh, I'm not a creator. I, I don't see myself as a creator." It's like, okay then, don't create.

Justin Welsh 32:27 [laughs]

Calum Johnson 32:27 Just document-

Justin Welsh 32:28 Yeah

Calum Johnson 32:28 ... what you're doing. And when you do that, it starts to send out a signal. People that are experiencing or a few steps, uh, before you, they can start to kinda be drawn towards you and start to give you that signal and start to show their problems. And then from there it's like, okay, the only thing a business really does is it just solves a problem for a specific customer.

Justin Welsh 32:50 That's it.

Calum Johnson 32:51 So you have the customer, you know their problem, now you have, like, the optionality to think about how you can solve it and be compensated for that. So I, I, I love that framework because anyone, like you, anyone can s- can follow that. Um, you don't have to be, like, a genius to do that.

Justin Welsh 33:09 That's, that's right. And I think one of the easiest things to do is just keep your ears open.

Calum Johnson 33:13 Mm.

Justin Welsh 33:14 Right? So, like, I'll give you an example. Uh, when I started creating content in 2018, I was writing about what I knew. I wrote about small to medium sized SAS companies in the healthcare technology space, right? Totally different, like I said, from what I do today, but I wrote about it every day, I shared my experiences, and I started getting DMs, and I also started getting questions on my content. And as I scrolled through those DMs, as I scrolled through the comments, like, yeah, I had like, "Oh, cool, can you tell me more about building an SDR team?" Or, "How do you do inbound marketing?" Like, I had those questions, right? But I also had a lot of questions about how to use LinkedIn. "Hey, man. Yeah, I know you write about healthcare, but, like, how are you getting so much engagement?" Like, "How did you learn to write? What time are you posting? What day are you posting? What tool are you using?" You know, "How many comments sh-" And I was just like, "Well, this is really interesting." That was not what I expected when I started to write about, you know, healthcare on, on LinkedIn. And so I was like, "That is some signal in a lot of noise." And I talk about healthcare, but I get all these questions about LinkedIn. What do I do with that? So I was like, "I don't wanna be a LinkedIn coach. I wanna keep working with early stage entrepreneurs and healthcare companies." So I was like, "What if I just put together a 60-minute video on how I use LinkedIn?" So I did. It's the very first thing I created in 2019 called The LinkedIn Playbook. It was 50 bucks. I sold 75 grand worth of it in 18 months, and I was like, it blew my mind. That was the first experience I had making, it's not really passive 'cause you have to build it, but making money while I slept, right? Wake up, and I was like, "Whoa. I made 100 bucks overnight." Just doing that changed the entire outlook of my business. I might still be consulting and advising for early stage healthcare companies in 2023 and '24 if I didn't make that choice. So, like, look around. See what's happening. See what people are asking you. There's gold there.

Calum Johnson 35:04 Mm. I love that. Like, just open, open your ears because it's like... And it goes back to even, I know it's completely different context, but it's like the universe whispers before it yells.

Justin Welsh 35:14 Yep.

Calum Johnson 35:15 That doesn't even have to just be negative. That can be positive.

Justin Welsh 35:18 Totally.

Calum Johnson 35:18 That can be that there's a good signal that's there that you're just missing 'cause you're not paying attention. I think it's, I think it's so good 'cause people will have that moment even listening to this where they're like, "Oh," like, "it, it makes sense."

Justin Welsh 35:30 And a lot of people say, like, I deal with a lot of, uh, kinda clients that say, "I've been asked the same thing 50 times by 50 different people, and I don't really wanna do that thing." Okay, I'm not suggesting that you go do something you're not interested in, right? We talked about that earlier. But, like, why not at least run at that for a moment, figure out how to build a product or service that solves that problem if it's so compelling, if it's so common, if you're hearing it every single day? Because by building that product, by building that service, by building that small business, you're gonna learn a ton of lessons. In all of those lessons that you learn doing that, go take those lessons and apply them to something you're much more interested in.

Calum Johnson 36:07 Mm.

Justin Welsh 36:07 Right? Like, it doesn't have to be fun and exciting from moment one. Go learn when you see a common challenge, then take all those things and apply them to the thing you're most interested in. There's, there's so much knowledge to be gained simply from making a transaction from solving a problem.

Calum Johnson 36:23 Mm. I think that's good as well because I think when it comes to making money online and in social media- I think we see all of these paths that we can go, right? We see the courses, the digital product, adverts, sponsorship. Like, people look at all these revenue channels. But it's like, I like the framework of you don't have to get it perfect first time. You don't have to start with courses and then be like, "Oh, okay. I only do courses now," and that's the thing. Like, you can try something, take the lessons from that experience, and then use it somewhere else. Like, I think, I think it's just a good way... I think

Calum Johnson 37:00 it's a good way to think about it.

Justin Welsh 37:01 Yeah. I, I feel like there's no right answer. People always say, "What should I start with? A service business, consulting, coaching, courses?" I don't know. Like, what problems do your customers have, and what is the right medium to solve them? If they need you to hold their hand, well, then a course probably doesn't sound right, right? It sounds like you should build a service business. Do it, do it for them, right? If they wanna be educated on their own, in their own free time, a course might be great. If they want to get a monthly tip on how to do better, maybe a subscription email will work, right? If they want to just get their business in front of more clients, maybe a partnership is, is the right thing to do. There are so many things to do, but it's, it's not what you wanna do. It's how the problem gets solved. And s- everyone's focused on me, me, me, me, me, me, me, when they should be focused on customer problem, customer problem. That's all that matters. And if you can do that well enough for a long enough period of time, then all the things you do in the future can be you-focused-

Calum Johnson 37:58 Mm

Justin Welsh 37:58 ... as long as you get it right for your customer.

Calum Johnson 37:59 Mm. You know, I wanna key in on something that you said right at the beginning, which is when you started building this one-person business, the thought that was at the forefront of your mind was life first-

Justin Welsh 38:12 Yeah

Calum Johnson 38:12 ... business second. And here's the thing, right? And I see it, and the reason I speak to it well is because I feel it myself. Which is, like, when you're ambitious and you like to go for things and you like to push one level higher each time-

Justin Welsh 38:28 Mm

Calum Johnson 38:28 ... it's very easy as you start getting success to be like, "Well, what if I just start taking from this life bucket-

Justin Welsh 38:36 Yeah

Calum Johnson 38:36 ... and I start shoveling some of that dirt more into this business bucket? Maybe I could take the 75,000, make it 10 million." And so I'm curious, as you're going on this journey, how do you keep that thought in y- the forefront of your mind, life first, business second?

Justin Welsh 38:56 So first of all, great question, and something that I deal with all the time, right? Because I'm... I, I'm not super money-driven, right? I, I, I like to make money, so don- don't get me wrong. Don't let me lie and tell you I don't. But, like, I'm often thinking about, how can I continue to do what I do but get more of my time back? But I get distracted, and I call that shiny outcome syndrome. It's different than shiny object, uh, object syndrome. I look at creator friends of mine, and I'm like, "Oh, that person's doing something really cool. They're making way more money. They're impacting way more people. Like, I gotta do that thing," right? Give you a good example. My buddy Hunter Hammons, you had him here on the podcast, right? Hunter's doing insanely incredible work that is just impacting so many people. And I look at that, and I'm like, "Maybe I should do that. Maybe I should do what Hunter's doing," right? Then I think, "Okay, what are all the things that Hunter has to do in order to build 12 businesses that are all a million or two million more," or however many businesses he's built to however many millions, right? What do I gotta do to do that? I lay out the work, and I'm like, "I don't wanna do that. [laughs] And I don't wanna do that, and I don't wanna do that, and I certainly don't wanna do that." It's like, "It's a no-go," right? I get distracted by the outcome. Oh, it's c- be cool to make all that money and impact all those people and do all... Bring it back. Life first, business second, right? It's why I think grounding yourself in how you want your life to be is the most important thing. You may not get it right the first time, but it has to be your grounding. And so when I look at my business, do I wanna grow my business year over year? Yeah, for the most part, right? If it didn't grow, I wouldn't care very much, right? I'm, I'm... love where my business is at. What I really want is to get more of my time back. So I sit down strategically and think, "Okay, my business is here at X. I'd love for it to be to Y. What are the things I can do that get it from X to Y, but don't impact this foundation, don't impact my life, don't force me to do things that I hate doing?" Having that grounding will always allow you to make... at, at least give you the best chance at making the right decision for you and your family. Just to give you a quick side note, I started, like, a Slack community two years ago. And as a guy who doesn't wanna spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year doing work, like, I skipped that grounding part, right? I overlooked that. I jumped over it and went, went for something that I thought I should do. I regretted it. I loved doing it. People loved it. But it just didn't fit into my lifestyle, and that's one time I can remember really going against my best judgment.

