Justin Welsh Shares His Secrets To Make $200,000, Add 100k Twitter Followers, & Capture 30k Emails In 5 Months

Welcome to the Digital Writing podcast where we talk about using writing to capture, keep and monetize attention. If you're looking to build an audience, start a business and scale yourself online, you're in the right spot. What's going on, everyone? We got Justin Welsh in the house and we're going to kick it off. We had Justin here five months ago, February 24th. Justin, what has happened since then? You've taken over Twitter. You're crushing it there. You launched an entire product basically on the back of our call last time. And we'll link to that in the replay video of this. But talk to us about the last five months, what's been going on?

So Twitter has. I've definitely figured out Twitter a little more than what I knew at the time. I think when I was here in February, I probably had around 45 or 50,000 followers. And I'm about to cross 153,000 today. So five months later, extra 100k. That's been super fun. A lot of interesting learnings. You know, I think as you mentioned, you know, I kind of walked through my templatizing system when I was here the first time, not expecting that people would find that to be all that interesting. Turns out people did find it to be interesting. Put together a course called the Content os. I can talk a little bit. It's actually, it's going through its V2 update right now. So anyone who has purchased that course or who does purchase that course will get a new update in the next 30 days. But I launched that in March after our our little time in February. And that's done $212,950 in four months. And so that's been pretty awesome in terms of digital courses. So adding on to make that really robust. So in the next 30 days, I'll re release that and it'll have a bunch more new sort of operating systems that I'm using now that I have a newsletter and things like that that I think will be really relevant to people.

Incredible. I would love to. So one thing I would really like to dig into, I mean, growing as much as you have. So let's see for context. Between our last call and now, you've added about a hundred thousand on Twitter in that same amount of time. Dickie and I flipped. So you started focusing on Twitter and we started focusing on LinkedIn. And I think both Dickie and I started right around like a thousand, two thousand real nothing. And we're both like right at 30,000. So we're growing pretty well, on LinkedIn. That's amazing. I think, you know, thanks to you. You introduced us to us and kind of showed us the ropes, but you've outpaced that by like more than double on Twitter. And so I think it'd be really helpful for people. Like what were some of the things that you've discovered over the past five months that have cause you were growing consistently before, but there's definitely been big uptick. So what are some of the things that you've noticed?

Yeah, so a couple of different things. I'm actually just pulling up some notes that I think will be helpful to reference. So I'm writing about this. It'll be my newest newsletter will come out Tomorrow morning at 8 o' clock Central time. And it's how to add your first 5,000 Twitter followers. But I think essentially what I write in that article is not too dissimilar from how I've added all of my Twitter followers. I just think I had to pick an arbitrary number. So I picked 5,000. But essentially there are a few different things that I think are really important that I'm seeing. What. Which is the first one I screwed up for a really long time. I used to have like a profile where I was like, I was a former CRO at this company and the company grew really fast. And like I thought that was interesting to people, but it didn't really tell people why they should follow me. Cause I was leaning on my former sort of certifications and experience and then talking about something totally different. Former CRO at Patient Bop. And now I'm talking about how to build a one person business. So those two things weren't connecting. And I see that a lot where people try and jam their bio fix filled with like what they might think of as social proof. And what I started to do was started to play around with my profile and think about how can I build my profile out so that it gives a really compelling reason for people to actually follow me. Because Twitter is not really just about content. It's also about like getting the right content in front of the right people and then giving them a compelling reason to actually click follow. Because there's a lot of people whose content I stumble across three or four or five times and never choose to follow them because their profile doesn't really tell me why I should. And so I broke down what I think are the three most important things in a Twitter profile. The first one being very optional. Although Cole, you and I have talked about it, which is like claiming your stake that first one, which is like, I'm the diversified solopreneur. That's just my stake. I'm claiming that I'm the solopreneur, the one person business who has five different or six different revenue streams underneath my umbrella there are other people who are doing those things, but I'm claiming that name and that moniker. And so I come out and state that's who am. That's what my business is all about. The second thing that I think is really important on the profile, at least in my opinion, is to actually tell people what you're working on. So like what are you doing right now? What's your project? What's your journey? What are you working on? So I have mine as I'm building a portfolio of one person businesses to 5 million in revenue. I hope that's interesting to the right person. So I'm the diversified solopreneur who's building a diversified building a portfolio of one person businesses to 5 million. And then the last thing is, what can people expect if they follow you? So being very explicit about what it is that you actually talk about. And so I just write tweets and threads about audience and business growth. So altogether it's the diversified solopreneur building a portfolio of one person businesses to 5 million in revenue tweets and threads about audience and business growth. So that's who I am, what I'm working on and what you can expect if you follow me. And I think since doing that, I've definitely seen an uptick in terms of the velocity at which I've grown. Cause I just think I'm being a little bit more clear. So that, I mean that pretty common sense, right? For probably most people, yeah.

