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 🚢

Recently, I coached a small mastermind of entrepreneurs with one ambitious goal:

To grow take-home profit by 50%+ during our first 6 months working together. 

So, I wrote the manifesto I wish someone handed me 5 years ago.

Here are 9 business principles that have served me well:

1. Speed is king

Your goal as an entrepreneur is to:

• Build things faster
• Collect cash faster
• Answer questions faster
• Respond to people faster

This does not mean act recklessly.

But it does mean questioning the tempo & timeline of the way you & your organization currently operate.

2. Raise your standards

You are exactly where you are because you tolerate it.

Your employees perform exactly how they do because you tolerate it.

Growth requires a raising of the minimum amount of performance you tolerate.

3. Think bigger—no one else will

To raise the standard, you must have something that motivates you to put forth new discretionary effort.

This will fall into either:

• Family impact
• Social impact
• Customer impact
• Or material goods

You tolerate the current level of your business because (whether consciously or subconsciously) it is meeting the demands you’ve placed on it.

4. Profit, profit, profit

You must obsess over the profitability of your business.

5. Data, then decisions

Doing things is easy.

Figuring out the right things to do is hard.

And it’s hard because you lack the information to make the right decision.

Which is why you need a tracking system that makes decisions for you.

6. Do the money math

Every single goal you have in this world is a simple set of equations.

And that’s especially true in business.

You should have clear models of:

• Every marketing platform
• Every payroll allocation
• Every sales process

Each should be modeled well in advance so you know exactly what you are building.

7. Solve in sequence

The people who move fastest:

• Work on things in the right order
• At the expense of everything else they could work on
• For months and years on end

This is the discipline you are going to need.

8. Care for your customer

It’s a shame, but most people in the internet education space do not give a single F about the people they work with.

9. Enjoy the ride

I can look back and smile on every single moment of my 4 years as an entrepreneur, even though I was not smiling in the moment.

Which means you can take the same approach now, no matter how challenging something is.

—
📌 The fastest vehicle to take home 50% more money right now:

Ghostwriting.

All you need to add $36,000/year is to land 1 client paying you $3,000/month.

I started a ghostwriting side hustle while working 50+ hours per week at my corporate 9-5.

And demand here on LinkedIn is huge.

Want to know how to land high-paying writing clients in 2026?

This free, 5-day email course has everything you need to get started: https://lnkd.in/gpPJpAS9

Here's some advice for anyone afraid of being laid off and replaced by AI:

Clear your entire calendar for the next week.

Use that time to immerse yourself in new AI tools like Claude Cowork.

Don't fear AI.

It won't replace you if you are:

• Using it intelligently
• To remove bottlenecks in your work
• And build yourself leverage that compounds forever

This is why I'm hosting my 2-week Claude Cowork Bootcamp starting TOMORROW.

Here's the schedule:

• Session 1: Setup & build your first Claude Skill
• Session 2: Write in-depth newsletters in minutes
• Session 3: Prepare your mind & materials before every meeting
• Session 4: Chain complex workflows together
• Session 5: Templates and browswer automation
• Session 6: Build your own custom Claude Skills

And no, you do not need ANY coding or AI experience.

But don't wait!

Enrollment closes TONIGHT at midnight.

Click here to secure your spot (before doors close): https://lnkd.in/gDzCitKk

Last January, this writer got fired.

And 2 days later?

My team & I started mentoring him.

And Warren's been running his digital business full-time ever since.

Just look at this small handful of wins he's collected so far:

• 3 sales calls & 1 new client in a single week
• Made his first $3,000 as a ghostwriter
• Booked a 6-month ghostwriting retainer
• Landed a $5,000 email course project

And if there's ONE thing you should know about him:

He's got an insanely good work ethic (even on the tough days).

For example, he got *every* possible response you can get from outreach in a 24-hour period:

• A lead telling him to “drop it”
• Another just brushing him off
• And a 3rd wanting to hop on a call

But he still kept going.

This is how I know Warren's one of the most committed students we've seen inside our Premium Ghostwriting Academy.

And clearly, it continues to pay off for him.

So, let Warren be your reminder never to give up.

I promise you, it's worth it.

📌 The good news?

It gets easier when you have a proven blueprint to follow.

That way, you can use your limited time on the simple actions that will *actually* help you make money the fastest.

Even if you:

• Suck at sales
• Don't have an audience
• Have never ghostwritten before

Click here to get instant access to the same proven blueprint Warren used: https://lnkd.in/gVpFVgvi

I build decks (sales & pitches, not patios) | professional magician | out here makin' friends

I used to help founders raise/sell millions with beautiful decks.
Now, I’m using AI to help humans heal their inner world.

Same storytelling skills. Different stakes.

I’m Head of Product & Ops at a stealth mental wellness AI startup, building games that help humans heal their relationship with self (the ‘what happened to you’ pieces).

On here, I talk about:
- Mental health & dopamine: the games our brains play, how tech makes it worse/better
- Storytelling: whether it’s a deck, a product, or a habit… story drives behavior
- Ops & product in the wild: what’s working (and not) as we build
- Books: I read 100+ a year and steal the best ideas shamelessly

For you? Well, you tell me…

Founder? Need a deck or website → DM and I’ll intro you to my partner. 
Ops/prod person? Follow for ops + AI wisdom from the trenches. 
Interesting human? Send me your favorite book rec.