Calum Johnson 41:34 Yeah. You know, one of the things I think that I've seen is, like, when you almost talk about building that mindset into your life, I feel like it needs to be infused into your habits. And the reason I say that is it's so easy to get caught up, right? It's so easy for... to spend, you know, a bit longer at the office one day, and then one day doing that turns into a week-

Justin Welsh 42:02 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 42:02 ... which then turns into a month, and now that's just your life. It goes back to what you were saying when you were working that job, right? Which is like, "Oh yeah, I just eat a few more extra calories every day," and then that's now what you're doing for months and months and months. I think what breaks that out

Calum Johnson 42:20 is when you kind of have these habits and things that you do which just kind of give you the perspective.

Justin Welsh 42:25 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 42:26 And so I'm curious about, like... Talk to me about some of that. Like, what are some of the things that you are doing-

Justin Welsh 42:32 Yeah

Calum Johnson 42:32 ... which when you're like ... course isn't performing or you're starting to get a bit too caught up into this thing, it just kind of pulls you out even for a second.

Justin Welsh 42:42 Yeah. I live a pretty regimented life, which, um, I, I, I'm thinking about something that, uh, this will, this will tie into what my friend Ben Meir wrote this morning on LinkedIn, which is, like, living your life in quarters. So, like, if you think of, like, your day in 24 hours, like, what are the four quarters of your life, right? What are the four quarters of your day? And so habits to me is, like, regimented blocks of time. That's, that's how I operate. Now not to say that I don't get outside those regimented blocks or I don't do something different on a regular basis. I do all the time, but there are certain things that I have to do. For, for example, um, from 6:00 in the morning till about 8:30, I am always drinking coffee, I'm always chatting with my wife, and then I always spend 30 to 45 minutes on social media interacting with my audience. Do that almost every morning, right? Miss here and there, but generally that is what I'm doing every morning, right? After that, I have a non-negotiable either five to seven-mile walk or 90 minutes at the gym. My wife and I do that every single day, non-negotiable. Of course, and I say every single day, we miss sometimes, but for the most part, non-negotiable, right? We, we usually do six to seven days every single week. Then it's like, great, we've got three hours when we get home. We eat lunch. We've got three hours of work time, so generally I'm at my best, at my peak from 1:00 to 4:00. From 4:00 to 5:00, I have open blocks for meetings, for stuff like this. Um, so I set aside that time for creative work, doing a one-on-one call with somebody who I find interesting, something, right? By having that sort of rigid schedule, I'm building not just a business, but I'm building a life. It might be, uh, a comeback might be, uh, people might say is like, "That doesn't sound very lifestyle driven," but it is. I love going to the gym with my wife. I love going on walks with my wife. I love drinking coffee with her in the morning. I love working for three hours a day. It's great. And then the evening after 4:00, if I don't have any meetings, is free for us to do whatever we want. Go out and hang with friends, have a happy hour, check out a new restaurant, drive down to the city and stay at a hotel. We can do whatever we want with that time, but it keeps me focused on the habits that I need to build in order to build both the life and the business that I want.

Calum Johnson 44:47 Yeah. I love that framework actually of just like what are just some things that I just love doing?

Justin Welsh 44:54 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 44:54 And then let's make sure that, that it's infused into the routine. It is present every day. There is something that I objectively love to do. I, I love that way of thinking about it. Okay, you know what? So let's carry on, let's carry on the trajectory of, like, the, the one-person business and, and scaling it to the point where, where someone could get to the point where they have, they've done 5 million in revenue from doing it. So you start kind of posting online. You're building your audience. You've kind of maybe you've put out your digital product. You've put out a course. You're doing consulting. Let's say that that's got you to, I don't know, like 10K a month or whatever in earnings. I'm curious like [lip smack] what do you say to people who are thinking about, like, the transition? Because I'm assuming a lot of people that do that, they might still have a job or, like, some sort of main income, and then they're almost using this to like, as a side hustle to, like, supplement their income.

Justin Welsh 45:54 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 45:55 How do you think about that transition from being, you know, I'm working a job and I'm doing this thing on the side to just going all in on that thing on the side? When is the right moment?

Justin Welsh 46:07 There's never a right moment, but I can give you what I think is some good advice, and people will say, "I know someone who did it differently," right? There's outliers in every single situation. Don't get me wrong. Um, generally what I would say is if you're working on something part-time and you've been able to grow that to 50, 60, 70% of your take-home earnings at your job, it's a pretty good indicator that if you suddenly got 40 hours a week back, that you could probably bring that up to 100. It's not guaranteed, but it's a nice indicator. It doesn't mean you do it one month. It means you do it six, seven, eight, nine months in a row. You can see this trajectory where your business is either relatively flat or tilting slightly up or tilting way up, right? It's going down the whole time, th- that's not a good indicator. But find that 60%, that 70% of your overall to- total earnings. Get there on a regular basis, and then ask yourself, "If I had 40 hours a week back to work on this side business, do I believe I could get it to 100%?" And by the way, you might not need to. You might actually say, "If I can get it to 80% and have a better life, that's a win for me." There's flexibility there. Once you decide that you're, you're ready to make that leap, that's why I talked about this sort of regimented life that I live. The 9:00 to 5:00 is very regimented. Go to work, generally arrive at 9:00, generally leave at 5:00, right? If you jump into something full-time, suddenly you have freedom and flexibility, so that's why I'm regimented. I treat my creator job like a job, right? And I think, I think it benefits people to continue to treat that side hustle, especially when they go all in, as a 9:00 to 5:00 job, especially in the beginning. Work that 40-hour workweek. Make sure you're growing that business to 100% of your take-home earnings or more. But get it to a place where you have a regimented approach, 'cause the worst thing that happens is you jump into this thing full-time and you decide, "I'm gonna kick back, rest on my laurels for a minute. That was, that went great," and suddenly you have no job and your revenue starts going down.

Calum Johnson 48:03 Mm.

Justin Welsh 48:03 That becomes really, really difficult to handle in my opinion.

Calum Johnson 48:06 Yeah. I remember actually, uh, in the weeks leading up to when I was leaving my job, that was the biggest piece of advice that I got from people, which is like, um, you take it for granted how your job, like, structures your life.

Justin Welsh 48:19 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 48:19 Like, it kinda sets the context to everything else. Like, even, say, when you go to the gym, most people go to the gym really early in the morning or after work. Like, everything is kind of done in

Calum Johnson 48:30 relation to your job.