But what I love about that, and I just to double click here is obviously the benefit of naming and claiming your niche, you know. And I do think that whether you stumbled upon it or it was a super conscious thing, probably an element of both. Just more and more we're all noticing this tailwind of I want to build my own thing, you know. So solopreneur, just as a mega category, is huge. And so you doing what you're doing, like are clearly riding that tailwind, which is just amazing. But the second is, which I don't know that I thought as much about, but that second piece of telling people what you're working on right now, I think just to clarify what makes that interesting is when someone clicks on your profile and goes, that's what I want too, you know. So you saying I'm Building this is cool and that's interesting, but it's compelling when it's the same thing that your target reader goes, well, I also want a portfolio. You know what I mean?

100%. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I try and think about my profile like a landing page, where it's like everything above the fold has to be so clear and explicit because I think people try. And I've said this before on different, like, podcasts or probably with you guys before, but, like, people try and get so interesting and clever. There's like, very much a want to be very naval or Sahil Lavinia or Jack Butcher esque, where, like, you know, and by the way, they've all earned the ability to treat their Twitter profile the way that they do, which is like, you know, very philosophical, very challenging, very making me think differently and drastically from the way that I think most of us haven't earned that. So, like, being wildly interesting or ironic is just unclear for the most part. Right. And so I always encourage people to just try not to be too. I guess interesting is the best word. Just try and be direct about what it is that you're doing right now and what. What it is that people can expect, because the human brain is wired to avoid confusion. And so if somebody comes to your profile and it's, like, not immediately clear what it is that you do, that you just might lose a additional 5% of people who might otherwise follow you. And across a million impressions over time, that's pretty significant.

Yeah, all those little things definitely add up over time. I'm really curious, too. I actually have pulled my own observations from you, but I would love for you to share is in the actual tweets themselves. What are some of the new structures or what are some of the differences that you've. You've made? Because I've. I've been reading your stuff pretty closely because I love. I think you're, you know, one of the. One of the people kind of at the top of this game right now. And I love learning from you as well. And I've noticed how your Twitter has changed in five months. So I'm curious what things have been conscious for you.

Yeah, I think one thing is I've been trying to be. I've been trying to sort of be both more educational but also deepen trust with the audience, because Twitter, the way that the platform is built, is mostly built for platitudes because it's 280 characters or less. So it becomes really hard to be, like, extremely educational or instructional in 280 characters or less. But I try and do that by having sort of a structure that I approach the day with, which is in the morning, I try and give a really small tip, and that's usually a tip that can be read in less than 280 characters. So one tweet. So an example might be like, I've tweeted 217 days in a row. I've added 53,000 followers. Here are four short takeaways during that time period. Takeaway one, takeaway two. Takeaway three, takeaway four. Right. Short tip. One tweet. Not extremely deep or extremely granular, but very high level to see. And what I'm really looking for is, is this particular tip or topic interesting to people? So that's generally what I'm doing in the morning in my second tweet of the morning. Often what I'm bringing is a listicle. Why? Cheap, easy wins sometimes. Like, here are seven books I like. Here are six things that I would do. Here are four steps to this. Here are eight, you know, observations I've made. So generally I'll bring like a listicle. What I'm usually looking for is not like incredible follower growth. I don't really care about that. When I'm tweeting, what I'm really doing is testing the water to figure out what's working and what. What's resonating. And then what I'll do is I'll take a look back over those 10 tweets or 15 tweets over the course of one week, and two to three will stick up, stick, you know, head and shoulders above the rest, and I'll turn those into threads. And when I turn those into threads, I already know that the topic itself is interesting. And if I go deeper and more granular on that specific topic, there are two things that will happen. One, it's likely to go pretty not viral, but it's likely to get a lot of attention because the topic has already been vetted through the group. But the second thing is because I share so much more at a granular and tactical level in the thread that that also helps accelerate the thread itself. And so what I've been able to do is create more threads, and those threads have gone and become more popular. And I'm gaining sometimes 10,000 followers a day on a thread day. And that's been the real fuel and growth behind, you know, the last five months. Multiple threads.

Yeah, I want to just, just to make this super conscious for everyone here, I want us to share My screen on this briefly, because this. This was. Has been one of my biggest takeaways from. From your Twitter content is realizing that in one tweet, if you really compress it down, you can essentially fit an entire article into one tweet. And all you're doing, like, if you really just, you know, break, like, what's happening under the hood, this is like the intro of an article. These are all the main points, and then this is your conclusion. And what we talk about in ship 30, we call it lean writing, where, you know, you start small and then you expand it. This is just exactly what you're talking about, is if. If you see a standalone tweet that works like this, the obvious next step is make it a thread, and each one of these is. Is its own tweet, and all you're doing is just expanding it. But the. The almost mental framework that I've been really interested in watching your content has been, what are all the different ways that I can do this? How can I compress an entire article into one tweet? Whereas I feel like the year before Dickie, you know, like, our whole focus was always on threads, and I was always thinking in threads, you know, but watching you, Justin, now it's like, okay, I've got threads figured out. How do I do the entire arc of that in literally one tweet?

