College teacher turned ghostwriter | Scaling founders, coaches, and consultants to $100K+ /mo | Writing to build wealth and better self | 98,000 on Twitter (X)

Taylin John Simmonds

3 years ago, a friend lent me $40K to pay off my debt. So I could focus on business.

2 years ago, I offered to pay it back. He said no. Reinvest. Pay me later. 1 year ago, first payment. 

Yesterday, I paid him back!

Find the people who bet on you before it makes sense. Then spend your life proving them right.

College teacher turned Substack ghostwriter | Thoughts about craft, ideas, and AI as a creative partner (not a replacement) | 2B impressions | $4M+ revenue generated | All in on Substack

One pattern I’ve noticed in all the people that inspire me: They live a diverse life.

They layer unrelated skills. 
Read widely. 
And have friends you'd rarely see together. 

A rich life isn't only about money. It's about the range of experiences that made you who you are.

Stop calling yourself a content creator. Content creators chase algorithms. You're cultivating a body of work.

You're not in the content game. You're in the depth game.

And depth doesn't scale. It compounds.

I'm noticing a quiet rebellion against balance. 

People who disappear into their craft. 12, 15 hours a day for weeks. Then step back completely. No guilt. No routine. No splitting the difference. Full immersion, then full recovery. 

Seasons, not schedules.

You don't actually want to stop working. You just haven't found work worth your devotion.

The goal isn't to do less. It's to care so deeply about one thing that everything else becomes noise.

Find that thing. Then you'll never need convincing to start.

Everyone's trying to escape work. Fewer hours. Passive income. Early retirement. That's not freedom. That's avoidance.

You don't want to do less. You want something worth pouring everything into. Work that's worthy of your full attention, your full energy, your full devotion.

Find that first.

If AI is speeding up your writing process, you're using it wrong.

AI should slow you down. Stress-test your ideas. Pressure-test your arguments. Find the angle that actually matters before you write a word.

The bottleneck was never your writing speed. It was your thinking clarity.

You don't need 100 clients. You need a handful of the right ones and the devotion to serve them so well they never want to leave.

No empire. No team of 30. No "scaling to seven figures."

Just craft you're proud of and a livelihood that lets you live well.

A book you highlighted but never practiced is a book you never read.

Understanding doesn't live in the notes you took.

It lives in the choices you made differently afterward.

A life-changing habit I picked up recently: Fifteen minutes of breath work before work.

The breath brings me out of my head and into stillness. A stillness that makes creative work feel effortless.

Your best work is hiding behind the ritual you're skipping.

The real value in the AI age isn't what you know. It's who you can inspire.

Give them an aim, a compelling reason, and the next small step when everything feels overwhelming.

If you want to matter in the AI age, don't just share knowledge. 
Lend direction.

You're behind because you've never given 100% of yourself to the thing you care about.

Subtract everything that isn't it. Give it everything you have. Not 40%. Not most days. Everything.

You've never seen what happens when you actually commit. Find out.

The Mindful Creator | I talk about mindset, creativity, & content writing | Building The Mindful Creation Blueprint

I wasn’t supposed to be here.

Five and a half years ago, my life was going the other way...

I was: 

🔹Drinking every day
🔹Running from myself

And one night alcohol took my right eye in a freak accident

That was my wake-up call.

I had two choices: 

1. Keep spiraling downwards (and potentially die) 
2. Rebuild myself

I chose to rebuild.

I got sober. 

Which forced me to face the sides of myself I’d been running from. 

And in the process, I discovered something most people never realize...

Your identity shapes your whole reality. 

Who you believe you are determines what you're capable of creating. 

That lesson became the foundation of everything I do now.

When I started my consulting business...

I was in college studying audio engineering.

Just a normal guy who had to figure it out from scratch.

Since then... 

I built my consulting business to six figures organically on LinkedIn.

And I've watched my clients break through the same walls I had broken through in my own life.

Today, my mission is simple:

To help established leaders and creatives get to $20K/m by doing the inner work combined with the business work.

Because I know what it feels like to lose everything.

And I also know what it takes to build yourself back stronger.

Darion Rae

Sales Navigator trying so hard to get me back it's even telling me Tony Robbins is a potential lead haha

60+ 1:1 Clients Served | Helping solopreneurs build 6-figure service businesses on LinkedIn

One of my clients has a hard to deal with client of her own.

Here’s how we handled it…

She told me on a call that one of her clients keeps responding to her messages later than agreed upon and also pays her invoices late every month. 

