Why Attention Is the New Currency (And How to Use It)

Hey guys, welcome back to the Another Excuse podcast. I'm your host, Byron Greeley, and today's guest is Matthew Wheeler-Barrett, the founder of Unify, a personal branding agency. Before we dive in, I feel like I have to make this ask. I've never asked it before, but I feel like it's time. If you're listening to this episode on one of the podcast platforms, if you could rate the podcast, or I think it's on Apple, you can leave a review. That would be amazing. And if you're watching on YouTube, if you could like, comment, and subscribe, that'll be awesome too. I really appreciate it. Now, back to today's episode. Matthew Wheeler-Barrett's the founder of Unify, as I said, a personal branding agency. And we go into what personal branding is, how it all works, why it's important to pay attention to your personal brand. And we also discuss Matt's journey, uh, failed business idea that he started when he was 23. And we chat about leadership and how he intends to grow and manage his business, Unify. I learned a lot from this one. It was a really cool conversation. I think you'll enjoy it. Enjoy the show. Hey Matt, thanks for joining me today. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. So to dive right in, could you tell me a bit about Unify and what you guys do?

Sure. So Unify was co-founded with my business partner, Matt. I'm just going to have to get used to the lots of Matts in the conversation. But, uh, yeah, I founded Unify. We're a B2B personal branding agency. And on my side, I used to work in the UK in the agency space. And on Matt's side, he was the ex-creative director of a big e-com firm in South Africa. So yeah, we team together where we offer an agency solution for running people's digital voice essentially, and allowing them to just tap into their network and create more sales and strategic opportunities for themselves and their company.

Awesome. And what gave you guys the idea to start Unify?

I think, um, some of the best businesses that are created essentially are from solving just day-to-day problems and usually with your family or friends and When I was working in the UK, LinkedIn's a lot more frequently used there. And I always thought, you know, when I move back to South Africa and work remote, there may be the opportunity to either change jobs or I may lose my job, but I need a digital presence in order to have more discussions and negotiations just to bounce back if I ever did lose my job or needed to find new employment. And Matt used to help me with my posts. I was earning a UK salary. In South Africa. So I was fortunate enough to have a bit of disposable income to reinvest in my interests. And one of them was personal branding on LinkedIn. So I think from those initial interactions, it just really got Matt and I ticking into LinkedIn for us to eventually just win our first clients. And it's just, yeah, the rest has been history really.

Awesome. And so you're based in South Africa, but obviously have clients all over the world. Would you say that that is quite beneficial to your business, um, at the moment?

Yeah, I'd say for client side, I think for them on the cost side of things already, it's beneficial with the exchange rate. As we know, I think anyone traveling over to Europe with the, with the ZAR or the Rand, you're going to struggle. But when you are able to offer quite a high level service and also competing with the same level of quality overseas, it's a very interesting opportunity for clients. And I think, yeah, with where we are in the digital space, with all the tools, like the tool we're using right now to do this call and all these other design tools, et cetera, like just using Canva alone, most things can be created remotely. So I think our clients do like that they're in a space that doesn't really require much in-face meetings, let's say. But at the same time, we are now looking to do a bit of a European trip where we're going to go and now visit our clients, create some content with them. Still do think it's highly important to grow those relationships on the ground. But I appreciate when you're starting out, you may not have that, those extra funds essentially to do that. So that's our next aim. We just plan to keep reinvesting our profits into our agency and growing stronger relationships with our clients.

Right. And you mentioned in person there. So is your team in person or are you guys fully remote? Is it, are you guys all based in South Africa? How does that work?

Yeah, so we're all based in South Africa right now, all of us in Cape Town. We work more on a hybrid model. So when there is a need for us all to run through processes or to tackle any ideas, we'll usually just book a boardroom somewhere around Cape Town and meet up. And then some of our team members either work from home or we just pay for them to have a hot desk at a co-workspace.

Cool. Uh, would you say those meetings, those in-person meetings are quite beneficial to like the the growth of the business and like how you guys brainstorm ideas?