Yeah, for sure. I'll actually. It. Would it be okay if I shared my screen really fast and just kind of show a couple things?

Last time we did this, everyone's jaws hit the floor. So I'm ready. I'm ready for it this time.

Cool. Awesome. I just lost you guys on Zoom. We pull you back up. Are you guys there? Okay, my Zoom screen is hidden somewhere. I don't know where the hell it just disappeared to, but whatever. Hold on. I cannot actually.

Sometimes it goes to, like, the bottom left.

Yeah, where the heck did that just go? Hold on. What the heck? All right, I'm gonna drop off and just come right back. Sorry, guys.

Don't worry one second.

We'll figure it out. But, yeah, I. This has been the biggest game changer for even my own content. Dickie, I've seen you do the same thing, which is I used to think of standalone tweets as, like, totally pointless, and I was all focused on threads, and now in the past few months, I've really over rotated and been like, yeah, okay, I do my one or two threads a week, but how do I compress a whole thread into one tweet and then how do I do that two times a day?

It's really funny. And I. I think I can share my screen as we keep talking about this. Cause I have five examples from this on my ILO that we can pull up of that exact thing. I'm just now realizing it too.

Cool.

I'm back.

Cool.

Awesome. Guys can hear me. Yep. All right. Sorry about that. I don't know what the heck just happened. I will show you a couple different examples of some things that I've been doing that I think are really helpful. So, okay, so, like, here's an example of that tweet I was just talking about. So In May, on May 16th of 2022, I tweeted, and I was like, hey, I've tweeted 217 days in a row and added 93,000 followers. Here are four simple lessons that I learned, and they're very, very simple lessons. And so I assumed that, you know, this might be relatively popular, but it was more popular than I thought. And so as soon as I did this, I thought, okay, well, this is a really easy thread to write because I've already got four different things, and there's probably three to five other things that I could add to this to make it more robust. So about a month later, in June, I just wrote something similar. Right. A growing Twitter audience is an asset to any Entrepreneur. I've added 121,000 followers. Here are seven dead simple things I did in this tweet. In and of itself. You know, 434 retweets, 48 quote tweets, 3100 likes. These are the ways that I'd just write like a single tweet as a test and then turn it into an actual thread. But this is all under the umbrella of something that is a bit deeper. And this is what's going into the new content operating system. And again, if you own that course, you'll get it. You know, there's no extra cost or anything. So this is something that I've been putting together for the last four months that has been working for me. So. So, well. Um, so it's called essentially, I call it the Content Brain. Cause I don't have a better name for it right now. Um, and I was trying to think about, like a. A main hub for creating content. For those of you who don't know, I write a newsletter every Saturday that goes out to 36,000 people. And writing a newsletter is. Can be pretty time consuming, especially if you're creating also 10 to 15 pieces of LinkedIn content. 10 to 15 pieces of Twitter content interacting every day. And also I run an advising business for early stage SaaS companies. So there's not a lot of time in the day. So I have this thing called the content brain. And would it be helpful if I walk through it? Cole and Dickie, or go for it?

Yes, let's do it. Cool.