So 2 weeks ago, I got her to send her client an email.

I won’t tell you what the email said exactly.

But let’s just say it demanded respect from her client in a polite way.

(Most solopreneurs are afraid to do this because they fear they’ll lose the client)

Here’s what happened next…

Her client apologized, signed up to an automated subscription (no more late invoices), and agreed to respond within 24 hours as their contract stated. 

She was shocked but obviously happy.

I told her…

You have to set expectations with your clients and then hold that standard.

If not… they’ll walk all over you.

I didn’t start in the online space with authority or expertise.

Nobody did.

You build sh*t offline, keep stacking proof.

Share your wins (and losses) publicly. 

Then and only then will your credibility and status start to rise.

People will doubt and judge you, but you need to keep delusional self-belief…

Because you can’t let not having a bunch of authority yet be the reason you don’t keep building.

--

🔷 I created a 3-day mini course breaking down The LinkedIn Acquisition Triangle that I’ve used for me and my clients to generate almost half a million on LinkedIn.

You get instant access to it when you join my free Skool community, Identity & Income Breakers. Find us here: https://lnkd.in/dNFDt2yC

Be bold.

Speak your truths.

Being too agreeable and aiming for broad engagement stops you from sharing your own opinions on topics. 

This forces you into the same broad vanilla content that’s all over LinkedIn right now.

Do this right…

And you’ll magnetize your people.

--

🔷 I created a 3-day mini course breaking down The LinkedIn Acquisition Triangle that I’ve used for me and my clients to generate almost half a million on LinkedIn.

You get instant access to it when you join my free Skool community, Identity & Income Breakers. Find us here: https://lnkd.in/dNFDt2yC

I hit my first $5K month with less than 5K followers. 

I also went on to hit my first $10K month with less than 7K followers. 

Proving to me once again the dirty little secret most LinkedIn gurus don’t want you to know (because you’d stop liking and commenting on their posts so much)

→ You want your dream clients to respect you more than they like you. 

You’ll grow slower.

You definitely won’t be ‘LinkedIn famous’.

But you’ll actually make money here.

--

🔷 I created a training breaking down my LinkedIn Acquisition Triangle that I’ve used for me and my clients to generate almost half a million on LinkedIn.

It’s inside my free Skool community, Identity & Income Breakers. You can join here: https://lnkd.in/dNFDt2yC

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Founder

Co-Founder

2 years I ago I joined my first coaching program.

Here’s what surprises most people…

The guy who ran it didn’t have a huge following (around 10K subs).

When I found him on YouTube, he wasn’t famous.

And his videos weren’t high production, they were just him talking into the camera. 

But I still paid him $7K anyways. 

Here’s why…

I knew he could help me grow my coaching/consulting biz. 

He had the client proof. He had the authority. He had done it himself. 

And his content was relevant to where I was at and what I was struggling with. 

In other words, he knew his niche inside and out. 

Why does this matter to you? 

Because if you want to actually make money from LinkedIn…

The same rule applies. 

Stop trying to be LinkedIn famous and start aiming to be niche famous.

--

🔷 I created a training breaking down The LinkedIn Acquisition Triangle that I’ve used for me and my clients to generate almost half a million on LinkedIn.

You get instant access to it when you join my free Skool community, Identity & Income Breakers. Find us here: https://lnkd.in/dNFDt2yC

After working with 60+ solopreneurs 1:1, 

Here’s the biggest mistake they all make on LinkedIn…

→ Trying to be liked by everyone

Instead of:

🔹Writing targeted content relevant to the people they help
🔹Standing up against their dream client's injustices and enemies
🔹Engaging with potential clients and building relationships with them

They:

🔹Write broad generic content to get empty engagement
🔹Never have bold stances or opinions on topics in their niche
🔹Spend their time on big creators’ posts hoping to get a response (and when they do it’s usually a VA)

The goal here isn’t just to magnetize your dream clients…

It’s also to repel people who aren’t. 

Authority with the right people > being liked by everyone

--

🔷 I created a training breaking down The LinkedIn Acquisition Triangle that I’ve used for me and my clients to generate almost half a million on LinkedIn.

You get instant access to it when you join my free Skool community, Identity & Income Breakers. Find us here: https://lnkd.in/dNFDt2yC

Meaning comes from progress.

When you're moving towards something you've decided is important to you...

Your mind has something to focus on.

This removes distractions and gives significance and meaning to your life.

I used to be an engagement junkie on LinkedIn 2.5 years ago.