Yeah, definitely. I think, um, and I've learned this from working for other people and seeing maybe what they did right and potentially what they did wrong. And I feel like for me, it's really important also for Matt, for everyone's ideas and voices to be heard. And for us to always consider if we can implement XYZ to help, help the team. Because at the end of the day, as much as you want good clients coming on board, you also want to make sure that the clients we're working with You know, we get to learn from them. The team enjoys working with them. So we try essentially remove as much friction or frustration as possible. We even will review our clients just based on like a score sheet, just to see where the team stands of how they feel towards the client. So we can either change a process internally or externally with the client. So yeah, it's really important. I think we meet at least once a week. Um, and we do have a strategic agenda. So it is like intense 2 and a half hours, but then that's all you need, right? And then everyone else can go and work. Where they feel their most optimal or creative or productive.

Sweet. And you touched on it a bit at the beginning of our conversation, but why do you think it's a good idea to have a personal brand or some sort of online presence?

I think, um, I always just like to use the example of AI because let's say it's the technology advancements that we can all relate to a lot right now. It's, it's growing incredibly fast within the last 2 years. Um, and the more and more noise that there's online, the more and more I feel there'll be a need for a credible human connection. And it's also just an easy way to stand out. Now, that's a top-level answer, but if you look at it in more detail, everyone is competing for certain product market share or certain service offerings and competing for the same clients. But your best chance of being different to the competition is by simply tapping into your unique experiences, your energy, everything that makes you different to the competition. And that's probably the most unfair competitive advantage you can push towards your competitors is simply by being you. Yes, people want to work with people that take their jobs professionally, seriously. But at the same time, if I can work with someone I can relate to on a human level and also have a bit of banter with or relate to them over a hobby like mountain biking, for example, I cycle with lots of my clients. It just makes the whole process a whole lot more fun and enjoyable for everyone. That almost work becomes play essentially. So now I don't wake up ever feeling like, oh, I have to go work now. I absolutely love like getting our clients pumped, building relationships and like trying to do what we did for ourselves on LinkedIn for our clients.

Yeah. Awesome. And you mentioned it a bit there, but how important is, has it been for you to have built your own personal brand and like what kind of opportunities and lead gen have come from that?

So I definitely would say, because we are selling it as a service, I would never want someone doing my personal brand that isn't practicing what they preach. Um, you know, like if I'm posting, asking a client to post a selfie in front of one of their billboards or something, and they're asking me why, I can go, well, look, my post isn't the exact same, but I did something similar based on my industry. And I got lots of engagement. It was really personal. But if I'm not doing that, How can I expect my clients to do that? So my job in essence also indirectly is pushing my brand to also help me instill confidence into our clients to also try different things, to put themselves more out there. At the end of the day, the more vulnerable you can become on these platforms, the more people actually connect with you on a deeper emotional level. In turn, if someone was connecting with me like that, I would trust them a lot more to give them my money. Or to give them the responsibility to run my online presence for me. I think we're in a very interesting space where there's lots of people that can do ghostwriting or whatever, and it's, there's minimal barriers to entry for someone just suddenly, you know, gonna quickly grow my brand to 5,000. I'm going to sell like a $500 offer where I ghostwrite for a client per month. It's very easy to get into it, but I feel like the best agencies in the personal branding space will eventually be the ones that can ask the best questions to their clients, get the most out of them and create an environment of them feeling more relaxed and open to being a bit more vulnerable because the better chunks of information you get out of your clients, essentially the better you can make them look and make them more relatable to their audience.

And would you say that's the key to good content is like the relatability and like vulnerability and sharing genuine stories?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, everyone, you can decide what level you want to do it at based on like how comfortable you are, but The way we like to see it also is LinkedIn. Yes, it's important to close deals and have potential opportunities online. Like with the previous question you asked, what opportunities came off my brand? And with, with our first 15 or so clients, they all were purely inbound leads. So they either booked in a call on my profile or send me a DM, just purely resonating off my content. Um, so that taught me that side of LinkedIn too. But we also say to our clients, it should be seen rather as a tool that supports your efforts on the ground. So if I'm trying to pitch a fintech company and I'm going into their office and chatting to them, within that week, I'll look to strategically try see if there's a content idea around someone else in the fintech space, leveraging their personal brand to create more opportunities for themselves, because then I'm able to show them content that's more relatable to their situation. So yeah, I think that's, hopefully that answers the question.