So on my calendar I carve out two 30 minute blocks a week for strictly ideation. So I might. So you'll see like idea capture here. And there's just a few ideas in this old one that I have, but if you go to my new one, that's starting to flow a bit longer. Right. So like how to maximize LinkedIn for your side hustle. Five newsletters that I never miss. How I wrote a sales email that made a certain amount of money. Five life changing pieces of advice from top creators. I just keep track of my ideas here in Notion in a, in a step one idea capture. So if I'm walking with my wife and I have a great idea, I just open up notion on my phone, I add it, but I really try and carve out two 30 minute blocks a week where I'm just ideating. And the way that I ideate is I look through all my curated newsletters. I go to YouTube channels that are relevant to me and I sort them by most popular videos to least popular. I know the most popular videos are about topics that the audience cares about. So I'll rip some of those topics. I'll look at what's going well on Twitter and LinkedIn. Anything that sparks my interest, I just dump three to five ideas in here. And this list starts to get pretty long. Every Monday I choose a topic. So for example, this Monday you can see I chose, you know, how to get your first 5,000 Twitter followers. And so I just chose that there's no re like just completely at random. I'm just like, I want to write about that this week. And so once I choose those things, I go out and say, okay, I have an idea of how I would get 5,000 Twitter followers because I've done it. But there are probably also ideas that other people have that support my idea might be in in addition to the ideas that I have. So the second step that I do is I just do some research. I drop a couple of tweets, couple quotes, maybe a book, maybe an article into my notion document that supports, you know, the topic that I'm going to write about. So at the end of two steps, I have a newsletter topic And I have a few pieces of research that support what I'm going to write about. Once I have those two things, I open up my newsletter template. Here is the typeshare template that I use, which is the how to do something template for those of you who subscribe to my newsletter. It's the same template every week. Probably don't notice it, but it's literally the same every week. Like every single issue is the same template. But that's okay, because what you're looking for is the knowledge you're not looking for, whether it's written in the same way. But I introduce a problem that most people have, I introduce the way that most people handle that problem in the wrong way. And then I introduce three to five steps of how I might think about handling the problem in a different way. So that's, that's basically it. So I, I start writing my newsletter and I just follow this template. I've gotten fast enough where I can usually pick an idea, do a little bit of research, and complete my newsletter in 60 to 90 minutes. So that's getting pretty fast. And therefore I am done with my Saturday newsletter on Monday, which is helpful. Usually before lunch, I'll usually eat lunch, do do some other things and then I'll come back and push it through for editing questions. Have you added appropriate visuals? Is it concise, grammar corrected and understandable? Did I stick to the topic, reduce going on tangents and deliver what's promised in the headline and then go through my draft and add all the relevant links to the things that I'm linking to? So once I've pushed it through those four questions, I generally feel like it's in a pretty good. It's in pretty good shape. I might re edit it a few days down the road. When I think of some things, the next thing I do is I write what's called my pre newsletter cta. So my pre newsletter CTA is just in this template. An opening line, a contextual statement for takeaways. And then Tomorrow I'll show 36,141 people. You can see that today on my profile right here.

I was, I was hoping you were going to show this. Sorry, Justin, I want to, I want to pause here. Everyone, I want to say this and be very clear. Justin, you are the single best person on the Internet driving people to your newsletter right now.

It is growing pretty fast.

Yeah, I mean, for a reason. I pull up, pull up the post that you did today to show people to subscribe to your newsletter. Because I want to Point this out.

So, like any. Yeah, yeah, Here you go.

This, this is what is worth double clicking on. Because every person who has a newsletter, goes to Twitter, goes to LinkedIn or goes wherever and says, subscribe to my newsletter. And what you do, Justin, that I think is so painfully obvious but brilliant is before that link is a valuable tweet, right? Like, anyone can add 5,000 Twitter followers. Here's how. 1, 2, 3, 4. Oh, and by the way, tomorrow I'm going to expand this tweet into a whole newsletter, right? It's so simple. But, like, nobody does that. And you created the template for that. And I just want to say, like, that that has been amazing to watch what you've created.

Thanks, man. Thanks. I'll. I'll show you a couple of interesting things. So that, that is right here, right? That's this template pre newsletter cta. And I write it right after I've written my newsletter because it's still fresh in my mind. And so it's easy for me to craft this up, right? The next thing that I do is I write my post newsletter cta, which is, okay, Friday is the pre newsletter. Saturday the newsletter comes out. Sunday is the post newsletter. So it's like another sort of interesting standalone tweet or LinkedIn post. And it's like yesterday, 36,411 people learned this thing. Did you miss the issue? Grab it here. And I'll actually link to my website into the issue that people missed. And that'll bring people and de platform them off of LinkedIn and Twitter gives them options. They can subscribe to my newsletter if they like the issue. They can look at my products and services, so on and so forth. I think the next four are probably where it gets really, really fun. So once I have a newsletter topic picked. So, for example, how to gain 5,000 Twitter followers in 90 days, how to network online, how to be more productive each week. Doesn't really matter what the topic is. I have a topic. And once you have a topic, it's so much easier to write about that topic because you're not like, what do I write about today? You've got it. The question you want to ask yourself is, in what format do you want to write about that topic? So I open up step seven, and the next thing that I do is I turn the newsletter topic into a story. And so, for example, a story to me has five parts. Pain, agitation, intrigue, positive, future, and solution. So I'll write the story, each part of the story underneath the subheading and that keeps me on pace and so I can very easily turn the newsletter topic into a story. Once I've in, the story goes on LinkedIn because Twitter's too short for stories, but LinkedIn loves a good story. So like, this is the framework that I use and this comes out and I'll show you in a minute. Then I write an observation. What's something interesting that I noticed in gaining 5,000 Twitter followers over 90 days? Then a contrarian take. What's a commonly held belief about this? That's wrong. So what do most people say about gaining 5,000 Twitter followers in 90 days? That I think is wrong. Pretty easy for me to think of something, write it down, get an idea, then a listicle. What are six pieces of software you should be aware of if you're growing 5,000 Twitter followers in 90 days? Right. What are the four best accounts to follow if you want to grow your Twitter following fast? What are the three best blog articles to read about growing your. Like, whatever. Right. Just throw something onto paper and just get some ideas down. Right. It's all about kind of ideation still. And then present versus future. I also like past versus present, which is like in 2015, this is how you added Twitter followers. The game has changed in 2022. This is how you add Twitter followers. Whatever. Right? Just like, same thing about like productivity. 2010, this is what it meant to have a more productive week. 2022, this is now how. What it means to have a more productive week. Whatever, right? Just juxtapos, juxtaposing. Excuse me, you know, a couple different years. So once I've done that, I've got five pieces of content, or if I want to write two stories, two observations, two listicles. I've got 10 pieces of content and now I have a newsletter, a pre newsletter, CTA, a post newsletter, CTA and five to 10 pieces of original content.

