Episode Summary
What is the secret to building a strong brand? The secret is that there are no secrets! A powerful personal brand is a result of hard work, patience, and you guessed it – being yourself! Or, as our guest likes to say, “Don’t be afraid to have strong opinions.”
Justin Welsh, the founder of JW Strategic Advisory, joins Nick Bennett to share the lessons he’s learned on his solopreneur journey. Over the last decade, Justin’s helped build two $50M+ ARR companies, teams of 150+ people, and has helped raise over $300M in venture capital. Then, in 2019 he burned out and decided to start working for himself. Today, he runs an advisory firm, creates digital products, and writes about all things entrepreneurship.
In this episode of the Rep Your Brand podcast, Justin and Nick discuss the benefits of having a powerful personal brand and pinpoint how it can help with your career. Justin shares his hacks for accelerating online growth and talks about his content creation tips. If you’re interested to learn how you can monetize your own brand, tune in to this conversation.
Guest Profile
- Name: Justin Welsh
- What he does: He's the founder of JW Strategic Advisory, a company supporting high-growth SMB SaaS companies on their path toward $50M in recurring revenue.
- Company: JW Strategic Advisory
- Key Quote: "It's hard to stand out when your opinions are fluffy. Just don't be afraid to share how you feel about things if you have a strong opinion. As long as you're not mean divisive, nasty, treating people poorly, none of that stuff flies either. Have a strong opinion."
Key Insights
- Building a brand takes time and consistency. Personal branding is an ongoing process, and it takes a significant amount of patience. As someone who managed to position himself as a thought leader in sales, Justin says there are no hacks or tricks for building a brand overnight, but there are certain ways to accelerate your growth slightly.
- Polarizing on social media isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's safe to say that social media knows how to polarize us. But is that such a bad thing? Justin thinks it's more complex than that. As opposed to driving divisiveness online, we should share the things we truly believe in. That's what's going to make us stand out from the crowd. "When you say more interesting things, people have arguments in the comments. Lots of comments mean lots of engagement. It's not intentional. It's just, 'I'm going to be myself versus just being super boring in the middle of the road.' It's the internet. You have to be interesting."
- How do you start building an audience from scratch on social media? When asked to share his advice for someone who's just starting on social media, Justin suggests picking a niche and then niching down further. Start by identifying your passions and interests. Then, go out there and speak about it. "I think Sarah Brazier does a great job. For example, when she started posting, she didn't just talk about sales. She didn't just talk about becoming an AE. She talked about how hard it was to transition from an SDR to an AE in sales. And it was very specific. So it resonates with a lot of people who are in a pretty similar situation."
“Putting yourself out there for the first time…regardless of what platform you choose…is challenging.”
Justin Welsh
Founder
JW Strategic Advisory
Episode Highlights
The untapped potential of using LinkedIn for personal branding purposes
“LinkedIn is generally considered professional, so most people think of it as a business. That scares a lot of folks. It’s a lot less social than other social media channels. But really, it is a social media channel, and people are figuring out that by creating content on LinkedIn, they can stand out pretty easily. And so what I consider it is just open field right now. It’s still in its infancy.”
“For me, it’s a place where you can go and generate a hundred thousand impressions a day, millions of impressions every year. And you can do one of many different things. You can land a better job. You can become a thought leader. You can end up on podcasts like this. You can sell a product. There are so many different ways that you can take advantage of LinkedIn.”
How to leverage your personal brand using LinkedIn
“I use my brand in several different areas online to power different parts of my business. So my main business, the way that I make my living, is I advise early-stage SaaS companies. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last 11 years is building SMB, SaaS businesses. So that’s who I advise. And I do that through different channels than LinkedIn. I do that through creating SEO-optimized blog posts. I do that through partnerships. And then on LinkedIn, where my audience has been really helpful is I’ve created two courses.”
“Some other interesting ways that I use LinkedIn is I do some one-on-one coaching. I end up on shows like this and other popular podcasts where I can promote my coaching, my advising business, my products. So right now, I’ve got four different revenue streams that contribute to mostly an automated way of making money with 20 hours a week work schedule for advising.”
Four resources to keep your brand fresh
“I really like marketingxamples.com by Harry Dry. It’s probably my favorite place to go to read really well-done marketing analysis. Harry’s a really sharp dude. I like him a lot. I really like Jack Butcher’s stuff on Twitter. I think it always gives me a unique futuristic viewpoint on how to think about content creation.
I like Derek Sivers’s blog. I wouldn’t consider him a modern creator. He doesn’t spend a lot of time creating daily. But he writes blog posts every once in a while, and he turns them into books. And I think the way that he thinks is really unique.
And I like Daniel Vassallo a lot. I follow a lot of what he creates ’cause he’s someone who, as I was going through my panic attack, was talking about creating and designing a different type of lifestyle. So I hooked onto that and was like, ‘Oh, this is someone that I want to emulate in terms of creating that life.'”