Here’s what I mean…

I thought success on LinkedIn meant likes, comments, and impressions. 

So what I did was find top performing posts, then write them out by hand on a piece of paper. 

Then I would look at the structure, flow, and rhythm, and write my own post on a different topic following it to the letter (down to the same number of words per sentence). 

It got me engagement, but never any clients. 

At first I thought I was winning because my follower count was growing…

But after almost 5 months I still didn’t land a single client. I was frustrated. 

It wasn’t until I learned about targeted content that everything shifted for me.

I started writing to build trust and authority with the people I could help only (no more broad generic posts). 

2 months later I hit my first $5K month… then a few months after that my first $10K.

All from this one shift. 

Look if you’re here to get some LinkedIn fame and some likes, more power to you. We all have different goals. 

But if you’re here to actually magnetize and land clients (and currently aren’t)… 

Maybe it’s time to switch your approach.


---

🔷PS. I’m doing a live deep dive into writing targeted content this Thursday inside my private Skool community.

I’ll be teaching the same strategy me and my clients have used to generate almost a half a million dollars on LinkedIn over the last 2 years. 

You can join us free here → https://lnkd.in/dNFDt2yC

I’ll be doing some Q&A + content audits for people who are live on the call… so don’t miss out.

“Over 1 million impressions! Can you believe it only led to 1 newsletter sign up and 0 dollars?!”

This is what the ghostwriting agency owner said to us on the writing team after a post went viral on Twitter. 

Here’s what’s shocking… this is not uncommon. Back when I was ghostwriting… 

I saw this a lot. 

Everyone aiming to get likes and impressions (the vanity metrics).

All which led to nearly no clients signed which means…

No money. 

This showed me firsthand why being respected online by your niche is FAR more important than being liked.

---

🔷 If you're struggling to write content that feels aligned with you while still attracting your dream clients on LinkedIn...

I ran a workshop teaching my 6-figure content system & strategy.

Catch the free recording here:

https://lnkd.in/eUqPr7vK

Most solopreneurs approach content wrong. 

They write broad to get engagement, but struggle to magnetize clients. 

That same time you spend writing for likes and impressions you could be spending on building authority and influence. 

(The type of authority & influence that brings clients to you instead of you chasing them)

Because the longer you stay stuck in the engagement trap…

The longer you’ll struggle to consistently attract clients. 

One of the core pillars I teach my clients on how to magnetize is → targeted content. 

The goal is to write content that resonates with the right people (and repel the wrong people).

This is how you squeeze the most dollars out of the time you spend each week writing content. 

I made this shift myself just over 2 years ago…

And it led to my first $10K month from LinkedIn. 

My client Abby went from 0 clients to working with 5 just from writing targeted content. 

The trick is it has to be done right. 

Which is why this Thursday at 1PM CDT I’m doing a live deep dive on targeted content inside my private Skool group.  

I’m also going to do a Q&A at the end + some content audits for people who are there on the call. 

Just comment ‘TARGETED’ below and I’ll send you the calendar invite (it’s free to join).

🔷PS. I also put together a ‘targeted content’ checklist + a swipe file with examples from me and my clients for you to reference and use as frameworks.

Yours to keep if you show up live.

The number 1 reason solopreneur’s content fails:

They focus on engagement, not relevance. 

🔹Chasing viral topics/trends
🔹Writing for everyone instead of who they help
🔹Checking how many likes they got before ‘who’ actually liked it

All this creates is empty numbers with no leads. 

Here's the switch I made:

Went deep on the person I help (their fears, frustrations, desires) → Created content for them (not just teaching, but leading from experience) → Wrote as if I was speaking to them 1:1 → Saw what they resonate most with (then did more of it) → Repeat

Stop trying to go viral and write for everyone (if you want to magnetize potential clients)

Start writing for the people you want to work with. 

Most content here looks this same, this is how you stand out from everyone else.

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🔷PS. I’m doing a deep dive tomorrow on how to write targeted content inside my free Skool community.

If you’re a solopreneur and your content isn’t attracting the right people (or anyone)… you have to be there. You can join us here → https://lnkd.in/dNFDt2yC

PPS. I’m doing a Q&A and real time content audits at the end for a few people who show up live… so don’t wait and sign up now.

taplio

The Battle

Taylin John Simmonds

Darion Rae

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Performance ScoreTaylin John Simmonds's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Taylin John Simmonds

Darion Rae

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);}Taylin John Simmonds's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreTaylin John Simmonds's LinkedIn Performance