RAW TALKS! with Matt Wheeler-Barrett & Mr. Raw - The Power of Authentic Storytelling

And we are live and ready once again with Raw Talks. And today is quite exciting for me because I started my morning in Australia with my Perth-based customer, and now I have moved a continent to Africa, to South Africa, to be speaking here with Matthew Wheeler-Barrett. Good day to you, sir.

Yes, good day to you. Thanks for having me. Um, yeah, luckily Australia is as warm as South Africa right now.

Yeah, it's crazy. So, uh, I, I'm, uh, I would like to know, uh, as a first thing, who am I actually speaking to? Of course, we, we've had conversations before, but if you give me a, an intro of who you are, that would, that would help the audience. Who is Matt?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, sure. Based in, in Cape Town, South Africa. I've been living here for most of my life. Uh, in terms of what I do for work, I'm a co-founder of a B2B storytelling agency. We use LinkedIn as one of the main vehicles to help our clients tell their stories. And I'm sure we'll dive into it a lot more now, but yeah, we're big on stories, big on people really showing the, the messy parts of their journey, especially in business, because I feel like With all this AI fluff going on the feed, people need to really know the real people behind these corporate logos. And I always like to say to people, when they can see themselves in your story, they can see how you can help them with it.

Yeah. So, uh, you, you are, you are sitting and competing in, uh, probably, uh, the, the, I would say the worst space one could ever, uh, imagine on LinkedIn. Uh, however, uh, I know you are successful. Uh, so, uh, that's even one in a billion. Uh, And I, no, and I'm saying that because I don't think there's anyone listening to this who, who doesn't get poked by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20, 30 Indians, Pakistanis, or, or, or whatnot, uh, Nigerians, uh, who are, who all have become, uh, specialists on how to retrieve leads on LinkedIn. And, uh, I'm actually having this conversation because it's, it's so hard to, to cut through the noise. Uh, it's hard to find those few people, I would say, out there who are really raw. And I learned, uh, in our last conversation that I'm actually speaking to a real raw person. Um, not least, uh, due to your journey. Uh, you've been around the world as well. And, uh, what happened?

Uh, yeah, so I originally moved to South Africa when I was younger. Um, I was originally from the UK. My mom remarried, and then with my mom and dad here in South Africa, you know, fell in love obviously with the, with the country. Well, I was a child, I had no choice, I had to come. But no, jokes aside, uh, had my schooling here, then moved to Cape Town because I was from more of a smaller town down the coast. And then from just being in Cape Town, it's— you could say it's the, uh, biggest space in South Africa, or arguably Africa for startups where they, where they come from, but more specifically South Africa, a big high volume of startups are founded in, in Cape Town in South Africa. And I just thought that essentially, yeah, by spending time with people that are doing things really cool in this tech space and doing things better than me, I always, uh, wanted to learn from the best in the business, but also learning at a young age to push your ego to one side because you have these people that think they know everything. Meanwhile, every single person knows something we don't know. And that's what my parents always taught me. And I brought that philosophy into my working life. But yeah, essentially went back to the UK for a bit as well during lockdown, had a startup that didn't work as well as expected. Then I landed myself into a full-time agency job in the UK. Unfortunately, with the lockdown and everything, with anxiety, depression, and just not being used to the way of living in the UK, let's say lack of outdoor activities and not having my friends, did go down a bit of a deep, dark drinking hole in the UK. And through that, eventually pulled myself back out, got back to South Africa, did my job in from the UK remotely, but unfortunately, just with the, the way the world was going in the UK with the war and everything. I do appreciate that it would have been more valuable for them to have had me on the ground there. So I lost my job about 3 years ago now, which then pivoted me, or let's say spurred me on and gave me the kick to start my own thing again with my co-founder Matt. And yeah, now we are where we are today. Yes, Matt and Matt. Matt and Matt, and we have about 7 Matts as clients as well. So just makes it easier. So no one forgets everyone's names, you know. One less detail to remember. Hello, Matt.

Well, that's amazing. So, uh, that, that's, uh, interesting. Um, many people don't speak of their falls, uh, in life. You, you said you had a depression, uh, in the UK. What happened?

