270. How Justin Welsh built his $8M LinkedIn business (3-step system)

How Justin Welsh built his $8M LinkedIn business (3-step system)

What if you could turn your LinkedIn profile into a business that generates $8 million—with over 90% profit margins? That’s exactly what Justin Welsh did, and in this electrifying episode, he pulls back the curtain on the 3-step system behind his success. In this episode we dive deep into how Justin carved out a crystal-clear niche, created content that compounds (without chasing virality), and built simple offers that convert like crazy. This isn’t just theory—it’s a proven, repeatable strategy that can help you grow your business, one post at a time. If you’ve ever wondered how to stand out, show up, and sell on LinkedIn—this is your blueprint.

Links Mentioned: 

• Free 9 Step Business Email framework
• Justin Welsh Full Conversation:    • How to grow on LinkedIn in 2025 with ...  
• James Clear Full Conversation:    • Atomic Habits James Clear : An Easy W...  

Timestamp:

00:00 Introduction and Personal Achievements

00:16 Key Insights for LinkedIn Success

00:34 Insight 1: Define Your Niche and Offer

03:33 Insight 2: Consistent Content Creation

07:23 Insight 3: Monetizing Your Audience

09:14 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Ash Roy and Justin Welsh Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):

Justin Welsh:

Providing value to your LinkedIn audience is building your personal brand. The easiest way to grow a business is to the thing that's contributed most to my success is. When I first write something, it's not simple.

Ash Roy:

I recently spoke to my friend Justin Welsh about how he used LinkedIn to grow his business to $8 million with 90 plus percent profit margins over a few years.

And in this video, we'll share three key insights that you can apply to grow your business using LinkedIn.

Let's do this.

So, the first insight is get clear on your niche and your offer. Justin's first principle is get ruthlessly clear or get ignored. Sounds a bit harsh I know, but getting crystal clear about who you help and what specific problem you solve and the specific transformation you deliver to that specific person is absolutely vital.

If you want to build a business that compounds over time.

Justin Welsh:

If you wanna help seven figure businesses do SEO for example, the easiest thing that you can go out and do is learn as much as you can about SEO. Become thoroughly obsessed with it, use it, teach yourself, use it on your own site. Get really good at it.

Ash Roy:

After 15 years in corporate finance and strategy, having completed a CPA and an MBA, I launched productive insights in 2013. Initially, I offered a broad range of services including marketing, website development, leadership coaching, thinking that it would widen my reach and allow me to attract more clients.

But because I didn't have a clear target market, I wasn't clear about who I was helping and what specific transformation I was going to deliver. My messaging was vague. I tried to be everything to everyone, and I ended up being nothing to anyone. My messaging fell flat. I got little to no traction for years, but when I narrowed things down, and I specifically focused on helping service-based businesses grow using digital marketing and content strategies everything changed my LinkedIn following, grew from 2000 followers to 8,000 followers in a very short period of time.

So, the key takeaway here is picking one specific audience and offering one clear transformation and seeing that through to the end where you are actually delivering value and getting paid well for it.

By that specific target audience is absolutely vital. Trying to launch several offers and products at the same time is suicide. When you see businesses having really made it and they have this whole plethora of offerings, that's because they've actually mastered one thing, launched it, monetized it, scaled it.

And then move to the next offer. But when you try and do multiple offers or multiple initiatives at the same time, you do very little in terms of making progress. So, if you wanna get clear on specifically who you help and what transformation you deliver.

I recommend asking yourself the following questions.

What specific problem am I uniquely qualified to solve? Which clients have I worked for in the past where I've delivered outstanding results better than the rest of my competitors could because of some natural advantage I had? What work energizes me the most and brings me joy when doing it? That I will sustainably be able to commit to for months, years, and maybe even decades.

Okay. Step two, publish consistently on LinkedIn using a simple but actionable content system. What I've found fascinating about Justin's approach. Is that he doesn't chase virality. His method is creating a system that allows him to post consistently rather than trying to be brilliant every time. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not like he's posting rubbish content.

In fact, he broke down his specific approach, which includes creating what he calls a scroll stopper, and then a hook, and then a call to click. Which you can check out in detail because he's explained it in detail in our full conversation, and I'll link to that in the description. But the key point he made was that he focuses on creating good content and doing so consistently because he harnesses the power of compounding over time.

Justin Welsh:

The thing that's contributed most to my success is showing up daily. I haven't missed a day of posting on LinkedIn or Twitter in two years.

Ash Roy:

It was only when I started posting every single day on LinkedIn and responding to comments every day for at least a couple of hours that my following started to grow.

I've grown to a size where I'm happy, and so I don't post every day anymore on LinkedIn, but I still draw on that asset I've built because these days when I publish a video on YouTube, I use my LinkedIn audience to help direct traffic. To YouTube, which is the platform I'm building right now besides my email list.

Of course, the same goes for my podcast. When I first launched my podcast, hardly anybody was listening to it. It was only after episode 50 or maybe even a hundred that I started to get some traction. I'm now at episode 270, and every day I get pitches from people wanting to be guests on the show. The point is, this didn't happen overnight to achieve extraordinary results.

