The G.E.M. Series Episode 5 Embracing Curiosity with guest Justin Welsh 

[00:00:00] Blake: Welcome to the gym series powered by rocket level. On this podcast, we empower entrepreneurs to succeed by setting big goals, 

[00:00:09] Justin: executing like a pro 

[00:00:10] Blake: and having a fearless mindset. The gym series is all about investing in yourself. We're here to share the path to getting what you want out of life. By sharing the stories of entrepreneurs who have done this themselves.

[00:00:21] Blake: Providing thorough research from our team on what careers and habits are yielding the best results and discussing the mindset it takes to overcome the obstacles that 

[00:00:29] Justin: all future 

[00:00:30] Blake: entrepreneurs will face investing in yourself, starts with putting in the work every single day. And this podcast is here to help you do exactly that.

[00:00:38] Blake: My name is Blake Chapman. I'm the vice president of the ambassador program here at rocket level. And I am thrilled to be your host for the gym series. Today's guest on the gym series is Justin Welsh. Justin comes from a VP of sales background and has led companies to grow to over 50 million plus ARR he's built huge teams.

[00:00:58] Blake: He's raised over 300 million in venture capital. He's achieved the sales equivalent of winning the super bowl for a company. Twice. So a lot of people would consider this the summit of their career or the pipeline for what they're gonna be focusing on for the remainder of their days. Maybe hopping from company to company and trying to recreate the success.

[00:01:17] Blake: But Justin went a different direction and decided to invest in himself. If you're online, there's probably a good chance that you know who Justin is or have come across as content. At some point, Justin currently runs a boutique advisory firm for early stage. SaaS entrepreneurs builds digital products for creators and solopreneurs runs a private community for LinkedIn creators and is constantly dropping amazing knowledge for anybody looking to enhance their brand or start their own thing today.

[00:01:45] Blake: I want to talk about this change. All right. Hey Justin, thanks for hopping on the gym series. How are you doing today, sir? 

[00:01:53] Justin: I'm doing great, Blake. Thanks so much, man. It's great to meet you. 

[00:01:55] Blake: It's great to meet you too. You know, I I've been a long time fan and followed you for a while now. Just a little tiny background for anybody that, you know, hasn't heard of Justin before, which would be surprising for me.

[00:02:06] Blake: But you, you come from growing multiple companies and the reason I wanted to you to become on this podcast in particular, Is because for a lot of folks they might feel like kind of continuing down this road and following that executive route or like they've finally arrived. But it seems like you just keep going after bigger and bigger goals, Justin running a boutique advisory firm, sharing new knowledge of content creation for you know, creators and solopreneurs among.

[00:02:29] Blake: Any other number of projects? I'm sure. So I, I was hoping to hear a little bit about your story from yourself for our audience, if you wouldn't 

[00:02:36] Justin: mind sharing a bit. Sure, sure. So my story is I got into sales outta school and I spent about six years in sales. I wasn't very good at it for the most part.

[00:02:45] Justin: When I, when I came outta school, I was pretty immature. Focused on, you know, all the things that you're focused on when you're 21 or 22, right? Like going out, having fun, working out, staying in shape, meeting people, like all, all those normal things. But finally kind of found my groove at age 28, got into technology.

[00:03:02] Justin: Did a really good job at the first technology company that I was a part of called Z doc in New York city. And turned that into an executive role. By the time I was 33, when I was hired as the VP of sales at a company called patient pop in Los Angeles was there about four and a half years. Grew it to 50 million in recurring from its first dollar.

[00:03:18] Justin: Came back as the interim CRO in 2020. But I think what a lot of folks, you know, of those who do know me might know me for is I just burned out, like after a decade of really high growth startups, you know, being in an executive role, having to drive numbers every single month, you know, bookings going up quarter over quarter, hitting big goals, became exhausting and In 2019, I burned out.

[00:03:41] Justin: I stepped away on a sabbatical, came back as, as the interim chief revenue officer and then stepped down again. And for the last two years, I've really been focused on creating my own business in, in, in the driver behind that is, you know, one to build a different life for myself and for my family.

[00:03:57] Justin: Instead of being grinding all the time at a high growth startup company, I wanted to build a lifestyle business. And so over the past two and a half or, or so years, I've built, you know, about four different businesses on my own as a one, one person business. And I've turned that into a, almost a seven figure lifestyle business now.

[00:04:15] Justin: So that's my strange and winding career path you know, for lack of a better description. Well, 

[00:04:22] Blake: you know, it is I like that you call it strange. Right. But I think that you touched on a couple of key things that so many people are resonating with right now, for instance, just this idea that there's a lot of people that I think are in, are in your shoes that you were at in, at one point, right?

[00:04:37] Blake: In a place where they're experiencing this burnout experiencing this place where they don't really know where to go next. So you know, something that I like to kind of. Would love to hear a little bit more about is just before we get into cuz what I'm really curious about is this big decision and this this, this point in time where you decided to pivot.

[00:04:54] Blake: But before we get into that, something that I always love to talk about on the pod a little bit is any early failures because I personally have learned to like love of my failures over the years. Is there anything, did you just have this like. Step ladder of a climb up to be able to get to this place.

[00:05:09] Blake: Or were there any places where you ran into, you know, trouble along the way? Sure. I'd love to hear about that too. 

[00:05:15] Justin: Sure. I, I mean, I've experienced failure in every aspect of, of my business and profe and you know, personal life. Right. I think we've all experienced failure. Yeah. Anyone who says that hasn't probably not being very truthful.

[00:05:26] Justin: So you know, early on I got fired three times. From 2003 to 2008, first three jobs never made a sale, never hit a quota, just got fired. So there was failure early on in my career, you know, I had a nice run for seven years where there were there weren't a lot of like meaningful failures, like big, huge, interesting failures.

[00:05:44] Justin: Mm-hmm I think the, the failure that I experienced as I got to, like 2019 was just not taking care of myself. And when, when I say that, I mean, The business became all consuming at patient pop, being an executive. There was great. I love it by the way. And I loved that role and I loved the people there. And I'm, I'm close to that business to this day, but like, you know, I gained 40 pounds.

[00:06:04] Justin: I was drinking too much alcohol. I wasn't eating very healthy. I wasn't exercising very well. I wasn't sleeping well, like there were a million things that contributed to this burnout are the things I would call failures. Right? Like those are mm-hmm . Those are. Failing to do what you're supposed to do for both yourself and your family.

