Anthony Carlton

Founder @ CRE Digital | Helping commercial real estate funds raise capital with premium branding and investor acquisition systems

I built my personal brand to escape the corporate grind.

After working with clients across finance, private equity, venture, and real estate—I doubled down on one clear problem:

Most CRE firms struggle to raise capital online.

That’s why I founded CRE Digital — a content and brand strategy partner for capital raisers, fund managers, and private equity firms.

We turn your expertise into influence, using systems that drive:

• Brand authority that builds trust
• LP investor leads and committed capital
• Off-market deal flow and JV partners
• Speaking invites and top CRE podcast features

What sets us apart? 

We’ve sat on both sides of the table — advising high-net-worth investors and partnering with top CRE operators.

Now, we build digital brands that attract capital at scale.

If you’re serious about raising capital and want your brand to do the heavy lifting, book a call in my featured section or visit credigital.io

Founder & Brand Advisor

Build Your Brand @ FinGhost.io

Your independence isn't violently taken from you.

It vanishes with 100s of "safe" decisions.

Here's how it happens (and ends up becoming a cage):

Age 18: You choose the "smart" major.

• Law.
• Finance. 
• Engineering. 
• Computer science.

Your parents are relieved. You're rewarded with scholarships and summer internships.

Age 22: You take the corporate job.

Goldman. McKinsey. Google. Whichever pays most and has the best brand.

Your professors congratulate you. Your classmates envy you. You're rewarded with a signing bonus and an impressive title.

Age 25: You accept the promotion.

More responsibility. More money. More visibility to senior leadership.

Your manager says you're on the "fast track." You're rewarded with status and a salary that justifies the lifestyle inflation you didn't plan.

Age 30: You take the management role.

People report to you now. You attend 10-15 meetings a week. You have influence—or at least the appearance of it.

You're rewarded with prestige and the comfort of knowing you're winning the game everyone else is playing.

Age 35: You wake up.

Your calendar isn't yours.
Your decisions aren't yours.
Your time isn't yours.

You're unhappy and burned out, but you can't move because you have a mortgage, car payment, daycare, and stock options vesting.

Every individual choice was rational.

But somewhere along the way, your autonomy disappeared.

The trap works because it's not obviously a trap.

It's comfortable. 
Respectable. 
Safe.

It's what winning looks like from the outside.

But from the inside, it feels like you're capable of more...smart enough to see the problems but powerless to fix them.

Successful by every conventional measure.

But somehow still not free.

This is the trap to avoid. 
Now you know what it looks like.

What you are working on in 2026 for more personal freedom in 2027?

--

♻️ Repost if this resonates.

Follow me Anthony Carlton for more posts on building wealth and independence.

I build media systems for operators who want influence, growth, & capital at scale | $50M raised through social | Founder & Writer

Don't quit your 9-5 to go "all in" as a solopreneur until you have 4 things: 
 
- Proven offer 
- Clients paying you 
- Results and case studies 
- Consistent lead gen systems 
 
Give yourself 6-12 months to build skills and undeniable social proof before you leap. 
 
In 2019 I quit my job, spent a fat chunk of my life savings, and failed at going solo. 
 
I had 0/4 essentials above. 
 
Didn't know how to write. 
Didn't know how to sell. 
Didn't know how to build. 
 
In 2022 I made a successful transition from 9-5 to building a full-time creator income. 
 
But I worked for 12 months alongside my 9-5: 
 
• Testing ideas 
• Growing on LinkedIn 
• Finding proof of concept 
 
I'm confident everyone who reads this can build a full-time income as a creator. 
 
But only if you set yourself up for success. 
 
That's why I write weekly guides giving actionable strategies for making the leap. 
 
Need a good place to start? 
 
Read this: https://lnkd.in/e-RX6KFj

“Set a goal to become a millionaire—not for the money, but for what it will make of you.”

Jim Rohn damn near invented the category of personal development.

This is one of his hardest-hitting quotes.

In one sentence, it shifted my mindset around goals.

Setting goals is less about the end result, and more about who you become in the process of achieving it.

Early in my career, I chased all the wrong things.

→ If I only got that raise...
→ If I could just get that VP title...
→ If I check one more big goal off my list...

I thought if I just hit the next milestone, then I’d feel free. Then I’d feel successful.