You have to put an extraordinary effort. The power of compounding works in your favor. As James Clear said to me, time is the ultimate magnifier. If you'd like to check out the full conversation I had with James, clear, we'll link to that in the description as well. So the key insight here is LinkedIn works in the same way that any platform works, and that is your credibility comes through consistency, delivering value, and doing it over a period of time.

Not randomly posting every day of the week for one week and then nothing for a few months, and then every day for a month, and so on. So the key to being able to post consistently on LinkedIn is to have a clear content calendar that is built around specific content pillars and aim for good quality content every day rather than perfection.

Justin Welsh:

The easiest way to grow an audience or grow a business. Or build your Twitter or LinkedIn following, is to try a bunch of stuff and figure out what works.

Ash Roy:

The key is to think like an educator by teaching inspiring and sharing lessons from your own life and from books and from various resources that you have gathered over time.

I like the idea of documenting your journey. And sharing what you learn along the way, and YouTube is a great platform to do this, as is LinkedIn. The other interesting thing he says is he finds many ways to say the same thing. He calls it Think once published 10 times. And interestingly enough, that is one of the most successful posts on my LinkedIn platform where I talked about Justin's approach of thinking once and publishing 10 times.

Justin Welsh:

It's really about one idea. I, call it think once, publish 10 times.

Ash Roy:

So in terms of content creation, here's what's working well on LinkedIn at the moment, using carousel posts that are interesting and engaging for your viewers. Uploading short video content, but doing so natively on the LinkedIn platform, adding your own personal insights and your experience.

To reinforce what you are sharing and teaching.

Okay, insight number three, turn attention into revenues through simple, understandable offers. Here's where many of us get stuck. Growing an audience is just the first step. The real question is how do we monetize that attention that we earn from our audience of a time?

What from Justin, is the power of keeping your office simple and outcome focused. Not having too many of them.

Justin Welsh:

Providing value to your LinkedIn audience is building your personal brand. I think that's a misconception that PE like brand building isn't like a thing that you do outside of providing value for your audience.

The value that you provide is the brand that you build.

Ash Roy:

Early on, I overwhelmed my prospects with too many options, coaching, consulting, website development, custom packages. But by simplifying my offers into a membership and consulting things became a lot easier for my audience to make choices about which product or offer they wanted to go with.

On LinkedIn. Having a couple of simple offers paired with established trust over time, converts naturally. The important thing is to work on building the trust before you try to sell.

Justin Welsh:

Providing value to your LinkedIn audience is building your personal brand. I think that's a misconception that PE like brand building isn't like a thing that you do outside of providing value for your audience.

The value that you provide is the brand that you build.

Ash Roy:

A very important way of building trust is to keep things simple. Keep your office simple, keep your content simple, and you'll see that your conversion rate improves.

Justin Welsh:

When I first write something, it's not simple. It looks crappy. I spend a lot of time editing it to make sure that I'm taking out every unnecessary word.

So when you read it, it feels like you're just getting a lot of juice and not a lot of fluff.

Ash Roy:

Now, what if you adopted the principles that Justin shares in this video and implemented them consistently over a year? Imagine what things could look like for your business. Or your career a year from now, you could have a thriving LinkedIn presence, and while you may not have the biggest following in the world, you'd have an engaged set of followers who would be hanging on your every word and ready to buy your offers when you offer it to them because you've established so much value.

You've earned that trust over time. That's exactly what Justin Welch has accomplished.

Justin Welsh:

I get about a thousand emails a year that tell, tell me from people. Uh, I quit my job. I built my first side hustle. I paid off my mortgage. I paid off my car. Uh, I could spend more time with my kids, with my partner. Like I love the life that I live in, the freedom that I've created and my biggest gift that I could give to other people is the same thing,

Ash Roy:

and it's what we all can accomplish.

Provided we apply this three-step process consistently over time, it's worked well for me and I believe it can work really well for you too. Provided you do the work. Just keep in mind that everyone's situation is different and you do need to consider your specific circumstances when applying these principles.

Justin Welsh:

All advice is contextual. Mine included. The easiest way to grow an audience or grow a business or build your Twitter or LinkedIn following is to try a bunch of stuff and figure out what works.

Ash Roy:

Now if you found this valuable, consider subscribing to our YouTube channel. It really helps the channel grow.

Check out the playlist that we are linked to in the description and in the comments. And be sure to check out my full conversation with Justin Welsh, which is really a masterclass on how he used LinkedIn to grow his business to $8 million using the very principles we've discussed. He goes into them in more detail in that video.

Now, I'm curious, what's your biggest LinkedIn challenge right now? Is it finding a niche? Is it creating consistent content? Is it converting connections into clients? Share your biggest challenge in the comments below, and I promise I will do my best to respond within the first 48 hours of this video going live.

If you think somebody else will benefit from this video, please do share it with them. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.