[00:06:21] Justin: And that led to the decision to sort of pivot and become more of a creator, more of a media person than, than you know, an executive at a SaaS company. Since, since going out on my own. I mean, there, there, there have been plenty of failures for every successful business that you see on the internet.

[00:06:36] Justin: Talk about. I've created a YouTube series that failed miserably that I didn't like. I created a biweekly newsletter that I stopped writing that I, I didn't like writing. Like I I almost burned out again, like I tried to do all this on my own without a whole lot of outsourcing or support. And so I got back into that grind of like working too hard and on focusing on my wife and the things that are important.

[00:06:58] Justin: So, so that, that has also been, you know, what, I might chalk up as a failure. Although, I think the second time around, I was more equipped for that. I, I had seen it before. I, I knew how to handle it and you know, I didn't let myself go down the same road that I did when I burned out at patient pop. But there has been, you know, continuous failure as there, as there is for every person that you see, you know, doing a good job somewhere in their life.

[00:07:22] Justin: There are plenty of failures behind the curtain. 

[00:07:24] Blake: Absolutely very well said too. I you know, it, I, that's the thing that I think I learned this really over the last few years is just how essential failures are to finding out what your threshold is. And then hopefully learning from it, you know, seeing seeing just what, you know, what happened.

[00:07:41] Blake: How can, you know, how can we tweak things and also recognize patterns in life. Also, just recognizing that work life balance, like you talked about, because as soon as one starts tipping down, it's just like human nature. We're that, you know, if we don't if we neglect that health part of ourselves or anything.

[00:07:58] Blake: Mm. Ultimately, we kind of come toppling down or there's the potential to, if we don't, if we don't call it out fast. So with that mindset that you're kind of talking about, you know, I, I would love to know what, what was the mindset that, because thank you for being so open about this too, because what I found is that whenever you tell, talked about, you know, those early failures, I guess something that stuck out to me was, you know, there's so many people in sales right now that are like, oh my gosh, I got fired from my last sales job.

[00:08:27] Blake: It's kind of brutal. The churn rate is insane on people. What sparked something in you to where, you know, you come up you're 28 years old. And you wanna make that transition to, I guess, kick it into high gear and, and make something happen. What, yeah. What was the, the difference there you think? 

[00:08:44] Justin: Yeah, it was is what I call like an intersection of three or four things that happened.

[00:08:49] Justin: That just part of it's luck. Right? So like again, anyone who tells you, they got to where they are without getting lucky is again, probably not being very truthful. So part of it was luck, but, but the other things, it was just small little things that all intersected at once. So I'll give you an example. Prior to working at Zoc in 2009, I had lived in really small towns in America.

[00:09:09] Justin: Like I'm, I'm from a, a small farm town in Ohio. And I had lived in like Steubenville, Ohio, Toledo, Ohio St. Claire shores, Michigan, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, like all these very, very small places. Mm-hmm . And when I went to interview at Zoc, I took a bus from basically the Philly area. I was in Allentown, Bethlehem area, and I took it to New York city.

[00:09:27] Justin: So first of all, like I came to the city. And it was the first time that I had really been there on my own as an adult. So like the energy's thriving, it's pumping. Like I can see all the people running around and I'm very much inspired. I go up into the building that I'm interviewing at and like, I meet the smartest people I've ever had a conversation with Cyrus, Oliver, Nick Netta, and Ryan five people interviewed me at Zuck.

[00:09:49] Justin: The product. Was just like something I believed in is booking online doctor's appointments. And I was like, oh my gosh, I would actually use this product. Like I had been selling things I didn't care about for six years, seven years. Right. And like, this was something that I actually just really cared about.

[00:10:02] Justin: And then like the last part, which is the luck was just, I was starting to mature a little bit. Right. I was 28 years old. I was starting to grow up a little bit. I knew that I didn't have that many more chances to like, be good at something mm-hmm . And so like all those things just intersected. It was the city, it was the product, it was the people, it was my own maturity.

[00:10:19] Justin: They crossed out and just like everything went well. And for the very first time in my life, instead of failing, instead of feeling like I didn't want to go to work, I like wanted to get up, go to work, make sales, like it was such an enthralling experience for me. And it was the first time I was really good at something.

[00:10:35] Justin: And so like, When I think about people who have been fired a lot in their sales roles, like sometimes they're struggling because they just don't know how to sell very well. And they're not, they're not putting in the time to learn the craft. That is, that is an issue. But also sometimes people just aren't fulfilled.

[00:10:50] Justin: They just haven't found the right. Role for themselves and if they know how to sell, but they're unfulfilled and they find that right role, sometimes that can be sort of all the spark. They need to light that fire. And I think that's just sort of where I was, you know, I, I, I feel like I knew how to sell at the time.

[00:11:06] Justin: I just wasn't, you know, fulfilled. And, and when I got to Zo doc in New York, I was just like, this is, this is it. This is for me. And it was a great five years there. I, I cherished every moment of, of working at that company. That's. 

[00:11:17] Blake: Yeah. And, you know, I, I, I, I think that it is essential to, to kind of think about that luck factor and you know, all of that cumulative skill and finding that, that right.

[00:11:27] Blake: Sweet spot because that's something that I feel like, yeah, people just don't talk about as much nowadays and is so crucial for being able to, to get wherever you want to get. And then from Z doc, you went over to patient pop, right? 

[00:11:39] Justin: Yep. Yeah, totally. I, I had a stint in between at a small startup called public stuff.

[00:11:44] Justin: I don't talk about it a lot just cause I was there for only a year and it got acquired. I went over and I became the director of sales at a real small company called public stuff. It was with a couple of buddies of mine. And our, our job was to basically replace the executive team and get that business acquired which we did was acquired in 2014 by a company called Aela.

[00:12:02] Justin: And as that acquisition was happening, I had a lot of opportunities. Like I had done a really good job at so doc, I had done a really good job at public stuff. Leading the sales organization there. And an old employee of mine who had worked for me at OC reached out and said he was the first sales hire at a new company called patient pop in Los Angeles.

[00:12:19] Justin: And that was the first of like three to six months worth of conversations. I can't remember exactly how long the, the conversations went on, but Luke and Travis, you know, talked to me, they're the co CEOs of patient pop. Talk to me a few times on the phone came and visited me in New York. And like we just went back and forth and back and forth and.

