Anthony Carlton

I build media systems for operators who want influence, growth, & capital at scale | $50M raised through social | Founder & Writer

I built my personal brand to escape the corporate grind.

After working with clients across finance, private equity, venture, and real estate—I doubled down on one clear problem:

Most CRE firms struggle to raise capital online.

That’s why I founded CRE Digital — a content and brand strategy partner for capital raisers, fund managers, and private equity firms.

We turn your expertise into influence, using systems that drive:

• Brand authority that builds trust
• LP investor leads and committed capital
• Off-market deal flow and JV partners
• Speaking invites and top CRE podcast features

What sets us apart? 

We’ve sat on both sides of the table — advising high-net-worth investors and partnering with top CRE operators.

Now, we build digital brands that attract capital at scale.

If you’re serious about raising capital and want your brand to do the heavy lifting, book a call in my featured section or visit credigital.io

Founder & Brand Advisor

Build Your Brand @ FinGhost.io

In 2026, a salary isn’t enough.

The real multiplier of wealth is ownership.

That doesn’t mean you need to build the next Fortune 500 company and manage 1,000 employees.

Ownership comes in many forms. Think of it as a ladder you climb over time:

Level 1 → Stocks in your brokerage or 401k
Level 2 → Equity in the company you work for
Level 3 → Advisory (lend expertise to a startup)
Level 4 → Invest in startups, real estate, assets
Level 5 → Build a side hustle that pays you monthly
Level 6 → Build & own IP: audience, products, media

There are 101 ways to create ownership.

So the excuse "I don't have enough money or experience" doesn't work in a world where you can create something from scratch TODAY with a $20/month AI tool and a google doc.

Salary stops when you stop.

Equity compounds while you sleep.

This is how you buy back your time.
This is how you achieve freedom before 70.
This is how you own assets that work for you.

There's too much leverage available in the world to spend the next 30-40 years earning and spending a salary with no ownership to show for it.

Bet on yourself.
Bet on ownership.

What assets are you building or buying over the next 3 months?

Anthony Carlton

Getting financial advisors millions of dollars & impressions | $20+ million in capital & AUM raised from LinkedIn | 100+ million client impressions | 400+ meetings booked | $1+ million in client courses sold

If you work in finance or real estate and want to add clients or capital through LinkedIn, send me a DM.

If you want to write a memoir or lead-gen book, send me a DM.

Adam Knorr

LinkedIn 2022: "I miss the 2021 algorithm."
LinkedIn 2023: "I miss the 2022 algorithm."
LinkedIn 2024: "I miss the 2023 algorithm."
LinkedIn 2025: "I miss the 2024 algorithm."
LinkedIn 2026: "I miss the 2025 algorithm.

Please, shut up, all of you. 

Posts about how people "miss the old algorithm" are the only thing you can actually guarantee will persist on LinkedIn day-to-day.

Do you want to know the secret to success here?

Post good content people want to read. Make a bunch of friends. Do this consistently for a long time.

I used to dread Monday mornings. Now I go to bed early so they get here faster. I don't think I'll ever get used to loving work.

I get out of bed between 3-4 AM most days. Within 15 minutes, my laptop is open.

I used to think I did this because I was anxious — about work, about clients, about hitting 10,000 steps before 8:00.

But over the past few weeks, I've come to realize I start work so early because... I want to? Because it's fun? Because I love it?

Now, yeah, it's stressful. More stressful than any W-2 job I ever had.

But even on the (many) days where I have to remind myself that my lungs can take breaths deeper than the kiddie pool, it's invigorating.

I get to solve problems for myself. If I solve them properly, I reap the rewards. I am not accomplishing something so someone above me on the ladder gets a better bonus, and I am certainly not relying on someone else on the corporate food chain to make sure a project gets done right.

I just get to do it all. My brain vs. my brain.

Every week is this chaotic collage of testing new offers, figuring out the right pricing, threatening Claude, designing marketing materials, sending DMs, getting on sales calls, building new products, apologizing to Claude, managing clients, and — yeah — shipping over 50 pieces of content. Every week. 

It is playing Shell Game against yourself.

You know the prize is under there, somewhere, but can you really trust yourself not to sabotage it? 

It is constant uncertainty.

I sometimes hate it.

But man, do I love it.

I was walking through the Grand Rapids airport at 4:31 AM today when I stumbled across The Holy Grail. 

A 304-page book about "unleashing the power of LinkedIn." 

My favorite part is the "praise" from the Definitely-Read-This-Whole-Thing beta readers on the back cover:

"This book empowers you to create opportunities, build trust, and grow your business in tactical, practical, and methodical ways."

