Ep70 Charlie Hills - How to Build a 130K LinkedIn Following in One Year Using AI Without Losing Your Authentic Voice

Charlie Hills  0:00  
When chat GBT launched, but prior to that, I actually wrote my dissertation at university on the impact of AI in customer loyalty the year before chat GBT. Lo and behold, after I'd written it, AI just suddenly blew up overnight, eventually, like it got to the point I was like, I need somewhere to share all of this kind of passion and expertise. So that's why I took to LinkedIn. Now I was using AI every single day to help me create my content whilst also working full time.

Suzanne Taylor-King  0:29  
Hey, hey, welcome to a podcast where dreams meet determination and success is just around the corner. I'm your host, Suzanne Taylor King, and I'm here to help you unlock the full potential of your business and your life. Welcome to unlock your way with SDK. Let's unlock your path to success together. Good morning. Good morning. Everyone. Suzanne Taylor king here for another live episode of unlock your way with STK and I might be just fan girling a little bit right now, because this is one of my favorite content creators, founder of linked agency and AI content creator, Ghost Writer extraordinaire, masterful. Charlie hills, welcome to this conversation.

Charlie Hills  1:23  
Oh my god, thank you so much. Suzanne, I never had someone who speaks so highly of me, but it's really great to be here. And yeah, I'm excited to dive in.

Suzanne Taylor-King  1:31  
Well, one of the coolest things ever when I found you on LinkedIn and I became a stalker. Sorry, I was intrigued by this masterful ability you have of writing content that transitions into a desire to have whatever you're talking about, whether it's DMing you or commenting and it's, it's really done so not only classy, it's done super well, and it's done without that spammy kind of Oh comment. And, you know, we'll get into a AI bot conversation about $1,000 program. So incredible. Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. How did this AI journey start for you? Oh,

Charlie Hills  2:31  
yeah, I love that question. Well, I mean, for me, I started, obviously, you know, when chat GBT launched, but prior to that, I actually wrote my dissertation at university on the impact of AI in customer loyalty. And this was, like, the year before chat GBT, So lo and behold, after I'd written it, you know, AI just suddenly blew up overnight. And, you know, I was kind of like, you know, working full time, using it in my day job. And the eventually, like it got to the point I was like, I need somewhere to share all of this kind of passion and expertise. So that's why I took to LinkedIn, and that was from January 2024, onwards. Now I was using AI every single day to help me create my content, whilst also working full time, because it wasn't part of my day job, I'd be there on the weekends, like evenings, just like batch, creating all my content, commenting on people's posts. And like, nine months into that journey of posting to LinkedIn about AI, I quit my nine to five initially, at this point, it's been just over a year since that that happened. So all of

Suzanne Taylor-King  3:41  
those followers that you have is just in a year,

Charlie Hills  3:47  
yeah, like, it's been over, yeah, from 30k to 160 odd k in the last year.

Suzanne Taylor-King  3:53  
Wow, wow. So one I'm thinking I was lucky to have you agree to this because of how popular you are, but this is such a great message for my listeners, entrepreneurs, content creators, looking to have that bigger impact on social media, and you weren't going for likes and follows. You were going for an outlet to share what you were learning and your knowledge, which that's a really cool message.

Charlie Hills  4:33  
Hmm, yeah, that's the whole reason why I started. I didn't really have, like, a grand ambition, so it was just simply to post and to share what I knew with everybody.

Suzanne Taylor-King  4:44  
Yeah, yeah. Well, we're both fans of sub stack, so I'm going to make sure to get on some of your writing there. But now as far as AI goes, you know, being a content creator. Yeah, how did, how or how do you deal with the skepticism about AI and writing content?