[00:12:35] Justin: There's one thing that really just stuck out again, like it's kind of like Zuck, right. Which was Luke and Travis were these two really friendly guys. Like I got the sense that like, if I was gonna take my first executive role, that these would be the guys that would like have my back and like, believe in me and like be my support system.

[00:12:52] Justin: Super friendly Canadian dudes. Right. It's a stereotype, but they're very friendly, very friendly folks. Lots of a or, yeah, and I just love, I love Luke and Travis and like, they were just so, so kind and good to me and so supportive. And when I saw the product, I was like, oh, this makes sense to me. I come from healthcare technology, this solved a ton of problems that a lot of softwares solved, but you got to buy 'em all.

[00:13:13] Justin: Patient pops, just one software, solved all the problems. And I was like, oh, I, I know that I can, I can sell this product. And then I can hire a team and build a team out to, to sell this product. And, you know, after three or six months, again, I can't remember exactly how long it was of, of sort of negotiating and getting to know one another and doing projects.

[00:13:29] Justin: I pulled the trigger and I started there in January of 2015 as the VP of so ails of one person with no revenue. Wow. 

[00:13:38] Blake: and which led to obviously, you know, build out a really, really really large team from 

[00:13:44] Justin: there. Right. Yeah. Yeah. We started building out our sales team and, you know, I hired a bunch of old folks from Zoc that I had worked with that I knew were good that had left Zoc and gone somewhere else.

[00:13:54] Justin: And then I, I kinda went to wherever they were and, and picked them up and started making these real strategic hires from my network. And one thing that I had done a good job at at so doc was. Being successful and therefore attracting other successful people in the company to my brand. Right. And when I got the VP of sales job, it was pretty easy for me to go out to folks like Derek Janowski and max Kim brown and Robert Pombo and, and convince them to, to join the, the, this, this train.

[00:14:20] Justin: And I did, and, and again, that's a little that luck, right, where it's like, If I couldn't have made really good early hires, like it, it may not have been as successful, but that was the start of what would become a five year journey. And then again, I came back as interim CRO later, but my first five year journey there was really about hiring good people.

[00:14:38] Justin: And sort, I know it's cliche, but just like getting outta their way. Right? Like I've always thought the easiest way to be successful is hire a bunch of people who are much smarter than you and just, you know, give, give 'em the resources. They need to be successful and wind them up and watch 'em go. And, and that's, that's something that I think I did really well and helped us helped us get to 50 million and, you know, just foreign half years, it was pretty fun.

[00:14:59] Justin: That's 

[00:14:59] Blake: that sounds pretty fun. And I think you're right. It's totally essential to find the key players in the mix and just. Be like, let 'em loose. Let's let do it. Do what you do best. That's something that I think is so, so essential. What are you looking for typically when you're trying to find somebody like that, because obviously you have some sort of an eye for 

[00:15:17] Justin: this.

[00:15:17] Justin: It seems like. Yeah. I think like there's, there's a couple different things, nor normally when I'm, when I'm hiring. Like my first, if I were to go back to a business and say, all right, I've gotta make a first sales hire. Or mm-hmm first two sales hires. I'm gonna go with historical performance. And so like when I hired Derek Janowski, he was my first sales hire at, at patient pop.

[00:15:39] Justin: He was my SDR at so dock. Like, I didn't have to guess. I just knew what I was getting. Like, it was like, it's like, if you're gonna, if you're gonna, if you're Tampa bay Buccaneers and Tom Brady's and free agency, it's, it's not like, you're like, Hey, let's go interview this guy and figure out like, you know who he is, you know, what he does, right.

[00:15:56] Justin: Performance guarantee is there exactly. Right. And so, like, that's how I think about sort of first hires a as I, as I kind of get through that, and you're forced to go outside of your network. I think the thing that I mostly focus on is is things like curiosity. Like I'm not like a big industry guy. Like, I don't care if you have healthcare experience or come from an industry.

[00:16:15] Justin: Like I'm mostly just interested in curiosity because curiosity to me takes care of almost everything else. Like curious people, if they wanna learn. More about your industry. They teach themselves. If they wanna learn more about the customers, the prospects, they teach themselves, they want to get better at sales.

[00:16:30] Justin: They go out and actively learn how to do that. If they want to ask better discovery questions, they read books, blogs, newsletters, podcasts, whatever. So curiosity to me is just huge and there are. You know, it's not an easy thing to measure, but I think that there are some indicators inside of your interviews that will lead you to understand whether or not, or not someone is curious by nature.

[00:16:51] Justin: And I think that when you find that and you build an organization of like very like-minded curious people. You have an opportunity to go out and create this internal culture where everyone is always teaching and learning. And I think that that was a huge thing that we did at patient pop. We had a lot of young people, a lot of first time in the sales organization, but they were just wildly curious and, and excited to, to be good at the, the job.

[00:17:15] Blake: I I, I've never heard curious as a, you know, a, an a, a, basically a trait that somebody should have, but I think that, you know, that's a really, really good way to put it, especially in sales. And mm-hmm, with the nature of how, you know, sales operates these days, everything is consultative to some extent, right.

[00:17:34] Blake: And I think even just being able to. Execute a sale effectively. You do have to be curious by nature. The other essential thing that I love that you touched on is the ability to teach yourself that's something that, you know, I, I know I had to learn very on and something I always am talking about with, like, with my colleagues is.

[00:17:52] Blake: The answers are out there. There's every single resource to go and teach yourself whatever you wanna learn now. And it sound, this is kind of an obvious thing, right. But I, I, I feel like it is so essential to have that hunger and just that understanding of. It's it's there. Like go, go take it. 

[00:18:08] Justin: Right.

[00:18:08] Justin: Totally. Totally. If you, 

[00:18:10] Justin: If you wanna figure out how to do something, try first ask questions later. Like that's sort of my mantra. Like, I don't know. I very rarely go and say, like, I wanna figure something out out. So the first step is for me to ask somebody like my first step is always just. Like go online.

[00:18:24] Justin: I try and figure it out. Like, you know, I, I'm not a technologist by any means. I'm not a coder or an engineer, but I run my own business. And so like, I wanted to learn how to write a few lines of code. I wanted to learn how to connect different applications. Like I wanted to learn how to use Zapier.

[00:18:38] Justin: Learning it. Made sure that I wouldn't forget it. And so I know how to use all those things just cause I was interested in just genuinely curious. And I think in sales, there are two types of curiosities. There is: "I'm curious because I'm supposed to be, and therefore I'm asking questions that I think I'm supposed to ask of my prospects and customers".

