Five Justin Welsh Lessons For Substack
...and how the maverick solopreneur saved my record
In Short:
Start at Chapter 1 for the full story.
Jump to Chapter 4 for pure value.
1 The Exile Before Hand
In 2023 I returned from a winter living in my van in Scotland. I was bearded, unkempt and at a crossroads. To pinch from Kerouac, I was
“At the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.”
So much had fallen away. My relationship had broken apart and, now in my early 40s, I was facing the brute reality that my dream of making a living from music was well and truly dead.
I had a successful career as a commercial filmmaker — but I had a question to answer: did I have an artistic future?
I know the modern message is to grind through periods of difficulty and uncertainty. But I’d been grinding my whole life, and I had to answer a deeper calling. So I returned to the land of my birth after two decades away, shivered through a winter, and at the end of it broke down at my mother’s grave.
So much of my life poured out in that moment.
It was then that an answer came to a question I didn’t know I needed to answer.
I would continue, until the day I died, to be an artist. No matter the cost. No matter the judgement of the world.
It was around this time that I first heard the name Justin Welsh.
2 The Cost of Conviction
I had lived in the grey zone that so many artists inhabit for years. I had zero love for social media. I was analogue, old-fashioned and opinionated.
I wanted to make albums and have other people promote them. Full stop. After I was signed by EMI, I assumed they had the marketing mechanism — but then EMI crumbled. I was the last artist to release an album on the label of The Beatles and Radiohead, and it was out for a total of three days before Universal completed its takeover.
I went back to the drawing board. I fundraised a boat for refugees, supported Safe Passage and the ECCHR, and filmed The March of Hope — which, despite screening at over 100 film festivals worldwide, was a disaster financially.
I’d arrived at the value heart of my life. But the more I tried to contribute, the more comically off the rails went my own.
In 2023, I realised I had to finally get my own life together. I knew I had to find a new way to be a modern artist. But to do it, I had to reinvent not just my bias against social media — I had to humble myself before life. It was time to become a beginner again. At 43.
What happened next, I didn't see coming.
3 Build In Public
Early 2023. Berlin was freezing and before dawn I ran its icy streets. I had burrowed so far down beneath the sceptre of failure that I felt reborn. There is nothing like being at zero — it crystallises you back to your living self.
Weirdly, I started learning from the hackers first. Not because I wanted to code — I just related to the spiritual freedom in the way they shared their work openly. It was like the Wild West.
Hacker friends led me to The Build in Public Podcast where I stumbled across Justin Welsh. I learned so much in his 42 minute appearance that I reached out to the host. We got on like a house on fire, and dear KP encouraged me to start my own podcast, which went on to interview luminaries like Jay Clouse and Josh Spector.
It was Justin, though, who unlocked something in me — and what he did cannot be unlinked from the emotional history that preceded it.
4 Enter Justin
What I want to focus on now isn’t where I am today — it’s where I was.
Because the people following me on Substack are often standing exactly where I was two years ago.
I’ve since built a following of around 30K across platforms, with Substack as my home base and primary growth area. But none of that happened by accident — and a surprising amount traces back to lessons I picked up from Justin Welsh.
His most helpful ideas aren’t always the ones that circulate loudest. I was inside his Creator MBA community — and I’ll say this plainly: you can build an entire career from what that course teaches.
Today I want to give you five lessons that transformed me — from a digital caveman to a creator with a platform.
LESSON 1:
Get Out The Grey Zone
When Justin left his corporate career he realised: “I needed to get some attention.”
Here's the problem: creatives struggle to admit they want attention — not just that they need it.
As such they live in a grey zone — using social media to vaguely update about life and work — while resenting that no one gets their artistic endeavours.
Simply put: many of us want social media to be something it isn't.
The moment you can start to build on social media is when you realise it has its own laws, rules and architecture.
Yes, you can be entirely you. But social media is not your art. That lives in your gallery, your gig, your book.
Social media is a representation of that reality. And you will never get to grips with it while you are holding on to a fantasy version of it that does not exist.
Stage one of growing an audience is not tactics. It’s leaving the mindset that you had.
That starts with asking yourself clearly: do you want to build an audience or not? Personally, I found that remarkably clarifying.
LESSON 2:
To Get Followers, You Have to Talk to People
The single most important thing Justin taught me is this: you have to talk to people.
It’s what everyone seems to miss about the work, effort and commitment he put in to build his profile.
PLEASE: Look at points 2, 3, 4. He had a system.
Many of us are stuck at level 1 because, like I was for a decade, we believe that posting quality work is enough. Everyone wants a following like Justin. And yet very few are willing to do the specific work he did to build it.
You have to build relationships. And relationships online take time and consistent showing up.
I would post but was entirely unwilling to put in the hour — answering messages, replying to comments, supporting my community.
It was only in November 2025 that I really got this. Since then, my Substack has grown without fail by over 200 subscribers per month.
LESSON 3:
How Justin Revolutionised My Substack
I had been writing on Substack for three years. Then Justin arrived with his first article in May 2025 and I immediately learned two things. They seem embarrassingly obvious now — but I’m sharing them so you don’t make the same mistakes!