No, I think it was just from not having too many friends and then going into the lockdown with a limited limited ways to go meet new people and, you know, stuck inside all day. I think naturally anyone would struggle with that situation if you didn't really have many people to lean on. Yes, I had my family, but at the same time, I think when you're a young adult wanting to put yourself out there in the world and you're wanting to create cool things, it feels very isolating and limiting that you can't do anything about it. So it just unfortunately drew me down. A bit of a dark hole, but at the end of the day, it's who it made me today.

You started drinking as well, is that what you're saying?

Well, look, I always go for drinks, but maybe I just started going to the pub more than expected because it was just an easy escape, an easy, you know, way to just delay the problems. But then eventually, yeah, it all came back to South Africa. I got my shit together, let's say, and with that came good things. And I think, you know, You said people are— lots of people are afraid to share their failures. But for me being really transparent with how the UK affected me, how it created, you know, mental issues for me, that allowed us to connect on a much deeper level with one of our first clients. And yeah, they still are our client today, one of our biggest clients too. So they've supported the financial journey, you know, through the hard times. We've always had one of those really solid pillars in our clientele. But I feel that would never have been achieved if you aren't vulnerable with people, if you aren't actually genuinely being the human you are today. And especially on LinkedIn, everyone's trying to polish their posts, make it look perfected. At the end of the day, that's false. And almost feel like perfect is the new imperfect, or, you know, it's not actually real because everyone's just putting this AI facade over it and essentially hiding behind all the success. Meanwhile, I think if you are really raw, and that's why I love the name of this podcast as well, you may upset some people. Some people may think you're weird, XYZ, but as long as your team's happy, your client's happy, and they believe in your vision, and they believe that you have genuine intent behind what you do, I just feel like what could go wrong? Like, when people read my content and they come on a call with me, like, I want them to feel like they really know me and that they know whatever I'm telling you. I'm not hiding my opinions in case I hurt your little, like, feelings or ego. I'll tell you what I think, what's what, and we just deal with it. And rather be authentic and get all cards on the table versus tiptoeing around things and avoiding it and letting up— letting all this negative energy and resentment build up. I feel like Yeah, when you put yourself out there more, and especially with us, we, I mean, we are to a certain, yeah, we're personal branding by trade. You have to put yourself out there. Otherwise, who's going to know about your stories or the amazing things you've done, but you should see your failures as a stepping stone to success, but also a stepping stone towards allowing people to have a much deeper level of trust within you. And I think I'd rather invest in anyone that's failed and then got up and succeeded because it shows they pushed through the hard times. They got knocked down a few times, but no matter what, they didn't give up. Like, that's way more important than, than looking all perfect and not ever making any mistakes or failures in your life.

No, I fully agree. Uh, actually, my, my first American investor I had many, many years ago, uh, we, we were, we were talking back and forth trying to close the deal, and, uh, at some point, uh, we, we met for a beer and, uh, out of the blue, I, I said, and, and then I tried to go bankrupt. And he said, what? I tried to go bankrupt once. And he said, why didn't you tell me about that before? We could have closed this deal 3 months ago. And then we closed the deal. He actually invested in me because I failed.

Yeah, that's super important. I think, uh, obviously when you, if you, if you fail, and let's say, let's say like you said, like almost forced liquidation or some— or bankruptcy, or you push the business as far as you can. With my past startup, it was selling high-end secondhand clothing. And I got a fair amount of people knew what I was working on. I was very vocal about it online, on social media, hustled. I went for like 2 drinks and 2 coffees a day, met people, got their clothes from them in person, try to really use it also as a chance to, one, get the items for the website, but to have a chance to tell the story. And then having to shut that all down and everyone knowing that I was technically deemed a failure, to then go again and put yourself out there, that if you now reach a level of, you know, let's say stable income or stable success, whatever you want to label it, then I think people also do gain a lot more respect from you. That same client that I mentioned, I spoke about the vulnerability. He was, uh, having drinks with me because he's one of my friends as well. And before that, his father, we pitched him, but yeah, unfortunately, sadly, he did pass away. But his sons continued the legacy, my friend. But he reminded me when we were having drinks this weekend saying, Matt, the thing I've always appreciated about you and where you are now is you've gone through so many different things. I've seen you constantly fail or get screwed over, win a bit somewhere, lose a bit more. But like, you're here now. And he fully forever trusts me. It's actually to the point where On his LinkedIn, I can post anything without him even looking at the content. He just lets us run with his account.