Right, that's. That's interesting. I didn't really realize that it was. You have your one kind of guiding topic for the week and then all your social content is in some way a tangent of that one North Star for that week.

But I also. Actually, I don't think you publish all those at the same time. Right. So it's. You generate all this and then they go into drafts. So it's not. You basically you take it, squeeze all the juice out of it, and then spread that juice across 12 weeks.

That's right. It's a hub. It's a. It's a hub and spoke model. So the newsletter acts as the Hub and the story observation thread, Contrarian, Take past, first, present, and Listicle all act as the spokesperson. But what I don't want to do is I don't want to be like, here's how to gain 5,000 Twitter followers and then for one consecutive week, write about the same topic and then switch. I think that's boring. It's like, by Thursday, people are like, dude, we get it. We understand how to get 5,000 Twitter followers, right? You've been harping on this for four straight days, so that would be boring. So I don't do that. I'll show you how I do publishing here in a moment, but once I've done writing, I actually turn it into a thread template. So I'll take the actual newsletter itself, and I will copy and paste it into my publishing tool, and then I will remove all the clutter, add headlines, and turn it into a thread. So if you go into my publishing tool, you know, and you take a look at whatever, I think tomorrow or some other days here soon, maybe next Tuesday, I actually have a thread, right? I've got, you know, 55 pieces of content queued up, which is helpful when you. So here's like, a thread coming up right here. This is six months ago, I was doing this. Here's a picture of my calendar. Here's a picture of that hub and spoke that I just showed you. This thread that's coming out on Tuesday, August 2, is this newsletter issue that I'm literally showing you right now, right? There's my calendar up here. Here's the hub and spoke. It's this newsletter issue copied and pasted into Twitter and turned into a thread. But this came out three weeks ago. And by the time I release that, there will be four, three to four weeks in between the newsletter and the thread itself. And therefore, people will forget. People haven't seen it, so on and so forth. So, thread template, once the threads published, I capture it and turn it into a LinkedIn carousel. And then my publishing is here. So, all right, pre newsletter, CTA on Friday, newsletter on Saturday, post newsletter on Sunday. The story comes the following Monday. The listicle is two Tuesdays from now. The thread four Tuesdays, the observation, three Wednesdays. So I stagger everything over six to 12 weeks. And because each piece of content is related to the hub, it always allows me to link back to that thing. And on LinkedIn, people are like, LinkedIn hates links. I found a way where they don't. At least you get like a 20% reduction, but I get a 600% click through rate improvement. So it's like really, really valuable. And you can see that playing out in my website analytics. So if you look at this year, you can see, you know, 315,000 unique website visitors in seven months. And that's just one person, very little SEO. It's just all from LinkedIn and Twitter, right? 119,000 views, 61,000. And especially this most recent sort of last 30 days, you can see the visitors improvements here. And that's because I've been running this hub and spoke model. So every day on LinkedIn, I'm like, here's a story. Do you want to learn more? Come read this old newsletter issue that it's related to. And so I'm just deplatforming every single day, improving the visitors to my website. And they're there to buy products and services. And so the website, the traffic itself has gotten massive daily. So these are new newsletter signups every day. And it's way up from like, I know this is just recent, but back in the day, I used to get about 70 to 80 signups a day, and now I'm at a steady 200 to 400 every day because I'm de Platforming more.

What I love about this is.

It.

Is the solution to the fact that social platforms are a bit of a. They're a grind, you know, and so it's a hamster wheel. And so by doing this where it's kind of like when you're in that head space and you're already thinking about one thing, but breaking it out and scheduling things to like weeks and weeks in advance, you're always guaranteeing that someone's finding their way back to something that you wrote six months ago. And the compounding on that is amazing.

