S03 EP06 with Tim Hughes - Outreach at Human Scale

Cold calling is running a 3% connection rate. Inboxes are buried under AI-generated spam. And sales teams are still being handed more tools and told to go faster. Timothy Hughes has been arguing for a different approach for over a decade, and in this episode of The Habit Architect, he and host Michael Cupps get into what that actually looks like in 2026.

Hughes co-founded DLA Ignite, where he has trained thousands of B2B salespeople to build pipeline through social rather than outbound volume. His fourth book, Social Selling and Influence, published in early 2026, brings together ten years of research and field work, including a chapter on where AI fits into modern selling. He has also launched Azpertilo, an AI-native platform built on Claude and Gemini that generates personalized, on-brand content for sales teams at scale, grounded in each individual's own tone of voice.

The conversation covers the core principles of social selling, why LinkedIn ads are largely ignored while organic content compounds, how to write posts that get indexed by both Google and large language models, and why the companies generating multi-million dollar deals on social are doing nothing most sales leaders would recognize as outreach.

Cupps and Hughes also dig into what happens when companies hand their teams a tool without training, the difference between AI washing and real AI application, and why Hughes kept human coaching in the Azpertilo product even after building the automation to replace it.

The episode connects directly to the AI readiness themes raised in Episode 5, this time from the seller's side of the equation.

Connect with Timothy Hughes: linkedin.com/in/timothy-hughes
 Learn more about DLA Ignite: dlaitb2b.com
 Azpertilo: azpertilo.ai

The Habit Architect is sponsored by Enterprise Diagnostics and Time Bandit

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Transcript

Good morning, and welcome to The Habit Architect. My name's Michael Cupps, I'm your host today, and thank you for Time Bandit and En- Enterprise Diagnostics for the sponsorships of today's show. Really enjoy our guest today, but I wanna tie it into a conversation Flora and I had last week. We did the episode last week around AI readiness and things like that, and one of the things we talked about was a lot of fault that happens with companies is they just give everybody Claude or give everybody ChatGPT and say, "Now we're an AI company." Cupps: 0:35

And while some people are proficient at that and use it well, others probably don't know where to start. But really what happens now then, when you think about maturity of a company and using AI, is you're looking for applications of AI that are really returning results. And Tim Hughes, who's gonna join us today ha- wrote a book on social selling and influence, and we're gonna talk a little bit about that. Cupps: But in equally, they've launched a product that that is designed to be very helpful to sellers out there. And sellers in a world of AI, it's so confusing 'cause there's so many options. There's so many tools out there that you could use,

and most importantly, you could use them very badly, and it will affect your reputation, and we're gonna talk a little bit about that with Tim, too. Cupps: And I just wanna say as Tim joins us he also co-founded DLL D- DLA Ignite, and we'll talk a lot about that. But go ahead and bring Tim on board. And I will say go check out his book on Amazon, Social Selling and Influence. It's a fantastic read for all sellers. And I also wanna say that Tim, when I published my book, he was the first to have me on the air with him to introduce it to the world, so I'm always appreciative of Tim. Cupps: 1:35

It's great to see you again. How are you today? Tim Huges: Hello, Cupps. I'm very well, thank you very much. It's a pleasure- Yeah ... to be here. Always happy to help. Cupps: Yeah, absolutely. You are, you are a busy guy. You've got the books, you've got the company, and you've launched a new product. So tell us a little bit about how, what, how you got here, and then we'll dig into each of those details. Tim Huges: So my background is B2B sales. I worked at Oracle on and off for about 20 years, either working for the company or in their channel. And so my background is new business, B2B

enterprise. That's what I know and that's what I love and that's what I generally talk about. 10 years ago I published my first book on social selling. Tim Huges: It was 10 years ago. And we set up a our own company, DLA Ignite. And we've been training and coaching thousands of salespeople how to use social as a way to generate revenue, not by spamming people or anything like that, but actually by using it to get visibility, to get... to build influence and ultimately to get conversations. Tim Huges: 2:35

Because anything in the B2B enterprise world wi- requires you to have a conversation. So what we're trying to do is not, we're not selling over social. What we're doing is we're selling like we normally do face-to-face, but we're using social as the mechanism to get those conversations. Cupps: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a big distinction, too. What we're trying to do is have a conversation. And once you get to the conversation, then there's a natural thing that occurs, do they actually need what you sell and vice versa? Is the buyer, they're obviously in a conversation understanding if they can trust you as

well, and I think that's a big piece of the foundation of your model, is building a- authority or credibility and trust that, that leads to more B2B- Tim Huges: Yeah, so we have a definition of social selling, which is I never, remember it, so I read it off the... Tim Huges: 3:35