Yeah, it does. And what's your view on like hacks or trends? Um, because I've noticed like there's one trend in particular that comes to mind at the moment where it's, you know, sharing a resource and then, you know, comment a certain word, um, send a connection request and I'll send you the resource, but it gets people a lot of followers., and that trend seems to vanish for like 5, 6 months. It seems to be cyclical and then it appears again. And at the moment it's happening again. And would you say those things are beneficial or is it just sort of like hack, not really a substantial, it's good way of like growing your brand?

So I think, uh, you can, on a smaller example, you could always use, like, if you don't have anything worthy to say on LinkedIn, I would, or any social media platform, I would never post for the sake of posting, but with lead magnets too, when you're offering these free resources, if they are actually a higher level of quality, like I'm all for them because you can build credibility. And in theory, the methodology behind it is you want to show someone enough to build your credibility and your know-how to be like, this is why I need to pay this person to do X, but you don't want to give them enough information. To want them coming back for more essentially, so they can actually then pay for your service. So that's like, I guess the whole overarching methodology behind these lead magnet posts. But I mean, I've only done one and it wasn't really one strategically positioned for sales or anything, but I have, I am coach on a private cohort for a creator, another Matt in Australia. And he does lead magnets with his clients where their lead magnets absolutely popped off, like This one guy grew his following from 700 to 14,000 in 10 days and got 9 clients from one lead magnet. So I think with LinkedIn and with anything in social media too, with trends, you kind of have to be one of the first adopters and execute it well to really get like the ROI off it. Or they still will work, but eventually now people, I've heard also, like they get annoyed with these lead magnet posts now. So with, with, with. With our content and what I tell our clients is that it's not about how many people see your post, it's who sees your post. And at the end of the day, there's two sides of LinkedIn. There's inbound and outbound. Now, if you are churning out really good stories, relatable stories, it doesn't matter if you get 200 likes because vanity metrics don't equal money, right? But if you're having conversations with people in the DMs and then they go check your profile and it's optimized selling yourself and your posts are going a bit deeper. That in my eyes is what it should be used for. It builds added trust to help your on-the-ground efforts and your online negotiations or chats in the, in the DMs.

Yeah, that makes sense. Um, what's your view on AI at the moment? Would you like, obviously it helps with workflow and stuff, but do you see it becoming sort of competition to what you do in a way? Like, is it making easier for everyone to sort of create their own content or do you, do you think? The ideas are the main point of it.

I think, um, with like anything in life, if you are able to really use and optimize a tool to its full potential, like it can really do lots for you. And I guess if you have the right mindset around it, like you've asked this question now, I mean, with my content, I send myself voice notes. So when I have an idea of literally if I'm mountain biking, I can barely breathe, I'll still send myself an idea or like when I'm chatting to friends and I'll make notes on ChatGPT. But I never rely on AI to like generate my initial thinking or ideas because that comes from my experiences and that's what makes me unique and different. And that's what makes my content different. We use AI more in the agency just to optimize and refine thinking. Um, for example, you could upload a batch of posts from one of our clients' best performing, let's say 10 posts. We can add the document that's got their tonality, their strategic objectives on a content level. And then we might just use that to see if we can potentially gain some more content ideas out of it. But we won't purely just rely on AI to do all the work for us. We, we got a nice group of copywriters as well that write for the love of writing. And we rather focus more on making sure our discovery calls with our clients are really strong and we get the most out of them as possible. So as I said, like trying really hard to create that environment where they're more comfortable to be saying something a bit bold or vulnerable, anything that allows us to just make them more relatable to their audience.

Great. Yeah. And what would you say is the best way to use AI at the moment? Would you say it's that just refining ideas or are you seeing any interesting use cases popping up?

