Tara Horstmeyer

Simplifying LinkedIn | Individual + team training you need to succeed on LinkedIn | Executive Ghostwriting | Content Coaching | Hands-on Workshops

"One person posts, and I now know them. Multiple people post, and I now know their company..." - MJ Peters. (Powerful, huh?)

Execs: I believe you were made to lead—NOT exhaustively create LinkedIn content.

Yet:
> Figuring out how to engage + leverage the power of LinkedIn.
> Finding a TRUSTED Executive LinkedIn Thought Leadership team that understand business.
> One that also offers content strategy, company LinkedIn training and high-level, strategic writing execution...

...can feel like another full-time job.

I'm here to remove this burden.

HI! I'M TARA ⬇️

The Original LinkedIn Ghostwriter + Founder of Happy Words. 

My 20+ year career as an award-winning editor, writer + leader gives me a unique understanding of not only what it takes to leverage content in a digital world...

But also what it takes to work with impactful leaders—in the REAL world.

After scaling to 30K+ followers + driving well more than 6-figures of revenue solely from my LinkedIn as THE Original AND highly sought-after LinkedIn Ghostwriter...

My career evolved to building Happy Words: A writing, consulting + training team that supports executives like you.

I’ve since been featured in Business Insider, Vox and Morning Brew as a LinkedIn Ghostwriting industry expert and have spoken at events + workshops while appearing on dozens of podcasts.

This truly sets me apart as I can both appreciate + serve busy executives who desire to impact others through their LinkedIn presence.

Executives—like you.

Bottom line:

You were made to lead, not exhaustively create a LinkedIn presence.

I'm here to help you expand your influence, grow your presence and stand out as the authoritative thought leader you ARE.

LET'S CHAT. HERE TO SERVE YOU ⬇️
Serving individuals, founders, execs, teams + companies:

1. CONTENT: LinkedIn Post Strategy + Ghostwriting
2. WORKSHOPS: LinkedIn Mastery Workshop + Workbook

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So, that's a little bit about who I am, what I built (for years) and how I've served countless leaders (like you!) on LinkedIn.

I am ALWAYS up for a chat in the DMs. So...

Drop me a note.
Say hi.

DMs always open.
Cheering for you!

- T

Executive LinkedIn + Leadership Trainer

I help executives, companies and teams build their LinkedIn reputation at scale.

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Leading is a full-time job.
Exhaustively figuring out LinkedIn shouldn't be.

No matter if you are looking to build your executive personal brand on LinkedIn, bring visibility and opportunity to you, your company or team or create an employee advocacy program, I can help you achieve it all.

You were created to lead — not spend your time writing for LinkedIn.

Let’s work together to bring YOU, your business, your team and your company to those who need it the most.

🔥 Expand your influence. Grow your reputation. Ignite your opportunities.🔥

3 WAYS I CAN HELP YOU ⬇️

1. LinkedIn GHOSTWRITING:
Writing WITH you + AS you is what I'm known for.
DM or email for information, packages and availability.

2. LinkedIn 1:1 + Corporate TRAINING:
From corporate workshops to 1:1 consulting + employee coaching, I've worked with the best to leverage LinkedIn.

Shoot me a DM to design your session now.

3. LinkedIn Brand CONSULTING + COACHING:
Whether you are looking for an all-encompassing LinkedIn strategy that works or need a professional editor's eyes on your (or your team’s) posts, I'm your guide to help you along the way. 

Shoot me a DM to discuss a Coaching or Consulting plan or visit me here:

tara@happywordssell.com
www.happywordssell.com

The Legal Profession’s Top Ghostwriter | 25M + views on LinkedIn | Creative Director at CONTENDER | Co-Founder of UNrationed | Author of In the Creative Arena

If you're an attorney, the people you want to talk to—potential clients, referral sources, and talent—are all on this platform. 

And while your traditional marketing channels are intensely competitive, the feeds of the people you want to reach on LinkedIn are ripe for the picking. 

We're still early in the content creation game on this platform, which has more than a billion users worldwide and ~200 million in the United States. 

Very few attorneys or law firms have even made an effort to stand out.

CONTENDER helps attorneys produce LinkedIn content that resonates with the people you want to reach, so they can Know, Like, and Trust you.


ARE YOU READY TO...

- Become a trusted AUTHORITY in your market?
- Grow your audience and dramatically increase your reach on LinkedIn? 
- Build a recognized PERSONAL BRAND?

🟦 GHOSTWRITING SERVICES 
- Our done-for-you LinkedIn content produces results for growing your presence and your firm. 

🟦 LINKED LAWYER BOOTCAMP
- I’ve developed the premier training program for lawyers looking to level up on LinkedIn. 

About Me 

I’m a former lawyer and current serial entrepreneur based in a forest north of Toronto, where I live with my wife and 2 little monsters. 

I’m the author of In The Creative Arena: Why Creativity Is Key To Building Your Future.

I’m also a co-founder of: 
CONTENDER (www.contenderllc.com)
Unrationed (www.unrationed.com)

Anthony Albrecht

There's 1 skill I think every single one us needs to be working on in 2026.

