Ed Latimore is a writer with over 10 years of experience in creating engaging and insightful content for various platforms and audiences. He has a B.A. in Physics from Duquesne University, a MOS certification as a Land Combat Electrical Missile Systems Repairer, and a Secret Clearance issued by the US Army.

As a self-employed writer, Ed shares his unique perspective and wisdom from his diverse background as a former heavyweight professional boxer, a veteran of the United States Army National Guard, and a physics graduate. He teaches the lessons he has learned through his blog, his newsletter, and his Twitter account, reaching millions of people who benefit from his advice and stories. Ed's mission is to help others overcome their challenges, improve their lives, and achieve their goals.

Ed Latimore

At 41 years old, I have lost quite a few friends over the years for different reasons.

My drinking or being an asshole or just being immature.

Many were my fault, 100%. Others, I could have salvaged, but only by betraying myself.

I'll never see most of them again, but if I do, they are strangers. I'll see them in a new light with no pretense.

No one did anything unforgivable.

Maybe they'll be different. Maybe not.

Either way, I'm not a slave to the past. You should not be either.

Professional boxer (14-1-1) | Stuck at 1800-ish chess rating | Keynote Speaker | Author of “Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business: Boxing And The Art of Life

You want it to happen quickly, so it probably won't happen at all.

And if it does happen, the result will be so different from what you intended that you'll have to start over anyway.

I'm starting to realize that the reason everyone and everything is so polarized is cognitive laziness.

No one wants to question anything if it feels good. People are not interested in facts. They're interested in feelings.

And the internet makes this worse in at least two ways:

1) Every idea that feels good is easily amplified, whether it's true or not. The worst ones, of course, get the most amplification.

2) It's completely eliminated cognitive friction. People just are not used to thinking hard. Now, thinking has always been taxing, but before the internet, you didn't really have a choice. But now, people don't care about sources, or, even worse, they twist they misinterpret the data to fit a narrative. Or hallucinate information that isn't there.

AI is ONLY going to make this worse.

Because imagine a machine giving your hallucinations weight because it's used 80% of its tokens... but you don't even know what a token is, because that takes energy to learn.

So eff it! If the all-knowing AI said it's true, it must be.

Stupid people don't know that they're stupid.

And they usually assume that *you're* the stupid one for not understanding or agreeing with them.

Remembering this can save you a lot of misery.

The average person has neither the courage nor the intelligence to choose truth over tribe.

They're too worried about fitting in.

Or more precisely, about not being outsted and being forced to confront the possibility they've been fed bullshit.

Because then they'd have to think for themselves.

The reality is that any significant accomplishment is a confluence of both individual effort and interference from factors beyond your control.

You make your own luck, but paradoxically, only when you’re acting in a way that reduces the need for luck.

In this way, creating luck comes from strategic decisions that reduce uncertainty.

The old saying “The harder I work, the luckier I get” perfectly encapsulates this reality.

Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business: Boxing And The Art of Life https://amzn.to/4dt8n3m

You can't help someone committed to ruining their life.

You are *literally* the enemy for trying to help.

The best way to catch a falling knife is to let it hit the ground.

The Illusory Truth Effect

The illusory truth effect is a cognitive bias where repeated information is perceived as more truthful, regardless of its actual accuracy. 

Familiarity is mistaken for credibility, meaning hearing a statement multiple times—even if false—makes it more believable.

This phenomenon is driven by processing fluency, where familiar information is easier to mentally process, thus making it easier to believe.

Given how social media has rendered our attention span to something that can only be measured in nanoseconds, it's no wonder that people believe anything they see a headline about.

Combine this with cognitively lazy approach of "journalistic" websites simply c̶o̶p̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ syndicating other stories, and it's no wonder this happens.

If it aligns with a person's world view (confirmation bias) and it makes them emotional (emotional suggestibility), then you can be guaranteed they won't even think to question it.

This is how you get groups of people defending a subjective interpretation of reality as if it's objectively accurate.

We are doomed, because the ONLY fix for this requires so much work and confronting erroneous thoughts a person has invested energy into, that it won't happen.

And you can't even train kids to do this because most people don't realize this happens and they don't want to believe it's happened to them.

"It's easier to fool people than convince them they've been fooled."
-Mark Twain

Luke Shalom

CEO @ Grow Solo I help the C-suite turn industry expertise into predictable pipeline

There are two ways agency founders try to turn LinkedIn into a reliable source of clients.



One is by guessing. Posting when there is time. Relying on referrals and hoping the next month is a good one.



The other is by building a system that creates steady conversations, even when client work gets busy.



Our clients choose the second.



→ Joya Dass (Founder, Women’s Leadership Lab)



The problem:



- She spent hours in the DMs to book a few calls.

- Content happened on weekends.

- When delivery picked up, sales stopped.



Some months were strong. Others were quiet.



Even in good months, there was stress about where the next client would come from.



What we did:



We built a simple LinkedIn content system she could run in house. No ghostwriter or agency retainer dependency.



We shifted her content from generic how to posts to insight driven thinking.



That changed the conversations. People in her network showed up aligned and ready to buy.



We added a content led outbound system powered by a setter we hited and trained. The system kept working while she focused on delivery.



Results:



- Revenue grew from $150k to $300k.

- Sales became predictable.

- The pressure eased.



→ Jonathan Crowder (Founder, Founders Ally)



The problem:



- No time for content.