That's right. And then the really nice thing about it is when I write five to ten pieces of content that are all related to the newsletter and I stagger them out, those all become my morning pieces of content for Twitter and LinkedIn. Then what I do is, especially on LinkedIn, I go into Shield Analytics. I go one year back, and all my afternoon content on LinkedIn is what I posted last year on the same day. That's it. I mean, I've got 150,000 or 100,000 more LinkedIn followers than I did at this point last year. So a most of the followers won't remember. It's 12 months later. I don't even remember what I did yesterday. Right. I've got a hundred thousand new followers who have never seen it. And of those people who were following me then, a lot of them probably never even saw it. Anyways, so I've got a new piece of content in the morning, a repeat piece of content in the afternoon, and then sometimes I position my content at midnight or 8:30pm to hit the Indian and European market. Because now I'm offering purchase price parity on my website. And so I'm getting a bunch of folks from around the world buying my courses at a steep discount.

That is a very. It's very rare. It's very rare that we come across a framework that's like, whoa, we. We should definitely play with this. This is amazing. I appreciate you sharing this with everyone. This is so cool.

Yeah, of course it's going to be all in the content operating system. You know, if you, if you own it, it'll all be there in the next 30 to 45 days.

So.

Cool.

I'm trying to think about the next question because all I want to go do is like, end this call and go back through all my analytics and tweets and things, generate all these ideas. But this is amazing. And it just, it. It shows that this is a. This is a game that the people who do the deepest thinking about how to play it well are the ones.

Who are going to win. Yeah, right there.

There are a lot of spray and pray or, you know, this is. I'm just kind of trying to figure it out. But the amount of intentional thought that you've put into these systems is why you're growing quicker than everyone else. It's not a. It's not a game or it's not a guessing game. Right. You figure out one thing that works and you're like, how do I bolt this onto my system that's already working? And your feedback loop is just.

It's rapid. Yeah. There are two things that are important to me. One is I think of it as a game. And so, you know, having played video games growing up, I'm like, how do you figure this out? Like, what's a cheat code? Right? Like, how do you, like, manipulate the game so that you win more frequently? Number one. And then number two, it's also a business. And so since I have a bunch of different businesses that require a lot of time, I think one thing people don't do, and myself included, I'm just getting better at it now is being cognizant of when something's difficult. So when I sit down at my computer and I'm like, this is really hard to do. This particular thing that I'm trying to do. The next question I've become accustomed to asking myself is, is there a framework or system that makes this easier for me? And so what this came out of was a conversation with Dan Ko where I was sitting down being like, dude, I'm struggling to take the newsletter issue I have in my head and kind of turn it into content. He's like, well, here's how I do it. And I was like, oh, that's not how I would do it, but that's a good way to get me thinking about how to build a system. And so I opened up Notion and I was like, how would I do this? And so I just figured out my own system and built it into Notion. So each Monday I wake up and know exactly what I'm doing.

And that is why it's going to resonate with so many people like us. And a lot of people watching this video is they're facing the same problem. And I think that's a huge takeaway for anyone building digital products on the Internet is if you are solving your own problem first and then putting your solution on the Internet, it just goes and finds all those exact people who have that same problem. So that's kind of the more macro takeaway here, is that scratch your own itch, figure out your own problem, start doing something where you're going to identify problems, solve them for yourself, distill it, share it. Right. It's no secret on that front either.

And the value isn't for everyone who's here. The value isn't doing what I do. The value is thinking through your own challenges and problems through a similar lens. So it's not about copying me or Dickie or Nicholas or anybody. It's just thinking about like, okay, I don't want to copy their framework, or maybe you do. It doesn't matter to me. But it's like, how do I start to think about building frameworks that work for you personally? And just like Dan shared his framework with me, I was like, that doesn't work for me. It's not the way I think. But it did prompt me to start thinking about building my own. And I think that's what's really valuable, especially when we're all really busy.

Yeah. Yeah, it is not a just copy paste. Like, that's exactly right now. Now I'm gonna go re watch the recording of this and be like, how do I invent my own content brain? You know, that's. That's the. The takeaway. I'm curious too, Justin. Well, the last thing I want to double click on is your queue had, you know, 50 plus posts in it. So you can see a world where you work so far ahead that you're like, I could seriously take six months off and nothing about my machine changes, you know, that. That I think is a really powerful unlock as well. But I'm curious, like, fast forward a year, you know, say you triple everything. What changes for you?

I disappear. No, I'm just kidding.

Argentina.

Phone goes in the lake, I do a wave emoji and you never see me again. No, I think you raise a good point. Sure. I could get six months ahead. The interesting thing is because I tweet a lot and because I write on LinkedIn a lot, those queues deplete pretty fast. So there always is this urgency to go back and fill those queues up. But ultimately, I'm not really trying to scale my revenue. You know, I'll do. I'll have my best revenue year this year by 2x. And I think the average business owner might say, well, then how do i2x that the next year? I have no interest in doing that. If my revenue stays the same in 23, 24 and 25 as it is in 22, I'll be very, very happy, especially if I can do it working less. So where it goes from here, Cole, to answer your question, is trying to figure out how to implement processes and systems similar to the one that I just showed you in other areas and aspects of my business to reduce the amount of time that I spend doing the work that powers the revenue. That's sort of the big focus for me. And then secondarily, it's opening up new distribution channels for the business, not to make more money, but to diversify and de risk the current channels.