Charlie Hills  5:10  
Oh goodness, yeah. I mean, obviously there is a lot of Skeptic skepticism out there. But for me personally, I always really disliked copywriting personally. So for me, I was just like, obviously, I'm going to use AI to write my posts and help with content ideation, design briefs. But I do get an odd few comments of people being like, Wait, this is AI. Like, why would you use it? Yeah, and I'm not actually 100% sure, like how to deal with those people sometimes, because that's their opinion, and they're entitled to it, right? But I just simply, you know, like, we have to kind of adjust to this new norm, because it is the future and it's not going anywhere. So obviously, if you can write without AI, great. Good for you. But for people like me, you know, it's been a massive help, and I wouldn't be here today without it. Yeah,

Suzanne Taylor-King  6:06  
I feel the same. I often I do a really good job with my AI images as well, and I have an incredible team member who is doing beautiful things with images and AI and somebody commented recently on a post of mine that said, How's this AI Generated Content working for you? And it wasn't an AI generated post. And I thought, wow, that's actually a compliment that he think I wrote that story, and, you know, with AI, because I often use my own stories, you know, with AI's help, and it's made me such a better writer. I never claimed to be a great writer in the first place. So me too made me a better writer. Do you have a favorite tool for writing content?

Charlie Hills  7:05  
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I talk about it a lot on my LinkedIn, but it's, it's Stanley from the guys at Stan's store. I absolutely love that tool. Before I was using a custom GPT and chat GPT, and that was fine. But with this tool. It's, you know, next level. It like scrapes all of my LinkedIn posts. Firstly, I don't know how they managed to get that from the LinkedIn team, but basically, literally, because I post so much on LinkedIn, it has such a massive catalog of my stories, my stats, yes, all my expertise I've shared online. And literally, nine times out of 10, it will write me the perfect post with only a few minor edits. Obviously, I'm still sprinkling in my unique seasoning into it, but yeah, prior to that, I'd spend way too long with chat, GBT and, like, kind of follow up and, you know, really fine tune it. Whereas this is, like, chef's kiss, I love it.

Suzanne Taylor-King  7:56  
I am obsessed, actually. And I found out I do. And I found out about it because I had a client who was setting up his stand store, and it, you know, there's a little link there that said, Try Stan Lee AI. And I was like, what's that? Let's check that out and instantly analyzing my LinkedIn content, and I'm obsessed with the emails every week, so getting that reflection back to me what works, what my audience actually engages with more I've learned so much about my content from it, and out of all the AI tools I have, it might be the most expensive one. I don't even care, because it at 97 a month. I believe 97 or 99 it's the most valuable information, and I've tested out some of the posts it's created for me on Facebook as well, and the engagement went through the roof. So, oh, wow, it's it's platform transferable, and something super fun I tried when it gives me an idea for a post, I add to the prompt and say, insert the story about when I did this, this and this, so good, so good.

Charlie Hills  9:32  
Love it too much. Yeah, you can use it for so many different ways, like, if not just this writer, I also use it to, like, optimize my profile this week. You know, asking what's killing conversion rates as an example. So it's literally like a content strategist, and, yeah, so worth it.

Suzanne Taylor-King  9:49  
Like, I will definitely try that now I definitely want to get into the way you do. I call them hand raising posts. And hand raising posts for me on Facebook, you know, kind of look like a colored background. And, hey, I'm doing a training next week on x. Want to come and then, you know, people comment I send them the link to register for the training. But you have taken that idea of a hand raising post to the next level on LinkedIn and explain a little bit about how that came to you and the strategy behind it.

Charlie Hills  10:29  
Yeah, I think you raise a really good point here, because lots of people will post and say, you know, I'm running this workshop. Please sign up and it just screens desperation versus if you strategically weave it into your content, you know, just by focusing, because I've always focused on top of the funnel content that's been my like, you know, my bread and butter, just to scale my audience and to have a wider net to cast, ultimately, when it comes to offering services, and I think ultimately, you really don't want to feel like you're selling to someone, you want to give so much value that when you do come to making an ask people like, of course, you know, I love Charlie's content, and he provides so much value, I'm I'm going to sign up, I'm going to comment in exchange for something. And there's so many different ways you could go about it, even if it's like a highly valuable lead magnet, or it's, you know, I've got this mega prompt. If you want it, just comment and I'll, I'll give you it. And just by generally asking questions and building relationships, people will, you know, they'll recognize you and then want to come and, you know, be interested in your services when the time does come.