[00:18:55] Justin: And there's like genuine curiosity, a like "this person's business is struggling and I actually care about why. And like if I can figure out the answer and I think our product is a part of that answer, I can sell our product. If I figure out the answer and our product is not a part of that answer, I can make a good recommendation.

[00:19:09] Justin: And I think that that, like genuinely caring about someone in, in being curious about their business and it's challenges. It's hard, it's hard to be bad at sales. If you embrace that sort of mentality. Absolutely. 

[00:19:20] Blake: I totally agree with that. So you're at patient pop. You've built this really, really big team.

[00:19:27] Blake: You guys are at 50 million and you start experiencing burnout around like 2019. You said, right? Yeah. Like late 2018. Yeah. 20. Okay. So, you know, for a lot of people, when I ever, they see this, you know, this shift I kind of was, kind of think it gets almost like when Michael, because. It's not easy to grow a, grow a team like that, right.

[00:19:48] Blake: To, to 50 million and grow companies that, that large. So a lot of people would see that as, you know, maybe Michael Jordan leaving to go and play baseball or something like that. So tell me, like, where was your head at right then when you decided to, you know, bet on yourself, invest in yourself? Yeah.

[00:20:03] Blake: What could you just share a little bit about where, what, where your head 

[00:20:05] Justin: was at around that time? Yeah, certainly. As much as I appreciate the Michael Jordan comparison, I think I'd be foolish to think of myself in that fashion, but I do appreciate it. But I think where I was sort of at was I went to a Christmas party in 2018 and you know, stayed out too late, woke up the next morning.

[00:20:20] Justin: Didn't feel super good. I had a few drinks just going out to lunch with my wife and. For some reason, like, I just felt very strange feeling like I had kind of never felt before mm-hmm and what started as like kind of a, not feeling so good turned into a. I didn't know what it was at the time, but it was just full blown panic attack.

[00:20:40] Justin: And I had never had one before, so I didn't actually know what was happening. I thought it was dying to be very like very Frank. Like I thought it was dying. It sucks. Like it's the worst thing thing I've I've 

[00:20:49] Blake: had 'em before too 

[00:20:50] Justin: terrible. It's the worst thing I've ever experienced. And like it, I didn't know what it was.

[00:20:54] Justin: So I thought I, it was dying and we had to go back home after we had been driving to lunch and. I started like hallucinating and really losing it and just like being in a really bad place. And so my wife called 9 1 1, and all the, the paramedics and EMTs came and checked me out and told me I was fine.

[00:21:10] Justin: And I started to kind of get back back to normal. But like every, that was just sort of like, I think this is the right word to use, but like crescendo. Right. Which is like, everything reached a point where all of the past year of not treating myself well, not sleeping well, not eating well, you know, not, not.

[00:21:26] Justin: Drinking too much, not exercising. Like all those things just came to a head and like, that's what, that was the result. And when that happened, like, it's not like I woke up the next morning and was like, maybe I should do something about it. It was like, I have to do something about this. Like, that was such a terrible experience that I can't ever go through that again.

[00:21:43] Justin: And I can't put my wife through that. Like, it was real and miserable for Jennifer, my, my wife. And so. I just made this commitment then like, what I did was I started walking 10 miles a day. I started intermittent fasting. I cut alcohol. I started eating healthier and all of that led to better sleep and like, yes, that was cool to like get back into the groove and to feel better and whatnot.

[00:22:03] Justin: But the pressure from my job. Was really eating at me and people always talk about burnout. Like it's working too much, which it's not like I can work all day. I can work 24 hours a day without, without a lot of problems. If, and obviously it's an exaggeration, but like I can work a lot. What, what burnout is, is it's losing control.

[00:22:21] Justin: It is a loss of control in your inner ability to figure things out. and when things start to spiral out of control, in my opinion, that leads to burnout. So yes, I had gotten my health under control. I was moving in the right direction, but I was, things were out of my control at work. Like most people brag about how good they are at work.

[00:22:39] Justin: Like I had hit a ceiling. I, I hadn't expected to get that business to 3,000,005, let alone 50 million. And here I was like, first time executive role. I think I was 35 or 36 at the time. And like, Every day was a challenge. And, you know, that's, when you wanna look at someone who's built a business to 500 million, right.

[00:23:01] Justin: They've seen that before that they know mm-hmm . Yeah. And so, like, I went to my co-founder, the co-founders Luke and Travis, who I mentioned earlier and basically said like, I can't do this anymore. Not only can I not do it because it's. Basically killing me. Sure. Yeah, but you don't need me to do it. You need someone different.

[00:23:18] Justin: And I know my place, like I I'm, I'm pretty self-aware I know when I'm good at something and when I'm not, not doing a very good job and I knew I wasn't doing a very good job. So you know, I negotiated with them to stay through July. This was in January. Yeah. I ended up ultimately staying till August 1st.

[00:23:31] Justin: So I was there for another, you know, seven full months. But, but I just, I had to make a change. There was, there was no other option. 

[00:23:38] Blake: Absolutely. And while you were making this change, were you thinking of business ideas? What popped into your head during that time period? Yeah. 

[00:23:47] Justin: Well, a about that time, early 20, 19, I, I knew what was happening.

[00:23:54] Justin: right. I knew that I was burning out and that I was gonna have this conversation. And so. I knew that I needed some time off, but I also didn't wanna, I wasn't in a position at that point in my life yet to, to like, just not work. Right. Just like take six months off. So. I had this hypothesis and this hypothesis was sort of, if I was gonna go out on my own, like people needed to know who I was.

[00:24:15] Justin: And so with that hypothesis in mind, which is not a very like granular one or like very specific, it was just like, I need to get known. And so I started writing every morning and I chose LinkedIn to start writing. And so I wrote on LinkedIn each morning and I was just sharing what was going on in my world.

[00:24:33] Justin: Like not like. Personal stories or anything, just like things I was learning at work. Here's how you build a sales organization. Here's how you connect sales and marketing. Here's how you should hire your first people. A lot of the things that you and I just got done talking about. Right? Yeah. And I was just sharing those out into the open and people started to care, which I was surprised by like people started paying attention and, and, you know, engaging and asking questions.