Justin Welsh 48:31 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 48:31 So when you-- that's taken out, which might-- That's a reality that a lot of people dream of is, like, having that freedom, but then there's still a void there. Like, there's-- So you need to, you need to add that structure. Um- I think that's so true. You know what? I'm kind of curious on, like, the, the mindset level of someone leaving their job. And here's where I can see people's mind going, which is like, okay, I did a course, I did a digital product. It went well. It went way better than I even imagined. But it, it's, it's a one-off, you know? I... It went well once. Can I now leave my job and, like, I'm gonna be able to recreate this month on month? And there's, like, this anxiety of like I'm removing the stability and the security of my paycheck to do this, like, creator thing where I listen to the guy on the podcast-

Justin Welsh 49:26 Yeah

Calum Johnson 49:27 ... and it's like I don't know if this is gonna work again, and again, and again. I'm curious, do you even have that, that sort of trepidation, that sort of anxiety of like what if it just goes away?

Justin Welsh 49:39 Yes, every single day. Every single day I have that an- anxiety. Mostly because I'm an anxious person, right? So that, that's more of a personality trait o- of my own. But, like, every day I, I turn to my wife and say, like, "What if this all goes away tomorrow?" And it could. So can your job, right? Most of us have been fired from a job before. I was fired from my first three jobs, right? So you can go from making 100 grand a year to making zero overnight in a job. It's unlikely all 23,000 of my students quit tomorrow, right? So I actually think it's less likely if you build your business in an effective way. But of course I worry about that. But you have to worry about that in any business that you build. There are ways to overcome that. And the ways that I think of overcoming that, by the way, they don't work every single time, but there are some ways to de-risk that. One way to de-risk that is to offer up different services. So relying on just a course is scary because course requires traffic, requires conversions, it requires social media content or SEO or paid advertisements. All those things can work. I like to always recommend to people they offer a service business. What's something that you can do using your skill where you're trading your time for money and you're making a nice hourly rate or project rate, right? That's the easiest way to backfill your salary, to backfill your earnings, is with a service business. Once you figure out how to land some customers,

Justin Welsh 51:00 and like I said, you're doing it for 6 to 8 to 10 months in a row and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you know it's time for you to go all in because with 40 hours a week back, you can make that service business really thrive. Once you do that and you start to carve into your service business, who are your ideal customers? Who do you love helping, and who loves your help? Who specifically? What specifically do you help them solve, and what specifically do you help them achieve? Once you do that and you really niche down your service business, you can raise your rates. When you raise your rates, you have two options: work more and make more money, or work less and make the same money because you've raised your rates. What I recommend is work less, make the same money, and take all that newfound time to figure out how to build a digital product for all the people that fall outside of your ideal customer profile. If you can do that, you now have a service business which requires you to hunt, land customers, and spend your time, and you have a digital product business which can sell while you're sleeping, right? Your content lasts for a long time, especially the more and more and more followers you get. As you grow your followers, you now have a service and a product business. The next natural thing for you might be, and again, it doesn't have to be, launching a newsletter. If you can launch a newsletter and you've already got 50,000 or 60,000 followers, you might be able to grow that to 10 or 15,000 subscribers. If you can do that, you now have a new revenue stream, sponsorships, right?

Calum Johnson 52:28 Mm.

Justin Welsh 52:28 Maybe it's only a grand an issue, but if you release it a week, it's 52 grand, right? So suddenly you've got service, a product, you've got sponsors, and you've got a newsletter which can help sell more of your service and your product. So it's completely holistic, this sort of ecosystem that we're building, right? Then as you start to think about your product business, what are some very narrow things that you can create that will help people inside of your product business? So for example, I teach people how to use social media. I also have a very narrow product called the Monthly Templates, which are five simple social media templates you can use every month to grow your following. I add those onto the course as a one-click upsell. They cost $9 a month. I have 3,000 subscribers. It's a $27,000 a month business where I send one email. So now you've got a service business, a product business, sponsorships, subscription email. I could go on forever in ways that you can monetize under the same umbrella, right? Once you've done that, you are de-risking this problem of suddenly money going away overnight.

Calum Johnson 53:33 Mm. Okay, no, that's so good. It reminds me, actually, um, [lips smack] Daniel Priestley. I, I've... He has, like, a few books. I've seen him on a few podcasts. And one of the things, the way that he kind of frames it is like you wanna build up demand, right? And so the beautiful thing when you can build up demand is that you can start to section off some of that demand into, like, these different offerings. That's what leads to the, the diversification. And I heard it when I was listening to you, which is like one of the ways that you build up demand is you get specific.

Justin Welsh 54:08 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 54:09 You start to really understand, like, specifically what is the problem that this person is facing. And then it's also, it goes back to that thing that Alex Hormozi said, which is, like, skills and belief. I think the thing, even if someone can be super specific with what their customer's problem is, the reason that they struggle sometimes mentally is, oh, would someone buy this from me? Would someone pay $10 for the template? Like, I don't know, like it doesn't seem like someone would pay. But that's because you've already done it.

Justin Welsh 54:41 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 54:41 Like, that's a ton of value. And it's like once that mindset shift starts to happen and you're in the process of building value and getting specific- I like it because there'll be a ton of places in your business where you can-- It's a separate revenue stream.

Calum Johnson 55:00 It's like the revenue streams will jump out to you-

Justin Welsh 55:02 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 55:02 ... once that mindset shift takes place, and that's actually a beautiful process, is being able to almost survey the landscape of your company and be like, "Oh, there's a revenue stream here, there's a revenue stream here, there's a revenue stream here."

Justin Welsh 55:15 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 55:15 It's beautiful.

Justin Welsh 55:16 It's, it's interesting. And, and, and my brain works the reverse way, where I, I, I don't often see revenue first. What I see is a problem.

Calum Johnson 55:25 Mm.

Justin Welsh 55:25 And so, like, as people are going through my course, they'll reach out to me, "Hey man, love the course. Like, this is still one thing I'm struggling with. Hey, hey man, love the course. This is still one thing I'm struggling with," back and back and back, right? Over and over and over. It's like, oh, I hear a common problem. Okay. How do I solve it? Well, the templates, right. Plug that in, right? Oh, there's a problem over here, right? Uh, oh, with my sponsorships. For example, I have two sponsors in my newsletter. I had a big company reach out and say, "Hey, we'd love to do a sponsorship with you, but we wanna own the sponsorship slot. We want our logo there. We wanna own it. We don't want any c- competitors in there." And I was like, that sounds like a different price point. That sounds like a new package. That sounds like a new partnership. Put together a partnership, toss it over to them, sign my biggest partner. Like, it's not revenue, it's problems. You gotta listen for people saying, "I have this problem," just like we talked about before. If you can do that, there is money to be made, which is nice. The best thing is you're solving someone's problem and they're getting better at the thing they wanna get better at.

Calum Johnson 56:26 Mm.

Justin Welsh 56:27 That in and of itself will drive additional revenue. With 23,000 students, my courses have, I think, a 4.98 rating. Every single day online, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, somebody is saying something nice about one of my courses, and someone else is buying the course because of that. So work on solving problems, and that word-of-mouth mar- mouth marketing will do wonders for your business, whether it's a service business, a product business, or a subscription business.

Calum Johnson 56:51 Yeah. You know what? As I was, as I was listening to you, um, it clicked. It clicked, and here's what I mean. Earlier on you said, um, people need to-- It's just you need to open your ears, and you said the reason that people don't open their ears is because it's uncomfortable. This customer, like, discovery process, this process of getting really clear on what the problem is, it's uncomfortable.

Justin Welsh 57:16 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 57:16 'Cause I need to get on the phone with people, and I need to dive deep, and I need to kind of get the answers. And so when I say that it clicked, it's like one of your skills, and, and you know what? You even tell me. You can speak to it better. One of your skills, one of your superpowers is that customer discovery, is becoming really clear on exactly what that person's problem is, and it's so powerful when you talk about your courses, uh, the thousands of people that have done your courses, 4.9 out of 5 rating. It kinda comes back to that, right? Which is understanding exactly what their problem is, because once you have that, you can figure out the solve. But here's what I think is really helpful, something that will be incredibly impactful that you can speak to, which is for the person that feels that they have-- they don't have that skill set in customer discovery, how can I get better at that?