- Unpredictable sales calls.

- Leads with no budget.

- No sales background. A 10 percent close rate.



What we did:



We removed Jonathan as the bottleneck. 



We built a content system using AI supported by his real thinking. It sounded like him, not software.



Trust was built before the call. Outbound went from 10% to 40% response rates.



We focused prospecting on real buying moments, like recent funding to catch buyers at the right time.



We simplified his sales process. Clear outcomes. Clear cost of inaction was communicated to his buyers.



Results:



- Meetings went from 3-5 a month to 10-15 sales qualifed leads a month.

- A visible pipeline. Increase to a 25 percent close rate.

- $300k in pipeline in 60 days.

- $30k in new revenue closed.



→ Brian Dukes (COO, Exit Wise)



The problem



- Ovelry dependent on referrals.

- No LinkedIn playbook.

- No time to write.



What we did



- We clarified positioning.

- Simplified the offer.

- Built a content engine.



Then we added outbound from the founder profile.



Everything was owned and run internally.



Results:



- Consistent posting machine.

- 500 to 6500 ICP followers.

- $740,000 in LinkedIn-driven revenue over two years.



We have helped 100+ founder led agencies replace unpredictable growth with systems they understand and control.



If this feels familiar send me a DM with "Grow", we should talk.

Founder

We help executives to build and monetize their brand on linkedin by scaling your content and turning it into leads, authority and thought leadership.

How?

Engagement + DM flows = Qualified meetings. 

Done with you. Done for you.

I close 50% of my discovery calls with 5-figure clients. Here's the exact founder profile funnel that does it:
 
Most agency founders are stuck in "random acts of growth".
 
They post and hear crickets.
They buy expensive tools.
They hire an agency and blow there marketing budget.

Nothing works.
 
So pipeline stays unpredictable.

Referrals dry up.
 
And LinkedIn gets written off as something that "doesn't work for our industry."
 
It's not the channel. It's the absence of a system.
 
The founders winning right now have stopped chasing tactics and built a Founder-Led Demand System.
 
One engine where content, trust, and outbound compound together.
 
Here's exactly how mine works.
 
TOP OF FUNNEL
 
Tools: LinkedIn, Perplexity, Claude
 
My founder brand on LinkedIn is the engine.
 
Every month it pulls the right people in. Follows, likes, connections, profile views from founders who match my ICP exactly.

By the time they reach out, they already know me. They already trust me.
 
That means every call I take is with someone already in consideration. I'm not selling to strangers.
 
But that only happens when your positioning is locked in and your content is engineered to take someone from skeptical to ready to buy.
 
Most founders post randomly and wonder why nothing converts.
 
MIDDLE OF FUNNEL
 
Tools: YouTube
 
LinkedIn gets them in the door. YouTube closes the trust gap.
 
I've never gone viral. My videos are lucky to get 500 views.
 
But every single client I've signed in the last 6 months said YouTube was one of the main reasons they hired me.
 
Why? Facetime. There's nothing that builds trust faster than watching someone think out loud on camera for 20 minutes.
 
Every video is built around a buying objection I hear on calls. I post once a week and drive LinkedIn traffic to it. Our setter uses videos in the DMs before calls, between discovery and close, and when leads go cold.
 
It's the best sales tool for trust building I have.
 
BOTTOM OF FUNNEL
 
Tools: Valley AI
 
This is where most agencies leave money on the table. They generate interest and have no system to convert it.
 
We run warm outbound to every ICP founder who engages with content. Likes, comments, profile views, lead magnet requests. All of it.
 
A human is in the loop at every stage. We qualify hard before anything hits the calendar.

That's why close rate is 50%.
 
Interested in building this out for your Agency? DM me "grow" and I'll show you the gaps stopping you from turning LinkedIn into  7 figure channel.

Founder at Atticus | Predictable LinkedIn pipeline using a founder-led sales system I 100+ clients scaled | Be the next 👉 atticusagency.com

Stop sending DMs that get ignored. I booked 1,000+ sales calls from LinkedIn and made $1.3M doing. Steal the exact script ↓

Comment and I'll send it to you.

I used to spend hours crafting the "perfect" DM. Tweaking. Rewriting. Getting ghosted anyway and following up like a desperate ex.

Now I use a 5-message sequence I've tested for 3 years straight. Instead of 18 rejections out of 20, we are booking 20-40 calls a month.

Every conversation feels like it came from them.

Here's what's inside:

- DM 1: Open with context, not a pitch
- DM 2: Follow up without sounding desperate
- DM 3: Uncover their pain in natural conversation
- DM 4: Transition to a call without it feeling forced
- DM 5: Make it stupid easy to book the meeting
- The complete walkthrough...  all 5 messages in action
- 5 mistakes that kill your DM conversion rate
- How to customise the script for your ICP

BONUS: DM Personalisation Framework that gets 80% response rates.
It took me 2 years and 1,000+ DMs to build. Takes you 60 seconds to steal.

Stop using LinkedIn DMs like a cold email channel. 

Start using them like a trust-building machine.

How to get it: 

1/ Connect with me 2/ Comment below and I'll DM you everything

♻️ Repost to skip the queue. 

P.S. We must be connected... otherwise LinkedIn blocks the message.

P.SS The perplexity lead magnet will be coming over today/ tomorrow... keep those eyes peeled!

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The Battle

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Luke Shalom

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Ed Latimore's LinkedIn Performance

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