Yeah. So because you're good, of course, that's, uh, that's the only reason.

The team is, the team is good. It's not just me, but yeah, we, we're all, we're all putting in our, in our dues to make an overall good effort. Yeah.

So you've been doing this agency for 3 years, you say?

For 2 and a half years, but obviously we did a bit of planning in the background before we pushed it live. Technically, since we announced it to the world, 2 and a half years.

And how big is your team?

We are, it's full-time team of 8 now. And then we have, yeah, on about 25 recurring clients. And then on top of that, I do also a lot of coaching. So I'm sure you know Matt Lakaiev on LinkedIn as well. I run the content room on his cohort and I help out a few other people on, let's say, different tiers of offerings through coaching. I'm a, yeah, I get very passionate about that because like this conversation, you get to tell your story, but you also get to leverage your story to help push the message a lot harder to people so that they relate. And I think if you're able to tell any form of your stories through more of a human relatable level, people pay a lot more attention and you can only do that by posting stuff that isn't entirely perfect.

And not only do they pay you a lot more attention, they pay you more as well.

We won't mention that though, because they might cut my deals.

Yeah, I know. So have you seen some significant differences happening on LinkedIn the past year, apart from the whole AI part? That is, you know, you see an hyphen and then—

I'd say that, I mean, naturally it happens when a few, few people start succeeding off using a certain platform or channel, more people are going to give it a go so they can also try and monetize it. So LinkedIn definitely has become more competitive and I think the algorithm is slowly changing, but it's changing in a way that it's becoming a lot more intuitive in seeing you know, how you position yourself, how you speak about your content. And is it authentic? Are you using certain, let's say, keywords from what you actually are selling? Like, you know, you can't have on your profile that you sell aeroplanes, and then you're talking about speedboats in your content, your content is not going to do well. Maybe you'll get a few likes because there's a nice sunset in a boat. But at the end of the day, it's not speaking entirely about you. I then see obviously the second shift, so many people are rocking up With AI, everyone's looking the same. So the founders that I've seen doing really big things on LinkedIn right now, the ones posting the messy, the raw. I know there's a really cool brand in the UK called Salt, which is, I think, electrolytes. And the co-founders, I think, don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure there are a couple and they're doing amazing things, really putting themselves out there, guerrilla marketing sort of, you know, efforts to get people's attention. I know Joe Juice, I think, didn't want to do a partnership with them initially. So they just, you know, bought the real estate digital space of the billboard above Joe Juice to have their brand with the, you know, in the same proximity as their logo. So, you know, people are willing to be bold, put themselves out there and like, know that in the back of their heads, yes, maybe this could flop, but like, fuck it, who cares? Like, it's going to show people I'm human and I'm willing to try things. And all you're actually doing is trying to do things for the betterment of your, your company and also your team. I think when you start building out a team as well, and you're responsible for people's livelihoods, that gives you an additional why, because if you're not showing up on a daily, how can you expect your team to show up? And secondly, if you're not putting yourself out there, you know, how can you expect your, your, your new deals to come in? How can you expect to have those resources to keep protecting your team? So there's a lot more motivation that comes from that too. But yeah, those are the two patterns on LinkedIn. I think there's more people coming on now. The bar for higher quality of content is going to become higher, but it's also going to become higher in terms of the people that are really able to push their full personal side of things into their content with the raw, with the messy, not just, you know, here are the 7 strategic tips for emails, like Anyone can copy and paste that, but can someone copy and paste the time when you by mistake sent out an email campaign to thousands of the wrong people and your client was pissed off at you, almost fired you, but then maybe you spent 2 hours, sorry, 2 days of sleepless nights working on a new campaign that 3x'd their income and won their trust back. Those sort of stories, no one can replicate them. And also, because you're living in the moment, building in the moment. I tend to post on the day of things that happen throughout the day. Like if I have a conversation with someone that sparked a thought, I'll write about it. You can't just copy and paste and put it on your feed. So that's my unfair competitive advantage. And everyone else's too, is people are learning how to speak through their eyes and that content you can't replace. Soon as someone starts copying you, you'll exactly know they're bloody copying you.

