Take Action Copy

www.takeactioncopy.com

I write words that make you money.

Founder, Ghostwriter & Copywriter

CRE Digital

Head of Content & Ghostwriter

AllianceBernstein

Team Lead | Assistant Vice President - Regional Consultant

Assistant Vice President - Regional Consultant

Jackson

Sold variable annuities. Yeah. I know. 



Attained Internal Wholesaler Level 3 status -- the highest level available.  

Was named Internal Wholesaler of the Quarter for quarter 3 in 2017 for the Northeast Region, and was awarded "Top Gun", an internal award given to the top performer in a two-day showcase.

Internal Wholesaler

Grand Valley Lanthorn

Assigned and edited stories, wrote up to four pieces a week, and ran the Lanthorn sports Twitter account. Covered beats for GVSU football, men’s basketball, and baseball.

Sports Editor

Wrote and edited stories and briefs while covering a variety of games and athletic events.

Assistant Sports Editor

Local Sports Journal

At this Muskegon prep website, I wrote feature stories profiling high school athletes and teams. My main focus was football, though I branched into soccer, volleyball, and tennis. I also helped with editing, which involved monitoring our WordPress page, reviewing stories, and posting them to www.localsportsjournal.com.

Sportswriter

FOX 17

With FOX 17, I shot video at local sports events, edited the clips for broadcast and wrote scripts. I covered high school basketball, Grand Rapids Griffins hockey, West Michigan Whitecaps baseball, and various Division I and II sports. I also wrote news releases for the FOX 17 website.

Freelancer

Grand Valley State University

More than 4,000 incoming students went through freshman orientation during summer 2014, and 
I assisted every one. Over the course of 40 orientation dates, I worked closely with faculty members, professional advisers and other student assistants to help freshmen choose courses and ease into college life.

Orientation Assistant

During my time as a staff writer, I covered golf, lacrosse and cross country, as well as club sports like hockey and rowing. I wrote two stories a week, either features or game recaps.

Staff Sportswriter

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.

Last Wednesday, I knocked on 11 doors and invited 11 strangers to dinner. But the story doesn’t start there. 

In October, I was on a flight from Houston to Austin. 

When I’m on a flight, I like to honor the miracle of air travel by becoming the least approachable human I can be. Hood up, laptop out, headphones over the ears. I’m Simon Cowell with a toothache, Gordon Ramsay judging a toddler bake-off. I’m the Grinch — stuck in economy. 

But on this particular flight, I was sabotaged. 

Her name was Kay, and she was in her 70s. 

Kay caught me with my headphones down and started chatting me up. 

After a few minutes of small talk, Kay looked at me:

“This is nice,” she said. “No one talks on airplanes anymore.”

“Tell me about it,” I beamed. “A travesty.”

Kay went on to tell me how she puts on social events for her friends back home in New Mexico. She talked about how community is dying. How we're all in our phones to stay in touch, forgetting that those phones just keep us out of touch.

Six months before this flight, I had been invited to a dinner in Toronto by Tony Albrecht. 

Tony got some people from LinkedIn together and treated us all to a family-style dinner. 

I told Kay about this — and about how cool it was — and she asked me:

“Do you have anyone you could do that with?”

“Well,” I said. “I have 11 neighbors on my apartment floor, but I never see any of them. I guess I could put together a dinner and knock on their doors.”

So Kay made me promise that I would. She even gave me her personal card — the one she started carrying after she retired and no longer needed a business card — so I could tell her when I did it.

And that’s how, last night, I hosted a dinner with nine new friends. 

Turns out, knocking on doors gives you what tapping on screens promises you.

Adam Knorr

Talks about #writing, #lifeadvice, #copywriting, #ghostwriting, and #personalbranding

Gratitude post for all writers who continue to use the em-dash in the face of libelous AI allegations.

We will rightfully protect what's ours.

Do not surrender ground.

I stand with you.

In June 2018, I applied for my dream job. 
 
I got turned down. 
 
That job was writing for Morning Brew, a newsletter-turned-news-company that reaches 4+ million subscribers today. 
 