Storytelling. 

Writing is still important. 
So is problem solving. 
And critical thinking. 
And selling. 

But regardless of what stage you're at in your career or what you're trying to accomplish, you need to be able to connect with folks on a human level. 

Stories have been the way we've done that for a very long time. 

And even though the world has changed very quickly, our human wiring really hasn't. 

We still love a good story. 

I've been telling stories for a living for 3 years now. 
And I've still got so much to learn. 

That's why I signed on to compete at Speaker Slam last month. I wanted to try telling stories in a new way. 

So I tried telling a story from a stage. 
With a 5-minute timer rolling.
And an audience. 

This is an excerpt from that story. 

I'm interested in your take. 

Is storytelling an essential skill in 2026? 
Or more a nice-to-have than a must-have? 



----
I'm running my next LinkedIn Foundations Workshop next Friday. 
Storytelling is indeed a topic we'll touch on. 
https://lnkd.in/eKD9dcyn

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“The Yoda of LinkedIn” for Lawyers | Helping you go from invisible to unforgettable out here.

Did you know you can make 6 figures as a LinkedIn ghostwriter? 

What a world. 

Precisely 1 year before I started LinkedIn ghostwriting for a living, this wouldn't have occurred to me as a way to make money. 

Now? 

We're hiring our 4th ghostwriter here at CONTENDER. 

Learn more about the opp here. 
https://lnkd.in/gZivvJDT

Must you be a lawyer to be a Legal ghostwriter here? 
So far, yes. But I'm open to having my mind changed on that. 

Must you already be killing it on LinkedIn? 
No, though showing me that you're trying out here helps. 

Is this a full-time gig? 
Yes, though we're open to starting out part-time to check the fit. 

Can you really make 6 figures here? 
That's an affirmative. 

If you're intrigued, have a look at the job posting. Feel free to DM me with questions. 

Onward.

Tony Albrecht

In 2021, Sawil and I packed up our 2-year-old son, our baby daughter, and everything we could fit in the Subaru—

And we moved to Canada. 

I was leaving:
- my career (decided to move instead of making partner) 
- my family (parents and sisters still live in STL)
- the house we had built 2 years earlier
- my hometown 
- my country. 

We were headed toward:
- a house on 18 acres we’d bought sight unseen 
- an area where we knew nobody 
- a rural lifestyle (very different than the everything-delivered-in-1-day convenience of living in a city) 
- an uncertain professional future (if I wasn’t going to be a law firm partner in the US, what was I going to be?)
- a blank canvas of a future. 

That month we made the move was one of the most stressful of my life. And in retrospect, there are a couple aspects I'd tweak. 

But overall, the move has been another data point backing up the truth of Bradbury’s philosophy—

We must continually be jumping off cliffs and growing wings on the way down. 

We had an idea of the life we wanted to begin building for our children and for ourselves. 

We leapt. 

And 5 years later, we love where we're at. 

Our kids love Great Moose Academy, the forest school they go to. 

Sawil has started a second career as a therapist, complete with a full slate of clients. 

And I've spent the last 3 years building this thing we call CONTENDER. 

It feels like our wings are still coming in. 😬
But we haven’t hit the ground yet. 🤞🏻

I continue to believe that the life we want often waits for us on the other side of a leap that freaks us out. 

Right? ;-)

I know it's a goofy thing to say...
But LinkedIn changed my life. 

I ignored the platform through my 12 years as a practicing attorney. 

It was only after I left the practice in late 2021 that I started paying more attention to the platform. 

Watching what folks like Darren McKee and Robb Gilbear were doing, I realized LinkedIn wasn't what I thought it was...

The most boring social media network on the planet. 
The world's biggest online bulletin board. 
The place to stash my digital resume. 

I started to see LinkedIn as a place to: 
• express myself genuinely 
• meet interesting people 
• create opportunities. 

I didn't have my own business then. That came later. 

What set me on that trajectory was recognizing that I'd learned LinkedIn the wrong way. 

And if I approached this platform differently, I could get different results. 

LinkedIn empowered me to build CONTENDER, a business that employs 6 full-time people. 
We're going to break 7 figures in revenue this year. 
And we're just getting warmed up. 

I told the fuller story of how LinkedIn changed my life (and it's potential to change yours) in the first video on my new YouTube channel. 
https://lnkd.in/gFyRQ6a3

If you'd be willing to subscribe to my channel on how to magnetize your LinkedIn presence, I'm in your debt. 
Bonus points for leaving a comment. ;-) 

Has LinkedIn changed your life (yet)?

There has never been a better time to start posting on LinkedIn than right now. 

If that strikes you as the self-serving talk of a guy who sells LinkedIn stuff, fair enough. 

But I truly believe that. 
Here’s why. 

People love lamenting:
• How reach has dropped. 
• How terrible the algorithm is.
• How hard it is to get engagement. 

They’re almost always saying some version of—

My posts are not getting enough attention. 

That’s understandable. Indeed, organic reach appears down in a ton of circumstances. 

But organic reach is not actually the point. 

Nobody pays the rent with organic reach. 
Nobody buys a truck with likes and comments. 
Nobody covers their kids’ tuition with impressions. 