So, so, uh, What is happening on LinkedIn is happening on what happened on Instagram throughout the time. In the beginning, you had a, you had a lot of fakes, if you may, whereas the real personas coming in, the real influencers, have, get, get to have a real saying. So actually, because of all this noise happening, we are actually removing all the noise, which is which is quite funny to think about. I hope LinkedIn will speed up their algorithm to make that happen. So how do you succeed on LinkedIn, would you say?

Well, I first think obviously it depends what industry you're in. And then there's two sides to the coin, I feel, with LinkedIn. And that's your, obviously your financial return on investment. But then you also have non-financial returns. So financial return, obviously simple ones, you know, opt-in calls booked in, you know, have they booked in a demo form? Maybe, you know, some people are really good where they get all the way to the point where they can sell their offer through sell by chat, through the DMs. They don't even need to hop on a call because they understand the pains. They've displayed what results they've achieved for other people so well that people buy. So those obviously are all your financial returns on investment. Non-financial return should be seen more for the long term and you need a long-term growth mindset on LinkedIn. And that could be, for example, you grow your brand now, you've built your audience, you're starting to become a bit more well-known in your space. Now, now you get, you start getting invited onto podcasts, like we're having a call now. Maybe this conversation leads to someone watching your podcast that leads to value for me with someone, let's say, you know, wanting coaching or wanting to use our services. So technically it's non-financial, but those non-financial returns on investment can lead to financial return. Secondly, I'd also say on the non-financial return is we like to tell clients now that you should start seeing your content as— because there's so much AI, who knows what to believe these days, also with Soren, all these real-time videos. They're scary how realistic they are. And from you still tapping into your story and people following it, your content almost becomes a form of a business development tool. And what I mean by that, went to London, invited a few people off a whim at very short notice for drinks, 80% of the people rocked up. That's, that's a business development tool. You know, it's going to allow you to get into bigger boardrooms. It's going to allow people to take you more seriously. Because they can see if you really know your stuff as well, you'll always have really good content to post. But if you just post, posting sporadically and, you know, diving in and out of the platform, then I start to ask, like, do you really know, you know, what you're doing? Or these people that will optimize their profile every 3 weeks, why would I give you my money when you obviously are quite clearly unsure what your offer is and where you stand with your own business? So I'll not give you my money. But if you're ruthlessly consistent, those are also returns of investment that lead to financial return. But yeah, I mean, it's all dependent on different clients, right? Because the quickest way you could get leads and like money for it is like forms of lead magnets. But let's say if our client's selling machinery, you can't give away a free machine. But maybe, you know, if you're in personal branding, I can give away a free 30-minute like consulting call or give away a free video session of what I was speaking about with our client that allowed them to achieve XYZ results. So it's all about when people come on the platform, you need to manage your expectations around your industry and then also how long it takes, I guess, for you to think you need the deal. But LinkedIn only works, it's just like SEO of a website. It only works if you consistently reiterate and keep experimenting with your message and speaking to your ICP. Just like SEO as well. You need to keep using the right keywords, key phrases so that you start ranking organically on Google. Same thing.

Yeah. Or GEO as it's called.

Exactly.

And no, no, it's funny where, where, where all this AI going on, I think we, we within 1 or 2 years, I can already feel it. Uh, they're not gonna be many voices. Outspoken. It's more, it will more be about, I stand by this statement because any email, any post for that matter, could or would most likely be somewhat AI generated. I would even say to the least, if I'm right, I'm usually writing most of my posts. Myself, but it's always good to put it through ChatGPT because sometimes you spell wrongly and it fixes the wrongdoings. So I completely agree with you that it's all about having a raw voice out there, a real voice that people want to listen to. And then I'm thinking, What kind of industries do actually, apart from an agency like yours and having a profile like mine, Mr. Raw, what kind of industries excel using LinkedIn marketing, LinkedIn profiling, influencing?