At the time, I had been working in finance for 2 years. 
 
I barely had any professional writing experience. 
 
So I got creative. 
 
I spent hours designing my resume like a Morning Brew newsletter. 
 
I submitted it. 
I didn’t expect to hear anything back. 
 
A few days later, I got the email below: 

"We loved your application..."
"Just not enough experience..."
"But stay in touch."
  
Over the next few years, I applied a few more times. 
 
But I never fixed that lack of writing experience. 
 
I just kept calling financial advisors. 
 
Then, I quit my job and started writing. 
 
And in August 2023, I got an email: 

"Hey Adam... Would you be interested in writing and researching for our team?"
  
The time between my first application and that August email: 

5 years, 2 months and 4 days. 
 
So look: 
 
-> Focus on the long term. 
-> Make yourself better. 
-> Just keep going. 
-> Be consistent. 
-> Put in the reps. 
-> Stay in front of people who matter. 
 
It pays off. 
 
(Trust me.)

Write in paragraphs if you want people to take you seriously.

Not walls of text — never walls of text. But use two sentences. Even three.

Yeah, white space is good. But if it's all you use, you're telling your audience you don't deserve their attention.

I rarely talk about fitness on LinkedIn, but it's such a massive part of my life that it seems crazy not to. Here are 5 fitness tips that will change your life:

JK I just wrote that hook as an excuse to share this photo. 

You know it. I know it. We all know it. 

Anyway, book a LinkedIn consulting call with me here: 

https://lnkd.in/gXRi8zYd

My profile appeared 87,495 times across LinkedIn from Nov. 11-18. 41,018 of those appearances were from comments.

Every week, someone sends me a DM saying:

"How do I get more engagement on my posts?"

And I respond saying:

"How often do you comment? DM? Engage with other people?"

And then, 9 times out of 10, they don't respond.

The irony.

Goodness, gracious.

The irony.

Some people think celebrating follower milestones is dumb. To those people I say:

Kick rocks. 

I started writing on here in December 2022 because I didn't know where else to write. And I didn't know how to make money as a writer. But I figured if I kept publishing my writing somewhere, it could only help. 

I had like 1,100 followers at the time. 

Some people would click "like."

Some people would click "comment."

And somewhere along the way, 13,900 people clicked "follow."

And now 15,000 of y'all are showing up and looking at the words that I put down on my screen sometimes.

They say it takes a village to raise a child.

I don't have children, but I can confirm that it also takes a village to quit your corporate career and try to make a living doing something you love.

So thank you for being my village.

What a blessing.

Love y'all.

Elementary schools should be teaching personal branding, not biology.

Everyone laughs at Gen Z/Gen Alpha for wanting to be influencers.

Do you realize how much of a cheat code having an audience is?

I made my first post on LinkedIn in October 2022.

Since then, I have:

• Made more than $500,000 from writing.
• Created 5 different income streams.
• Been hired to write books. 
• Charged $400/hour for consulting calls.
• Worked with founders, CEOs, and celebrities.

And most importantly, I have built a distribution network for my future work.

When you build distribution, you create optionality and flexibility for yourself.

If every single one of my clients fired me tomorrow, I'd create a new offer and push it on all 15,259 of you so fast you'd think I was Pablo Escobar at a Korn concert. 

I imagine in 2035, I'll be making money online in a way I never considered in 2025.

And that's a heck of a lot more valuable than learning about peas and some guy named Gregor.

Every year, I work from my dad's office over the holidays. It's a good reminder that I've had more advantages than 99% of freelance writers.

I've been writing professionally three years. I'm finally sort of comfortable claiming I've had a little bit of success — but if I want to claim success, I have to tell the truth about where it came from.

And the truth is, I have had every single advantage.

My dad was a freelance copywriter. It was the first job I knew you could do. Before I ever dreamed about playing shortstop for the Detroit Tigers, I saw myself alone in a quiet office, armed with a red pen and an AP Stylebook.

