How my $450 Chat with LinkedIn Millionaire Justin Welsh Changed My Perspective

26d (edited) • Intro's & General Discussion

After Justin closed Audience + Income, I'd moved on from Sales Sherpa (lawsuit over the trademark), and rebranded Revenue Climber to Solopreneur, Inc. The new branding impressed him on the call.

This quote below was from Justin Welsh, who makes $10M a year in passive income from LinkedIn and Substack. He posted this eternal immutable wisdom on Substack today:

“Stop wishing for outcomes that require you to do work you aren’t interested in and improve your life the easy way.”

I responded right away with a version of my thoughts below.

Let’s see how it goes. I’ve already built companies, have over a million, and enjoy a great lifestyle. But what I wanted was $10M annual passive income stream from doing nothing—the real Golden Promise.

He accepted me back in 2021 into his first private invite-only audience + income community. We started on Discord, but he caved to the corporate crowd that likes Slack better. Then he closed the entire thing. Now, he gave up on LinkedIn, focuses less on Twitter (x), and got popular on Substack late to the game.

See my email to my partner Dave when I got the acceptance email from Justin, as I'd been on the waiting list. Baited breath folks. This is about royalty, popularity, and big time celebrity acceptance. Dave was open to the conversation. We split up our partnership in early 2023. He wanted passive income only, while I wanted to focus on creating something new for me and other entrepreneurs.

The Justin meeting cost me $450. What I learned was to "let people get to know you, rather than market to them." Who will eat the power of those simple but quite expensive words, and waiting 3 months to talk. Between late 2020 to early 2023 the investment in total was modest. I spent $150K to get popular.

Jeff Lopes is a Canadian serial entrepreneur with over 26 years of experience, having grown multiple seven- and eight-figure businesses including a boxing equipment brand that sold over 250,000 pairs of gloves and a growing vacation rental portfolio in Northern Ontario. He's an example from Revenue Climber days. That was after Audience + Income closed, and I founded Solopreneur, Inc. with Dave.

— Larry

MY POST RESPONSE

I’m totally confused, Justin.

Let’s break this down to make sense for everyone at home.

Our goal is to use First Principles to simplify this message. This approach works in physics, and it also works for entrepreneurs, business owners, and solopreneurs who want to finally make real money.

Let’s turn this word salad into an equation, clarify the elements, and find a way to take immediate action.

What do you want? Money? Freedom? Happiness?

My aim is not to compromise. Eli Goldratt, who applied First Principles to business, nailed this approach with his Theory of Constraints (TOC). The core idea of TOC is the global goal: when a company knows where it’s going, it’s easier and faster to get there.

Here are the key elements to consider:

Easy way
Improve your life
Stop wishing for outcomes
That require you to do work
You aren’t interested in

Applying this “Magic Triangle” is simple if you shift your mindset. Let’s stop viewing this as an opinion and instead share it as proven experience. This works.

What you must do now is find a simple hustle. Figure out how to find a group, get them to like you, and then convince them you know what you’re doing.

It’s not hard. The challenge is the media spend. It might take a few years, a crowd of equally popular allies, or years of effort to avoid doing any work.

Here’s Justin’s original advice:

“Stop wishing for outcomes that require you to do work you aren’t interested in and improve your life the easy way.”

Here’s another way to look at it and actually use it today:

“Improve your life by wishing for outcomes that require you to do work you aren’t interested in that improve your life the easy way.”

That’s what happened when I applied simple First Principles to a marketing concept—helping Justin make $10M in passive income.

What do you think?

Is Justin right?

Would this pathway work for you?

When I paid him $450 for 30 minutes of his time, I learned one thing:

Early membership in Audience + Income back when it launched was interesting.

He did agree to speak at my Solopreneur, Inc. event but pushed me out one year later.

That’s how we learn, right?