Yeah. Is there, is there a platform you're paying attention to? Like, if you were to scale to a third one? What are you thinking about?

Pen on paper?

Get around paper.

Potentially awesome.

Do it. Yeah, do it. I mean, the next logical step is for you to go through, look at all your most popular content, group it all together and publish a book, you know?

Yeah, that's a potential one. I've considered tinkering around with other platforms like YouTube and TikTok and things like that, but I'm not super interested in doing that. And so I'm thinking about a book. I'm thinking about, I don't know, maybe trying to find a different written platform. I don't really know. I haven't really thought it too deeply, but if I Do write a book, Cole. I'll ping you. I know you're the guy for that.

Whenever you're ready, I'm ready.

I mean, the beauty of what you're doing too is the second you decide to go to YouTube, though, you have a billion ideas. What I think a lot of people get caught up in is like, oh, I've done all this writing, but like, I can't go to YouTube because what am I going to do there? I'm like, you, you just take what worked on your writing and you turn them into videos.

Read it. Read it out loud.

Just read it out loud. Pretty much, right? There's no need to overcome, like us going from Twitter to LinkedIn. It was put what worked on Twitter over on LinkedIn and, and then. But the nuance is the content doesn't change, but your tactics will change. So you learn the intricacies of the platform. Like, if you go to YouTube, you probably are going to learn how to create thumbnails that go to click through or get someone's attention in the first 30 seconds. But you can learn those rules of the game in two weeks, three weeks. And you're the best example is like, go talk to the people who are doing it well and just look at what they're doing and then take the tactics from them and apply your own content. And that's the easiest way to grow.

I had this hypothesis that if I went on Instagram and simply took a picture of my tweets and posted them on Instagram, it would be the same account as my Twitter account. What's the purpose of going to my Instagram account if they're just screenshots of tweets on a different platform? But lo and behold, other people like to be on Instagram, not Twitter. And therefore I'm meeting my audience where they, where they play. And I gained 3,000 followers in four weeks, just screenshotting tweets and then pairing them up with LinkedIn posts that were quasi relevant, you know, and that was, that was it. And I stopped because I didn't actually like doing it all that much. Maybe I'll do it again down the road. But I just wanted to prove a point to myself that like, content is so repurposable and so people are like, this is the best stuff. And I'm like, these are tweets that have been on my account for a while. You can just go follow me on Twitter. But they're like, no, we're on Instagram. I was like, great, awesome.

I think the root of that Belief is most of us think we're far more important than we really are. And so when we're scared to repeat ourselves or repost something, it's because we're assuming that everyone is looking at every single word we write, scouring it just to wait to say, hey, Justin, I've seen you talk about solopreneurship before. You know, I can't believe you did that again. But in reality, one, people aren't paying that much attention. And two, I love this quote from Alex Hormozi, which is, we need to be reminded far more than we need to be taught. And when you recognize that your audience really just needs to hear the same idea again and again and again hammered home, you get a little bit more comfortable sharing it, too.

Totally. I had a guy named Scott Baer on LinkedIn Write to me the other day on a post, like, in public, and said, this is like the 10th time I've read this very specific thing. But for some reason, it resonated with me this time. And I bought your course today. Just want you to know that I've read this 10 times, and today was the day that I decided to pick up your course. And I was like, awesome. And then there's other times people write and they're like, I've seen this post before. And it's like, congratulations, you're the winner. Right? So, like, the other 900 people commenting on it seem to enjoy it. So, like, I will take. Instead of letting that one little thing like, you know, irritate you or give you doubt about, you know, repurposing, I'm just like, you know, it's an 800 to 1 ratio. I think we'll be all. I think I'll be all right.

Yeah, be careful attending to the vocal minority.

Yes.

I've learned that over time, something that I don't find very many people talk about. I've been writing on the Internet for a long time, so I've seen a lot of these cycles play out. But endurance is a differentiator. You know, like that person going, oh, I had to hear it 10 times. You know, there's a lot of creators that start and even get popular for a year or two, and then they stop. And so think about all the people that were following and reading up to that point, but hadn't hit that. I saw it 10 times, and I decided to buy, you know, milestone. If you're one of those people that goes, I'm going to be doing this for a decade, all of a sudden, that in itself is a differentiator because everyone else, you know, peaked and burned out, peaked and quit, peaked and stopped taking it seriously. So I feel like, Justin, you're. I mean, you're already growing quickly, but the longer you do it right, the more. The more and more you just start to swallow the whole. The whole market. It's awesome.