Suzanne Taylor-King  11:42  
Well, I love that it's leading with value. I think that that's my motivator, having a bigger, bigger impact, more value to people, but the scope of how you're doing it. I There was one post I saw that had, you know, well over 500 comments of people raising their hand. How do you deal with that volume of people?

Charlie Hills  12:19  
Yeah, honestly, I am. It's, it's so tough sometimes. I mean, people like to send DMS to give someone the link or the resource they're offering, but in my case, I prefer to just reply to them in the comments. I find that's way easier one, because then I don't have to connect with people on LinkedIn. Two, I can just, like, post a link, and it's just very simple, and I just tried to do that as much as possible. Like, even yesterday, I had a giveaway post of sorts, and I was there, like, after eating dinner, just like, kind of going through and replying to people. So I really tried to, kind of like batch them throughout the day, rather than just, like leaving it to feel overwhelming and doing it at once because,

Suzanne Taylor-King  13:03  
yeah, it's fun. You've done a couple different things where you will drop a link to subscribe to something. You've dropped a link to a Google Doc. Sometimes the graphics that you share in your carousels. So well done. I've actually taken one of your carousels, downloaded it, put it into chat GPT and said, expand on this and tell me about this, and it was phenomenal. So the amount of value that you can extract from your content, in this in this sea of content that we all experience is is really the example. I think I've sent about 15 people to your profile and said, see how he does it. Don't do anything less than that. When you're asking for a DM or you're asking for someone's email, it's really got to be stand out, top notch quality. Who did you learn that from? Like, where did that for you?

Charlie Hills  14:28  
Yeah, I mean, for me, personally, I think I've always been studying what works on LinkedIn, you know, like, go really strong creators who came before me, like Lara, Costa, Yasmin, Alec Rubin as well, like they're all really, you know, kind of inspirations, or have been to me now I'm kind of like doing my own thing, and I felt like I found my groove. But, you know, it's just being like subsurban and just watching everybody else. So I'm like, Okay, this is what's working on LinkedIn. This is how, even sometimes I'll go to a creator's comment thread, I'm like, what is their commenting strategy? Like, how are they approaching this? And so Walker ish sometimes. So, yeah, definitely those people that they've been big inspirations.

Suzanne Taylor-King  15:17  
Yeah, same. And I remember when I found Justin Walsh, he's a good writer, I said he understands this at a whole nother level. And now I'm in his private community that he created on sub sack, by the way. And again, it's, it's the idea of attracting people to your ecosystem and being of such value that they want more. And what does more look like from you? What's, what's that next step in working with you?

Charlie Hills  16:01  
So for sure, obviously, like LinkedIn is my landing page, like that's where I share all of my top of the funnel content. Then ultimately, my aim is to drive people to my profile, which they then why they become a newsletter subscriber, hopefully, because I have a lead magnet on there and then, and then, I also have my agency business, which I've been running for over a year now, basically helping founders, CEOs, to scale on LinkedIn, because I've had many conversations with them, and barely anybody has time for one to create content to like. Think about commenting on LinkedIn. They're like, what I have to spend, like, an hour a day doing this is ridiculous. So that's kind of like, where I help, and plus, I've also had a recent boot camp launch, like a private community, which has been really fun, you know, helping folks just kind of get to grips with, how do I write a hook? How do I design content? So it's been really nice, you know, I just kind of do that, done for you, done with you. And also got a DIY solution coming out soon. So, yeah, I like to have those three separate layers, because not everybody can afford a high ticket offer, whereas, you know, some people can afford the mid ticket one and then soon to be, the low ticket offer, which will be a SaaS.