I think it definitely has to be more so the companies in B2B because with high ticket value items and services, there needs to be a lot more trust and rapport built up before, you know, someone's going to give you a million dollars for some work, for example. So staying top of mind is super key to help nurture those sales conversations. However, with B2C as well, there are opportunities. And for example, let's use that brand Salt I brought up recently. As they grow their products, they eventually will need things like warehousing. They still need to attract talent. There are things you can still get on a B2B level that help you serve the B2C market, right? Like, you know, let's say if you've got now loads of relationships with commercial directors and people in the property and real estate space, you're going to probably find better suited dispatch units or warehouses to like produce your product and find talent of other marketers that can help you on a B2C level. Advertise better. I just feel like on LinkedIn, because it's quite a serious platform, you don't see many bots or anything. You have so much access to decision makers, whether it's B2C or B2B. I mean, there's that other, um, much, much a brand as well in the UK. They're either, I think they're Perfected or Perfected, whichever way you want to say it, but they have great personal brands online on the B2B space too. But I guarantee you it's helped them with more of their, their warehousing, their fulfillment, their supply chain. And then on the B2B side, I'm sure they have— I don't look, so I don't have Instagram, but I'm sure on Instagram and TikTok they're serving the B2C, but there's always an angle on B2B. But I mean, in our agency space, we help other agencies. We help people that are in the edtech space, people in the out-of-home space. And then in the packaging and machinery space, because there needs to be big levels of trust with machinery that you're paying like a million pounds upwards for, like you need to know who's behind those machines, who's the team that's actually building a product that costs so much money, but also is going to speed up the production and manufacturing of my company. So I make more profit for my business. You need, you need trust for that. Um, so I think also with Anyone, it's a great platform just based on how the algorithm works with it favoring personal brands that you can leverage that to build an email database as well. So we all know none of us own any of these platforms. It's all rented digital real estate, but our emails, those are ours to keep forever. We can do as we please with them. If suddenly a platform goes down, who cares? Let's just message our, our fans on our emails. So I think it's, there's always a strategic angle to LinkedIn, especially because it's become a lot more social. I almost believe any business can leverage it. I guess though, I appreciate certain businesses would prefer leveraging, let's say, marketing budget to Instagram, where majority of their money and income that comes back is through B2C purchases, but on a B2B side, You definitely need it. Who's good? Otherwise, who's going to trust you? How are you going to also— how are people going to know about you if you're not putting yourself out there? Yeah, you can do a company page and a sponsored post, but do people really connect with that on LinkedIn? Like, no.

Makes sense.

Every time I see one, I tell LinkedIn that it's annoying. It's annoying. Like, everyone that just— I've seen it too many times. I literally report report, not like reported as anything wrong, but I just let the platform know, stop showing me that, it's annoying. I just want to see the stories behind people. Like, other than that, annoying.

I completely agree with you. Um, and, uh, and it's funny that the more technical we, we, we get, you know, the more tech we get with AI and blah, all these things. Uh, one thing it always comes down to in the end. Is storytelling. Like when we were sitting at the campfire without a TV, without a radio enabling us, we must tell each other stories. And I think it just runs so deep in humanity that that's the one thing that will never disappear. In fact, I think now due to all the AI and so on, Jesus Christ, those horror movies, when you think of what is going on, Good luck, Hollywood. Good luck, Bollywood. Uh, in a very short time, you, you, and goodbye music for that matter. I'm a musician. I'm fucked.

Yeah, but I still think in the world, there'll always be purists. Like I always want to go to a rock concert versus listening to some AI generated shit. Like there's a, and I think with personal branding as well, people always still need to know a few of the key members behind it. Otherwise. Like what? Like, name it, Netflix, Airbnb, everyone knows the story behind those people. There's your proof. Also, all these bigger companies like OpenAI, PayPal paying for CEO content writers. There's your, there's your sign. It's the movement starting now. But unfortunately, some people are still too, I don't know, stuck up to admit that, you know, it might just flop or whatnot. Guarantee it won't, like, The more AI there is, we still need that raw element. And like you said, the storytelling around the fire. When I was on a coaching call this morning, one person that was on the call commented that he found with my stories, what I did well is I spoke to their pain points, told them where they are in the story, but at the same time told them about my service, all in just a nice story that had a nice rhythm to it. Not too salesy, not too pushy, but it made sure it touched all the layers that were needed to convey what we do and how we can help you, but through relatable storytelling. And if people can't relate to you and it's just generic AI fluff, you are wasting your time.

Amen to that. Ladies and gentlemen, Matthew Wheeler-Barrett. What's your company's name, by the way?

Unify. Unify.

I love that. You are all. Thank you very much. Uh, stay on the line and, uh, see you next time.

Thanks, man.