But learning from people like Jim Rohn, I realized:

The goals weren't a magic checklist.

The goals were about who I had to become to achieve them.

→ A person who can communicate better
→ A person who can be self-reliant
→ A person who can grow and improve

Writing did that for me.

It gave me clarity.
It built proof of work.
It opened doors that used to be locked.

But more than that, it forced discipline. It exposed gaps in how I think. And it helped me build leverage instead of just more output.

So yeah, set big goals.

But understand: the real win isn’t the number.

It’s who you have to become to earn it.

That’s where the compounding starts.

What's the WHY behind your biggest goal right now?

Anthony Carlton

Do you want to be impressive or independent?

99% optimize for an "impressive" cage.

Achievement looks like:

- Climbing the corporate ladder
- Adding prestigious titles to LinkedIn
- Hitting salary milestones
- Getting promoted faster than peers
- Building a resume that impresses strangers

Achievement is external validation.

It's playing a game someone else designed and winning by their rules.

Agency looks like:

- Owning your calendar
- Making decisions without approval
- Building assets that compound
- Disconnecting time from income
- Designing work around your life, not the other way around

Agency is internal freedom.

It's designing your own game and defining what winning means.

Here's the trap:

Achievement is measurable, visible, and celebrated.
Agency is quiet, personal, and invisible to others.

So we chase achievement because it's easier to see we're making progress.

We climb faster, earn more, get promoted sooner. And wake up one day realizing we built an impressive cage.

I spent my 20s optimizing for achievement.

• Better titles. 
• Higher salary. 
• More responsibility.

I looked successful on paper but felt trapped in practice.

Now I optimize for independence.

• More decisions I own. 
• Fewer meetings I didn't schedule. 
• Systems that don't require my constant presence.

It's less impressive to people on LinkedIn.

But infinitely more valuable to me.

The question isn't "How do I achieve more?"

The question is "How do I build for optionality?"

--

♻️ Repost if this resonates.

Follow me Anthony Carlton for more posts on building wealth and independence.

Getting financial advisors millions of dollars & impressions | $20+ million in capital & AUM raised from LinkedIn | 100+ million client impressions | 400+ meetings booked | $1+ million in client courses sold

If you work in finance or real estate and want to add clients or capital through LinkedIn, send me a DM.

If you want to write a memoir or lead-gen book, send me a DM.

Adam Knorr

Sometimes I drink fish tank cleaner.

(And 5 other questionable health things I do) : 

1. I drink methylene blue. 

Methylene is a textile dye. It's also an industrial-grade fish tank clear. 

I also drink it, because some Bro Scientists think it slows aging, improves mood, sharpens cognition.

It tastes like someone stirred a glass of water and Malort with a Sharpie.

2. I've taken peptides.

Only BPC-157 to speed up injury recovery.

It's not FDA-approved, which I feel is a great sign.

3. I eat 15-18 lbs of plain Greek yogurt a week.

Those 3-pound Kirlkland tubs. Always with frozen blueberries, sometimes with honey if I want a nice little treat.

4. I mix my own electrolyte powder.

LMNT just posts their recipe on their website. Shoutout LMNT.

So I mix all the ingredients together and create my own. It's a bunch of white powders and I have to weigh everything on a scale, so I like to play Pusha T while I do this.

5. I drink ~800 MG caffeine a day. 

1-liter French Press before the coffee shop opens at 6:30.
2 16-oz coffees at the coffee shop from 6:30-11.
Sometimes a 100-200 MG energy drink in the PM. 

After writing this out, I realize I might actually need to get this under control. 

6. I tie my mental health to a social media algorithm.

I hope this post gets a lot of impressions.

Getting financial advisors millions of dollars & impressions | $20+ million in capital & AUM raised from LinkedIn | 100+ million client impressions | 450+ meetings booked | $1+ million in client courses sold

Recycling your best-performing posts isn't lazy. 

It's the correct strategy.

Just... Make small adjustments so you're not outright lying to people.

Why you can't expect to make money on social media by copying what works for the gurus: Exhibit A.

I know it's easy to dunk on Hormozi. And I genuinely like a lot of his ideas. 

But I also know that if he saw this post, he'd agree with me. 

The ultimate irony:

To get to the point where you can post zero-calorie platitudes and get 2,600 likes, you have to create a tremendous amount of valuable, insightful, unique content that only you could have created.

