TL;DR: Balancing a full-time job, two kids, and a rapidly growing Creator brand sounds impossible—but Lee, known as @theintrovertedrecruiter, is proving it isn’t. He started creating content to combat the bad advice he saw online, sharing free resources to help job seekers get ahead. Today, he’s built an online community of over 585,000 and uses Stan to grow his email list, sell digital products, and streamline his workflow down to just 3 hours a week. Here’s how.
Lee Harding is an introvert, recruiter, and dad from the UK who shares no-nonsense career search and recruiting advice. After over 20 years in recruitment, he was sick and tired of seeing unqualified Creators share horrendous job seeker advice.
Many of the tips he saw gaining traction were blatantly wrong or pointed to expensive products that preyed on people’s vulnerabilities just to make a sale. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had knowledge that could genuinely help people.
Lee didn’t see himself as social savvy and absolutely despised showing up on camera (still does), but decided to try content creation anyway. Not to escape his 9-5, but to truly use his skills to make an impact.
“I just thought either no one will see it, in which case it doesn’t matter, or people will see it, and it might help a few people”.
Now, two years later, he’s built a community of over 585,000 across TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Substack, and receives daily messages from job seekers he’s helped.
I chatted with Lee to learn more about his Creator journey, what’s driven his growth, and the impact it has had on his life. This is his story.
The Challenge: Serving Job Seekers at Scale
As a full-time recruiter and father of two, Lee had limited time to put toward content creation. He didn’t set out to build an audience with trending TikTok dances or skits—just honest, tactical advice job seekers could benefit from.
“Look, I’m just some bloke in his bedroom who’s trying to help people.”
When it came to creating, Lee kept things simple, using a consistent face-to-camera video style from his desk chair. Instead of focusing on creating perfectly produced videos, he doubled down on consistency—targeting 2-3 posts per day on TikTok, every day, for three months.
“I didn’t do anything fancy. Just filming on my phone in this exact same chair in every single video, wearing a black t-shirt every single video. Just talking to a camera. No fancy editing, nothing like that.”
At first, posting felt wildly out of his comfort zone. He was an introvert and dad who’d never shown up on camera, after all. Could he really make it as a TikTok Creator?
But with every post, his content gained more traction. And three months later, one of Lee’s videos hit 100,000 views. People were loving his advice and authenticity, and he was beginning to see its broader impact.
Before he knew it, he had 10,000 followers. Then 20,000. Then 100,000.
Reaching More People With Repurposed Content
Lee expanded to other platforms, like LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, to reach more job seekers by reusing the same content across channels.
Repurposing content allowed him to consistently post five videos per day while juggling full-time work and parenthood. Instead of constantly reinventing the wheel, he batches videos in one sitting and posts them for months.
“My best-performing video on Instagram has 5 million views. There are still millions of people on there who haven’t seen it. So, if I want to repost it, I’ll repost it because there are still a lot of people it could help.”
As his audience grew, so did the flood of questions from people looking for personalized guidance, CV help, and interview prep. Lee didn’t have the time to help people individually, so he began creating free resources he could share at scale.
But delivering his freebies required tools, and tools required subscriptions. Lee began looking for ways to cover the rising costs of his content creation tools—not profit off job seekers’ desperation like so many other Creators he saw.
That’s when he started looking into selling digital products.
The Solution: One Place to Promote, Deliver, and Sell
While searching for tools, Lee saw Stan in other Creators’ bios. After giving it a try and loving its simplicity, he decided to go all-in on the platform and launch his own Stan Store.
“I’m doing it in 10-minute gaps in between the kids or in the evening. I just want something that’s dead easy to set up, and I can totally just run with. So I went with Stan.”
He uses Stan to sell a few affordable paid resources his audience can buy for more in-depth support, like his job search system, ultimate guide, and career playbook.
And to address the sheer volume of requests he receives for career coaching and CV feedback, Lee spent hours training three custom AI products with his expertise, including an:
These give his audience bespoke advice at a low cost without taking up more of his time. “A normal career coach would charge you 100 pounds an hour for a session. 29 quid and it’s yours forever,” he explains.
Protecting His Online Community
One of the main reasons Lee started using Stan was to grow his email list. After 18 months of diligently working at growing his audience, the last thing he wants to do is lose it overnight.
Stan gave him an easy way to turn his free resources into lead magnets, protecting his audience in case anything ever happens to his social accounts.
Freeing Up Time With Automations
Now, Lee houses all his resources on Stan and seamlessly drives traffic there with StanAutoDM. Instead of spending hours manually responding to every person’s question, AutoDM instantly sends them the right resources.
And once someone downloads one of his freebies, they’ll automatically receive an Email Flow sequence that highlight all of Lee’s free resources while introducing his paid offers.
The Result: 585,000+ Lives Impacted
Lee started his Creator journey with one goal: to help job seekers navigate the market. He wasn’t sure if his content would resonate and didn’t have high expectations for growing an audience, but he showed up anyway.
The result? A community of 585,000+ people and 11,220+ downloads in just two years.
A bulk of that growth happened this year alone. In January 2025, he had an audience of roughly 195,000. By November, he’d already hit 585,000—more than tripling his audience 🤯
And it’s not just social growth. Lee has also rapidly scaled his email list, receiving nearly 100 new leads each day and growing from 7,500 subscribers at the start of the year to over 26,000 now.
Since switching to Stan, he has accelerated his growth while dramatically decreasing the time he spends on his Creator business, putting in less than 3 hours a week.
Lee did all of this without leaving his 9-5 or radically changing his lifestyle—and that’s not what he’s aiming for. Instead, he has made his mark on the world, impacting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
“[The most fulfilling part is] when I get messages from people telling me they went for an interview and they just watched this video, and it really helped them. And they got the job, or they used my template, and it’s gotten them interviews. Or things like that, because that was the reason I set out to do it.”
Being a Creator has had a ripple effect on Lee’s career as well, opening up opportunities he never imagined. Now, he gets approached by people all the time at recruiting events who recognize him from his content. He’s had the chance to contribute to dream brands like Glassdoor and was recently even contacted by a TV producer about appearing on a morning show.
Embodying What It Means To Be a Stan Creator
After talking with Lee firsthand, it’s clear his driving motivation for being a Creator is to genuinely help others. He’s not here to share flashy videos or rise to fame, but to make an impact on the people he has spent the last 20 years of his career supporting.
That’s exactly what makes his story so meaningful.
Lee proves Creator success is possible in any niche, at any age, on any timeline. You don’t need expensive tools, an extroverted personality, or endless free time to make an impact. You just need a point of view, a willingness to help, and the discipline to keep showing up.
He represents the heart what it means to be a Stan Creator—building a business with grit, unwavering consistency, and a genuine desire to make the world a better place. His story is a testament to what’s possible when you follow through on your goals and put your purpose at the center of everything you do.
Ready to launch your own Creator business? Stan Store is the easiest way to get started. Try it free and see why Creators like Lee love scaling with Stan.
Follow Lee’s journey:
Stan Store: Lee’s Stan Store
TikTok: @theintrovertedrecruiter_
Instagram: @theintrovertedrecruiter
YouTube: @LeeHardingTA
LinkedIn: @LeeHarding1
Substack: @theintrovertedrecruiter