[00:24:53] Justin: And I was like, oh, this is good. Like, I'm getting some attention here. And like, I know that's a weird word to use, but that's what it is. It's attention. And that's what social media is. Right. Absolut. I, I got the attention of a lot of founders who were building SA SAS businesses. And as I sort of moved towards August 1st, when I was gonna, you know eventually exit patient pop, I built a website, you know, consulting website.

[00:25:16] Justin: I got my brand in order. I started focusing my writing a little bit more, or, and when I stepped down at patient pop, I launched my. Personal site the next day and instantly had a funnel of clients. And so the hypothesis had proven to be true, like getting attention was a good thing. And you know, ever since I've been writing on social media now for three years, and so I continue to do it because it fuels re business that I run.

[00:25:42] Justin: Yeah. 

[00:25:43] Blake: And can I just say, man, you fire me up like every day, so thanks. I love, I love everything that you have out there. I appreciate it. You know, I, I was so excited to get to chat a little bit about bit about this, because I know that right now we're in the great resignation. Right? And so many people are wanting to figure out how to take that next step.

[00:26:03] Blake: So for you, it sounds like did you just wake up and you're like, you know what? I have this hypothesis, I'm just gonna go for it. Did it take any kind of yeah. What, what did it take to 

[00:26:14] Justin: execute on? Yeah. Yeah. You know, it was funny cuz I started writing and like when I started writing it, I didn't get traction right away.

[00:26:22] Justin: Like, you know, like most people that write on social media, you start writing and like no one pays attention. It's part of the, part of the gig. And I kind of thought, all right, cool. So I've got this hypothesis. I want some attention, like I'm gonna start writing. So if you're gonna write every day, then you should probably be a pretty good writer you should learn to write.

[00:26:37] Justin: Right? Like that was the next thing. Like, okay, if I'm gonna write every day, I should teach myself to write. And like, we all know how to write, but writing and writing good are two very different things. And so I went and I bought books on. Personal branding. I went and bought books on, you know, creating your persona marketing books by Donald Miller, like building a story brand.

[00:26:55] Justin: I read, you know, Ovie on advertising. I read cash advertising. I read the Boran letters by Gary Hal. I read every piece of like conversion copy that I could get my hands on. I went to marketing examples.com, which one of my favorite at websites like, and I just consumed as much information as I could on like high quality writing, both long form and short form.

[00:27:15] Justin: And because I thought to myself, like, I think that I can outperform other people just by learning how to write and combining that with how people think like human psychology is another really important thing. Like you don't study marketing, right? Yeah. You study writing copywriting, human psychology, how people make decisions.

[00:27:34] Justin: Like those are the more important that are timeless people's brains work the same way as they did 200 years ago. So you might as well understand how they work. And so I just like. Consumed all that. And by consuming that I wasn't just like waking up in the morning and writing things, Willy nilly, like I brought the systems and process that I had at my sales organization into my personal business.

[00:27:54] Justin: So if you look at my calendar even today, like it's color coded. I know. What I'm doing, what I'm writing, what I'm editing, you know, when I'm creating Twitter threads versus LinkedIn posts versus long form newsletters, like it's all scheduled many, many, many weeks in advance. And that gives me the confidence that I need to make sure that I don't start falling into a, you know, a panic, right.

[00:28:17] Justin: You're I'm a one person show. If I, if I stop writing the business probably goes away. 

[00:28:22] Blake: Yeah. Hey, I, I'm also seeing some parallels here between the the curiosity, like we talked about earlier. It sounds like that carried you through some of the, some of the initial part of it too, is just mm-hmm seems like you're a pretty curious minded person.

[00:28:35] Blake: Have you always just had this kind of OB, you know, obsession with diving into things 

[00:28:40] Justin: or, no, not at all. Like, it's my wife and I were just talking about this at dinner. Last night, like when my wife and I got together, I was 30 and I was, I, I was an idiot. Like I was just like, I was like, what? You might just call an idiot.

[00:28:56] Justin: Right? Like, I, I didn't have a whole lot going for me other than I was like, pretty good at my job at Uck, but like, I went to work and then I did what, every 30 year old does. I mean, in again, I was pretty immature. Like I went out and had beers with my friends, right. Like, yeah, that's what I did. And I, I wasn't like consuming content or trying to get better.

[00:29:14] Justin: Like, I'm so amazed by people who are in their early twenties who are like, well, you know, consuming and trying to get better and like studying. And I'm just like, they're far ahead of where I was at that age. But something happened as I became. More entrenched at patient pop. As I started writing more I started traveling a lot and like, I think something really there's something really good about traveling.

[00:29:38] Justin: Right. I think we all know that like already mm-hmm , but it really exposes you to other people's lives. It exposes you to other people's cultures, how people live, it really flex his, your empathy muscle. And like the more and more and more I learned, the more I wanted to know. And that was about different cultures about my business.

[00:29:56] Justin: And just like I became obsessed with learning things. And I think that was just this really slow progression over time. That was a, you know, and the outcome of travel. It was the outcome of growing older. It was the outcome of, you know, being in a really great relationship with my wife, having more focus, having a little bit more time.

[00:30:16] Justin: I think all of those things contributed to just becoming a more curious person. 

[00:30:21] Blake: Well, yeah. You know, I, I gotta say, yeah, I think you, you hit something, the nail on the head with the, with the traveling too. It just opens you up in so many ways. Right. When, so did you really start going, traveling internationally by the time you got in your thirties and, and was that when you started kind of venturing out a bit more?

[00:30:37] Justin: Yeah, I had never left the con trip before. And so I, I started traveling in my early thirties. Actually right before I got together with my wife, I went on a trip to London. It was the first time I had been out of the, the country, my wife and I are big travelers. She comes. I mean, she worked at startup companies with me, like we met at OC, but prior to that, she comes from like a very high end, like concierge food sort of background.

[00:30:56] Justin: So she has a lot of that cultural stuff and kind of in her blood as well. And so we started traveling, you know, south America, central America spent a lot of time in Mexico. I'm really interested in like the arts of central America. Erica, there were so many things that really like, just get my attention.

[00:31:10] Justin: She went to India, we've been to Europe, a bunch of times, New Zealand, Japan, a million times, and we love it there. And. And that's just like opened my eyes to wanting to learn more like when you get out and see all the different things that are happening in the world, it's just, it's hard to say, like, I don't want to know more about this.

[00:31:25] Justin: At least it is for me. And maybe that's just who I am, but that's been a huge driver, I think, O of success and, and also just a huge driver and like just being empathetic. And I think that when you're empathetic and you can understand other people's journeys and plight, like you just become a more relatable person in general.