My parents were both entrepreneurs — my mom in real estate — so I grew up watching early mornings, stress, sacrifice. But because it was all I saw, I didn't realize it was remarkable. It just was. That's how everyone works, right?

As a kid, I wrote a lot. Since the guy who determined my bedtime was also a professional writer, I had access to high-quality feedback. I charge $900/month for that now, but he did it for free.

I'm good at writing. It's what I'm supposed to do with my life. But it certainly doesn't hurt that I got professional guidance before I ever put down a Junie B. Jones book for the last time.

I studied journalism, but took a job in finance. It hurt my heart to stop writing, but it helped my bank account.

Six years later, when I finally walked away to try freelancing, I had the thing most new writers never get: time. Runway. Margin for error.

I knew I could go a full calendar year without making any money and still be OK.

Most people trying to make it as a writer don't have this breathing room. Turns out, it's easier to score goals when you aren't white-knuckling the stick. Yeah, I was still tightrope walking, but my safety net was so close it was scraping the rubber off my soles.

For my first 20 gigs, my dad edited everything before I sent it. He introduced me to his contacts in the industry. 

The first time I charged more than $2,000 for a project came when my sister-in-law put in a good word for me at her company.

Yeah, I've worked hard. But I never had to work scared.

My family wanted to see me win, friends wanted to see me win, and strangers wanted to see me win. And instead of just golf-clapping from the sidelines, they each got in the game and dished me some assists.

So, yeah.

When you're comparing yourself to other people, remember that you're not seeing the invisible advantages baked into someone's default assumptions.

One morning, I quit my 9-5 job and said, “I’m a writer now.” 
 
Want to do something similar? Listen. 
 
Quitting my job to bet on myself is a decision I agonized over for years. 
 
But when it came down to it, the actions it took to create my reality took me less than 24 hours. 
 
-> Woke up  
-> Printed a 2-week notice 
-> Gave an 8:00 A.M. presentation 
-> Quit at 9:00 A.M. 
 
When you're "stuck" in the day-to-day grind, it's easy to get tunnel vision. And it’s hard to grasp the vastness of opportunity that simply being alive offers you. 
 
And because the years whip by at breakneck speed, it can feel impossible to find the time to break patterns. 
 
So instead of taking advantage of the limitless sandbox of the human experience, you blink and years have passed and you still haven’t progressed toward That Thing You Wanted To Do. 
 
But the life you live is simply a result of the actions you take. 
 
Most outcomes are determined by your input — not by random chance. You have control to change situations you don’t like. 
 
And look — these don’t have to be drastic things. They usually aren’t. I know plenty of people who love their patterns. Their jobs. Their relationships. 
 
But you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn’t have something they want to change. 
 
So whether that’s quit-your-job-and-move-4,000-miles-away drastic or man-I’m-sick-of-eating-the-same-thing-every-day mundaneness, the actions it takes to change your situation are often less daunting than your brain makes them seem. 
 
Remember: 

Who you are is who you choose to be.

Anthropic (the company that created Claude) is hiring two writers for $255,000-$320,000. 

The ultimate irony:

AI is making the best writers *more* valuable.

The more people lean on AI for writing, the fewer talented writers exist.

The fewer talented writers exist, the more valuable they are. 

The more valuable they are, the more they get paid.

AI is making writing a high-income skillset.

I suggest you learn how to do it.

I have been paid $30,000 in a single day for a writing project, but nothing will ever beat closing my first client for $500.

It was October 2022, and I was living in Basecamp — a one-story, tarp-covered house on the bottom of a Kona coffee farm.

There were eight of us living in the house. At 28 years old, I was the Old Man By the Mango Tree, nearly a decade older than all my roommates. 

Often, I would wake up at 4:00 AM to start my day, fist-bumping a couple of roommates I passed in the hallway on their way to go to bed for the night. 

Between the eight of us, the farm provided two vehicles. I figured if I was going to be living in Hawaii, I didn't want my adventures to be constrained based on vehicle availability, so I found a guy with a car rental business.