Using your presence and behavior on social media to build influence, make connectionship, connections, grow relationship and trust, which leads to conversation and commercial interaction. Yeah. And I think that if you dig into the way that people actually want to buy, then actually that's the way that they wanna buy, and that's very different from we sell a particular way that nobody likes. Tim Huges: Then buyers basically buy a particular way, and if we sold like they, they bought, then maybe we'd sell more Cupps: Yeah. Yeah. So th- that's amazing. The, so the, d- I've been in B2B tech for 25 years, and like you said, 10 years ago you launched your first book. It's been, I wa- I was, when you said that I was thinking, "Yeah, how long have I been using LinkedIn?" Cupps: A lot longer, but to think of it as a vehicle for building new relationships ha- has come on the scene since you wrote that

book. But now it's like you said, it's spam. There is a large part of LinkedIn in particular that is overwhelmed with AI right now, I think. Is that fair to say? Tim Huges: Yeah. So I think what we've seen is that the... i've been saying that cold calling and spam email hasn't worked for 10 years. A lot of people disagree with me, but I, I was talking to an SDR leader the other day and he said to me that they're getting now o- only a, an only 3% connection rate. Cupps: Wow. Wow. Tim Huges: 4:35

If, so if that's connection, then, and probably most of those are going to voicemail, then it- it's just not happening. Yeah. And you know as well as I do that your inbox fills, fills up with absolutely rubbish. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: That, and I just create rules and get rid of it 'cause- Yeah Tim Huges: nobody's interested in that stuff. Yeah. So what happens is that people come to s- what I believe happens is that people think, "Oh, what we've gotta do is we've gotta interrupt people. So what we're now gonna do is we're gonna interrupt people on social." Yeah. And they think that social selling is somehow coming to you and saying, connecting to you and saying, "Here's a list of my products and services." Tim Huges: It's like I'm never

gonna buy from you because I don't know who you are. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: And it's like someone came to me and said I can help you with your restaurant franchises." "What rest- restaurant franchises?" Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: I don't have a restaurant, let alone a load of re- Yeah ... it's it's just spam. Tim Huges: Yeah ... and I think we're all really tired of it. And I know that the organizations that, our customers are, we've got people doing multi-million dollar deals on, on, on- Yeah ... on LinkedIn. And and it's we- why isn't everybody doing that? Cupps: 5:35

Yeah. Yeah. I- and I think you started, you said that you don't sell anything on LinkedIn. Cupps: You, you- No ... you get an introduction and you have a conversation is where- Yeah ... where it happens and, but so e- email I agree with. I didn't know the connection rate on cold calling, but email I think is just completely dead now. I, and I've talked to a couple of people that are in this world, B2B tech world that you know so well as and every- I think everybody's concluding that email's dead. Cupps: And, but- Yeah ... yet there's, seems like there's more and more companies out there saying hire a AI SDR team. That is all about that, right? And it's crazy

that volume is not the answer I think is w- is what I'm trying to get to. A- and it's more about can you connect Tim Huges: with- But it's that culture, isn't it? Tim Huges: That of one more call or one more- Yeah ... email is gonna get us. Yeah. Because 20 years ago, I phoned the CFO and it was five past six and I got through and I, and it's and we're living basically this, this sort of debt that we're basically still living on. And it basically is in a situation where we're just, it just doesn't work anymore. Tim Huges: And- Yeah ... unfortunately people have gotta walk away from it, and it's really difficult for them. Cupps: 6:35

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. The, yeah, I, I, over my career I can remember that the epiphany was, "Let's have a call blitz. Let's bring everybody in the office and let's make as many calls as we can in a Tim Huges: day." I organized them when I was at Oracle. Tim Huges: Yeah. We had a cold calling day, Cupps: yeah. It's amazing. Tim Huges: I won an award for organizing a cold calling day at Oracle. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: We rolled the thing out across Europe. And it's really? Today, come on, yeah. It's 2026. Cupps: Yeah. Exactly. Cupps: Exactly. So let's start with maybe the social selling and influence, just the core

concepts of when you are coaching or you're training people, can you just give us a highlight, of the, what the process looks like and what we're trying to do in that process? Tim Huges: So what we do is that in, in the training and coaching that we give, we, we teach in effect four things. Tim Huges: 7:35