[00:31:43] Blake: Yeah, I think that's that's absolutely right. I mean, It's it's funny when you just go to any other country and you just realize this vast amount of knowledge that you don't have, and also that you may, you may never have, but it definitely gets you on that road to that road to, to curiosity. And sounds like, you know, this was so right at this big shift into, you know, working for yourself.

[00:32:06] Blake: That's really what afforded you, the ability to be able to travel like that too, right? I mean, It's totally, it's hard. Totally. This when you're in your, your grind of being an executive and all that. 

[00:32:18] Justin: Yeah. Like I think, you know, the interesting thing Blake was, I had assumed that I would work for myself and that I would do okay.

[00:32:24] Justin: Or pretty good. And that I would do a lot of traveling and try and get myself back in order and get back and do a good groove. Go back to work for someone else. Yeah. What happened was like, I built this life. where we were much more intentional. We were more intentional with our time. I got to spend a lot of time with my wife.

[00:32:44] Justin: We got to travel a lot. We got to go to lunch in the middle of the day. We got to take walks every morning. Like there were so many things that we had suddenly unlocked when I wasn't commuting an hour in LA to work each each way. Right. We weren't taking the subway in New York, like we had on when we work together at OC and, and live together.

[00:33:01] Justin: So. I started to see that. And I was like, oh, this is actually really interesting. Like, I really like this life that I'm building. And I started to think, what would it look like if I continued to pour time, energy, money, resources into this business and started to become more curious about what it meant to build a one person business and like yeah.

[00:33:19] Justin: What the different revenue streams that I could build? How do I do it? What software do I use? Like. I built webinars. It had a bunch of stuff I never do anymore. And like I tried everything and some things worked and some things didn't work and also felt really cheesy. And like, I don't want to be. I don't wanna do things that don't feel authentic.

[00:33:35] Justin: And so it's just been years of experimenting basically. And I love that. I get asked a lot of questions online or people like, how do I do this thing? Or what would you recommend? And the answer is like, it doesn't matter what I say. Like it, I don't like, I don't know. I don't have all the answers. Number one, but like number two, Try things, right?

[00:33:54] Justin: Like trying things is the best way to figure out what works for your business, what works for your customers, what works for your life. Right. And I think like, yeah, I can definitely be helpful. And that's why I have a community and I, you know, build courses and I do things that are mm-hmm, helpful for folks.

[00:34:09] Justin: But the difference, like whether you take a course or don't, whether you join my community or not, whether you get a and call like all those different things, the only thing that matters is you go out and try at the end. You can get as much information as you want, but if you don't try anything, it doesn't matter.

[00:34:22] Justin: Right. It's just like reading books, you read books all day long. If you don't apply anything that you learn, what's, what's, what's 

[00:34:28] Blake: the matter, you know? Yeah. You ought to take the plunge eventually, you know? Totally. Otherwise. Yeah. You've just got a bunch of knowledge floating around in your brain. You know, something outside of maybe execution that I was curious about was goals setting for you and what that looks 

[00:34:44] Justin: like.

[00:34:46] Justin: Yeah. Boy, it's a challenge. Every year I set goals. I'm really bad at like staying focused on them. I know that's maybe a weird thing to say, but like I do OKRs with our family. We have like family OKRs, which are pretty fun me, but I'm, I'm also like, A dreamer. And so whenever we create our OKRs, I'm always like, these are the six things that I want to do.

[00:35:09] Justin: And like, I have like these big dreams and aspirations. And then like, as I get grounded into reality, oftentimes those things change so fast, right? Like this, the beginning this year, I, I decided I wanna build a SaaS product. Like I had an idea for a SaaS product. I want to build it. I wanna distribute it to my audience.

[00:35:23] Justin: Like to weeks later, like after doing the diligence and the research, I was like, I should partner. Or buy, not build mm-hmm and I was like, cool. That was a goal that I can basically already cross off my list at least for this year. So the way that I try and set goals is like two to three really big goals.

[00:35:40] Justin: A midpoint measurement. So it's like, Hey, if you want the accomplish this goal by December 31st, like what should July 1st look like? Right. Yeah. And then, and then how do you take that midpoint goal and align tactical action steps in your calendar to make sure that you're actually moving towards that midpoint and endpoint goal.

[00:35:56] Justin: And I've done that for this year. I'm tinkering with my actual big objectives, but that's the same process. I schedule out everything in my calendar. So I know if I wanna write 52 newsletters this year. For 30 minutes every morning, I have to write part of that newsletter. And on Friday I have to edit it and on Saturday I have to deliver it.

[00:36:13] Justin: So those are just like tactical action steps for actually finishing what I need to finish every week. And I'm a calendar guy. So like everything from taking a shower to going to dinner, to taking a walk is all in my calendar. So that's how I live sort of my life and set my goals. 

[00:36:28] Blake: And what is your daily routine?

[00:36:32] Blake: If you could gimme a day, you got a day to day thing that you you stick with or you're a routines guy. 

[00:36:37] Justin: Yeah, for the most part. I am. I wake up usually at around five 30 in the morning. Two cups of coffee. I get online, like I do my social media post about seven 15 in the morning. I interact with folks for about 30 to 60 minutes depending.

[00:36:52] Justin: How it's going. Cause I love to interact with my audience and me and my wife go for a five or six mile walk each morning. We haven't been super good about it lately, but we, we did it for like hundreds of days. You know, for, for a long 

[00:37:03] Blake: time, have you made it to the moon yet? That's what you need 

[00:37:06] Justin: to calculate.

[00:37:06] Justin: No, right. So we go for a walk in the morning and then I come home and I try and limp. I try and knock out all the work that like is the hardest work in the morning. Mm-hmm so I write my newsletter. I create more social media content. I jump into my community, interact with the members and then in the afternoon I have advising clients.

[00:37:20] Justin: So I still advise. Four or five early stage S and B SaaS companies. And so I usually do those in the afternoon. I like to create in the morning, cuz I'm most creative then. And in the afternoon I'm like a little slower, but a little more levelheaded maybe, and like not so excitable. And so that's a good time to spend with customers figuring out problems.

[00:37:37] Justin: Whereas the morning when I have energy and coffee and everything, I like to write. That's 

[00:37:42] Blake: Yeah, that's, that seems like really, really crucial. If somebody is doing what you do is to figure out what this what this constant routine is. I know that for a lot of folks waking up and just being at the mercy of your day, that personally is something that I found very quickly to you know, freak me out.