Suzanne Taylor-King  17:19  
I like I like that because in my mind, you know, I never had a lower ticket offer until this past January. I created a kind of container that's $97 a month. And instead of having a more beginner business group coaching offer. I rolled it all into a community. And the idea of entrepreneurs supporting each other, I think, is so, so important, especially at the you know, under under $500,000 a year, under a million dollars a year, you need that network of people you need introductions and referrals, and this idea of somebody noticing me and then saying, Oh, you need to go look at what Suzanne is saying or what Charlie is saying. I don't take that for granted, and I know you don't either. What was the I don't want to say scary, but what was the most intimidating piece for you in this massive amount of growth you've had in such a short time? Oh,

Charlie Hills  18:39  
goodness, it's definitely in the early days, it was kind of like figuring out, like operations and like how the business was running. Because I literally, like, fell into my agency business right out of the nine to five. I didn't have like, any runway or plan. Ultimately, I was kind of just like learning, client by client, what to do. And that was quite tough at a point, you know, I scaled to around seven clients in April of this year, and I I was about to burn out, like I was literally on the edge. I was creating content for myself every day. I was doing stuff for clients every day, and it was too much. So I then, kind of like, closed everything down. And in the last three months, I've, you know, I've partnered up with somebody. We've got, like, everything squeaky clean now, and a lot of learnings from the previous model. And basically now we're just like, it's so nice. I just focus on what I'm good at, which is my brand marketing for the business, and keep doing what I'm doing. Just grow my audience, so then we can generate new business. And yeah, kind of we all just focus on what we're good at, which is quite nice. So that's been the hard bit, managing the business with, kind of just growing my following, because the two don't always align people with 2000 followers. It's my app generate millions a year, all because they have, like, a very smart business model and tactical sales, whereas for me it was, it was kind of the other way around. I kind of had to figure it out, yeah, as I went along. So that was the hard part.

Suzanne Taylor-King  20:16  
Yeah, I see that not only in myself. I just invested in someone to help me automate some things. Now I know how to do automations. I know my funnel software like the back of my hand, but I wasn't doing it, and for me, realizing that I wasn't a details, centered person, big picture, visionary planner, strategy, great at that, but when it came down to the put my fingers on the keyboard and filled myself a new funnel. Wasn't happening. Was not happening. And I think it was the realization that if I want to grow I need to really invest in the systems, the operations, the SOPs, because you can't delegate anything, right? Unless you have it written down somewhere. It's got to be out of your head 100%

Charlie Hills  21:28  
Yeah, that's a hard lesson I learned. I'm especially when it comes to content. I'm a bit of a control freak. I want to, like, make sure it's, like, top tier, but then having a clear process and kind of just letting things manage themselves sometimes, is actually the better solution in the long run.

Suzanne Taylor-King  21:43  
I think so too. Well, let's get into other tools besides Stanley. I'm gonna go rapid fire. What do you like for SOPs?

Charlie Hills  21:56  
Oh, I mean, that's kind of hard. I'd probably just use chat GPT to be honest. Yeah, and you know, voice to text that works. Well,

Suzanne Taylor-King  22:04  
love it. Yes. Okay, what do you like for carousels and presentations?

Charlie Hills  22:12  
So, quite a popular tools, gamma, but I personally just use Canva or figma. I'm kind of old school now.

Suzanne Taylor-King  22:20  
Okay, so templates in Canva for your brand, you know, so you stay consistent. I like that. All right, what do you absolutely like cannot live without? As far as your business operations go day to day?

Charlie Hills  22:40  
Oh, it's got to be notion 100% I mean, that's kind of where the saps, etc, live, but that's my content management system. I think without that, everything would fall apart.

Suzanne Taylor-King  22:50  
I love it. So notion dashboard, notion just released some cool AI things. Have you been playing with that?

Charlie Hills  22:59  
Well, yes, yeah, I posted about it today. It's, yeah, it's quite crazy. It's, it's a new agent. It can literally build databases from from scratch. And there's like, more personalization and like MCP connectors now. So it's quite exciting. You know, I'm deeply invested in that tool. I literally love it.

Suzanne Taylor-King  23:18  
I love it. I have lots of things there. Could you give a tip on actually operationalizing and using it more like you said, you have a content dashboard. That's where you manage your content. How do you see using the AI feature now?

Charlie Hills  23:38  
So for the AI side of things, I think the most powerful is definitely the connectors and like the MCP servers that they're rolling out, because obviously I can now interact with notion via chatgpt or Claude, for example, which could be a massive hell. I think if you're literally just starting out on notion, you can use the AI to basically build out your CRM, your content management system, whatever you want, just from simple text prompts. So for more advanced users, definitely the connectors and then beginners is just building out the initial hard part, which is getting to grips with notion, which I hear all the time.

