What's your personal background? What motivated you to start your own company?

I spent 12 years in sales from 2003 until 2015, and then landed my first executive role as the VP of Sales at a very early-stage SaaS company called PatientPop. I grew the team from 1 to 140+, and annual recurring revenue from $0 to over $50M in 4.5 years. In late 2018, I started to burn out and had a pretty massive panic attack in December of 2018. I went to my CEO and let him know that I planned on stepping down in mid-2019 to focus more on my health. My motivation to start my own company was to build a much more intentional life. A life where I can spend more time doing what I love and less time doing what I don't. I wanted to recapture my health and my purpose, and solopreneurship has allowed me to do that.

What businesses have you built so far using no-code tools, and what purpose did each tool play in the final product?

I started by building out an information product business, mostly centered around courses that teach people how I use LinkedIn to create opportunities. I used no-code tools like Carrd for the website and integrated that with simple online selling tools like Gumroad. As my business has grown, I've started using more no-code tools and getting much more complex. I switched over to Kajabi for my website, landing pages, and email management. I've also installed Testimonial.to as a no-code tool for capturing and displaying testimonials on my landing pages automatically, as they come in, in real-time. I leverage Hypefury and Typeshare to write all of my social media content and newsletters, track my analytics with Fathom, build-out support videos with Loom, and run my entire business and life through my CRM built on Notion.

What were the initial costs to get your businesses off the ground?

In the beginning, my business was very, very affordable. I bought justinwelsh.me for $12 on Google Domains, purchased a Carrd subscription for websites and landing pages for $19 per year, and started selling on Gumroad for just $10 per month. As my business grew, I've added more and more technology, and now my business costs roughly $850 per month to run.

How do you attract customers?

My primary channel has been LinkedIn since 2019, where I've grown to over 230,000 followers over the last 3 years. I generally post 2x per day, each morning at 7:15a CST and each afternoon around 12:05p CST. I'll likely cross 100M impressions from my content there this year.

My secondary channel is Twitter, where I started writing daily in October of 2021, and I post 2x to 3x daily. I've since grown from 8k followers to over 120,000 followers in those 8 months, and now I attract a significant number of customers from there as well.

I also worked with my buddy, Brendan Hufford, to drastically improve the SEO of my website.

I have a newsletter with 30,000 subscribers and I'm also starting to become active on Instagram since roughly 3 weeks ago.

I've never run an advertisement, so my traffic is generated 100% through social media or SEO.

What are the biggest challenges you've overcome building growing online businesses?

For me, it's all about laser focus and systems. As my business grew, SO many opportunities fell into my lap. Podcasts, webinars, speaking events, sponsorships, feedback, community, etc. If it exists, it's come my way. This is all very, very distracting. So, I struggled to prioritize early on. As my business grew, I started following the eliminate/automate/delegate mentality to stay focused on the most important parts of my business. Recently, I hired a Virtual Assistant who handles most of my customer service and that's been a game-changer for me.

Another challenge is staying consistent with my content, which drives most of my business. In the early stages of my solopreneur journey, I wrote ad hoc. But with 10+ LinkedIn posts, 15+ Twitter posts, 2 threads, and a newsletter due each week, it's tough to stay organized. To do so, I've built out systems for achieving all of this, that I store in Notion and follow religiously. Every Monday, I jump into my Content Engine and get writing.

How much money do your businesses make per month?

- Courses: $90k per month
- Coaching: $12k per month
- Subscription email: $9k per month
- Advising: $8k per month
- Affiliate deals: $1k per month

Total: $120k per month or roughly $1.44M per year.

What's your advice for non-technical people who want to start a company?

Start by leveraging your strengths. Most non-technical people are great at something that will help their business thrive, whether that's writing, selling, marketing, etc. Find that thing and triple down on your biggest strength. Use social media to talk about everything you know and learn. Grow an audience of fans who want to know that stuff, too! Find the people 2-3 years behind you on the journey, and make everything for them. For anything technical, just keep it simple. Prove that you have a product or service that people want before you spend time and money on sophisticated technology.

What are your future business plans?

I want to experiment with cohort-based coaching, virtual events, and even live events. You'll likely see more on more platforms (Instagram, TikTok, etc.) and different mediums like podcasts or video. I also want to continue to create more affordable, tactical, high-quality courses that teach people how to go down the Solopreneur path, so be on the lookout for those.

How do you think the rise of no-code tools will impact entrepreneurship?

They already have. They've made entrepreneurship possible for people like me. I think, ultimately, we'll see an incredible explosion of solopreneurship. One-person businesses built around a specific skillset that other people want to master. No-code tools allow people like that, who are non-technical, to get up and running 100x faster than they used to. You can now test, validate, and launch in no time. What a win!

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

If you'd like to learn more about what I do, you can visit me at justinwelsh.me