[00:37:59] Blake: totally. 

[00:37:59] Justin: So I like to know what I'm doing every minute of the day. That's just, it's a weird thing for me. It's probably not healthy, but it's just how I am. 

[00:38:06] Blake: Yeah. I, I think there's something there though, you know, I, I really do. I hope so. Yeah. It's worked so far. absolutely. And so you're doing five to six miles a day walking.

[00:38:16] Blake: Tell me a little bit about that. Do you guys is, is walking your, your, just your preferred, your preferred method of getting out there and getting some exercise in. 

[00:38:24] Justin: Yeah, I've got a bad back. So I've had two back surgeries, so I can't do much else. I can't run. I can't like lift weights or anything like that.

[00:38:30] Justin: So the only thing I can do is walk elliptical. That's it. And so I don't really like the gym. I don't like, like, it's fine. Like I used to go to the gym all the time. Yeah. But like, I don't right now, I'd rather go walk in the Shelby park, which is around the corner from my house in east Nashville. And so we get out in nature, get outta the house, stop staring at the screen.

[00:38:45] Justin: Right. And just like we walk five or six miles. It usually takes us about an hour and a half. And like, Lot of good ideas, a lot of good content ideas, a lot of good business ideas, a lot of good just, or just like connecting with my wife. Right. Like it's not all about content and business. But yeah, I just, we, we enjoy that keeps you slim, keeps you healthy, you know, I think I hope.

[00:39:04] Justin: And so that's been something possibly like get out in nature and get away from the screen. That's like the biggest thing that we wanna accomplish. Yeah. 

[00:39:11] Blake: I'm I'm team I'm team walk as well. It's funny. I yeah, I I've found that, you know, if I, if I'm sitting at my computer really trying to do something that requires not just a step by step type of work where it requires true thinking, usually a walk I have, like, it just unlocks a lot in you.

[00:39:27] Blake: It's it just works wonders 

[00:39:29] Justin: for that. Totally. 

[00:39:30] Blake: I agree. So I recently was going through your article, the truth about the creator economy. And I was, you know, wanting to see if you could share a little bit about why this might be the right time to get started with participating in this creator economy.

[00:39:45] Blake: I love that analogy with, you know, the example of the, the, you know, the fight with I, I think it was at Logan Paul I don't remember which oh, huge. That was, yeah. 

[00:39:54] Justin: One of thes I think like right now, It's like the creator economy is really scalable, right? Like everyone is online, consuming so much information through so many different channels.

[00:40:08] Justin: And if you can get a little bit of attention, you can distribute things that generate revenue. In so many different ways. So think about the, the different ways that you can support yourself and your family with knowledge, right? There is something like a free newsletter, which doesn't generate any revenue, but might, if you get sponsors, if you get affiliates, things like that, right.

[00:40:36] Justin: That, that wraps you know, thousands and thousands of people into your writing every week or every day, or however long you want to, you know put your newsletter out. You can. Record your knowledge. One time on video, turn it into a course and sell it at scale forever. Right? As long as the knowledge remains relevant, and you can do that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to 4.6 billion people with an internet connection.

[00:40:59] Justin: It's pretty crazy, right? Huge distribution. You can take all the things you learned and coach people. You can do group coaching. You can build a paid community. All of that is dependent on attention. And audience and followership and people are always like, oh, I don't call it audience building. I don't call it followers.

[00:41:18] Justin: It's like, doesn't matter what you call it. Sure. Doesn't matter. Right. All that matters is if you have the ear of people online, then you can turn that into a business. And it's a mutually beneficial business. You are transporting knowledge to someone else to is expensive and takes a long time to learn.

[00:41:35] Justin: And you're doing it at a low cost. And in a short amount of time, they're winning because they're short cutting the system. They're learning things faster. They are learning things cheaper. They are avoiding expensive mistakes and you're making a living. And so the reason that I wrote about the Mayweather Paul fight is Floyd Mayweather made more money on that fight than he did fighting any other boxer because he was fighting.

[00:41:56] Justin: So someone who had a lot of attention. Like who cares about Jim Smith? The like third ranked middleweight fighter, nobody. Right. Or, and not enough people to make it that interesting. But when you fight someone who's got 500 million or whatever it is, followers on YouTube, like you make the big bucks and yeah, you, you don't fight someone.

[00:42:15] Justin: That's a professional fighter, even though, I guess maybe he is now, but you know, it's the easiest money in Mayweather said it himself. 

[00:42:22] Blake: Attention is we're going back to that attention idea. It just, it is so crucial and it seems like a lot of your content talks about how to empower other people to kind of get a jump start.

[00:42:34] Blake: Would you say that with the way things are going, it's looking like more and more people are going to maybe switch to model of joining the creator economy. I mean, you're like working with so many people like what's yeah. What, what are your thoughts about the future of. Jobs and what, what, that's gonna look like 

[00:42:51] Justin: few years.

[00:42:52] Justin: I mean, think about, think about it in the context of like how many people are quitting jobs that don't lead to the creator economy. So let me give you an example. So a lot of folks are working, were working like late night restaurant shifts, right. And they're washing dishes, their hands are in each like, like it's it.

[00:43:11] Justin: It sucks. Like, and I've, I heard a podcast the other day where a girl was talking about, like, she left her restaurant job, not because she was able to go make the same exact amount of money somewhere else. But she was able to make 70% of what she was making and she was doing it online and you know what?

[00:43:25] Justin: She got back. She got back her sleep, she got back her nails cuz she wasn't dipping her hands in bleach. Like she wasn't having someone anxiety. So, like, it's not about recouping every P every dollar of income that you make. It's about designing a more intentional life. And that is what the creator economy lets people do.

[00:43:41] Justin: It lets people pull up their roots and say, I don't wanna live in LA anymore. I don't wanna live in San Francisco. I don't wanna live in New York. I'm gonna move to Nashville. Austin, Miami Raleigh, North Carolina, Cleveland, somewhere cheaper. Right? Put down roots, decrease my costs. Build something online.

[00:43:56] Justin: Maybe I won't make as much money as I made it my last job, but I get to spend time with my partner. I get to go take lunches. I get to do the walks, all the things that I talk about, that, that I get to do with my life. My wife, all those things are attainable. Again, the common thread is attention. And so I think that going out on social media and sharing your ex experiences has become the fuel to that, that fire.