One is about how to have a personal brand. And that, for a lot of people, they think that's like Mark Schaefer or Brian Solis. I'm never gonna achieve that." It's really just about making sure that you look you look good in the way that buyers want you to look rather than, "Hey, I'm a great salesperson and I'm gonna- Yeah Tim Huges: stitch you up in some deal," which is what most people basically do on their LinkedIn profile, 'cause that's what they think they have to do. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: So it's about how to have a personal brand where you're recognized as a someone of influence within your industry, where people actually want to be attracted to you. Tim Huges: The second thing is that we teach people how to network. It's actually classic networking where people used to go, and I keep these by the, business cards. Do you remember those? Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: Where you basically used to go and give people business

cards. And what we do is we teach people how to do that digitally rather than sending people a connection request and say, "Hey, Cupps, here's a list of my products and services." Tim Huges: It's like, no. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: The third thing we do is that we teach people the importance of content. Content's really important. We know that buyers are out there looking for content that, and they do it for a number of things. They're not interested in brochures because we can get them from your website. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: 8:35

We're not... And we know that anything that's generated from a corporate perspective's gonna say one thing, which is buy my product because we're great, so we don't read them. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: So how can we basically inspire people by creating content that's gonna stop people scrolling? And it's not here's me at a sales kickoff, 'cause actually this is, "Hey, this is how we've just spent all your money." Tim Huges: You thought we were spending... We... You thought we were selling, spending it on product development, but actually we're all in Honolulu out taking... Having a good drink. So there's this, what makes good content? We've actually done a lot of work around that. And to, to... We could do a whole episode on what good content actually looks like. Tim Huges: Yeah. And the third thing is actually

making having conversations with people online. Going up to people that you don't know, like you would at a networking event, and saying, "Hi, Cupps. How you doing? What, what brings you here?" And that sort of stuff. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: And we've done a lot of work around rather than just saying, "Congrats," or "awesome," or something like that, is actually having, putting a using context around the, the post. Tim Huges: 9:35

And actually then, because y- you'd be surprised, if someone's taken time to actually write something and you come with a, with an intelligent comment, they'll come back and go, "Thanks very much." 'Cause it's a bit like, it's flattering. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: And then you can basically connect to them and say, "Hey, we just had a great conversation. Tim Huges: Let's have a let's connect." And then using your powers of social, you'll end up getting, you can get a conversation with them. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: W- why are people cold calling when they're getting such a, a crap rate? When they could actually be on social every day, having conversations with people and ultimately getting connecting and having conversations. Tim Huges: It's a no-brainer. Cupps: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And what I

like about that, so the, the strategy isn't necessarily to just connect with them upfront. You're not finding a list of people and just trying to connect to all of them. You're actually looking at their content and saying, "Hey, this is somebody in the sector that's talking about things that are important in the sector," whatever it is that you're selling, and you're trying to build... Cupps: you start building the relationship first before you even connect- Tim Huges: 10:35

Yeah. So what you're trying to do ultimately is, y- we- we're all trying to get a conversation. So how is it that we can go through that process? You're gonna try and y- you're gonna try and talk to them. Tim Huges: Or what you're gonna do is you're going to you may connect to people, but you also may find that I can't get to Cupps because Cupps is really important. So what I do is I connect, everybody has a, a plus one, someone of influence. Yeah. So maybe we're connecting to those people. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: W- and also what happens is that you'll find that people are connection snobs. So what they'll do- ... is that they'll look at and say th- this person's clearly doing a ... I was talking to a CEO the other day, and they said, "I know when people are basically trying to sell to me." Yeah. "And it's because I'm the

only person they're connecting to. Tim Huges: But if they're connecting to me and they're connected to Steve and Frank and Mark- Mark ... Schaefer and Michael Cupps and people who I trust- Cupps: Yeah ... Tim Huges: then I'm more likely to actually trust the connection request, and it's more likely not gonna be, 'Here's a list of my products and services.'" Cupps: Yeah. And LinkedIn gives the assist there because when you see somebody's profile, you say you're connected to Tim in these ways w- you know, through these people. Cupps: 11:35

So it, you get the assist from LinkedIn on that a bit. So that's interesting. The you said we, we could have a full-time question about or session about content, but in general avoiding sales and marketing type speak is one thing. But are you trying to and this is topical because we hear about GEO all the time, are you trying to put posts out there that get AI indexed for, for when you do searches? Cupps: Or is it just, or what's the, if you just had one strategy if, on your content strategy, what would that be? Tim Huges: So content is something that that, that has a number of different things. One is you're trying to get a like a

conversation with a, a person. You're trying to get them to stop and go, "Tim Hughes looks interesting." Tim Huges: Yeah. And n- next time you put a post, Tim Hughes is interesting again, or T- and who is this Tim Hughes? Oh p- is... And, and- Yeah ... and so at the point where I send a connection request to you I'm already, I've already warm- warmed you up. The other thing is that we know that Google and AI love LinkedIn because they know it's full of thoughtful or thought leadership content. Tim Huges: 12:35

