Justin Welsh

Before you decide you’re bad at something, make sure you change the conditions.

Making more money is great.

Six rules I use to evaluate growth, protect my time, and decide when to leave money on the table.

Dolly Parton turned down Elvis Presley to protect the publishing rights to her song.

The biggest decisions of your life are often made before you know yourself.

Avoiding a hard conversation can feel harmless in the moment.

It made every part of my life better, until suddenly it didn't.

The world will keep moving along, in all its lunacy, whether you watch or not.

There's something you want.

There's a brand new way to fail, and it's spreading fast.

AI promises to free up your time, but history tells us otherwise.

AI can now replicate content, systems, and funnels in an afternoon.

Why the most skilled person doesn't always win, and what actually moves the needle when you're building a business from scratch.

You've been brainwashed to argue about the wrong thing.

The difference between looking rich and being secure isn’t what you make.

Criticism shows up fast.

Why choices that look wrong build lives that feel right.

The hardest move in learning anything new is the first one.

When life gets wider, paying attention to the most important people gets harder.

Why the advice that works for them doesn’t work for you.

What if the freedom you quit your job for isn’t really freedom?

The self-help industry sold us a cure for a disease we don't have.

The stories we make up about our heroes (and why we shouldn’t…)

When problem-solvers run out of problems, they manufacture fake ones.

Some mornings I wake up and think, what the hell did I just do?

Two people joined the same company the same year with the same pay cut.

Most people communicate what's in their own head instead of what the other person needs to hear.

When I was 27, a friend asked me point-blank how much money I made.

My old boss texted me during the pandemic.

The most successful people I know don't have better habits.

At some point I got really good at my job.

We squeezed into two bar seats on Valentine's Day without a reservation.

She threw herself down a mountain at 70mph — the same mountain that nearly ended her career four years ago.

The winemaker was only 25 when he took over one of California's best wineries.

A sushi speakeasy that seats eight.

Eleven years ago, I watched a sales guy tape together a paper pyramid in a WeWork.

A tiny Champagne bar in Healdsburg seats twelve people and there's always a line.

Everyone says the market is saturated.

Every podcast host asks me 'What's next?'

My wife looked up from her phone in disbelief.

My boss told me to move to San Francisco in two weeks and fire the entire sales team.

A friend paused his newsletter and podcast after ten years.

A consultant at a mastermind was doing $1.3M a year and wanted to 'scale.'

Back in 2018, I was burning out and had no idea how to get attention for a consulting business.

I found a two-and-a-half-year-old email from someone explaining in four paragraphs why I'm a terrible writer.

We hosted a private dinner for sixteen strangers.

I sat down to write the first launch email for my biggest course ever.

My wife lost her wallet in a NYC cab.

A woman we met in a Paris cafe seemed to have the perfect corporate job.

My wife and I just got back from two weeks in Tokyo.