Justin Welsh 58:17 Yeah. Yeah.

Calum Johnson 58:18 How can I get better at figuring out exactly what someone's problem is?

Justin Welsh 58:22 It, it comes down to curiosity. There, there are two ways to run a discovery call. I've built sales teams for 10 years, right? I've watched generally discovery calls fall into two buckets. I'm doing discovery because I want to make a sale, and I'm positioning every question as a way to get you to buy. And then there's other people who are doing discovery because they actually genuinely care what they're learning about the customer's problem. Like, imagine if I was sitting across from you and I was just-- We were having a beer, right? And I said, "Calum, podcast seems to be going well, man. Like, tell me, how's, how's the month of November gone? Like, how's November versus last December? What's, what's growth look like?" I'm, I'm interested. I'm curious. W- what if you told me, "Growth's actually down. It's down 20% year over year. For some reason, we're just..." I'm making this up. I'm sure your podcast is growing wonderfully, right? But, uh, you might say, "You know, it's down." "Really? What happened? W- what do you think the cause is?" "Oh, I think the cause is this." "Why do you think that?" "Well, I think that because of this." "That's interesting. Have you heard that more than once?" "Yeah, I've heard it three times." "Who'd you hear it from?" "I heard it from this person, this person, and this person." "Can you tell me a little bit more about that? That's-- Give me, give me a little more clarity around that." Like, I would just be interested in learning. I don't have a podcast solution to sell. But at the end of the day, if I did, and we were able to figure out that the loss of subscribers to your podcast was worth 50 grand a year and I came to you and said, "Dude, I have worked with four people who have podcasts of exactly your size talking to entrepreneurs just like you talk to, and instead of losing 20% year over year, they're growing 200% year over year. And to them, that's worth about 85 grand in cash. I can show you how to do that for about two grand," you might be s- You might jump and say, "Hey, that sounds like a hell of a deal," right? This all-- I learned this by being a customer. When I was in the startup PatientPop, we were trying to look at an SEO agency. We wanted to help, get help with our SEO. Every single SEO agency we talked to said, "Tell me about your SEO agency." "Well, we do SEO for companies just like yours." "Well, we do SEO for companies just like yours." Generic, vague, not compelling. I finally got on the call with this guy and he said, like, "Healthcare SEO has been changing a lot over the last decade," right? "What's working for the big, the big boy companies, the Pfizers, the Modernas of the world, is no longer working for them, and it certainly won't work for little startups like yours. So we've created this specific process, yada, yada, yada." And I was like, "Okay, this guy knows my business. He knows my industry. He understands the problems. He knows how to solve them. He's worked with other companies like ours." Like- This guy's speaking my language. So when I went out to build my business, I didn't wanna be generic. I didn't wanna be vague. I wanted to be specific. And the best way to be specific is to get curious, ask a lot of questions, deeply and truly understand the problem, and then craft a solution that makes sense. That's what discovery is, curiosity.

Calum Johnson 1:01:22 Hmm. No, I, I think that's great. I think that's great. You know what? I think there's, um, there's a second component that I have, I have to ask about, which is the curiosity is the driver that's gonna get you... It's gonna, it's gonna fill in, like, the understanding the customer. It's gonna fill in understanding what the problem is. The curiosity's gonna drive that. Once you understand what the problem is, there's a second component-

Justin Welsh 1:01:47 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 1:01:47 ... which is being able to speak to that person, and that's something that I think that even in that little role play that you just did, you did it very effectively, which is, like, I, uh... not only do I understand your problem, I know how to communicate with you in a way where you know that I understand your problem, and I know how to position a solution where it clicks.

Justin Welsh 1:02:09 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:02:10 The click is everything because then it's like, "Oh, I'm kind of unsure about whether I should buy from this person," to, "No, he, he's the one," or, "She's the one. We need to go with them." It creates that urgency when people have that click.

Justin Welsh 1:02:25 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:02:25 The click is coming because you, you, you framed it correctly. And can you s- so can you speak about that second component, which is like, okay, I might understand my customer's problem. I have no idea how to, to package everything together to frame the solution where they're like, "Got ya," like, "I need to buy."

Justin Welsh 1:02:45 Yeah. First of all, it comes from deeply and truly understanding their industry and their problem. You have to understand that before you can deeply understand a solution. Then I think it's, it's doing a lot of different things. There's so much nuance, I think, in, in doing that effectively. But one of the first things I think is you wanna speak to them in a language, in terms that they understand, right? So, for example, if, if I'm talking to somebody in healthcare, I might be using words like payee, payor, terms that we use in healthcare to describe different sides of the healthcare spectrum, right? I might use something like electronic medical records or, you know, what's your, what's your patient, uh, system of record? Using jargon and w- not, not necessarily jargon, but words that they're comfortable with, that they... shows them that you understand the space. But really, that's all secondary to laying out what I would call a great sort of solution plan, right? So for example, here's how I might lay one out. I might start by saying, "Hey, Calum, when we talked, you know, we talked about the decrease in followers of your, or subscribers of your podcast. Here's what I heard. I wanna make sure I heard you correctly, right? I heard there was X drop. You've tried this. It didn't work. You were really frustrated, right? It's costing you about this every single year. I heard that not only is it costing you money, but from a personal perspective, it's actually making your personal life really difficult. It's giving you a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear. Seems like it's top priority right now. You mentioned that you might be rebuilding the studio. That could potentially take priority number one, but it seems like right now that's priority number one i- is to fix this, and you'd like to get it fixed by March 31st, right? So let's put together a solution that works for you," and here's how I would do it. The first thing that I would do is I would go back and I would take a look at all the podcasters that I've worked with who have the same audience size, who had a very, very similar problem, and who talk to similar customers that you talk to, right? So you know what? Alex Hormozi, right? He has a podcast just like yours, similar size. It's growing. He's talking to entrepreneurs just like you, right? When I talked to him, he was feeling this way, this way, and this way. Does that resonate with you? I thought it might based on what you, you told me about how you were feeling. He also saw this decrease in, in customers, but where he saw it was a little bit different than yours. He saw it here, A, B, and C. So I solved that problem, but you're D, E, and F. Here's how I would hypothesize solving that problem, right? I would start with step one, which would be X, step two, which would be Y, step three, which would be Z. At the conclusion of step three, we're gonna have an understanding of whether or not we're moving in the right direction. If we aren't moving in the right direction, I've got a contingency plan. It's gonna look like this, A, B, and C. If we are moving in the right direction, we're gonna continue to iterate, we're gonna continue to get better, we're gonna continue to use data. Calum, I think we can solve this problem in about 65 days, recoup about 85 grand worth of money in potential lost revenue, and do it for about five grand, so about sev- 1/17th of what you'll actually recoup in revenue. Here's my ask, right? If I can execute on that, and do that effectively, would you be willing, at the conclusion of our working together, to sign up for a 12-month commitment to me where I show you how to grow this podcast on three different platforms if I deliver on my word? Most people will say, "If you deliver on your word, if you've worked with people like me, if you've solved similar challenges, if you can lay out a hypothesis-based solution, uh, for me," and then make that ask, most people say, "Yeah. Fix this problem first, and then let's go tackle getting, getting more people." They're amped up thinking about what's called positive future. Not only have I painted a picture where this current problem is solved, but I've painted a picture where this current problem is solved and you and I are working on growing your podcast through three new channels, right? So you're thinking, "Man, that would be cool if I could grow it on TikTok and Instagram and all this." So I've got you thinking about that positive future, 1/17th of the cost of the revenue that you'll recoup. Make it a no-brainer. Make it a win-win. That's how I might do that. That comes from 10 to 15 years of sales experience, though.

