How Taylin Simmonds’ Ghostwriting Agency Earns $500,000 ARR

It’s incredible where life can take you. One minute you’re in a career that envelopes you. Then, you’re leveraging all you learned to go out on your own.

Yes, life is incredible, indeed.

For Taylin John Simmonds, taking something from each experience and using it in the next pursuit has been an almost scientific endeavor. As you’ll see, it’s one where his business experiments have paid dividends for himself and his clients.

How much revenue does the business generate? 

I earn roughly $500,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR). 

What is your monthly recurring revenue (MRR)? 

MRR is $20,000 on average with big paydays when we do product launches.

How much profit does the business earn? 

• Content Marketing side – 60 to 70% margin. 
• Decentralized Education side – 90%. 

Tell us about yourself and your business. 

I started as an independent musician, ghostwriting for independent record labels. Then, I moved on to teach at a college level.

Teaching helped me develop the meta skills of systematic thinking, learning, and effective communication. 

I leveraged that knowledge to start a content marketing agency. Ghostwriting for Founders on X and LinkedIn.

Once I found my footing as a marketer and creator, I turned my attention to help other creators do the same. I’m now focused on the decentralized education side, helping other marketers leave their 9 to 5 and make a multi 6 figure living as a content creator. 

How does your business make money? 

Services, subscriptions, digital products, and done with your group coaching offers. 

Why did you start the business? 

I wanted to gain location freedom with the ability to work from anywhere in the world.

How and when did you launch the business? 

In 2022, I launched my ghostwriting agency after doing 6 months of free work for other agencies to gain experience. 

Dakota Robertson took me under his wing and helped me scale well beyond my first 6 figures. 

How much money did you invest to start the business?

I believe my initial investment was $5,000 for coaching. That was all it took to bootstrap it from nothing. I’ve since invested heavily in education from other top marketers, creators, and business owners to help me scale. 

How did you find your first few clients or customers?

I got them through referrals from friends within my network. 

What was your first year in business like? 

Insane. I went from making $0 to $40,000 per month in about 90 days.

From there, we kept scaling until it broke our systems. We then decided to reduce the size and scope of our agency and turn our focus to decentralized education. 

You’re anxious because you aren’t moving physically, emotionally, or spiritually.

Think of your mind as a bicycle.
If it’s not moving, it simply falls over.

Movement of any kind is the antidote to an anxious mind.

— Taylin John Simmonds (@TaylinSimmonds) January 9, 2024

What strategies did you use to grow the business? 

Referrals, content marketing, and doing everything we could to over fulfill for our clients. 

Tell us about your team. 

My team consists mainly of myself and my co-founder, Dale. 

I have 2 specialists that I contract work to for copywriting and appointment setting. The rest of our team is freelancers and VAs. 

What are your future plans for the business? 

Scale our decentralized education business to $1.5M before making a pivot to a new industry. 

How do you market your business? 

The only driver is content marketing on X and LinkedIn. 

What is your social media strategy? 

For LinkedIn, I do carousels 5 times per week. That’s focused on top of funnel growth content that blends accessible topics with authority.

My main strategy is to take known problems and solve them with unknown solutions. I’m going to experiment with more picture posts soon. 

On X, I use a similar strategy but post more short form content to test ideas before committing to long form. 

Do you use email marketing? 

I have a newsletter but it’s only recently become a focus. I’m still learning the ropes. 

What is your strategy with paid advertising? 

Not currently using it. But, when I do, I have a few friends I’d outsource too. 

Do you target organic search traffic? 

No, I don’t target organic traffic at this moment. 

How did you make the transition from side hustle to full-time? 

It took me 6 months of growing my business with working full time before I transitioned. I chose to stay at my job for longer so I could reinvest all profits into growth to increase my income well above my 9 to 5 income before quitting. 

What was the turning point when you knew your business was successful? 

By my definition of success, I don’t see my business as successful. I’m aiming for a $500,000 net profit per year through a high leverage vehicle that I find fulfillment in growing and sustaining. 

Still a ways to go yet. 

How much traffic does your website receive, and what are your primary sources? 

I’m focusing on social media growth at the moment. 

What is your best-selling product? 

My one to many group coaching offer – Digital Identity. 

I help creators craft unique 6-figure digital identities on X and LinkedIn. 

What is the most important lesson you’ve learned growing the business? 

1. Sustained success is the only success that matters. 
2. What you work on is more important than how hard you work – build leverage.
3. Consistency is the hardest part of sustaining success. Not just consistency of action, but consistency of daily energy, mental clarity, and drive. 

What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome?

At the core, learning to lead was my biggest obstacle. It’s hard to lead a team without having success habits and an amazing skill stack.

Keeping team members motivated and accountable can be hard. Creating a business with a high enough margin to hire quality team members can also be tough.

To overcome it, I’ve chosen to work with less clients at higher margin. And focused on being the most consistent team member on the team – lead by example. 

What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs? 

Understand yourself well enough to know where you fit best into an organization:

• If you’re a visionary, develop leadership skills and lead.
• If you like details, help a visionary execute.
• If you love human nature, you may be a good marketer. 

Play to your strengths. 

What tools do you use and recommend? 

Notion is pretty much all I use. 

What motivates you to keep moving forward? 

The burden of ambition. 

If I don’t push myself everyday, doing the things I know I should do to improve my life, then I go to bed feeling like a loser.

Some people tell me to learn to turn it off. But why would I do that?

That negative emotion has drove me to attain so many desirable outcomes – location freedom, high income, success habits, and more. 

I’ll wear the burden like a badge of honor. 

What are the best and worst parts of being an entrepreneur/founder?

I don’t think of it as best and worst parts. Everything in life has trade offs.

The trade offs of being an entrepreneur are stress, always being challenged, and experiencing more failure than success. But isn’t that the trade off of doing anything difficult?

If I wasn’t doing this as an entrepreneur, I’d be pushing myself as an artist, an athlete, etc. So, I don’t think about it as bad.

It’s just a part of the process of going after something highly desirable. 

What is your favorite quote? 

“Day by day nothing changes but when we look back, everything is different.” – C.S. Lewis 

If you had to start from scratch, where would you begin? 

I’d spend more time finding a profitable opportunity with asymmetric rewards. High upside for small amount of down side risk. 

I believe Alex Hormozi said, “The guy who makes $1M a year and the guy who makes $10M a year work the same hours with the same effort. So why does the 2nd guy make more? Leverage.” 

Choose the right vehicle.

What are some of your favorite books, blogs, podcasts, or YouTube channels? 

• Books: The Alamanck of Naval Ravikant and The Anthology of Balaji – both by Eric Jorgenson.
• Blogs: MarkManson.net. 
• Podcasts: Naval’s episode on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. 
• YouTube channels: Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson and Mark Manson.