Nathan Baugh

Consultant → writer. I study the best storytellers ever and share with you what I learn. Writing fiction and writing to 77K storytellers every Saturday. Join us 👇

Founder

In light of Sanderson’s Apple TV deal I’d like to remind you one of the best selling authors in the world has 17+ hours of free lectures on writing and storytelling on youtube:

-> Brandon Sanderson
-> Playlists
-> Writing Lectures (2025)

An insane amount of value.

I’ll share my notes on the class this weekend: https://lnkd.in/gXaqKe2u

Ghostwriter. Exploring the art and science of storytelling. Debut fantasy novel sometime ~soon.

Turned 30, hiked the Inca Trail, went to two great friends’ wedding in Lima, and finalized the cover of my debut novel. What a month.

No alternative text description for this image

After my freshman year, I did freelance writing to the tune of $0.04 per word. I'm a horrendously slow writer -- I like to take my time with each sentence, it's a habit I've tried to break for years -- and the clients were the sketchiest sites you can imagine.

The experience taught me you can't make good money as a writer, that writing is a commodity paid for by the word. A dream killer.

I could not have been more wrong.

When we moved to Madrid, someone liked my tweets and asked how much I charged for writing. Without a clue, I told him $2k per month. I made up this number. It felt like a loonshot.

He said sure sounds good, and I worked for his agency for the next year. Eventually, I went out on my own, and his advice was basically charge a lot more.

So I did, and today ghostwriting makes up about 60% of my revenue -- the rest comes from newsletter ads and info product sales.

Are there ups and downs? Absolutely. But I'm more convinced than ever now's the best time in history to be a writer. There's demand for the work, and there's non-gate kept access to distribution and knowledge.

***

My friend Nicolas Cole taught me more about this world than just about anybody. His ship30 program changed my life, and his PGA is incredible for anybody thinking about ghostwriting as a business or side gig.

They're doing a free masterclass tomorrow on nailing your client's voice. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/eKQ-E67v

It's my favorite part of ghostwriting because it's the most like fiction writing. Essentially, I create a character for each client and part of my editing process is, "Would this character actually write / say this?"

If yes, it's good to go. If not, then back to the chopping block.

A friend asked me what metric his company isn’t measuring about their linkedin activity but should be.

I could tell he expected me to pull out some obscure metric but instead I simply told him number of posts per month.

Everyone tracks impressions, followers, leads, etc etc

But those are all outputs. The only input is the post, of which volume and quality are the only things that matter.

Quality is an intuition thing, but volume is a number. 

More volume, almost always good.

Decided I’m taking my own advice. Gonna post here more often, even off the cuff like this.

Aiming for 5x per week.

Here’s a collection of the 10 best books I read in 2025 — probably the most eclectic mix you’ll see:

In no particular order.

1. The Inner Compass by Lawrence Yeo
2. The entire Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio
3. The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd
4. Mists of Avalon by Marion Bradley
5. You Can Just Do Things by Jay Yang
6. Persians by Lloyd Jones
7. Consider This by Chuck Palahniuk
8. The Sword of Kaigen by ML Wang
9. Hyperion by Dan Simmons
10. East of Eden by Steinbeck

Tried to read very little business books given I consume that content all day. What’d you read? What’d you enjoy?

The fact Randall Wallace is casually on linkedin teaching screenwriting and storytelling with examples from his incredible career is the most underappreciated wonder of this site.

This morning I got to read the novel Tommy Clark’s working on and I regret to inform you he’s as good a fiction writer as he is on the internet.

I talk about digital writing & personal progress

Here's a quick rundown of how I've spent my last 5 years:

1. Studied math and played football at Princeton. I graduated in 2018 with a degree in financial engineering and played center for the Tigers. In college, I was a 280-pound offensive lineman, so for the last 5 years, I've had to completely rewrite my personal operating system on the health & fitness front. I currently weigh 185 pounds and have learned a lot along the way!

2. Graduated and immediately started working for BlackRock in New York City. I worked as a junior hedge fund trader for 4 years, focusing on global macro markets. This was my dream job and the only corporate job I've ever had. In fact, it's the only job *interview* I've ever had (since I interned there as a junior in college).

3. Realized working for someone else was not going to be the long-term path for me. 12 months into working on Wall Street, I saw someone in their mid-40s ask their boss for permission to go to their son's Little League game. At that moment I realized I wasn't cut out to take directions or instructions from other people for very long.