"Finally, a book that solves the real problem every salesperson faces."

And my favorite:

"This isn't just another LinkedIn book."

Phew.  I just finished  "Wuthering Hooks," "Love in the Time of Connection Requests," and "The Sales Navigator," and I simply cannot handle another epilogue about the most effective DM campaigns.

I see the irony here. I know I teach this stuff for a living.

But I can't stop picturing somebody waiting to board their red-eye to Topeka, taking diligent notes on "How to give genuine compliments via inMail."

It may be the funniest thing I have ever seen. I am buying 10 copies.

Almost no one knows this, but you can sort your LinkedIn posts to find ideal clients to reach out to.

Step 1. Go to your post.

Step 2: Click "View Analytics"

Step 3: Scroll to "Social Engagement"

Step 4: Sort by Reactions or Comments

Step 5: Sort by Industry or Job Title (or both)

Step 6: See all ICPs who engaged with your post.

Step 7: Send them a DM and start a conversation.

Happy hunting.

I downloaded one of those lead magnets that promises to "replace your $3,000/month LinkedIn ghostwriter" last week. 

The "ghostwriter" was a 192-word Claude prompt built on such gems as:

"Short paragraphs."
"End with a clear takeaway"

And my favorite:

"Hook must stop the scroll in the first 2 lines."

If your ghostwriter's strategy is, "Write short paragraphs, give readers a takeaway, and write good hooks lol" — you deserve to lose the $3,000 you're paying them and I do not feel bad for you.

My Hook Generator Skill alone is 7,100 characters.

Just an example of one facet of it: 

While that lead magnet prompts an LLM for "attention-grabbing hooks," my system runs a mandatory Source Verification Gate. It categorizes every single syllable into three buckets:

[SOURCE]: Real data, real client stories, and real Roth conversion trauma.

[CONCEPTUAL]:  Metaphors and hot takes based on established patterns.

[FABRICATED]: Anything the AI tried to "hallucinate" to make the hook sound sexier.

If a hook contains a single [FABRICATED] element, my system triggers an Automatic Rejection that forces the AI to start over until the hook is grounded in reality.

If your hook prompt is: 

"Hook must stop the scroll in the first 2 lines."

You're going to end up lying to people with hallucinated hooks quite often. And even the hooks that are true are going to make you blend into the crowd because you are literally prompting them to match generic LinkedIn hooks. 

That Hook Skill is the 3rd step in a 9-step Claude Skill workflow I've been tweaking and improving every day since Skills dropped in October 2025. 

It's built on real results from big data sets of content written for real financial advisors.

So, yeah.

You get what you pay for.

And if you don't pay anything — in money, time, or skill development — you're going to end up with nothing.

And btw: I charge quite a bit more than $3,000/month.

My AI tool will hurt your feelings. 

"This is generic advisor slop," it often points out. 

Here are 7 notes from our beta testers who have been using InfluenceLab.io for a couple of months now:

1. "It gives brutal feedback sometimes, which is what you need to hear, not what you want to hear."

2. "I love the harshness. I'm a former athlete — I need to be yelled at sometimes."

3. "I also enjoy the shots it takes at my writing."

4. "My favorite thing about the tool is the blunt feedback" 

5. "It can be a bit harsh at times."

6. "Sometimes it makes me feel like a really bad writer."

7. "Your tool has given me major insecurities but has totally helped my writing become so much better."

This wasn't intentional. It's not like we were like, "Take on the personality of literary Gordon Ramsay."

It was just trained directly on tens of thousands of words of writing feedback I've given clients, and I am... not one to beat around the bush. 

InfluenceLab is already yelling at 42 users.

See how harsh it can be with a 7-day free trial here:

influencelab.io

--

(Some user feedback in the screenshot below.)

If you're a financial advisor who wants to get more reach on LinkedIn, the algorithm is showing you this post for a reason.

And I built something that will do that for you. 

In February 2025, I started editing posts for financial advisor clients. I charged $900/mo to edit 3 posts a week.

After I edited each post, I would leave 200-400 words of feedback on why I made the edits I did.

• Here's why we changed the hook
• Here's how we rewrote the body
• Here's where we added specificity
• Here's how we write a better CTA 
• Here's how we made this good 

I did this a lot. Hundreds of posts.

Then, one day, I got on a call with Ben A. Wise.

And Ben — who has been ghostwriting longer than I've been on LinkedIn — said:

"You should turn that feedback into an AI coaching tool."

"I don't know how to do that," I said. 

"I do," he said.

So he did.

And now, it exists.

An AI coaching tool specifically designed for financial advisors who want to get more reach and sign more clients on LinkedIn.