I don't like that term. Yeah. But in terms of it's interesting content. So for you to turn up on LLMs, you need to be creating content for them to index. Cupps: Yeah. Yeah. Tim Huges: And therefore you need to be, y- you need to be writing it in a, in an insightful way because that's the way that you know, th- these algorithm, a- algorithms aren't stupid. Cupps: Yeah. Yeah. And what... do you have a preference, or is it best to do all of it, video versus text versus carousels versus all the choices marketing people tell us about? Tim Huges: W- in our research, 60% of people actually don't wanna do content.

Yeah. Exactly. They... I don't have time, I have nothing to say people will laugh at me. Tim Huges: Yeah. So we're in this situation where whenever we've trained and coached people, we will find that 20% of the people will do it, 60% of the people won't. Or they do it a bit and then they stop. Yeah. So it's very important that your... i, f- for most people, text is okay. Yeah. Most people, if you said, "Do a video," they you, they'll run in the opposite direction. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: 13:35

So I think, and a lot of these things that LinkedIn tell you to do are not applicable for the vast majority of people. Yeah. 20% of the people will do them, but 60% of the people won't. By the way, 20% of the people won't even turn up, so- Yeah. Yeah ... it's all very well, but as I said, video for most people, it's not gonna happen. Cupps: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I wanna get to the tool in a minute. But we Flora and I and a few other guests had over the past few weeks have been talking about kind of AI tools that we use or don't use or that we get handed to us. And it makes me think about the context of marketing too, and there was a question from someone that said

you know- Is this a marketing function or is it a sales function? Cupps: I think I know your answer but maybe c- just talk through that a little bit. This is, this is- Because marketing does say here's some ads, here's some carousels, here's some things," right? Tim Huges: Okay. Nobody looks at ads you know- Yeah ... they're wasting their money. We don't come to LinkedIn to look at ads. Tim Huges: 14:35

LinkedIn- ... makes its money from selling you ads, but nobody looks at them. And so the thing is that we, we always scroll past that. Yeah ... when we scroll past it actually shows you, it, it actually shows that you have an impression, but basically scrolling past is... Anyway. Tim Huges: So i- is this market- No, this is modern-day prospecting. Just as much as you would phone somebody up, just as much- Yeah ... as you would send somebody an email, this is this is the way that you prospect. You should've been prospecting like this for 10 years. Yeah. But it's, it, this is modern-day digital prospecting. Tim Huges: And we'll talk in a bit about how marketing can support this anyway. Cupps: Yeah. Okay. Let's get into your new tool. You launched a new tool. And- Yeah ... and it's AI-centric, but it's still focused on the core principles of social selling and influence, correct? Tim Huges: Yes. So we've launched

a product called Aspartilo.ai. Tim Huges: Yeah. Oh, good, 'cause it's a made-up name, by the way. And, I Cupps: was gonna, I was gonna ask if there was something behind that. Tim Huges: No it is a, there's a long internal story about it. And so we've launched it to... So it's, so we're completely AI native company. We use Claude to to do... Tim Huges: 15:35

we use Claude and Gemini, and I'll come onto that in a moment. So it's all built within Claude. And it's an app which is enterprise strength. And we got our first customer on it, which is a French agritech company back in January of this year, and we got them live. Tim Huges: And that, the salespeople there were generating three meetings a week from social within six weeks. Cupps: Yeah. Wow. Tim Huges: So to give you some idea what we do, the first thing we do is that we bring in- Cupps: can I ask one question before that? D- were they using your methodology before that? Or- No ... was it completely new? Cupps: Oh, wow. No. Okay. Tim Huges: They were phoning and- Yeah ... and getting nowhere. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: And so what you, the first thing that you do is you need to ground the data. So we we bring in the definition of your ideal customer

profile, your value proposition it can be your, and your brand guidelines. You can be bringing in your SEO keywords. Tim Huges: So for example, sustainability is one of the keywords that this French agritech company wants to be famous for. So an- any data that you want from a corporate perspective. The next thing that we do is that we bring in data from each of the different individuals, because what we need to be doing is talking in your tone of voice. Cupps: Yeah. ' Tim Huges: 16:35