Yeah. It's also really cool to have two different channels. So I have LinkedIn and Twitter, where in LinkedIn I started in late 2018. I failed pretty hard, and then I started again in early 2019 with a commitment to consistency. But I was on LinkedIn for two and a half years, almost three years, building my following, and I finally released some projects, products, excuse me, and the first one, I had been on LinkedIn at least two years before I released my first product. And so I started to make money off of the platform. And when I came over to Twitter in October of last year, I was making money through my primary channel. So there was no urgency to play this, like, short transactional game on Twitter where I'm like, hi, I'm Justin, I'm new and here's all my content and buy my stuff, because I knew that that would be just a waste of time. So I haven't sold anything on Twitter. I mean, people have found my courses through my profile and things like that. But I haven't written a single sales post on Twitter in 10 months. And I don't intend to because I don't need to, because I have a channel that's older and that I've earned the right to do that within LinkedIn. And so I'll grow my Twitter following, do a half a million before I ever say I even have anything for sale. And then that'll become a new channel for revenue. And at that same time, I'll explore another new channel for growth. And then three years later, I'll monetize. And so I'm thinking about the long game versus trying to be as transactional like I see a lot of other folks maybe trying to do right.

I think there's a lot to take away on that. One of the endurance and thinking in five years. But so I want to transition quickly to. We don't want to take too much more time, but we are rolling something out via typeshare with new creator template packs, and we partner with Justin to roll out the very first one. So, Cole, you want to share your screen and we can kind of talk through this because this was inspired a bit by our conversations earlier. And Justin is the best example of someone who has put these templates into practice and is using them well. So, Cole, why don't you talk about what this is, and then we can jam on how people can kind of check it out.

Yeah, really, the idea behind this is the way that Dickie and I go through and create our own content every week. And we've noticed this is true for most of the other creators that we become friends with. And things like that is, you know, you look around and look at what other people are doing. And so there's a lot of times when I sit down to create content where Justin, I'll pull up your Twitter and I'll be like, all right, let's see how he's structuring things, you know, because there's a lot to be learned from looking at how people package their ideas and going, I'm not going to take the idea. I'm just going to take the scaffolding and I'm going to put my own idea inside of it. And that was really the origin of templates and of typeshare templates. So, Justin, yeah, when we were chatting about this, basically went through and thought, okay, well, what are some of the most valuable templates that you use over and over and over again? And what are they and how do you construct them? So, yeah, we put together this first solopreneur template pack that are a bunch of your most viral tweets and threads reverse engineered into, you know, like, color inside the lines. Take the scaffolding and just put in your own idea and your own content. And you're the first one. I mean, you're the. You're the beta test. But our hope is that we get, you know, hundreds and hundreds of creators on here with their own template packs. And as new writers start coming up and as new writers kind of, you know, invent their own niches, they can launch their own template packs on Typeshare. So appreciate you being our first one. This is really exciting.

Yeah, of course. My pleasure. I think it's. It's really awesome. I. I saw the new templates come out, and I'm excited to grab them. They look awesome.

These are going to be cool. So if. If anyone's played around with them yet, let us know what you think. I think they just went live. Was it this morning?

Just went live 10 minutes ago. You can go to Typeshare Coast Templates, and then you'll see it featured right on the front page. So, Cole, if you want to go there, the link might change, but if you go to Typeshare Co Templates. I like that pack. It's all, you know. And so hopefully we're going to have. If you have ideas for creators, you can leave a comment, let us know who you'd like to see template packs from, who we can go and partner with as well. And then below this, you'll find a bunch more templates for all things digital writing by the end. By the time a lot of people are watching this, we'll probably have newsletter templates, we'll have CTA templates, headline templates. Lots of cool things in the works, so typeshare co templates to check those out. But Justin, this has been awesome. Where can people go to find you your Saturday solopreneur, your products, all those. Where can we. Where can we leave them?

Yeah, you can just go to my website. Justin Welsh me. Justin Welsh me. It's W.W. e L S H. I actually took down the content operating system because I'm working on updating it. But I'll go ahead and put it back up there. And if you want to grab the V1, you'll automatically get the update when I update it in the next 30 to 45 days. You won't have to purchase anything else. So I'll put that back up for purchase for anyone who wants to grab it. Right now it's about how to build templates and things like that, but I'll. I'll throw it back up, but just. Justin Welsh me. Awesome.

Thanks again for jamming. I think we need put another one of these on the calendar for four or five months from now when you've. You've kept continuing to crush Twitter. And we'll catch up on everything that's working then too.

So awesome got guys. Thanks for having me. Have a wonderful weekend and I'll see you guys again soon. Boom.

All right, everyone, have a great weekend. See ya.