Then, the bigger you get, the more beneficial it becomes to morph into a human fortune cookie.

I quit my finance job in 2022 to become a writer. 

Now, I write LinkedIn posts. Not what I dreamed of. 

But you know what?

It works. 

My real dream is to get paid for my own content. I want to write books and blogs and screenplays that people shell out millions for. And, candidly, I expect that will happen.

But had I tried that on day 1, I would've been broke by day 30. 

See, when I started in 2022, I had no audience. I had like 1,100 connections on LinkedIn and a Wordpress full of college newspaper sports recaps.

So even if I did write a mindbending novel, it wouldn't have mattered. 

What would I have done with it?
Who would have seen it?
Where would it go?

So you know what I did instead of trying to write something I was passionate about?

I accepted a contract from Progressive Insurance to copyedit their policy docs.

And that's how I made my first few thousand dollars as a "writer."

Since then, I've made LinkedIn ghostwriting my primary service offering. Turns out I'm pretty good at it, and it pays me well. 

I have some plans in 2026 to write and sell you all some original writing. That's a big part of why I try to avoid writing content that's only "7 LinkedIn Growth Hacks!!!!"  

I want to see how people respond to my voice — not just my meta LinkedIn content about LinkedIn on LinkedIn.

If I've earned the right to give any advice to people who want to write for a living, I'm going to commit the worst possible sin a writer can and plagiarize someone else's work.

"You can be idealistic and fail, or you can be pragmatic and succeed—while continuing to fulfill your ideals as best you can."

Lot of insurance companies out there. 

Lot of policy docs that need to be edited.

2022: Quit my job, had 0 clients.

2025: 51 clients. Here are the numbers:

-> LinkedIn Ghostwriting:

$2,650–$4,000/month
7 clients (1 churned)

I've worked with my clients for 7 months–2+ years.

Deliverables: LinkedIn posts, interviews, content strategy, account management, image sourcing, scheduling.

-> Email Newsletters:

$95–$200/email
4 clients

Usually email is a ghostwriting client saying, "Can you write my emails too?"

To which I say, "Yes."

-> Twitter/X Ghostwriting:

$500–$1,900/quarter
2 clients

I never quite got my pricing right for this.

-> Advisor GPS (Course + Community):

$2,199–$6,997
12 members

An accelerator program for financial advisors.

I built this with two partners, so the revenue is not 100% mine.

-> Skool Community:

$900/mo
10 members

I edit 3x weekly posts for clients, provide 1:1 consulting, community access, and coaching calls.

Yesterday, I edited 3 posts for a client. The posts totaled 567 words. I left 1,571 words of feedback on why I made the edits I made.

It's time-consuming, so I'll be raising the price, but I love this community.

-> Agency Work:

$2,500–$5,000/mo
2 clients

Content strategy, ghostwriting, systems work.

-> One-Off Projects: 

$497–$5,875
9 clients

Book ghostwriting, funnel builds, AI systems, guest speaking, tour scripts.

-> Consulting Calls:

$297–$347/hour
16 calls (15 people)

Raising the price on these, too. Prep, 60-minute calls, and follow-up add up. 

--

In total, I worked with 51 unique clients in 2025.

I don't really know what to say next. Because in my head, I'm still 28-Year-Old Adam From 2022 Trying To Figure This Whole Thing Out. And I think I'll feel that way tomorrow. And next year. And in 2030, 2035, 2050, and 2060, Lord-willing and the creek don't do that thing it tends to do.

When I had just started doing this, I paid another ghostwriting agency owner $400 for a 1-hour call. He was doing like $50K a month at the time.

I asked him: "Does this ever feel insane to you? What you've built?"

"Honestly man?" he said. "I've had my head down in the day-to-day for so long that I've never really had a chance to step back and look at it like that."

I couldn't understand that at the time, but now I do.

You could tell me the last 3 years have actually been 3 days. Or 30 years. I wouldn't blink at either.

Time stops being neatly packaged when you're trying to build something. It turns into a forever-unspooling piece of yarn, where every Monday is a Saturday, every Saturday a Monday. April is December. You eat your midnight snack at sunrise. 

It all blurs together, and nothing feels like it ever changes. When I went to sleep last night, I was still 28-Year-Old Adam From 2022 Trying To Figure This Whole Thing Out. When I woke up this morning, I was the same.