Cause you talk different to me. Yeah. And and so what we do is that we bring in data for each of the different people. And so what you're able to do is res- create content really fast, and we did it because of this 60% of the people in the middle that didn't wanna do anything at all. Tim Huges: So what we did was we sat down and we realized that everybody else was basically building tools that were AI-focused on how we sell. This is an AI to- tool based on how we buy. And how do we buy? If you look at the 6sense data and the data from Forrester,

we buy based on relationship and and trust. Tim Huges: Yeah. And we've done that forever So how is it that we can build relationship and trust and do that at scale, and also show the salespeople's humanity and do that at scale as well? Yeah. And it's funny, I watch- I read articles from Mark Schaefer and he's, then he's going, "This is the Holy Grail. This is the Holy Grail." Tim Huges: 17:35

It's like we built it. And and what you're able to do is you bring in all that grounded data, you bring in the data of the individuals, and then they're able to create content, and they're able to do it within minutes. Seconds- Yeah ... minutes. The, the system scores you. If you want to, you can change it. Tim Huges: You can basically do voice notes. So you say, "I've just come off a podcast with Cupps, and he said this, and I'd like to write a blog about this." ... And the whole thing is designed to be completely friction-free in the way that you work. Yeah. We also have the ability to create comments. So this is something that I've been playing with over the last couple of weeks. Tim Huges: So I can go up to a, an indi- a, a s- total stranger. Yeah. Somebody I want to buy to, b- buy sorry, sell

to. I can go to that total stranger and I can basically put a comment on their LinkedIn profile. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: And they reply, I can connect, as I said earlier on. And then I can basically take that through to some sort of conversation. Tim Huges: So you're, again- Yeah ... it's modern-day prospecting. Yeah. And we've made it as simple as possible for people and ... and friction-free. Cupps: And the comment that you made in that s- example it's probably reading the context of their post and then putting it in your voice. Cupps: Does the user have the ability to edit and and change to make it Tim Huges: 18:35

shorter? Yeah. Yeah. Is that- So you've got the ability to edit anything, Yeah ... that you want to. And we've been using it in anger ourselves as you would expect us to and it's- Yeah ... it's quite it's, it... Tim Huges: We're it's good fun. Cupps: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's int- interesting. I think I saw a commenting tool like that and I tested it out, and it was so AI predictable that I didn't even, I didn't go past the trial. I, I- Tim Huges: Yeah. And the key- It Cupps: wasn't your tool, by the way. It wasn't your tool, by the way. Cupps: I'm just- Tim Huges: No. It's and the key thing is this, is that it's got your tone of voice. Yeah. So it you're feeding

it with, you can feed it with a, a n number of pieces of content. Usually we do three. So usually it's your LinkedIn profile which will be written in your tone of voice. Tim Huges: If you've written any blogs or maybe it's because, you've written a the summary of a tender or you've written some emails or something like that, but it's got your tone of voice. Cupps: Yeah. Yeah. Tim Huges: And and we're able to do things like, y- for example, we I found a really great Brian Solis- article the other day, which sa- says this is exactly what, this is exactly what people want. Tim Huges: 19:35

One of my team Helen basically posted that today. She's then actually shared that. We can take Helen's post and then write that in our own voice. So- Yeah ... we- we're able to take marketing content and share it out onto onto social in our own voice. So if you take employee advocacy, which was a way of trying to get round this, you're generally only empowering 10 to 15 people, the pe- 10 to 15% of the people, because most people know that they don't wanna post boring content on their profiles- Yeah Tim Huges: 'cause they know nobody wants to read it. Yeah. But what you're able to do

is actually get all 80% of the, the organization talking in their own voice, on brand and with the keywords, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's very powerful. Cupps: Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. And the, ... And is there a is there recommended post quantity and Cupps: 20:35

I c- because I, it d- for me, it's always, I tend to do when I think of something I wanna talk about I post it, but is there a structured calendar that you says you should post twice a week or three times a week or every day or comment every day? What ... do you have a, a discipline around that? Tim Huges: It's ... it's an interesting question, Cupps, because actually it's kind of old thinking. Because the way that we always used to work was that we knew that whenever we wanted to write something, it would take us 30 minutes. Tim Huges: Sure. So immediately what we're thinking in our heads is, "I don't have time for this." Tim Huges: So even if we've got past the nobody, what, nobody is interested in what we've got to say, and everyone's just gonna laugh at me, the next thing is, "I don't have time for this." And you're able to actually create content literally in, in

minutes. And we onboarded our, my, like our accountant who's one of the most least IT literate, Yeah Tim Huges: people. I- it was like onboarding my mother. And she's 88, and it was like can I just click the... It was like... A- and we got him and he posted something in eight minutes- Cupps: Wow. Okay ... Tim Huges: from o- onboarding. He'd never seen the product before. Yeah. And it was just it was just... So your so you're able to empower people. Tim Huges: 21:35