I also figured if I was going to wear Hawaiian shirts and sport a mustache, I owed it to Tom Selleck to drive something better than a Hyundai Sonata, so I signed up for a long-term rental on a silver Dodge Challenger.

I met the owner of the rental business in the parking lot of a Shell station in Kealakekua, Hawaii.

When he handed me the keys, I pounced:

"Hey man. I respect what you're doing with your own business. I'm actually self-employed, too. I'm a copywriter — I write websites and things like that. I noticed your website still needs to be written. Would you be down with me sending you a proposal for what I would charge to write it?"

His website existed, but it was full of Lorem Ipsum placeholders. He agreed to take a look at my proposal, so I cruised back to the shack and fired it off.

A day later, my phone rang.

"Hey Adam. Let's do it."

I was breathing like I had just done a Polar Plunge into the Pacific, but I managed to choke out:

"Sounds good. I'll send you the invoice."

Then, I hung up, sprinted out to the living room, and high-fived every 19-year-old roommate I could find.

Since then, the numbers have gotten bigger and the projects more exciting, but I have never felt the same high as that first client — and I don't ever expect to again.

If I were a financial advisor struggling to stand out on LinkedIn, here how I'd fix that in 7 steps:

1. Define my Ideal Client Profile.

When you try to speak to everyone, you end up speaking to no one. Your posts sound like every other advisor. And prospects scroll right past because nothing you're saying feels like it's for them specifically.

2. Redesign my profile.

Your banner, tagline, and featured section should all be designed to get your profile viewers to take the next step in your process.

If you haven't done this yet, do it immediately.

3. Never send out a firm-generated post again.

Sorry Hearsay, sorry FMG, sorry Buffer.

No one gets on LinkedIn to click a link to your Q4 market update.

(I know. I used to post this stuff.) 

4. Stop using ChatGPT to write my content.

You're using an amalgamation of everyone else's voice and wondering why you can't stand out.

I mean? 

5. Stop posting content rooted in zero personal experience.

"You're making $500K and you still feel broke."

Wow. Inventive. No one ever saw that one before. 

Prospects can tell when you're writing faux-pain point content. It all looks the same — generic content written in the second person that literally anyone else could have slapped together. 

You need to be telling stories from your experience that only you can tell. Yes, tweak some of the details, but write from the real conversations you have every day.

6. Learn how to write hooks.

Learn how to write hooks.

7. Lean into controversy.

What are your contrarian opinions?
What do you hate about the industry?
When did you go against the grain with client advice?

You can't hope to stand out when your content is written to blend in.

--

P.S. If you're a financial advisor who wants to 5-10x your reach and start generating monthly leads from LinkedIn, DM me "GPS."

Spots for my January cohort are filling fast, but have a few still left.

Not everything you post on LinkedIn has to be shoehorned into a fake lesson about what you learned. 

You can just tell good stories because it's fun to tell good stories.

And as a bonus, people won't want to vomit you when they read your content.

If you want to learn how to consistently break 10,000 impressions on LinkedIn, read this:

I’m sending out an email tomorrow to 828 people that breaks down the easiest way to create viral content on LinkedIn.

It’s too long for LinkedIn, so I can’t post it here. 

DM me your email address if you want to be added before it goes out at 9:00 AM EST tomorrow.

graphical user interface, text, application, chat or text message

What would 21,018,197 views do for you?

What about a measly 3,546,825?

These are some screenshots from content performance for myself + clients.

(Note that the ones around 3.5 million are less than a year into working together.)

These are all folks in commercial real estate and finance (and me). 

And before you ask...

Yes, this does lead to results.

-> 500+ booked calls
-> $20+ million invested
-> $1+ million in paid transactions

I'm going to tell you something that risks cannibalizing my business:

This stuff isn't hard.

Writing great LinkedIn content is literally:

• Applying hook formulas
• Understanding topic selection
• Telling stories and sharing controversial opinions

I can teach you how to do all of this in just 30 days.

As of today, enrollment is open for the Q1 2026 cohort of The Advisor GPS starting in January.