But when I pick my head up and look around, somehow everything has changed.

I never expected this. Not in 100 lifetimes.

But man.

I sure am grateful for it.

If I were starting as a ghostwriter with zero clients, here's how I'd close my first within 7 days:

Step 1: Go to YouTube. Click on videos in my niche.

Step 2: Watch the ads the algo serves to me in my niche.

Step 3: Look up the creators of those ads on LinkedIn.

Step 4: Make a list of the ones with no LinkedIn presence (it'll be 90%+).

Step 5: Go watch their 3 most popular YouTube videos.

Step 6: Write 10 LinkedIn posts for them for free. Include visuals.

Step 7: Message them on every platform offering those posts for free until they either agree to test them out or tell me to self-immolate. 

Step 8: Repeat with as many creators as possible.

Assuming you're good at writing LinkedIn content, you will 100% land a client within 7 days doing this.

Last week, I wrote about how I drink 800MG of caffeine a day. People told me that was concerning. But you know what?

Caffeine doesn't even affect me. And who are you to tell me what to do? Sure I get up at 4AM without an alarm and maybe twice per week I can't sleep past 3 and yeah maybe I feel like part of The Walking Dead every afternoon while I'm "crashing" or whatever but what do you even think that has to do with caffeine, anyway? You don't know me and you don't know my life. I know you claim to be "worried about my heart," but when I hurt my back again last month none of you said bupkus. And while we're on that topic, no one is every giving me any credit for showing up here darn near every single day WITH A HURT BACK and STILL posting to LinkedIn consistently. I'm like the Rob McClanahan of LinkedIn content, and you guys treat me like I'm Ralph Cox. Which is kind of a funny thing to bring up as a comparison because there's no way caffeine at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics was like caffeine is in 2026. People wonder why everyone is so anxious nowadays, meanwhile all the corporate girlies are shotgunning afternoon Alanis after their morning double-shot iced mocha and wondering why oh why they feel so much existential dread about the trajectory of their life when everything is so good on paper. I'm telling you they did not feel this way back when Eruzione was lighting the lamp on the Soviets, they were just sitting in the chalet and maybe having a Miller Light and a drag or two of a Marlboro and getting energy from Cold War patriotism instead of cold-can-concoctions of cotton-candy-caffeine. I'm not saying everything is perfect or anything like that, but we used to be a proper country back before we pretended like Auston Matthews was enough to take us to gold in Italy and we left Jason Roberston offer the roster. Like, yeah, let's leave the leading goal-scorer over the past year in the NHL off the team and pretend like that's gonna work out for us, great call Bill Guerin, why don't you go back to mixing up D-pairings in Wilkes-Barre. 

So I don't know why y'all keep saying "800 mG iS toO mUcH cAfFeiNe."

It doesn't affect me like that.

Friendly reminder that the best way to use AI to write your LinkedIn content is to tell AI to forget everything it knows about writing LinkedIn content. 

LLMs are trained to write LinkedIn content based on LinkedIn content, and the worst thing about LinkedIn content is that it sounds like LinkedIn content. Ideally, you want your LinkedIn content to sound nothing like LinkedIn content.

So when you're using AI to write LinkedIn content, it's best you don't even bring up the fact that you're trying to write LinkedIn content, because then you'll end up with content that sounds like... LinkedIn content.

"How do I sell to people in the DMs?"

Tell them you're selling to them. 

If you genuinely think your service can improve someone's life, it is your obligation to sell to them.

If you do not think that, you are selling snake oil, and you should go do something that doesn't rip people off, like medieval jousting or leading tours on a coffee farm in Hawaii.

I am ashamed to admit I spent the last 3 years and 9 months referring to myself as a "Founder." Is there a more self-important title in the world? 

I did not "found" anything. I paid LegalZoom like $500 and started pressing buttons on my computer.

I've been writing for a living for 3.5 years.

Here are 5 ways to be a better writer: 

♻️ Repost if this helped you and because I paid money for someone to design this for me and I want to feel better about that investment.

I generated 59 million views for clients last year.

10 writing insights you won't get anywhere else: 

1. Create a common enemy. Attack them in third person.

The best content unites you and your reader against a shared villain — Wall Street, conventional wisdom, the Cleveland Guardians, whatever. 