Calum Johnson 1:06:57 Yeah. Man, that was just a masterclass right there. That was a master... You got me ready to buy a service I don't really even need.

Justin Welsh 1:07:02 I blacked out. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 1:07:03 Yeah. [laughs] And, and I loved it 'cause it was like, it's like step one, it's like, okay, so you understand the problem.

Justin Welsh 1:07:10 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:07:10 Recap to them the problem.

Justin Welsh 1:07:12 Of course.

Calum Johnson 1:07:12 Tell them in your own words, and then that solidifies in their brain like, "Oh," like, "he gets it. He, he gets me." Two, step two is then like what's your methodology? Like, what's your unique approach? How are you gonna-- what's the solve? And what's the... It's not even so much what's the solve, it's like what's the process? Build confidence by, by explaining your methodology. And then three is, like, the close, which is, like, you know, it's the positive future. It's like, okay, here's exactly what we're gonna do. Here's the ask. And I-- it's, it's powerful, impactful.

Justin Welsh 1:07:42 And, and in between-- I- is-- sor- sorry for interrupting, but in between the, the sort of what we're gonna do and the close is the risk contingency plan where it's like, hey, if this doesn't work, I'm already thinking. I'm already thinking ahead. Like, I think this is gonna work, but if it doesn't, here's the secondary plan that we're gonna work, right? Risk, risk contingency. So if everything goes wrong, what are we gonna do about it, right? Is it gonna cost you extra money? It's not. I've already got a plan for it, right? So it's so much better than regular discovery. I'm sure you've been on sales calls in your life, and I've been on plenty of them. I can re- recall early in my journey, um, talking to a digital co- course company that hosted digital courses where I was like, [lip smack] "You know, the problem that I have is it's difficult for students to access the videos." And like quickly cut me off and was like, "We have XYZ. In the inside of our platform, we can do X and A and B and C and D, and then we can market you here." And I'm just like, "Whoa. That's not my problem. You weren't listening, right? Hear me out. Don't tell me about your features that I don't give a shit about. Like, I don't care about all 30 features you just told me about. I have one problem. Listen to me, and then tell me exactly how your solution can solve it, not all the cool features that you think I'm gonna find interesting, 'cause I want problem solved, not interesting features."

Calum Johnson 1:08:58 That is so good. You know, you know one thing that, that jumps out, and I have, I have to ask about it, which is when I listen to you speak, I feel like you're kinda like a natural educator. Like, the, the, the courses, it makes sense to me because the way that you can break down something and add energy to it but then also make it very much step by step, it's-- it feels like someone who's a teacher. And, you know, I think one of the things that's like... [lip smack] I think we're getting to a place with, like, the, the online courses where it's starting to become, like, a bit too much for people, where I go on Instagram or I go on Twitter, I go on TikTok, I go on YouTube, everyone has a course. They-- I, I watch one video, it's like, "Oh, yeah, you wanna sign up for my course on how to..." Like, everyone has it, and it's like-- it's almost getting to, like, this kinda icky level where it's like, oh, great, like another person with a course. [lip smack] I think, I think there's something special in, like, the reviews that you've got, in, like, the feedback that you've got. And so I'm curious from your vantage point, if I'm thinking about starting a course but I'm like,

Calum Johnson 1:10:11 "I don't just wanna be another course. Like, I don't wanna be the, the next person that's just t- you know, trying to sell their audience on a course. I actually want it to have true genuine impact" what are you doing in that process of creation of that course where it's truly a special experience for someone? They're, they're coming back. They're referring people. They're leaving incredible reviews. What is it that's separating you from all these courses that I'm seeing where people, you know, they sign up one day, and then the next day they're like, "Oh, whatever"?

Justin Welsh 1:10:47 Well, the course business has limited friction to get involved, so anyone with a camera can get involved. But so it-- people with no experience can get involved. But it's not too dissimilar from books, right? Like, we don't hear people complaining that there are too many books, but I know a lot of authors write books, and I know the authors personally, and they haven't done the things they write about. Like, books are just as polluted as courses. I think if we get mad about the medium, we're mad about the wrong thing. We should be mad as a-- I don't even know if mad is the right word. We should be irritated that people who don't have experience going and creating things that sh- suggest they do. It's not my job to protect people from the market though, right?

Calum Johnson 1:11:31 Mm.

Justin Welsh 1:11:31 It's not my job to babysit people and to point out people who don't have the experience, right? That's, that's babysitting stuff. Let people find out through, you know, making decisions on their own. I digress, right? Here's, here's what works for me when it comes to courses. [lip smack] I have this thing called [clears throat] what I call the trust tripwire, and tripwire usually has a negative connotation. It's something that's priced so low that you kinda trip over it, and it's like you get someone to spend $4 with you so they'll spend more money with you in the future. I don't really wanna do that. What I wanna do is take a problem that I know with 100% confidence that I know how to solve. I wanna build the absolute best solution in the market for that problem, and I wanna give it to people at a price they cannot believe, right? So the number one piece of feedback I get on my LinkedIn course is like, "This should be $1,500." It's 150 bucks, right? It's got 17,000 students in that course. I know that I could charge more for it. But why? That's short-term thinking, in my opinion. Other people will argue with me on this all day long. I don't mind. I would rather someone paid $150 and got 15 grand worth of value or 150 grand worth of value because the next time, two years or three years down the road when I come out with something else and it's $500, they're gonna go, "150? I got 150 grand worth of value. 500? I'm gonna get 500 grand worth of value," right? I am setting a long game journey up. I am showing people that when you spend a dollar with me, you get $100 in return. That's what I wanna show people. [lip smack] And because I surprise people with the quality of content at the price point, it makes it a no-brainer for them to leave a testimonial. Plus, I have frictionless ways in which I capture that, and every time I capture a testimonial, it goes to my landing page. So I've got thousands of testimonials on my landing page. More testimonials Higher conversion rates, more students, more word-of-mouth marketing, more testimonials, higher conversion rates. It's just cyclical, right? It all goes around. It's 'cause I wanna play the long game. Everyone wants to make money fast, so they come out, no experience, $2,500 course. The trust you need to sell a $2,500 course is so much, right? They underestimate that trust. So I'm playing this long game whi- while I think a lot of other people are playing a very, very short game. Lastly, I'll say you need to teach yourself how to teach. Teach a fourth grader. Sit down with... I have two very good friends that live, that live up near me in the Hudson Valley. They're both 80, 81 now. Um, they don't understand LinkedIn, but one of my friends, Marshall, wanted to get involved. So I sat down with him and I explained LinkedIn to an 81-year-old. He's very bright, right? But technology is not his forte, and so I had to really make sure I was crisp, specific. Where are the buttons? What do you click? How do you do it? Why do you do it? And by doing that over and over again with 81-year-olds, eight-year-olds, your friends, their kids, right? Like, get good at explaining things simply. Feynman technique, right? Explain things like you might explain it to a kindergartner. If you can get really good at that, people love to learn crisply and succinctly.