Now, the, the one of the things that we learned with we've, I think that everybody learned with SAS is that people were given a tool and then they didn't use it. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: So we went to a comp- there's a company in in, in the UK called Rentokil, which does, catches rats and wasps nests- Yeah ... and stuff like that, and they'd bought they'd bought I can't... Tim Huges: I won't mention the name. They bought this tool. They'd had this demo, the immaculate conception demo, where they said- Yeah ... you'll get so many leads." They switched it on and nothing happened. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: And we were called in because, we know something about LinkedIn, and they said, "Why is that?" I said you've not trained anybody." Tim Huges: "Oh, do you have to do that?" Yeah. The, the

company never told us." So we have this technical moat, which is that we've taken o- so n- not only do we have the tool, but we've taken the whole of our training and coaching, and we've pulled it into- Yeah ... a computer-based training system So everybody can learn at their own speed and they learn why they need to have a personal brand, why they need to... Tim Huges: 22:35

a- and how, not just why, but how they have a personal brand, how to write their LinkedIn profile, how to network, how to have, create great content how to comment, et cetera. So not only are they are getting a skill in terms of the, the AI, but they're also learning as well. And we've not taken the coaching away. Tim Huges: We, all of the... even though they're doing o- online computer-based training, we're still providing five- Yeah ... 30-minute coaching sessions per individual as well, which we originally thought just automate it." And then we said no. The coaching sessions are the thing that- Yeah ... that always get the the results. Tim Huges: Therefore, we're actually leaving them in." Yeah ... it's a, it's something that... there's lots of tools, there's lots of training, but nobody's basically doing the two together. Cupps: Yeah. And there's something

about computer-based training is fantastic to get a mass quantity of stuff done on their own pace, right? Cupps: But when you talk to them, you actually find the human elements that's holding them back maybe is one way to think about it. You- Yeah ... you h- they have that fear of, "I don't want people to laugh at my posts" or, and when you do that one-on-one training and... or that, face-to-face training, I should say. Cupps: It doesn't have to be face-to-face. It can be virtual- Yeah, we get- ... but talking ... we, Tim Huges: we- Cupps: Yeah ... Tim Huges: 23:35

we get questions like you said, "Should I be doing videos?" Really? You haven't even... you haven't posted in three months, so- Yeah ... you shouldn't even be thinking about video. Or, when should I post?" Tim Huges: The best time to post is now. Yeah. Or, "How many times should I post?" Actually, it's so easy. You can post every day. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: And th- this is about you, you building visibility and influence. Or from a marketing- Yeah ... side, how do we be measurable, distinctive, and different? Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: And by doing that, you're empowering everybody. And of course, every single LinkedIn profile that you have which is keyword optimized- Yeah ... which is what you'll get, is another website of your organization on the internet. Yeah. So if you've

got- Yeah ... 100 employees, you've then got 101 keyword optimized websites that, that- Yeah Tim Huges: that, that LLMs are crawling and Google is crawling. Cupps: Yeah. What about for smaller companies? Still, it's still, it still magnifies it, but do you see... I n- I know that you've trained big s- y- 4,000 people at Oracle, but, if a company that's just a startup are they good prospects for this? Tim Huges: We're a startup ourselves. Cupps: Yeah. Yeah, true. Tim Huges: And it's funny talking to people because w- when I talk, the people think that we've got way more people than, than we a- have. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: 24:35

So we're, we're able to really punch above our weight in terms of the the way that we market. Tim Huges: And remember, we've never spent a dollar on cold calling. We've never spent a dollar on, at any events. We've never spent a dollar on any email spam. We've, we, all we do i- all we do is do social selling. Yeah. And that's the way that we get and generate business. Yeah. Because I don't understand how you would cold call a social selling, but clearly your social selling doesn't work if you're call- calling or sending emails. Cupps: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just curious one la- one last thing on that tool. How does it

because sales and marketing measures all kinds of things, customer acquisition costs, all of the c- is our cat going up and down, and stuff like this, how do you tie y- the metrics from the tool and your system into, so marketing feels good about the, the return on investment? Tim Huges: So w- we would, at the moment we have to, or, and have to, and always have done is measure things manually. Cupps: Okay. Tim Huges: We would ask organizations to basically to create a campaign code for anything that they generate- Okay ... through social. And we would expect most companies now to be using- Yeah, probably Tim Huges: 25:35

