Justin Welsh — Writer & Entrepreneur | One weekly essay for 200,000+ ambitious people living and working on their own terms.
Writer & Entrepreneur | One weekly essay for 200,000+ ambitious people living and working on their own terms.
Justin Welsh ranks #1 of 18,566 LinkedIn creators in Internet, and is a standout voice in United States. They have 865.5K followers and published 36 posts in the last 60 days at a 0.6% average engagement rate.
- 865.5K followers
- 36 posts / 60d
- 0.6% avg engagement
- 9.2K follower growth / 30d
The roast
Justin Welsh is the only person on the planet who had a near-death experience and decided the most spiritual thing to do was write a LinkedIn post about it every single Tuesday. He claims he left the corporate world to live on his own terms, yet he still spends 40 hours a week posting instructions on how to quit the job he’s clearly still working.
About Justin
For more than a decade, I lived the kind of life ambitious people are told to want. I helped build two companies past $1B in valuation and raised more than $300M in venture capital. By 33, I was Chief Revenue Officer at a venture-backed company, making more money than I’d ever imagined. And quietly falling apart.I was burned out, anxious, drinking too much, and increasingly convinced that if I kept going, I might not see fifty.Then one afternoon, in our house in Los Angeles, I had a panic attack so severe I ended up on the kitchen floor. My wife, Jennifer, called 911. The paramedics came. And by the time they were standing in our home, it was impossible to keep pretending this was just stress.When it passed, I knew that the life I was building wasn’t the one I wanted to live.So Jennifer and I quit our high-paying jobs with almost no plan. We bought a house in the mountains of Upstate New York, drove across the country, and started our lives over.In the years since, I’ve built a $15M one-person business with no employees and no investors, and an audience of 1.5M+ people has followed along. But that’s not the real story.The real story is that I got my life back, slowly, unglamorously, one difficult choice at a time.Today, I spend that life writing.Every Saturday, I publish one essay about the choices that made it possible: leaving the obvious path, redefining ambition, using money for freedom instead of performance, and building something of your own without letting it consume you.These are the choices that can look wrong from the outside and still be right for the life you actually want.If that’s the kind of conversation you’ve been wanting to have with yourself, I’d love to have you with us.
Highlights
- Top 1% in United States — Ranked #1 of 5851 creators
- Top 1% Impact — 4,957 avg engagements per post
- Top 1% Audience — 865,463 followers
- Top 5% in Internet — Ranked #1 of 98 creators
Recent posts
AI has made effort really cheap. That's a big problem. Anyone can produce content at scale. Anyone can send auto-job applications. Anyone can flood your inbox with junk. None of it works anymore. Because when everyone has access to the same tools, volume is no longer an advantage. It's just noise. The people breaking through right now are doing the opposite. One specific thing, aimed at one specific person, executed at a level that no automation can produce. I came across a story this week that is the clearest example of this I have ever seen. Someone who faced the same odds as ever
379 reactions · 266 comments · 0 reposts
The most talented person almost never wins. Nobody tells you that. You grow up being told that if you get good enough, the rest takes care of itself. Do excellent work. Improve your skills. Be the best in the room. And the recognition, the clients, the money? All of it follows. So that is what most people do. They put their head down and try to get better. They work hard, earn the credentials, and polish their craft. And then they wait for the world to notice. It usually doesn't. I have watched brilliant people, smarter and more skilled than me, run their business straight int
666 reactions · 439 comments · 11 reposts
Easy is a trap. Don't chase the comfortable option. The safe job, the light workload, the path with no friction. You'll end up hating how you spend your life. Because comfort feels good for about a week and then it turns into boredom. The people who actually enjoy their lives do the complete opposite. They pick something hard and stick with it for decades. And somewhere during that journey, a magic thing happens: They get really, really good. The struggles turn into skill, and the skill turns into pride, and the pride turns into a life they're happy to wake up to. There's no shortcut
4.5K reactions · 1.1K comments · 139 reposts
Last updated 2026-08-01