We all want Linky to shower us with organic reach. 
But reach is not the real goal. 

What we’re really after out here…

Is opportunities. 

New clients. 
The next hire. 
More customers. 
The next job offer.
More awareness that you’re the go-to expert in your domain and market. 

If I offered you 1 million impressions or 1 new client, which are you taking? 

I’m taking the client every time. 

And I don’t actually NEED more impressions to land more clients. 

What I can use is MORE people starting to pay attention to LinkedIn for the fist time. 

The more people who do that, the harder it might be to get organic reach. 

But that’s fine. Because it also means there are more people plugged into the network. 

Each of those people is another source of potential opportunities. 

This is why I’m not worried about the drop in reach. 
It’s corresponding with the LinkedIn network getting stronger. 

And if you’re consistently depositing your energy into this network, you’re building up your social capital here. 

That social capital has never been more valuable than it is today. 
And I’ll bet it all that social capital here will be more valuable a year from now than it is today.

That’s why I’ve never been as bullish on LinkedIn as I am right now. 

How about you? 



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I've got 12 spots left for my LinkedIn Foundations Workshop next Friday, Feb 27th. 

You can find the info here: 
https://lnkd.in/eKD9dcyn

This comment thread is one example of why I remain so optimistic on the LinkedIn platform. 

I left a comment on a post from David Vicknair about the first house he bought out of law school. The post was about how he bought a duplex so he could rent one unit out and live in the other. 

That was very different than my mentality both during and after law school. My comment said that. I also referred to how a good friend from law school had done something a lot like what David had. 

A few hours later, Brian Wacker dropped into the thread and responded to my comment. 

I hadn't tagged Brian.
I didn't even mention his name in the comment. 
Mainly because I didn't think he'd care. 

Yet that comment found him. 

It led to us texting back and forth more than we have in the last few years. 

The algo takes a lot of heat out here. 
I think it's smarter than we give it credit for. 

And at the risk of dismounting with an after-school-special message...

You never know which post, comment, or dm is going to create a chance to build a relationship. Or connect with an old friend.

19 weeks from today, I’ll take my first proper crack at finishing 100 miles. 

I like mantras. Especially during long races. Lines that I can just repeat to keep me focused on the task at hand. 

On my weekly long run this morning, a new one came to me—

Can you do 1 more? 

I’m training for what’s called a backyard ultramarathon. 

It’s a peculiar format.

It’s a race in the sense that:
- it’s a competition and
- there is a winner. 

But it’s not a race in the sense that you don’t need to be fastest to win. 

 In a backyard ultra, everyone runs the same 4.1 mile loop. Called “a yard.”
Every hour. 
On the hour. 

If you’re not at the starting line when the bell goes off on the hour, you’re out. 

And that bell will go off every hour on the hour until only one person finishes the yard. 

My goal for the Utopia Backyard Ultra in June up here in the woods north of Toronto is to complete at least 24 yards. 

100 miles. 

And 5 months out I already know that there will be moments during those 24 hours when I might want to quit. 

That’s when the mantra’s come in handy. 

Can you do 1 more yard? 
1 more 4.1 mile loop? 

I don’t know if I’ll be able to do 100 miles right now. 
But yeah…yeah, I do finish 1 more yard in an hour. 

Then we’ll reassess. Ask the question again. 

Keep stacking yards, 1 at a time. 

And you might think I’m nuts, but I didn’t mind running in 28 degrees after several days in Mexico. Felt like being back home. 

Though I could’ve sworn I got at least a little bit of sun, which you wouldn’t know looking at this pic….

A new client has seen 128,485 impressions from her first 4 posts. My favorite part about this—

I’ve had very little to do with her fast start. 

Over the last 6 months, I've spent a lot more of my time coaching people on LinkedIn. Both clients and my team. 

And nobody has gotten more of that coaching attention than Jess Sargus. 

When Jess joined us in September, she had never written a post for somebody else. 

Our corest of core values at CONTENDER is—

We are all players. 

Everybody here wants the ball.
Everybody wants to make good things happen when we get the ball. 

And we understand that the key to delivering when we get the ball is to prepare. 

Jess is a consummate player. 

Humble. Capable. Driven. 

In less than 6 months, she has gone from 
• Beginner to 
• Very good at what she does. 

It's been awesome to see. 

And for this client specifically, Jess squared these posts up well by: 
• listening to our client sharing stories and opinions she really cares about; 
• shaping them into aerodynamic posts; and 
• crafting detailed, evocative hooks. 

If you're working on developing your skills out here as a writer, creator, and digital networker—

Focus on getting reps.
The results will take care of themselves. 


---------
10 of the 25 spots still available for my LinkedIn Foundations Workshop this Friday. 

If you're interested in leveling up out here:
https://lnkd.in/eKD9dcyn

taplio

The Battle

Tara Horstmeyer

Anthony Albrecht

Followers

Posts

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Performance ScoreAnthony Albrecht's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Tara Horstmeyer

Anthony Albrecht

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);}Anthony Albrecht's LinkedIn Performance

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