How it works:

• Paste your draft
• Get detailed coaching in seconds
• How to fix your hook
• How to fix your story
• How to fix your CTA

And a clear pass/fail so you know when it's ready to publish.

This works. Idk what else to tell you. It works.

Here's what our beta testers said:

Chris Brindle: "My business has genuinely grown on LinkedIn and that's at least partially due to my posts getting better with this tool."

Luke McElhenie, CFP®: "The workflow from taking the coaching feedback and putting it back into Claude has been awesome. Posts have been crushing it — 261,335 impressions in past 14 days."

Evan Wohl, CFP®, CLU®, ChFC®, RICP®: "It understands the overall message I'm trying to get across and drops the unnecessary parts or common LinkedIn AI 'fortune cookie' BS."

Anthony Degli Obizzi Jr.:  "My impressions have been through the roof on weekend posts with the tool."

Elijah Duduit, CFP®, CRPS®: "It's as if there's an actual human on the other side completely uninterested in flattering me with fruitcake feedback and is instead completely interested in fixing the mess I give to him."

Justin Pandy: "I love that it doesn't just say, this hook sucks, it goes into why it sucks, then offers ways to improve it."

Ryan Furlong, CFP®: "It's particularly helpful in cases where I feel like "something is off here" with the initial draft but I can't pinpoint it with the amateur eye. The tool lays all that out perfectly... Impressions have been through the roof at least by my standard this week. (154,421)"

Start getting more reach with a 7-day free trial here:

influencelab.io

P.S. My favorite testimonial:

Adrienne G.: "Your tool has given me major insecurities but has totally helped my writing become so much better." 

Adrienne is saying this because the tool can be quite mean. I don't believe in beating around the bush with my coaching, and it's built on my feedback.

So yes, this tool is mean and it will make you feel bad.

That'll be $49!

I'm giving away the 12-page report behind $53MM in qualified AUM pipeline — built by two financial advisors posting on LinkedIn for 12 months.

I broke down the data behind 460 posts that have helped my clients:

• Book 77 meetings across 25 states
• Attract 80%+ of those meetings as inbound leads
• Hire 5 people — including 3 CFPs — for $252 in ad spend

If you're a financial advisor who's posting on LinkedIn and wondering why it's not converting...

Read this report to learn everything that actually moved the needle:

• The exact character range where impressions peak — and where they fall off a cliff

• Which photo format outperform edevery other format by 1.6x 

• The hook type that averaged 10,884 median impressions — more than double everything else

• The two-track system that separates audience-building posts from meeting-booking posts

• The "character count curve" — a full breakdown of 460 posts plotted against reach

• Real LinkedIn analytics from two CFPs who started from ground zero

The report is backed by 460 tracked posts across two accounts, 10.2MM combined impressions, and 77 booked meetings that turned into $53MM+ in AUM and $150K+ in planning fee pipeline.

Want it?

Comment "REPORT" and I'll send you the full thing free (must be connected). 

--

P.S. This is for financial advisors only. Please do not ask for this if you are not a financial advisor.

I mean, you can ask. I'll take the engagement. But I'm not going to send it to you.

Yesterday, a financial services president signed up for my LinkedIn post editing tool at 12:25 PM. At 4:33 PM, he bought another subscription for his team. 

At 6:38 PM, he (Daniel Keever) sent me a DM:

"Hey Adam, a client of mine sent me your InfluenceLab as a research question. I told them I’ll check it out. Ended up signing up for myself and one of our team members. Surprisingly useful feedback. Appreciate appreciate the tool."

He was one (two) of 13 new subscribers yesterday, which brings us to 26 people using InfluenceLab.io. (Beta testers, plus a stealth rollout in the DMs the week leading up to yesterday's launch.)

Here's how advisors who are getting the best results are using it:

• Write your first draft.
• Pop it into the tool.
• READ the feedback
• Copy the feedback 
• Paste the feedback into Claude
• (Or ChatGPT, but you should be using Claude) 
• Have Claude punch up your draft based on the feedback
• Make your manual edits
• See your impressions jump

You can try it with zero risk for 7 days.

Worst-case scenario, you get a ton of free coaching about how to write effective LinkedIn posts.

Claim your free trial here:

influencelab.io

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P.S. The screenshot below is from another user, not Daniel.

When I work with a client who uses semicolons.

taplio

The Battle

Anthony Carlton

Adam Knorr

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreAnthony Carlton's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAdam Knorr's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Anthony Carlton

Adam Knorr

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Anthony Carlton's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAdam Knorr's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreAnthony Carlton's LinkedIn Performance