If you're a financial advisor who wants to learn how to do this stuff yourself, send me a DM today.

Spots are limited.

--

P.S. From current Advisor GPS students:

"I loved it!!! I thought it was great. Super useful stuff in there and I want to go back through a few times to really sink in a lot of these new ideas about writing content. My only regret is not working with you sooner"

"I thought the program was great! Definitely a lot of information that I will be revisiting."

"Seriously though this course and community is awesome. I am learning so much and stretching my comfort zone more than I thought possible."

Yesterday I taught a session inside Mando Sallavanti III, CFP®'s LinkedIn community — 83 financial advisors who are already investing in their growth on LinkedIn.

If you were there, you got a preview of the system I use to help advisors generate leads and smash impressions in 30–60 days.

If you want to go deeper, I’m opening up 5 new spots for my 30-Day LinkedIn Accelerator in January.

This includes:

• the complete Advisor GPS LinkedIn system
• weekly live coaching with me
• access to our private community
• templates, scripts, and growth frameworks
• and full support for 30 days

DM me "GPS" and I'll send you the details.

Stuff My Clients Say

I've written 4,100+ hooks. One mistake kills engagement more than any other: 

Assuming your audience knows who you are. 

Most creators have a "World Revolves Around Me" mindset.

You think people are paying attention. You think people have been following along. You think people have been reading your stuff, connecting the dots, building a mental map of your expertise, your offer, your point of view.

They haven't.

Most people skim. 
They catch a post here and there. 
They don't remember what you wrote yesterday.

So every single post, you should be starting from scratch.

When you write a hook that skips the authority, skips the context, skips the problem-naming — because you assume your audience already knows — it has zero chance at getting inbound leads.

Yeah, it's going to get comments from the same 15 people who show up every day...

But they were going to be there regardless. It doesn't mean the content was actually good — it just means you successfully clicked "post."

It's an inconvenient truth for 99% of creators, but you actually have to be good at copywriting if you want inbound leads.

You have to understand:

• Audience awareness levels
• Problem awareness levels
• Solution awareness levels 

This is why persuasive writing was destined to become a high-income skillset since Johannes Gutenberg started monkeying with his tiles in the 1440s. 

And this is why most people are deluding themselves into thinking ChatGPT can "write" content well enough to get inbound leads.

If you understand this stuff? 

Sure.

If not? 

You're going to keep showing up for another year wondering why no one is DMing you "financial freedom."

Only 5 spots left in The Advisor GPS January Cohort.

What you learn from me directly: 

-> Why LinkedIn actually works for financial advisors (and why most fail)

-> How to design a profile that attracts leads instead of repelling them

-> The ICP clarity exercise that determines all your content strategy

-> How to get in front of your ideal clients without spending hours networking

-> Why traditional "selling" doesn't work on LinkedIn (and what does)

-> The Sales Navigator deep dive for finding unlimited ideal prospects

-> How to send DMs that book high-value calls without being salesy

-> The commenting strategy that builds presence in your absence

-> How to escape the "first-degree vortex" where you only see the same 15 people in your LinkedIn feed

-> How the LinkedIn algorithm actually works (with proof from hundreds of posts analyzed)

-> Why "impression posts" vs "lead posts" require completely different strategies

-> How to never run out of content ideas (ever)

-> Advanced AI content creation so you're not spending hours writing (and so you're creating content that doesn't sound like you're a paint-by-numbers book that gained sentience)

-> Why email still wins (and why most advisors ignore it)

-> How to set up the LinkedIn → Email funnel

->  The 5 types of emails that get read

-> How to repurpose LinkedIn content into emails so you're not creating everything from scratch

-> How to create welcome sequences that nurture new subscribers automatically

You also get: 

• Unlimited 1:1 consulting access to me via DM
• Access to weekly group calls + office hours
• Lifetime access to videos, templates, and frameworks

I haven't posted publicly about the January cohort until now...

And 5 of the 10 spots have already been filled just from convos in the DMs. 

I'm sure the next 5 will be gone in no time.

Shoot me a DM if you want to reserve yours.

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