4. Started to write on my old blog, then on Twitter. Rather than quit immediately, I started to passively explore other opportunities by writing online, starting out on my old blog (which no one knew existed), then transitioning to Twitter in July of 2020.

5. Changed my trajectory with a 30-day writing challenge, which led me to start Ship 30 for 30. In September 2020 I was ready to give up writing entirely. But I gave it one more shot, this time moving from a weekly blog post to a daily Twitter thread. The challenge was a huge success. It took me 9 months to reach 100 followers and 1 month to go from 100 to 2,000. And that personal writing challenge turned into the foundation of Ship 30 for 30, which started as nothing but a Slack accountability group to help people publish consistently.

6. Scaled Ship 30 while working remotely for all of 2021. I built and scaled Ship 30 with Nicolas Cole to over 2,000 students in 2021—all while continuing to work full-time (remotely) for BlackRock. But towards the end of 2021, Ship 30 hit an inflection point and it no longer made financial sense for me to continue working on Wall Street.

7. Left BlackRock in March of 2022 to write and build on my own. After weeks of weighing the pros and cons and trying to project my path forward, I made the decision to leave BlackRock and chart my own path. 15 months into making that decision and I'm confident it's the best one I've ever made.

Dickie Bush 🚢

Reminder to self:

95% of people never start anything.

4% of people start something, then quit within 3 months.

The last 1% don't even do anything special—they just keep doing it.

5 reminders that you can enter the top 1% with just a tiny bit of patience:

—
📌 Want an easy way to make money as a writer in 2026?

Then become a ghostwriter.

It's how you can "win" at the game of writing:

• You get paid to practice
• You get paid to write in different voices
• You get paid to learn from industry experts

It's one of the quickest ways to master the art of writing.

To get started as a ghostwriter, click "Visit my website" at the top of this post.

5 Reminders It Has Never Been Easier To Win

This writer posted on LinkedIn about quitting his job.

And from that ONE post he got some epic results:

Booked 5 sales calls.
And closed a $1,000/month consulting deal.

Insane.

Especially since Stefan didn't:

• Go viral
• Use some secret LinkedIn hack
• Or do anything anyone else couldn't

All he did was:

• Say what he does
• For who
• And how he helps them

Now, this doesn’t mean if you just hit publish you'll book a bunch of sales calls (or any at all).

But every single LinkedIn post you publish is a lottery ticket.

Some will flop.
Others will only get you views.

And then sometimes, you get lucky and the right kind of high-paying clients resonate with your content.

Which is why you should be publishing consistently on LinkedIn.

It's an easy way to land high-paying clients & make 6+ figures as a ghostwriter.

But first?

You need to:

• Find your own lucrative niche
• Create an Irresistible Ghostwriting Offer
• Learn the secret to charging premium prices

So, I put together a 5-day crash course with everything you need to start making money ghostwriting on LinkedIn in 2026.

Click here to get instant access (for free): https://lnkd.in/ekBqPdQQ

Reminder to self:

You can focus on no more than 3 things:

• 3 habits
• 3 values
• 3 goals

And you can only do this over a 3-month time horizon.

I had to learn this painful lesson the hard way:

Every year, I would sit down and write out 10 goals for the coming year (like I was building some grand master plan).

Felt incredible in the moment.

Made me feel:

• Organized
• Ambitious
• Like I had my life together

But then I'd find that list 3 months later and realize I couldn't even remember what I'd written down.

Let alone tell you if I actually achieved any of it.

The truth is:

Any time I have ever made a plan beyond 3 months, it was basically a useless exercise.

It didn't change my behavior.
It didn't keep me accountable.
It just made me feel good for about 20 minutes.

Here's what actually works.

You can focus on no more than 3 things.

If you can't rattle off the three things you're most focused on right now without pausing to think, then you're unfocused.

Make them something you can actually track and measure.

And then ignore everything else until those 3 are handled.

You'll get further with 3 clear priorities than you ever will with 10 vague ones.

taplio

The Battle

Nathan Baugh

Dickie Bush 🚢

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreNathan Baugh's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreDickie Bush 🚢's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Nathan Baugh

Dickie Bush 🚢

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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);}Nathan Baugh's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreDickie Bush 🚢's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreNathan Baugh's LinkedIn Performance