Calum Johnson 1:14:52 Yeah. You know, I think the... And, and this is something I've had to learn firsthand. The experience piece is, is grossly underrated and, and here's-

Justin Welsh 1:15:00 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 1:15:00 ... what I mean when I say that, which is sometimes we think that, I don't know, maybe because we've experienced something or because we have the knowledge, we just think that we'll be a good teacher. But you don't have any experience teaching, though. You might know everything, and we've all had this experience growing up, right? Which is, like, the, the physics teacher who knows everything about physics but is a terrible teacher. They cannot convey that knowledge. And so I think it is such an important point you make, which is, like, the best way to do it is by you have to do the thing, you know? And even if you just start with one person, doesn't even have to be someone you're selling to, but just getting those reps. And you know what? It actually reminds-

Justin Welsh 1:15:42 [clears throat]

Calum Johnson 1:15:42 ... me, you, you mentioned our conversation with Hunter. Um, I think Hunter's kind of known online at the minute for, like, being able to build these agencies and scale them to a seven-figure point in, like, record time. When I was speaking him- with him, the piece that people miss is he is doing a ton of testing before-

Justin Welsh 1:16:03 Oh, yeah

Calum Johnson 1:16:03 ... they ever launch.

Justin Welsh 1:16:04 Oh, yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:16:05 And, like, that's kind of how you're thinking about it with the courses is, like, when you're teaching your 80-year-old friend or your mom or your dad or whoever it is, that's your testing period of, you know, like, getting sharp actually being an educator.

Justin Welsh 1:16:19 I have a wife who's a great student. Um, so when I create something, she doesn't like social media or, or marketing or sales the way that I do. In fact, she doesn't really like it much in general. [clears throat] And so when I build something, I'll put it in front of her, and pass one, she's always like, "I don't understand." I was like, "No, no, it's so easy. It's so easy. Just do this, do this, do this." "Doesn't make sense to me." I'm like, "Okay, that's... There's no need to get frustrated." It's like, "Okay, that's good feedback. Where's the breakdown? Like, there are steps one through 10. Is it step three? Step one? Step eight?" Once we find the breakdown, it's like, okay, let's go back to the drawing board. All you have to do is continue to put the, in front of people who are not your, not your students, right? Someone who has no concept of the industry you teach. If you can put it in front of someone and they say, "Yeah, I went through a 30-minute video, and, like, I've never been on LinkedIn before, but it all made sense to me"

Calum Johnson 1:17:16 Mm.

Justin Welsh 1:17:17 That's a huge win, right? If you give that product to a bunch of people who spend a lot of time on the platform, it's 100% gonna make sense to them.

Calum Johnson 1:17:25 Mm. Okay, you know what? Tell, tell me this, right? So I've, I've understood the problem.

Justin Welsh 1:17:31 [clears throat]

Calum Johnson 1:17:31 I've become a great educator. Let's take those two as a given. Getting people to sign up for the course, because h- here would be my, my hesitation, right? If I was gonna do a course right now, is, okay, I'm gonna spend this time developing this course and I'm gonna put hours and hours in, and then I feel that there's a market for it, you know, that has the problem. Um, but when I launch, will the demand be there? And people... And I, and I've kind of learnt this in business. It's very different-

Justin Welsh 1:18:03 [clears throat]

Calum Johnson 1:18:03 ... when someone has to pay for something.

Justin Welsh 1:18:04 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:18:05 That's a, that's different. And so the people that might have been telling you, "Oh yeah, I really need this, and this, you know, this sounds great" when it comes time and it's, okay, 499 for my course, The Calum Johnson Experience, I don't know what it's called, um, people start getting a bit more, "Oh, okay, well, maybe in a few months or, you know, maybe next year or..." Like, what is the right way to think about marketing my course-

Justin Welsh 1:18:32 Yeah

Calum Johnson 1:18:32 ... where there's gonna be demand, like, people are saying yes?

Justin Welsh 1:18:36 Yeah. First of all, don't build it until they buy it. [laughs] Like,

Justin Welsh 1:18:41 I reversed that on my newest course because I've been doing this for a long time, and I have a lot of data that suggests that people will buy it, right? 16,000 people on the wait list. I, I, I'm, I feel confident that they will buy it, right? But on my first two courses, three courses, I sold it first before I built it.

Calum Johnson 1:18:57 Mm.

Justin Welsh 1:18:58 There's no, no point in building something if people aren't gonna pay you for it. So [clears throat] what I-- the first step that I try and do is I listen, right? If 30 people come to you and say... The number one request I get is a copywriting course, which I don't wanna build. I'm not interested in building it. But since I get so many requests for it, I'm pretty sure that if I built it, people would buy it, right? So if I were gonna do that, I would go out and start talking about copywriting on a regular basis, which I'm not interested in talking about. But if this example, I would go out and start talking about why it's so important, what your future looks like when you learn to copyright, the biggest mistakes people make when copywriting Why copywriting is a skill that you have to have in 2024. I would just talk about it ad nauseam every single day, right? And at the end of those things, I would say, "I'm considering launching a course. Everyone, I've, I've got 30-plus people that have come to me and said they wanna get a course for copywriting. If you wanna get it, you can get it right now for $99 pre-sale. It's gonna come out in two months. Or if you wait till it comes out, it's gonna be 400 bucks," right? Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. Great. Look at your thing. Cool, I've made 50 grand. Is it worth building, yes or no? If you think 50 grand's worth building it, go build it. If you don't, tail between your legs, say, "Hey, guys, you know what? The demand just wasn't there. I'm so sorry."

Calum Johnson 1:20:16 Mm-hmm.

Justin Welsh 1:20:16 "I'm just-- I'm issuing you a refund." Don't build something unless people wanna pay for it, right?

Calum Johnson 1:20:21 Mm-hmm.

Justin Welsh 1:20:21 That to me is, like, the most important thing. Marketing is ... I mean, there's so much nuance, but to me, marketing is a combination of, uh, really understanding people's biggest pains, how they articulate those pains, and then understanding what a positive future looks like. Describe-- Ask them to describe it. "If I fix this problem to you, like, what does life look like for you? What does business look like for you?" They're gonna tell you things. Use those words in your content, your copy, your emails. All the stuff that I write on social media are words other people have said to me. That is the best form of marketing in my opinion.

Calum Johnson 1:20:59 Hmm. That is, that is good. And I guess the, the process of thinking about it is like it goes back to what you were saying originally, which is businesses just solve a customer's problem. There's a point A and there's a point B, and if you can position yourself as the conduit between that point A and that point B, you're gonna sell a lot of product and it's gonna be powerful. And it's not only that you're gonna sell, it's gonna be incredibly impactful. People are gonna have a level of gratitude, a level of happiness and satisfaction in dealing with you. Um, it's powerful.

Justin Welsh 1:21:34 It's, it's powerful and it's, it's simple. It's not easy, but it's simple. Most questions I get are, "What landing page builder should I use? What course builder should I use? What tool should I use? What time should I do it? What day? How, how many followers exactly should I have then when I should launch it?" All meaningless questions for the most part, right? When you get really good, like you can-- There's some questions, yes, those things might matter, right? Um, find a problem, understand it deeply, learn how to solve it, show people that you know how to solve it, build a product or service that solves it, paint a positive future, and you'll make sales. That at its most fundamental i- is the most fundamental way to think about business, right? All that other stuff is ancillary. All that other stuff is on the side, stuff you can get really complicated and advanced with later. Most people are worried about the advanced stuff before they have the fundamentals done.

Calum Johnson 1:22:38 Hmm. Okay. You know what? I'm, I am, um, maybe my audience is getting, is sick of it at this point. I am such a big proponent and I always go back to the 80/20 principle.

Justin Welsh 1:22:53 Hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:22:54 20% of the input drives 80% of the output. The learning there is that only

Calum Johnson 1:23:00 really, like there's 20% of what you're doing that truly matters. That's where the true impact is. Here's the reason that I bring that up, and this might just be in my, in my world, in my Twitter sphere or LinkedIn sphere, whatever. You are very much like the solopreneur. I think even in your bio-

Justin Welsh 1:23:22 Mm

Calum Johnson 1:23:22 ... it says the diversified solopreneur. You're on track this year to do $2.5 million in revenue, right?

