The School of Thought Newsletter

Make money with your mind, not your time.

Weekly Deliberate Deconstruction Issue

Breaking down top performing frameworks, strategies, and growth hacks from myself and other top creators.

Stop trying to reinvent the wheel.

That’s what I tell myself each week.

You see, even though I have 100,000 followers across social platforms, I still make beginner mistakes all the time.

I always feel the pull to create new content that explores new ideas.

Never rehashing my best ideas over and over again.

But all the top creators aren’t sharing new ideas. They’re repurposing the hits.

I resisted this for a long time.

Mainly because it felt lazy to me.

That is, until Jon Brosio changed my perspective.

Now I realize, if you aren’t repurposing your best content, you’re going to lose to those who do…

People Want to Hear the Hits

In 2 months, my girlfriend is going to see Taylor Swift live.

Regardless of what you think of her music, one thing is for sure…

… She isn’t going to perform only her newest songs.

She’s going to perform the hits.

Why?

Because people want to hear the hits over and over again.

Imagine going to see your favorite artist and they don’t play any of their hits.

You’d be extremely disappointed!

This happened when I saw Deadmau5 at EDC Orlando - he didn’t play Professional Grievers, The Veldt, or Pomegranate.

Content and ideas follow this same philosophy.

Which is why…

… The best writers aren’t the ones who can come up with an infinite amount of content ideas.

They’re the ones who know how to say the same thing 50 different ways.

Giving the idea more resonance and persuasive power each time they rewrite it.

Not to mention ideas only become sticky through repetition.

How do you do this without sharing the same content every other week?

Logical Frameworks Are Not Enough

Most top creators like Dan Koe, Kieran Drew, and Dakota Robertson all have swipe files.

They’ve deconstructed top performing tweets into frameworks that beginner writers can use.

The benefit of these swipe files is they give you 100s of different frameworks for repurposing tweets and ideas.

Making it almost effortless to share the same idea 50 different ways.

3 of the best frameworks I’ve found:

1) The Bold Observation

[Bold observation]
[Context]
[Pain or desire]

2) The Relatable Listicle

[Bold observation]

❖ [Relatable example]
❖ [Relatable example]
❖ [Pattern Break]

[Pain or desire]

3) Platitude + Comparison + Symmetry

[Big x, pain]
[Small x, benefit]

These frameworks are a gold mine when it comes to repurposing high performing tweets.

But most beginner writers still don’t go viral when using them.

Why?

They lack awareness of the emotional frameworks that underpin all high performing content.

Once you know what they are and how to use them, your content almost instantly starts going viral on the timeline.

Seriously, I started using them and my engagement increased 7x over night.

Here’s how to use them…

The Hidden Art of Virality - Emotional Frameworks Explained

Emotional frameworks define the constraints that lead to viral, persuasive content.

Logical frameworks which help you STRUCTURE content.

Emotional frameworks help you identify which WORDS to use within these logical structures.

The 2 factors of emotional frameworks:

❖ Relevance - how relevant a word is
❖ Resonance - how emotionally charged a word is

Choose the right emotionally charged words to increase your engagement - likes, retweet, and followers.

Relevant problems, pain points, and desires lead to attention capture.

Resonant problems, pain points, and desires lead to emotional connection.

Combine both and you’re almost guaranteed to get viral (assuming you get impressions).

Let’s use our 3rd logical framework as an example.

Ｘ - Version with low relevance and resonance:

Big pop tart, no hunger.
Small pop tart, lots of hunger.

✓ - Version with high relevance and resonance:

Big ego, miserable life.
Small ego, miraculous life.

The second works because

a) ‘Ego’ is a big burning problem people are aware of (relevance)

b) ‘Miserable life’ is an extremely undesirable state (resonance)

These words elicit emotion by being both highly relevant and highly resonant.

School of Thought Homework for You:

Browse your favorite creators on YouTube, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn.

Create a swipe file with the problems, pain points, and desires they use in their hooks and writing.

Then inject them into your logical frameworks to create viral content.

Easy as eating peanut butter ice cream.

Here’s an example of my emotional swipe file built in Dan Koe’s Kortex:

Bonus insight - a problem only has resonance if your audience identifies with it.

If I say ‘mental illness’ people are unlikely to click.

I’ve never met anyone who identifies as mentally ill.

They wouldn’t use that language when describing their problem.

If I say ‘anxiety’, ‘overthinking’, or ‘depression’, they’re much more likely to engage because they are aware of and identify with the problem I’m referring to.

Now I’m gonna go take a nap,

Taylin John Simmonds

This Week In The School of Thought Community

We held one of our highest reviewed mastermind calls yet

I’m so fricken proud of it, I’ve decided to share it with you.

❖ Creating your emotional swipe file
❖ Create powerful positioning in the idea market place
❖ Building personal brand through time under attention and connection

I’d recommend skipping to about 20 minutes in after all the small time.

That’s where the real value bombs started to drop.

You can check it out HERE.

If you’d like to join the School of Thought beta, smash this form to see if you qualify.

PS. There’s free “goodies” below 😉

Oh. Are you still hungry?

If your mouth is salivating for more goodies, check out these free courses and cheat sheets (more coming soon):

❖ The Ultimate Content Creation Hub ($999 But You Get It for Free)

❖ The viral hook writing cheat sheets I use to get millions of likes and impressions

❖ My free video course on how to make $10,000 / month with high ticket services (less than 2 hours to complete)