Now we’re friends!

John Linford

Remember that incredible girlfriend? 
The one doing the nonprofit? 
She’s my fiancée now :) 

Happy to share a glimpse of my personal life with my professional circle. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming 😂

Helping humans heal | talking ops, AI, & books | professional magician | out here makin’ friends

Hot take: think Apple’s gonna die.

They’ve done a beautiful job with their products.

I’m an Apple guy, writing this on a Mac.

That said, in the coming days/times, what’s going to be prioritized are the interconnected, well-trained, and ubiquitous AI platforms. 

And for all the merit a closed ecosystem had..
It might be killing them for the future.

Case in point: swapped their AI to Gemini.

I think it’s because they didn’t have sufficient stuff to train models on. 

Couldn’t make it good.

I think they need to pivot, and become die-hard hardware / physical product gurus (more than they already are), open up their ecosystem, and figure out a way to intersect with the growing tide.

Else their phones / computers are gonna get left in the dust by the coming AI-enabled wave.

Right? Wrong? 
Would love to spark some debate here.

I’m trying to split my brain.

One half is slow.
Dialed.
Logical.
Meditative.
Principle-driven.

That’s the brain taking pen/paper notes.
Going on long walks. 
Sitting in silence.
Built for an older time. 

Other half is fast.
Task-switching.
Instictual. 
Keen. 
New. 

That’s the brain running four parallel agents.
Composing and responding instantly.
Referencing internal docs rapidly.
Built for a new age of speed. 

I think both are important. 

And learning about “fast-twitch” and “slow-twitch” brainpower is critical, and Thinking Fast and Slow is one of the best primers I’ve found for that.

Highly recommend, you read this one?

Amazing how many conventions from previous bosses carry over.

I still:
- run trainings like Dave Lainhart
- do sales calls like James Dawson
- do my calendar invites like Matt W Gore 
- adjudicate pro formas like Jed McCarthy
- think about strategy like Mark Josephson
- orchestrate project management like Matt W Gore
- run convergent/divergent thinking like Nathan Wallace
- think about stakeholder needs like Anna Schena Walsh

And so much more. 

Feeling grateful on this Friday. 

I’d love to hear about your conventions.
Who’s inspired you.
Let’s get some feel-good in the comments.

Lenny’s Podcast has been a hack.

One of the recent episodes with Lazar Jovanovic (professional vibe-coder at Lovable) helped me immensely as I’m trying to build out workflows that massively increase my productivity. Two salient points: 

- don’t spend credits iterating
- build in parallel

The first bit is counterintuitive.
How we used to use AI (read: chat) was like this:

‘Here’s an idea’
*ok interesting response*
‘Here’s some clarification’
*ok now that’s slightly better*
‘Here’s even more conversation’
*oh shoot now we’ve lost the plot*

AI loses memory/context quickly.
It’s getting there, but not there yet. 

So, better to start, feed it some ideas, but then take that *slightly* better idea, and toss it into a new chat/tab, then slightly improve with one extra bit of brainstorming. 

Then, when you have all the pieces built out, you feed the final framework, implementation plan, design inspiration in one swoop, and let it run. You can build with confidence then. 

The other piece should have been obvious:
Build with multiple agents/chats at once.

Instead of staring down at the one chat screen,
I’m now in Code, Cowork, and Chat (Claude)
All at one, running different projects. 

Once they have good prompts, the rest is just reading and prompting for the AI to continue on it’s track, which means you can context switch easier.

Starting to feel the additional benefits in a big way.

Feeling like I’m tapping at the promised productivity hacks of AI. 

What’s been a helpful hack you’ve been using as you’re building with AI?

Product at early-stage startup means trampoline.
Bouncing from strategic to tactical, up n’ down. 

Acting as:

Product manager
(what are we doing this sprint)

Head of product 
(what are we doing this quarter)

Chief product officer
(what’s happening in five years)

Curious, what are the rules of thumb that guide when you hire to separate and reassign these combined roles? When should we think about giving other people my 3-4 extra jobs?

I might have just seen the death knell of Saas. 

We implemented EOS over the last few months.

Highly recommend, gets everyone rowing well.

But we’ve been using this software to run mtgs. 
Called Ninety, it’s…fine. Does the job.

But I’ve been meaning to play around with Replit. 

So, I went to Claude,
Fed it a bunch of context,
Few images and tech docs,
Created a solid Replit prompt…

And in two hours of tinkering,
I remade Ninety.

Full stop.
It works. 

We’re gonna start using it next week. 

For reference, we were about to add a bunch more team members to this platform. At $10/seat, we were gonna be paying $100/mo for this thing.

The money isn’t the point.
The point is that I built it. 

And dumb SaaS should be quaking in their boots. 

If you’ve got a simple web page that you’re charging a comfortable monthly price for…beware. Me and my little army of AI agents is coming for you. 

Whaddya think? There a reckoning coming? 
And if this is ‘dumb SaaS’, what’s smart?

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John Linford

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