Justin Welsh 1:23:31 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:23:32 What do you have to say to the person that's like, okay, he's kind of built a, a brand and everything around being a solopreneur about doing this one-person business, and you're incredibly successful at it. But can anyone? Can they, can they follow those steps and necessarily reach that point? Or is it something, like is this solopreneur, is it almost this new reality where we're gonna be seeing a ton of one-person businesses popping up that are doing seven figures, or is it like we're gonna see a few Justin Welsh's but for most people it's not really a viable solution? What do you say to that?

Justin Welsh 1:24:19 Uh, it depends on what viable means, right? So do I think that I'm an outlier? Yeah, for sure, right? I, I, I, I never, um, market my products as like be the next me, right? 'Cause I don't know that that'll happen. In fact, I, I highly doubt that it'll happen. Um, but think about anything that you buy, right? So, uh, I don't have kids, but I can remember going to basketball camp when I was younger. My guess is that basketball camp today, two-week basketball camp probably costs 500 bucks, m- maybe more, maybe a couple thousand dollars. I have no idea what it costs, right? Probably a sizable investment. Maybe 200 kids will go. Of those 200, I don't know, maybe 20 will make their varsity team, maybe one will play college ball, and zero will go to the NBA. Like did the, did the camp not deliver on its promise, right? If they promised you NBA superstars, then it didn't deliver. Most camps are just like, "We'll teach you how to play basketball," and some of you will be fundamentally better at it than others, right? Some of you will be taller and more athletic. Like that's just how it works, right? So my goal is to go out and show people the way, right? Some of those people will try and fail. Other of those people will never try. They'll buy the course, they won't even watch it, right? And a smaller subsection of people will build six-figure business, and an even smaller subsection will build a seven-figure business, right? I have three students that I can think of out of 23,000 that have built, uh, one to $2 million businesses. It's a pretty small percentage, right? But I have at least 100 emails from people that have said, "I make 80 grand or 90 grand or 100 grand." It's not my decision to determine whether or not that's, that's viable for them, right? As a solopreneur, kind of speaking to that side, I don't know that it's right for everybody. I'm not in the camp of speaking in definitives, right? So I don't say, "Solopreneurship is the way to go." I lay it out on the table as an option. Here's why I do it. Here's what I like about it. Here are the pros. Here are the cons. Here's why it might be right for you. But maybe they should build a company. Maybe they should be a 9:00 to 5:00 employee. Maybe they should be a freelancer. I, I don't know, right? All I can do is say, "This is what I like to do, and this is how my business works, and these are the skills that I've developed, and this is how I've developed them, and this is the game plan that I've put together," and allow people to self-select in to say, "I wanna learn more about that," right? I think about every nonfiction book I've read in my life. I don't know that I can think of a single book that I've read that has had a six-figure impact on my life. I know that's probably pretty pessimistic. Maybe there are some. But most books I read, I'm like, "That's cool. That's interesting." A week later, like, my life's the same.

Calum Johnson 1:27:10 Mm.

Justin Welsh 1:27:10 So it's all about how you implement things, and that's why, to me, um, having a peer accountability community, having groups where we can get together, having live AMAs, those things are all benefits to a really robust course.

Calum Johnson 1:27:25 Mm. You know what? Let's take the, let's take the sports camp analogy one step further.

Justin Welsh 1:27:32 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:27:32 I, I said it before. I absolutely love sports, and, uh, one of the things, and I've loved to do this from an early age, is listen to these top athletes speak, whether it be interviews, um, whether it be after the games, whether it be podcasts, whatever it is. If you take-- Even if-- I remember actually listening to, to Deion Sanders say this, one of the greatest NFL corners that's ever played the game, right? And he will go to a camp, or he will go in a university and speak, and he'll say something similar to what you just said, which is, "Listen, guys. The majority of you... Not even the majority. 99.999% of you are never making the NFL."

Justin Welsh 1:28:19 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:28:19 "Probably no one in this room is gonna be a Hall of Famer and have the sort of storied career that I had. However, there is always the chance that there is

Calum Johnson 1:28:30 that one person in the room." And even when you gave the statistical, like, example of your courses, it's-- There's, there's one or two people that have made the millions-

Justin Welsh 1:28:41 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 1:28:41 ... that, like, the, the trajectory, um, while not completely replicating what you've done, but it's like-- it's similar. It's at least in that ballpark. If it was Deion Sanders at the, the football programs, maybe one player is, like, a Pro Bowler in the NFL.

Justin Welsh 1:28:58 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:28:59 And so for one second-

Justin Welsh 1:29:01 [clears throat]

Calum Johnson 1:29:01 ... what I, what I would like you to do is speak to the individual that has that ambition.

Justin Welsh 1:29:06 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:29:07 And maybe they're even doing, let's say, 100-- they've done 100K, and they're like, "I wanna get into that, that million camp, that seven-figure camp." And if you had to-- We go back to the 80/20 principle, the 20% that truly matters. You're speaking to that person, and you have to say, "Okay. Do you really wanna make it into that camp? It's incredibly exclusive. Most people never get anywhere close to it. But if you really wanna make it, this is what you do."

Justin Welsh 1:29:38 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:29:38 "This is what you focus on."

Justin Welsh 1:29:39 Different for, for everyone, but I would say there's some commonalities amongst the people who have done it. Number one is they've built a movement, [clears throat] right? So, um, if you look at my content, it's not just like, "Here's 13 steps on how to build a course," right? Or, or it's like, um, "Here are three things I learned when, you know, um, running my service business." What I'm building is a movement. It is a different way to think about work as a whole, and it all goes back to that initial thing we talked about, building your life first and your business second. As common as that sounds, I don't hear a lot of people talking about it, at least not in my-- I do now. I started talking about it in October of 2021, why solopreneurship is life first, business second. I'm building a movement, a one-person creator movement, and by getting people bought in and excited and feeling like the movement is right for them, they become more likely to purchase products and services that will help them reach the destination. That's any movement, right? That's any political movement. That's any social movement, cultural movement. If you can get people bought in... And, and by the way, I think a lot of people will hear "get people bought in" and think of that with a negative connotation. It's not negative. I believe in solopreneurship. That's how I'm building my life. That's how I'm building my business to support my life. I think more people should explore it if it's right for them. They have to make that choice. But if they opt into the movement, I hope to have customers for life 'cause I hope to move them along in this movement and get them to the journey that they're trying to-- the end of the journey that they're trying to go to. It's very hard to do. So creating that movement, right? I think the second thing is understanding people's future expectations and their desires, right? So their emotional desires. What makes them tick? What gets them excited? Where do they see themselves in the future? And being able to use that language on a regular basis to reinforce that destination. I think great marketers use future-laden, really emotional language. I think that's, that's number two. Those are, like, marketing, right? So, like, kind of push those aside. [clears throat] One really common one is doing what you've done to get to 100 grand longer, [chuckles] right? Like, people are like, "How do I get to a million?" You do the thing that got you to $100,000 longer, [chuckles] right? Especially on social media. I- my revenue has grown as my followers have grown, my impressions have grown, my subscribers have grown. It's just, it's a marathon, right? Everyone wants to sprint this marathon. It's not how it works. When you run a marathon, if you've ever watched the New York City Marathon, everyone's crowded in a huge pile in the beginning. Go to the finish line at the end, there's, like, three dudes straggling across the finish line. Everyone else is, like, left behind, right? The longer the race, the fewer the people are left at the end. So if you can continue to run the race every single day, $100,000 will become 200, will become 400, will become 600, will eventually, not, not necessarily eventually, but could eventually become a million. Are there other things that go into that? Of course. Eliminating things that don't work, automating things that help your business scale, outsourcing things that, you know, you don't have the time to do, focusing really deep on creative work, finding out how to spend a dollar to make $3. That's understanding your customer lifetime value, how much it costs to acquire your customer. There are a million different things, little nuances that go into scaling, but having that movement, painting that future language, and outlasting your competition are three that you gotta get right.