When you throw stones at the enemy, use "they." When you pivot to help your reader, switch to "you." 

The Cleveland Guardians keep stealing your division. They succeed from devil magic. You deserve fair baseball.

2. When your reader IS the problem, use third person anyway.

Sometimes you need to call out a mistake your ideal client is making. 

Don't say: "You all suck at writing."

Say: "8 in 10 financial advisors write the wrong way." 

Third person lets them opt into the criticism instead of bracing against it.

3. Write "poorly" on purpose.

My job in 2022: "I know how to write properly. I will help you."

My job in 2026: "I know how AI writes. It's too proper. I will make it worse."

I sort of hate all of you who just copy and paste stuff from ChatGPT. It's embarrassing. You're an adult. At least pretend like your brain works.

I know I just violated rule 1. 

4. Nuance kills reach.

"I hate all of you" >>>> "I sort of hate all of you" 

If you're going to have an opinion, have the whole opinion. 

5. If it reads well but means nothing, kill it.

"It's all about strategy." 

Cool. 

What strategy? 
Why does it matter? 
What happens if they ignore it? 

If you can't answer those questions, delete the sentence.

6. Only ask questions people will answer publicly.

"What's your deepest darkest secret you've never told anyone?" might spark internal reflection. 

But nobody's typing that out for their boss to see. 

7. Proper nouns beat common nouns.

"Geek Squad" is more visceral than "tech support." 

"Zillow" hits harder than "real estate apps." 

Branded specificity makes abstract ideas concrete.

8. Write so specifically you never have to name your audience.

"I see this with [target audience] all the time" feels engineered. If your copy is specific enough, they'll see themselves without you pointing.

10. Intentionally skip one number in every listicle.

People will call you out for this in the comments bc they feel very smart and it will boost your engagement. 

--

Anyway, what's your deepest darkest secret you've never told anyone?

I am working within 15 minutes of opening my eyes every morning. 

Wake up (0.0001 seconds)
Scroll social media on my phone (13 mins, 56.9999 seconds)
Turn off my white noise machine (3 seconds)
Make coffee (1 min)

Then I fire up my laptop, put the Maggie Rogers Tiny Desk on my TV, and start arguing with Claude. 

By the time 8:00 AM hits, I have 4 hours of deep work done. At 11:00, I eat chicken and a boiled potato at my desk. By noon, I've worked an 8-hour day. Sometime between 4:30-5:30 PM, I generally shut it down and go to the gym.

Twice a week, I do 45-60-minute cardio sessions on the stationary bike. I had a friend at the gym 3D print me an attachment so I can snap my laptop onto the stationary bike and work during those cardio sessions.

Some Saturdays and Sundays, I sleep in until 5, but it's usually the same routine. I might start with the Phoebe Bridgers Tiny Desk or the Scarface Tiny Desk, but I run the rest of the playbook the same way.

My average work week is 70-80 hours.

And gosh, is it fun.

I'm always torn between how to post about my work online.

On one hand, I want to tell people to do what I did. Quitting my job and building my own business is the best decision I've ever made. And had I not seen content from other people who did it, I never would have done it myself.

On the other hand, survivorship bias. 

So — I think this post is the right middle ground.

I spend ~80% of my waking hours working, but only ~20% of those hours actually feel like work. The rest, genuinely, feels like play. 

Admittedly, it does go in seasons. I've had months where I've wanted to stab my laptop with a basilisk fang just in case the soul of Ebenezer Scrooge got horcrux'd in there somehow. 

And then I've had months that have gone by in the time it takes me to turn off my white noise machine.

The most important factor in your ability to successfully work for yourself is self-awareness. You need to know if you're actually talented, you need to know if you're actually a hard worker, you need to know if you actually love it — or if you just don't want to be doing the other thing you're currently doing. If you lie to yourself about any of these things, you're done. 

And even if you have a little bit of success, there will always be something in the back of your head telling you, "Tomorrow, this might all come crashing down."

So that's why I am working within 15 minutes of opening my eyes every morning.

taplio

The Battle

Anthony Carlton

Adam Knorr

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The Battle

Anthony Carlton

Adam Knorr

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Engagements

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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);}Anthony Carlton's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAdam Knorr's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreAnthony Carlton's LinkedIn Performance