generating 25% of their revenue through social. But we're now signed up as a LinkedIn partner. Yeah, Cupps: I Tim Huges: saw that. Yeah. And that basically means that we- we're we're saying that we're playing by the rules. No scraping of data or anything like that. And ultimately what we'll do is that we're gonna be able to pull the metrics from LinkedIn back into the tool. Cupps: Okay. Okay. Tim Huges: That's part... It's on the roadmap Cupps. Yeah. It's not there right now. Cupps: Yeah. I saw the announcement that you were a LinkedIn partner. I didn't know the depth of that, but that's, that's- Tim Huges: Yeah. So you go... they have to

learn to trust you, but it's really a, a statement of direction that we're not into we're not into spamming, we're not into scraping and anything like that. Yeah. But ultimately we'll pull all the data back. Cupps: Yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. That's amazing. This is The Habit Architect. I want to talk a little bit about habits, a- about making... Cupps: As an individual, if you can think about just what are the key things, and I know your tool makes it easier, that you have to do to make social selling part of your general motion and successful? Tim Huges: 26:35

We had, I did a demo the other day and one the, the CRO said, "My sales team are a lazy lot I want you to send an email to them every day." Tim Huges: So I said okay." So it's now on, it's in Sep- it's in the, the the, the product roadmap for September. It's part of it's part of the, the training and the coaching that we give, which is about- Yeah ... this is about, as with anything, James Clear book on, on habits and what you've talked about in your Time Bandit book, which is you've got to start thinking about these things and start regularly planning for it. Tim Huges: W- we d- we do certain we teach people and coach people about

building a personal content plan. Okay. And part of that is so you... So every Monday I do a video. So I don't wake up and think, "What am I gonna do today?" I know on Monday I'm gonna do a video. And and so- That's perfect ... one of the things that we do is we teach people about that and h- a- and that's about turning social into a habit. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: A- and part of the tool is to basically take all of the friction out of it and just make it so simple. Cupps: 27:35

Yeah. Exactly. And when y- once it's part of a system, it just becomes automatic, like you said, a video on Monday or whatever the, the habit is. It, y- you just, it just makes it, it more- Tim Huges: Yeah. Tim Huges: And and it, I've been doing this for a couple of years, so I know every Monday I woke up, "Oh, what am I gonna do for my video?" But actually I would have thought about it T- so Thursday's the day. I usually, we're recording this on a Thursday normally on Thursday I'm thinking about what I'm gonna do on a Monday. Cupps: Yep. It looks like Flora is either chiming in for a question or she just popped up on the screen here. Anyway, that, that's great. So z- I appreciate the comment about habits, because I think it is something that if it's sustainable.

I think one thing we're seeing 'cause, we work with AI as well, what we're seeing is that there's this kind of spike in usage of any AI tool that you give your employees and then it drops dramatically, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of thought about how to, if the tool's the right tool, that may be the first wrong choice. Cupps: 28:35

But then secondly, just how is your team training so... And h- and are rewarded for using it. Like you were talking about, you blend your training with your tool, which I think a lot of AI tools today are not that way. And I can't imagine. I get 10 a day- I- ... of people telling me, "Hey, there's an AI tool that's gonna give me more business." Cupps: I bet it's y- once you do the transaction, that's about it, right? Tim Huges: Yeah. I... so I've been doing a lot of research going back into my network and asking people what they're doing with AI. And what seems to be happening is that we've got some people that are building things, bespoke systems themselves in AI. Tim Huges: Yeah. So they've got maybe salespeople that are that they're not concentrating on what they should be doing, but they're doing stuff with AI. Yeah. That's... All that's gonna do is create an

echo chamber because you're not bringing in any new thinking at all. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: You're not bringing in experts that have sat down and thought about it, and that's what applications are all about. Tim Huges: Yeah. You're also building a whole load of technical debt. The second thing is that you've got people saying, "Oh, yeah I'm researching all of my customers on, in Claude or Gemini." Yeah that's table stakes nowadays. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: And it's nothing to exactly write home about. The third thing is that people are saying, "Oh, yeah, we've got AI on our CRM system." Tim Huges: Yeah. Cupps: 29:35

Yeah. Tim Huges: That's AI washing. That's not exactly, that's not... Again, so you've got a, a natural E- English dashboard to your old CRM system. Brilliant. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: But I'm not I'm asking people I'm, I've gone back in my network to conversations I've had to 2023, and I can't find anybody using an AI agent. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: Nobody at all. Yeah. No th- they're doing those other things- Yeah ... but nobody's using an AI agent. Cupps: Yeah. Tim Huges: Yeah. Cupps: Yeah. Got it. Got it. And we talked about the book, but maybe I wanna give you it's on Amazon. Tim Huges: Yeah. This is my fourth book.