Calum Johnson 1:33:34 Yeah. Yeah. No, that, that is, that is special. And it, and it's so true what you say, which is, like, there are certain companies that transcend. They transcend even being a business. Um, we buy, I don't know, like, we buy thousands of products, but how many products do we buy where we feel like we're part of a movement? Very few, and usually those companies kind of jump to mind, right? Like, you might think about an Apple. Like, people almost take their iPhone or their Mac, like it's a part of their identity. It's part of who they are. It's a movement. It means something for me to have this Mac, more than the fact that I can go on the internet or the processing speed or features, right? It's different. Um, and it-

Justin Welsh 1:34:20 And, and I'll just say this just to, n- not to jump in, but if you think about Mac, it's 'cause they have a great product, right? They, their product is excellent, at least I think so. [clears throat] Let's take something different. I'm wearing Nikes, right?

Calum Johnson 1:34:31 Mm.

Justin Welsh 1:34:32 Um, I like the way they look. At least in my opinion, my subjective opinion, they're not the most comfortable shoes. Uh, but I bought them anyways, right? Because Nike represents something more than comfort. It represents athleticism. It's cool. It's hip. Like, there are a million different reasons why we jump on the Nike bandwagon. They're made, I think, in Indonesia or China. They probably cost five bucks to make, and they're selling them for $180 or whatever. I mean, there are a lot of other shoes that I could buy, but why do so many people buy Nike? Well, because they've created a movement over the years. Phil Knight is a marketing genius, and that movement that he built is why Nike is a multi-billion dollar business. It's not 'cause they're comfortable, not 'cause they help your basketball performance. It's none of that, right? It's movement.

Calum Johnson 1:35:25 Mm.

Justin Welsh 1:35:25 And that's why I think building movements is, it's hard, but it's worth it.

Calum Johnson 1:35:30 Yeah. You know what's interesting, actually? Like, uh, I've read, I've read his book, Shoe Dog, a couple of times, and it's interesting for me 'cause I'm, I'm 25, so I don't really have this context. But one of the things he says is, like, shoes, trainers, sneakers, it was a commodity. Like, now everyone-

Justin Welsh 1:35:48 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 1:35:48 ... you know, like, they put out a new Jordan, or they bring back one of, like, the retro Jordans, and there's people, like, queuing up around the block to get it, and it's selling out and then reselling for thousands and thousands of dollars. So we don't think about it as a commodity. It feels fundamentally different than everything else. But before Nike, like, these were really seen as commodity. It's just a shoe. It's not spec- it's, there's nothing special about it. It's just a shoe.

Justin Welsh 1:36:14 There's a million different commodity items that sell a lot because they've built a movement. So as you think about your industry or your skill, one of the things you gotta think about when building a movement is who your enemy is. This is very, a very political thing you'll see, right? [clears throat] If you look at politics in the US, and I, I'm not a big political fan, if you look at the two parties, most of what they say, not all, but most of what they say is not, "Here's what our party can do for you." Most of what they say is, "Here's why the other party is terrible," right? It's an enemy thing. It's not, "Look at me." It's, "Look at them. They're bad. Vote for us," right? All movements have an enemy, and they don't have-- That enemy doesn't have to be a person. It can be an ethos. It can be a thought process. My enemy in my movement is living a life of regret, right? So I constantly shine the light on that enemy, and I give my followers on social media a common enemy that we can all band together and, to steal from Russell Brunson, throw rocks at, right? We're gonna defeat the enemy together, and that is part of the movement. That is a huge piece of movement building that I think a lot of people miss.

Calum Johnson 1:37:38 Yeah. No, that's interesting. Okay. Here's, here's where I wanna end. Um- There's a conversation sometimes that, like, I al- I almost have to hold myself honest. And the thing that I'm holding myself honest on is, like, I think that in life we kind of, we have to experience a certain level of, like, pain, right? And, and suffering so that we have the realizations. There's this thing, um, I remember LeBron said it, "Experience is the greatest teacher." Sometimes me putting my hand to that fire and, like, feeling that pain, it's what creates that trigger in my brain like, "I'm not gonna do that again."

Justin Welsh 1:38:19 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:38:19 That said, how much unnecessary suffering, pain do we put ourselves through?

Justin Welsh 1:38:26 [laughs]

Calum Johnson 1:38:27 And as I'm thinking about that in my mind, it reminds me of something that you said at the beginning of that conversation, of our conversation, which is in 2018 was when you had your first panic attack-

Justin Welsh 1:38:39 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 1:38:39 ... right?

Justin Welsh 1:38:39 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:38:42 And it could have been avoided. It could have been avoided if you had had, like, just maybe a moment of stillness, maybe just a moment of peace, of being removed from that situation, that point where everything felt urgent and it had to be done at, right at that second. Maybe if you just had a bit of perspective it could have been avoided, and that day and that suffering could have been avoided. And so where my mind goes is you're kind of, you're on a completely different trajectory now, right? You've got the, the one-person business. You've got the business that not only is it making money, but you've stayed true. You've stayed true to the ethos of life first and then business. And so this is the question that I, I had for you. If the Justin Welsh that's sitting in front of me now could go to the Justin in 2018, pre-panic attack, pre that day, pre the unnecessary suffering, what would that conversation be?

Justin Welsh 1:39:50 Hmm. Um, well, I th- I'm gonna read between the lines here and guess at what you might be asking, and I'll also answer your question. It sounds like what you might be asking is if that could have been avoided, would I have chosen to avoid it? That might not be the question you're asking, but that's the way I took it, and so I'll just say this. If I go back to my, myself, I would say, "Hey, you're about to experience something very life-changing. Lean into it." I wouldn't wish it away. [clears throat] I agree that experience is the best teacher. I like the fact that you, you quoted it from LeBron. That's very funny. Um, I like that. He's a-- I'm a Cleveland guy, so good, good-

Calum Johnson 1:40:37 [laughs]

Justin Welsh 1:40:37 ... good on him. Um, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't wish it away. I wouldn't have wished a different... There's no point in wishing away pain that leads to growth and success. Could you imagine going back and wishing away your most difficult workouts? Could you imagine going back in time and [clears throat] wishing away the heartbreak from, uh, a former girlfriend if you ended up marrying somebody else? Like, my heart was broken when I was 29 years old. I ended up marrying a better woman. Like, if I went away and wished-- If I went back and wished all the pain and suffering away from my life, then all the good things that I have wouldn't be there. So [clears throat] I, I'm glad my life turned out the way it did. I think everybody that I know that is successful, maybe not everybody, but I think a big majority of them, have experienced rock bottom. They've experienced addiction, have experienced the loss of a loved one, have experienced the loss of a limb. Like, I have friends who have experienced some of the toughest stuff, and those, those guys and gals are the most successful. So [clears throat] I don't know that it's necessary, uh, but it's certainly helpful.

Calum Johnson 1:41:56 Mm-hmm. I love that as a place to end. Justin Welsh, thank you so much for coming on, man.

Justin Welsh 1:42:00 Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Calum Johnson 1:42:02 So before we get out of here, I had to leave you guys with one last gem. That's the sponsor of today's show, Free Agency. Free Agency represents and manages talent in the tech industry. They do this by providing you with a dedicated talent agent that will help you find and win top of market roles. That talent agent is your career quarterback. They understand you and your career goals, they help you get interviews at the firms that you want, and they help you land the salary that works for you. So go to the link in the description, check out Free Agency. Thank me later. Peace.