Lessons Learned From Business-Builder Justin Welsh

His first post on LinkedIn got 12 views.

One year later, his posts would get 30,000 views.

By 2021, his content had been viewed 33 Million times in a single year, proving the effectiveness of his online audience growth strategy.

But who is this thought leader and how did he achieve such LinkedIn success?

Introducing Justin Welsh

Back in 2018, Justin Welsh was hard at work trying to get a healthcare venture off the ground for someone else, essentially building successful startups.

He started by working on startups where he helped build two companies to 50 million in annual recurring revenue.

He also helped businesses raise over 300 million in venture capital but along this path, his 9-5 was starting to get him down and he knew he was burning himself out by staying.

He certainly wasn't spending a ton of time on building his social media presence or doing any personal branding work online.

But working for someone else really wasn't up his alley.

So what did Justin do? He decided to start building an online presence for himself, hoping to land a better job elsewhere.

Little did he know that by taking that one step, he actually launched a whole new career, transitioning from an employee to a one-person business success story.

Growth To New Heights

At first, his online audience growth was without an end goal, simply monetizing LinkedIn audiences.

But Justin knew that having a pool of people interested in him and his thoughts would be useful someday, illustrating the importance of self-marketing for entrepreneurs.

Lesson #1: Never underestimate how important it is to market yourself, especially as an entrepreneur. You are an extension of your brand.

The answer was simple: what he already knew. Justin started writing about how to build sales organizations for software and service companies.

Essentially, he was giving key takeaways from the experiences he had gained working for others first, exemplifying the importance of working for someone else first.

And he did this, slowly building his side hustle, for almost a year before quitting his full-time job, illustrating the transition from a 9-5 Job to Million Dollar Venture.

Lesson #2: Work for others first, gain the key knowledge and use it to launch your own venture in the future. But don't think that you need to quit a paying job immediately to do so.

Justin spent some time working on his craft and what he wanted to achieve, all the while building his LinkedIn presence.

He dreamed of teaching a sales course to his audience on LinkedIn, identifying a potential Product-Market Fit.

With the help of a friend, he managed to hone in on what he could offer that was really unique and valuable at the same time:

A course about building an audience on LinkedIn

Just like he had been doing all this time.

In his own words, when he checked his DMs they were filled with people asking how they could replicate his approach, indicating a need for unique LinkedIn growth hacks.

He created content about How to Gain a LinkedIn Audience and it led to a successful first product that generated $75,000 over 18 months.

So far, Justin has generated $1,300,000 in revenue since starting this journey two years ago. But that's small change.

His real goal?

To build a portfolio of one-person businesses to five million in revenue.

And I think he'll do it.

Lesson #3: Hone in on what you can already do well, then see if there is a product-market fit for it. You never know what niche but profitable solutions you may come across.

.TL:DR Working for someone else first but ultimately finding his true value is what helped Justin Welsh get to where he is today - make sure to take these lessons from his journey as you work on yours.

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