Suzanne Taylor-King  24:16  
Yes, top person you would recommend to learn notion from if somebody is a beginner,

Charlie Hills  24:23  
oh, it's kind of hard. You know, I don't really think many people talk enough about ocean notion, because I know it runs a lot of people's businesses, but because I probably only post about a few times, I think notion themselves are actually really beneficial. They've got, like, a little community, which they share all the tips and hacks in there. So definitely worth checking out if you want to get into notion, okay,

Suzanne Taylor-King  24:49  
maybe we could talk you into some sort of notion workshop in the future.

Charlie Hills  24:54  
Yeah, definitely. I love it. I love I mean, it's so simple to me, but then I realized. Other people who just haven't spent enough time to get to grips with it yet.

Suzanne Taylor-King  25:04  
Well, isn't that what it's all about? Right? When I when I think about the massive amount of AI tools out there that we have to choose from, the trick is, you know, finding the ones that work for you and then tuning out what you don't really need, because it can become a big time suck for people trying something, seeing if it works for them. I'm a big fan of finding what works for your business and then really doubling down on that. And you've done that so so well,

Charlie Hills  25:40  
no, thank you so much. And they're saying any new AI tools that come out, and people like, check this one out. It's great. And you're like, really,

Suzanne Taylor-King  25:47  
yeah, there was, there was one. I'm not gonna mention any names that I had giant hopes for. And it took me a couple weeks and it made it to the top of my checkout list, and I spent about 20 minutes, and the output that I got was less than stellar, like much less than stellar. And I really thought it was going to be like the next thing for what I was trying to do, which was brand voice offers ideal client profiles, and I've gotten such good results from custom gpts in that area. And I thought, Why? Why was I even looking for something better easier when I don't really need to. So that was a really big message for me. If you're getting great results with something, it doesn't mean necessarily that the newest tool is going to be better than what you're using. Yeah, 100%

Charlie Hills  26:59  
I think sometimes you just need chatgpt And a Google docking, you can create a good business with that. Yeah, for sure.

Suzanne Taylor-King  27:05  
Yes. Well, Charlie, thank you so much. Obviously, follow Charlie. He's got incredible content on his LinkedIn profile, and I'm going to share your sub stack list. My Evelyn newsletter, I'm going to send you the most recent copy of hers, and I definitely want Evelyn to talk about what you do, and love to have my followers jump on your sub stack and get even more value from you. Yeah,

Charlie Hills  27:37  
100% that is very underrated. Social media platform slash newsletter network, yes, sub is Yeah, so good, so definitely, I look forward to checking out Evelyn and your publications. Thank you so much.

Suzanne Taylor-King  27:51  
Appreciate you, and looking forward to checking out your post from today, all about notion,

Charlie Hills  27:56  
yes, yes, definitely do. Thanks so much for having me.

Suzanne Taylor-King  27:59  
Really appreciate it. Thanks again, Charlie. Appreciate you and everyone. Make sure follow up with Charlie, and you know, check out his post and massive value. Love it. Thanks again, Charlie. Thank you. Bye. Thank you for tuning in to another empowering episode of unlock your way. I hope you found today's discussion inspiring and you're ready to take your business and personal growth to that next level. If you're feeling as fired up as I am and eager to unlock that full potential, I'm here to help you on your journey and provide that personalized guidance tailored to your unique goals and challenges, simply book a one on one coaching call with me, and we'll dive deep into your business aspirations and see how we could co create a road map for your success, and whether you're striving to scale an enterprise or just getting started. I'm here to support you every step of the way to schedule your coaching call, simply visit the website at unlock your way with stk.com click on the book a call button, and we'll turn your dreams into that reality. Subscribe and review on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube, plus, you can join over 800 entrepreneurs in the IDEA Lab Facebook group. Let's make success as an entrepreneur happen together. Until next time I'm SDK, keep dreaming big. Stay focused, and most of all, have fun while you're doing it.

AI VO  29:47  
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