[00:44:18] Justin: And so I see people in droves. Either creating a side hustle or taking that side hustle and turning it into a full-time business. And I love it. Like, I don't know. We've all been at the mercy of companies for a really long time and the tides are turning feels pretty good. Yeah, it 

[00:44:35] Blake: really does. I think it's just so empowering.

[00:44:36] Blake: Every time I see somebody shared just how their side hustle took over or a way that they got to improve gener the general quality of their life. I, I mean, even you, you picked up and went to Nashville, right? Mm-hmm, 

[00:44:49] Justin: moved to Nashville about 18 months ago. You know, we lived in California, you before this.

[00:44:53] Justin: So when you make income in California, if you look at the tax brackets, like. If you get to the top one in aggregate, they take 10% of your income. And so moving to Nashville gives you 10% of your income back. That's pretty wild. Like it's pretty wild. What you can do with not just 10% more of your income, but a house that cost half as much in restaurants that cost, you know, 70% as much.

[00:45:17] Justin: Absolutely. 

[00:45:19] Blake: And, you know, I, I just think it's really, really important for people to always hone in on, on what they have to be able to do to get what they actually want out of life. I know that I personally have been in the I've done the corporate thing before I've had any number of different jobs and ultimately being on a mission to empower myself is the most important thing.

[00:45:42] Blake: So I'd love to hear a little of, you know, your mindset about how do you, you know, contain, like, is it this, what, what drives you right now? Like what do you think is your biggest motivator out there? 

[00:45:55] Justin: Yeah, that's a great question. I would say the, the biggest driver, there are two drivers. The first thing is that.

[00:46:01] Justin: And something I didn't cover earlier when we chatted was the environment at Zoc my job in 2009 to 2014 was an in environment of high performance. Everyone who worked there was high performance. And so working there ingrained this thought that everything that you do should be quality. Very high quality.

[00:46:22] Justin: And so part of what drives me is the things I wanna do. I want them to be done well. And so I continue to try and do things that I think are high quality. I think the second thing is like most people I don't wanna work forever. And the, the more. Successful this business gets, I don't want to be Elon Musker Jeff Bezo.

[00:46:42] Justin: I don't, I don't want to earn the most money ever. I don't care about that. Like, I want to earn money. Don't get me wrong, but I wanna earn enough money where, you know, I can do the things I want to do and do nothing that I don't want to do. Right. That's my whole mantra. Do what I want when I want with whom I want.

[00:46:57] Justin: And so driving my business kind of forward, both allows me to do high quality work, and it also allows me to create a life where. I'm spending time doing things I wanna do. And that to me is like the ultimate luxury. Like, I don't want to yacht. I don't want boat. I don't want a big house. I don't want any of those things.

[00:47:16] Justin: All I want to do is be able to spend my time the way I wanna spend it. That's it. 

[00:47:20] Blake: I think that that is something that so many people are, are wanting to do too. And your partner is also an entrepreneur. So thinking about motivation, do you, how do you all motivate each other, you know, both being entrepreneurs and both having your own businesses?

[00:47:34] Justin: Yeah. I mean, I think it's just outta love, right? Like my, my wife comes from a background around in startups and so she worked at with me. She managed global office operations for, for the business and You know, she got into entrepreneurship because she loves. Finances like her dad is a stock, bro.

[00:47:50] Justin: Dad was a stock broker. He's retired now she's loves playing in the market. She's like read every book on finance that you've ever heard of. And so she did it because she just loves it. She's just interested in it. That was like the drive for her. And I think we stay motivated by just. It's kind of being, it's not really a competition, cuz that's not an accurate description of, of our relationship.

[00:48:11] Justin: I can be kinda fun. Yeah. It's like when I have some successors, she has some success, like we root for each other and it drives us to continue to want to grow both of our businesses at the same time. Also we're we're focused on the same outcome, right? Like. We both want to design a life. That's much more intentional.

[00:48:26] Justin: And when we, when we build our businesses successfully, we're able to do that. And so our goals are very much aligned and, and I think that's a really helpful way to stay motivated is always having the same north star. 

[00:48:37] Blake: Absolutely. And you know, Justin, I wanted to ask you also, what is your number, one thing that you're doing right now?

[00:48:45] Blake: I just know you have so many projects. What are you most excited about right now? If you wanna share with with the audience. 

[00:48:51] Justin: Yeah. I just started a new newsletter. That is four issues. Deep. I'm really proud of it. It's called the Saturday solopreneur and it's essentially a Saturday morning newsletter that goes out to a little over 10,000 people right now.

[00:49:03] Justin: And it is one audience or business business growth tip each Saturday morning that can be read in right around 90 seconds. And my goal was to take all the things that I'm sharing online. Get a little bit more granular, provide a little bit more context, a little more meat on the bones than I do on social media, but also make it really digestible.

[00:49:21] Justin: Like, so it's not a 30 minute read. It's just like you get in, you get out in 90 seconds, you, you learn something new that you can apply instantly. And that I'm really jazzed about. And so far the reception has been huge. You know, considering it's just four weeks old that I'm really interested in.

[00:49:37] Justin: And then I have a plan to, to create a new course this year, and I really want to focus on writing. And so I'd love to teach people sort of my writing process and you know, all the things that I learned to write effective copy and to, to get that attention that I've been talking about in this, in this episode.

[00:49:52] Blake: Wonderful. So I am really looking forward to checking out the Saturday solopreneur. And is there any other way that people can find you right now? Yeah. How, what, what, what are some of your links, if you wanna shout 'em out. Sure. It's 

[00:50:05] Justin: all, it's easy. It's you can learn everything about me from who I am, to what I do to my products, courses, newsletter all@justinwelsh.me and that's w E L S H.

[00:50:15] Justin: So Justin welsh.me. 

[00:50:18] Blake: Wonderful. Well, Justin, thank you so much for hopping on the podcast. It was a pleasure getting to learn a little bit more about you. This is the gym series until next time everybody. Have a good day. Awesome. Thanks 

[00:50:28] Justin: Blake. Thanks. 

[00:50:30] Blake: Thank you for joining us on this episode of the gem series, the podcast for anybody dedicated to investing in themselves, stay tuned for our next episode and look in the links below for resources that you can use for yourself until next time.

[00:50:43] Blake: This is Blake Chapman, and remember to be awesome and do awesome things.