First: I had never put a CTA in my newsletter. Justin puts it at the top — loud and proud. You have to make it easy to subscribe — and be clear about what you write.
Take a look at the “about” and “subscribe” button — then look at the growth in my analytics above. See that spike in May 2025? Justin’s influence.
Second: I had never used Substack Notes. For three years I’d been sending my newsletter out to virtual crickets. When Justin arrived on the platform, I started paying attention. First by using Notes. Then leaning in by getting systematic in November — and my Substack has been powering ever since.
Pro Tip: you are likely underleveraging Notes. My theory is that there is far more readership on Substack than creators — which means more organic reach than any other platform right now. More demand than supply. I post Notes at a regular three-hour cadence and my growth is supporting that hunch. If you’ve a backlog of ideas — don’t be afraid to crank it!
LESSON 4:
How To Grow On Substack
Here are some problems you are likely having on Substack:
You post something then don’t know what to do next
You negotiate with yourself whether you’re going to show up at all
When Justin decided to work for himself he dreaded the idea of sitting down on a Monday morning and not knowing what to do.
So he created systems, and that led to making $10 million as a solopreneur.
I realised that I was — as a typical wackoid creative — completely systemless. So I rolled up my sleeves and built my own:
I wanted to break down everything I’d learnt into step-by-step daily formula. Now, I wake up at 6am daily, make a nice cup of PG Tips Tea, open my tracker and get to work.
I don’t want to spend all day on any social platform — including Substack. So I built a timer. Four tasks, each 15 minutes. Discipline, with the promise of liberation afterwards.
It is so nice to know what to do! You can see the 4 daily tasks below:
If you'd like the tracker for free, click below — or if you're already subscribed, just comment "System".
See what I did there? I pinched Justin’s formula for making a lead magnet — thanks Justin!
LESSON 5:
Know Your Enemy. Build In Public.
When I was on The Creator MBA Justin encouraged us to ask questions before the sessions. I asked:
"Justin — if you were an indie artist releasing a record, how would you think about it?"
The three bits of his advice have helped me so much during its creation and now, its release build up.
Find your enemy Justin helped me surface what I’d felt for years about streaming platforms. His take is that having an enemy means being very specific about what you're for and what you're against. It is very easy to be vanilla online — sticking to safe, mainstream opinions. Yet what separates you is your take on things. I didn't realise it, but I needed a mentor to legitimise my feelings. The streaming platforms pay $0.004 per stream. A musician needs 26,500,000 streams to earn the average Spotify employee's salary. Given the cost of making an album, 99% of musicians spend their lives at a slot machine that never pays. That's not the democratisation of music — it's a tech con. That is worth standing against. What are you for and against? Name it. Stand against it. Write about it.
Make a great product. Justin's advice was to concentrate on the artisan side. This emerged from clarifying the useful enemy — what would the opposite of a digital release look like? What I didn't realise was what a rabbit hole would follow. I have since created a collection of collages for the artwork and written a book on the songwriting process — as well as completing the record itself. In a world so doggedly temporary, I have put all my chips on making what matters most: one great experience for one person. There is a life in this record. And knowing that is worth more to me than 26.5 million Spotify streams.
Build it in public. Justin also helped focus me on being transparent about my journey with the album. He suggested that it would be cool to strike up a relationship with a local vinyl pressing firm. I loved this idea and even followed through — but then it went into administration! However, I have continued to plot the album’s progress in public, and its helped to build interest way before its release. Building in public helps your concentrate on the joy of the process itself, rather than staking everything on its outcome.
CONCLUSION: The Age of the Artist Solopreneur
I have been an artist on a major label, had billboard campaigns run for my photography, and seen my documentaries screen at over 200 film festivals worldwide.
None of it has built the financial foundation to support the family I hope to have.
I am an artist who has, at first grudgingly and now excitedly, joined the content creator game.
After all my years seesawing in the chaos of artistic life, I realise the riddle can only be unlocked by one key. And that is to help people.
The crazy thing that happened on The Creator MBA was that Justin led me back to my musical heart. What I didn’t realise was that something else was incubating too:
The solopreneur in me has finally woken up.
I have built my first digital product and I am giddy with excitement how it can help anyone who felt like I did a few years ago.
It’s the culmination of my whole journey — the offering, with the record, that I want to make.
If you'd like to be first to hear about it, please sign up below!
To adapt does not mean to lose your artistic integrity. It means giving yourself a foundation from which to give your gift — not over a sprint, but over a lifetime.
We are, I believe, at the beginning of The Age of the Artist Solopreneur.
And I for one cannot wait.
Thank you as ever for your support everyone — and most of all, to Justin Welsh , for all I’ve learnt from you, and for being a guide during a tempestuous period in my artistic life!
With love,
Jim
Thank you for this. I'm new to Substack and figuring it all out. I really appreicate this post! I just added your Daily Non-Negotiable to my process. 🙏🏼
Thank you. Well written and helpful. Triggering me to find your subscribe button.