Cupps: Yep. Tim Huges: And it's on Amazon only, so you can buy it on Amazon across the world. Tim Huges: I wrote it at Christmas 2025. It came out at Easter 2026. And it's everything that from my head that we've accumulated over the last 10 years plus- Cupps: Yeah Tim Huges: All of the latest research, plus there's a whole load of myth busters in there about- Cupps: Oh, nice. Tim Huges: Nice ... the fact that you got 10,000 impressions and the fact that actually it's completely meaningless. Tim Huges: Yeah ... that sort of stuff. And if you, and we've also got a chapter in there about AI as well. Cupps: 30:35

Yeah. I read your first book. I it's up here somewhere. So you need to get Tim Huges: that one. Cupps: Yeah. That, and so I need to get the second one, and I certainly will. I, the my- I'll enjoy the myth busters especially because of Tim Huges: all the crime there, there- Tim Huges: stories ... are always things that come up on presentations that we give and that, we got 10,000 impressions. Okay. Whatever. Does it- Yeah ... how- how's your bank account? Yeah. We've got nothing in it. There you go. There's, there, there's a correlation there. Cupps: Yeah. Th- thank you so much, Tim, for talking about this. Cupps: It's so important. You're welcome. And it's scrolling along the bottom for the am-

the for the book as well as the, the website to to go engage about the new platform. I think it's exciting, and I'm gonna take a look at it as well. The I do ask everybody and it's unfair to ask you because you're talking about AI the whole time, but th- maybe let's go to a personal side. Cupps: Is there one thing that in your personal life that you are gonna offload to AI? Tim Huges: 31:35

I did two years ago. We decided to, to... I did it as an experiment to basically to tell people. Because at the time, actually it was quite revolutionary. So we went to Chile and Easter Island. Ah. And I did the whole of the thing on on AI, and everyone was going, "Wow, did you really?" Tim Huges: It reminds me of the times when I first started buying from Amazon. Oh. I was quite an early adopter, and everyone said, "Really? You... What? You don't go to a book shop?" Cupps: Yeah. " Tim Huges: Do the books actually turn up?" The... I remember people saying that, and it was like, "You booked a whole f- a whole..." Yeah, I did a whole holiday on, on, on AI. Tim Huges: It's a it's fantastic. We... Clearly we've built a company on it, but, come on, we all use it every day and it's a- Yeah ... it's an amazing

tool. And it's an, an amazing addition to to do things that we couldn't do or we wouldn't have had the time to do. Cupps: Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly where I think of it is it's freeing up time that we can choose to spend on something else, right? And that's the whole premise of you can't save time. You choose how you use it, and I would rather use it- Yeah ... on things I care about, right? Tim Huges: Yeah. Yeah we we run two podcasts, one of them The Digital Download, which is every Friday at 2: 32:35

00 PM UK time. And the whole of that is now automated on the whole of that is automated from a, a production perspective- Yeah ... because we can do it. Cupps: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Tim, always good to see you. Thank you so much for joining us today. Great to see you. Thank you. I know it's getting late later in the day for you in, in the UK. Great content and great information because I think it's... and it's so important. And you know what? It's also important for the buyers too because there is so much noise out there and you can n- as a seller you can stand out by just being credible in who you are, right? Cupps: As opposed to trying to knock over as many as

you can, right? Tim Huges: Yeah. Absolutely. Cupps: Thank you so much. If you did Easter Island la- last year, where are you going next? Tim Huges: We're going to Vietnam. Cupps: Oh, nice. Nice. Tim Huges: Yeah. Yeah. It's actually the third time I've been to Vietnam, but it's the first time with this person, friend. Cupps: 33:35

Yeah. Yeah. Pers- perfect. Great to see you again. Thanks everybody. Do check out Enterprise Diagnostics as well as Time Bandit and please do and favorite and forward our podcast to your family and friends so that we get more viewers on all the time. So thank you very much and have a great day. Tim Huges: Thanks everybody. Thank you. Cupps: We're still live, I think. Floor? Tim Huges: We're still alive Cupps: And I apologize, I missed a question Cupps: I'm gonna I'll be back in touch with you, Tim. It seems like we're

still live. I, I'll get... We'll just- Okay. Cupps: 34:35

I'll leave... Tim Huges: i'll just close it off. Cheers, Cupps. Thanks. Bye.