Yeah, I mean, I've been playing around a lot with ChatGPT lately just to help me refine like my emails and not so much my posts, but just to refine my thinking. I think, um, sometimes you just need like one or two different words in your sentence to really just nail it on its head, you know, like to really, really relate with someone. I mean, we speaking about AI on the topic, we are currently in talks with a company that basically in Europe are an AI production studio house that comes into your company, understands your pain points and builds AI infrastructure and systems to support your business, which I think is awesome. So that's literally like high bespoke tailored AI output and production. And I mean, they, they raised some questions after the pitch and things like that. And then I spent 2 hours, I literally got up at 5 this morning and spent 2 hours refining this email with like AI and whatnot. But most of it always was, I wrote the email out of my head, but it just helps me really just get my message across in a short like space of time. And I guess that's the way you got to see LinkedIn posts too. One of the biggest currencies we should actually be like trying to win is people's attention. Like attention's a new currency. And if you are able to get your same message and thinking over in a shorter amount of space, or let's say character limit, then like you'll get more interest because people won't get bored. They won't, you won't have to constantly try gain and like maintain their attention. So yeah, I think we just use it to the best we can, but we don't rely on it. I think we'd just rather see it as a colleague and a teammate versus the competition.

Yeah. Um, yeah, that's really interesting. You mentioned that European company, um, building like tailored solutions. I've actually been messing around with, you know, AI agents and like coding tools like Replit and Cursor and stuff and going back and forth between ChatGPT and v0 and like building backends or like customer management platforms, like tailored to specific businesses and stuff. And it's really interesting how far you can get without, with like zero previous knowledge on like how to code.

Exactly. Exactly. And a really interesting point that one of these co-founders made on this discovery call was the fact that they were working and building AI before ChatGPT or anything came out. So then you got people that are really good at marketing themselves, but aren't as good at actually building the proper AI tech. Versus them, let's say, that didn't focus as much on their digital presence because they were actually building proper AI products. So I just found that so interesting. And it's like, you know, with their content potential, they're going to have to be really careful of how they manage their credibility. And like, they are the guys when it comes to AI, actually, but there's all this fluff online. So it's like, also the importance of a personal brand. You get those guys that are really building in public, showing their financials, projections, everything. I would rather give that dude my money any day, he or she, versus like someone that is just like, you know, good at marketing themselves, but they're not very good at like showing their methods and strategies.

Yeah, definitely. And I'd like to rewind a bit and ask you about like your first experience or exposure to entrepreneurship. Like what was it that drew you in?

So I had, um, a passion of mine before, let's say, networking and personal branding was I really liked clothes. Um, and my father in the UK always gave me like his old jackets that didn't fit him anymore, but they would always be so cool. I'm like, this is sick. And I'm like, so many other people must have cool items in their closet. So I came up with an idea to start a secondhand company called Rewear, and I did it with two co-founders of an e-commerce site here in South Africa. And I learned a lot through that. We had a full, we built 3 iterations of the site and we were probably, I worked on it for 2 and a half years, but I think I was, I was quite young. I was 23 years old and I honestly just think I was just too immature at the time in a sense of just, just not, not had enough experience. Very hard product we tried to launch as well, where it was a two-sided marketplace. So you're having to worry about supply and demand and like, If someone comes onto the website and like filters their shoe size and color and only 2 options come up, like that person's not going to be inclined to come back to the site anytime soon. So without, like, I think it would have required a lot, a lot of capital to have been raised to really have got it like going. But all in all, I met my business partner through that interaction with those investors because he used to work for them. So it's all these things of. In the longer scheme of things, and if I would tell younger people as well, it's like your network still is like super important. Um, you just never know when that one person will actually just fall into your life and actually you just start working on something together. Like the reason why I asked Matt to help me with my, um, what's it, my personal branding initially is because I knew he was a really good copywriter because he did work for me there. And we also got him as a, um, freelancer when you work for that, when I work for that UK agency. It's like, I, I trusted him just from that. And like, it's all these, even though your business idea didn't work, all it did was aligned you to the business that would work for you, right?

Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. So what would you say, um, was the main sticking point to why Rewear didn't work? Was it because of the like financial implications, or was it also, like you said, the inexperience? What caused you to stop?

Says, yeah, it was a bit of both. Um, I mean, even things like we did high-end photography for each item, and then eventually we learned that people said it looked too good, that they didn't want to buy it because it actually was shot so well. And like, we only put on certain brands, like I was very specific. If, if, if I look at it now, I know there's a secondhand platform called Yago or something now, and they just let people post whatever they want. So it can be low-end dirty clothes and they'll still be on the platform. I think I was trying to be too perfect as well. Like my perfectionism was ruining my progress basically. And I was, I had just the vision of how I wanted to look aesthetically for me. And maybe that's not actually what the market wants. So same goes with personal branding too. It's like you need to put yourself in the shoes of your audience and your ICP because that's the way you relate to them. That's the way you grab their attention. You don't write content and post cool designs that get you excited because that only gets you excited. You need to do what's going to spark action from the other person.

Yeah, definitely. That's so interesting. So at 23, did you put together a team and like developers and stuff like that and like bring everyone together, or how far did you guys get in the process?

So they gave us a developer, we built the websites there, and then I had a few friends I worked with just part-time here and there. Um, yeah, I just think it's just, I'd never worked in that sort of situation before. I only had one full-time job before that. And I think I personally, just based on my experience and my know-how, maybe, maybe went into entrepreneurship a bit too early. Uh, but at the end of the day, I'm here now, so I'm super grateful that I still did this.

Yeah. And do you apply any of like the lessons that you learned then into Unify now? Or have you like changed your approach?

Yeah, I'd say the main thing is I just literally like invest heavily in people. Um, I used to, in Rewear days, I'd do lots of the deliveries myself. And especially, let's say if someone bought like this one girl, she bought a pair of Prada boots off the website and they were a high ticket item. I was like, this is awesome. And then like, I took her for coffee as well. Cause I wanted to like just hear her thoughts of the website. Like, and like if a guy bought a cool pair of sneakers, I'd reach out to him on Instagram or something and talk to him because yeah, the more and more you speak to people, everyone knows something you don't know, or they'll have a different take or different angle. And I'd say that's the thing I've fully bought in. That's how I found investment for Rewear, was simply me and my friend, I was like, we have to have this attitude that we don't know everything. If we get stuck on something, we need to just go ask someone if we can take them for coffee to learn about what they're doing. And we met this guy who owned this e-commerce site. And I just wanted to ask him about payment gateways. After he heard like 20 minutes of like our vision, he's like, do you guys need investment? So he literally, yeah, so it was literally from literally just asking him for advice that turned into opportunities. And I think that's where LinkedIn and personal branding is so important too. It's because it's soft selling. If your profile is really designed and giving off the right signals of who you are, what you do, and what pain points you can solve for me, if you come across me in conversation, but then I go look back at your profile, you're going to get that person to sell themselves to you. Like you don't even actually have to do the selling. That's why I think the personal branding is so important and it will become more important. It's just because it'll help you build a lot more reputation and trust on the ground.

Yeah, I agree. And what has been your experience working for yourself and working for others?

I think, um, the thing I like about working for myself is I'm a very early morning person. So I can get up super early, bash out like 4 hours of work, and I've set up my day. But if you are working for someone else, obviously you need to always be online when they need you. Like, at the end of the day, they pay you to do what they tell you to do. Um, so I do like the opportunity to just be a bit more strategic with my day and work when I know I'm my most optimal. And I get to look after my mental health and things like that too. Like, if I'm really just not focusing, sometimes I'll literally just tell the team, yeah, I'm going to hop on my mountain bike and do a quick hour ride. Um, so it's nice. I think working for yourself is, as long as you're disciplined and driven, I prefer it a lot more than working for someone else.

And does it take, um, like it's, you have to take some sort of like responsibility and not everyone's able to do that. I feel like they like some elements of entrepreneurship, but when it comes a time and they're fully in charge of all of their time, it's quite a tricky thing to get used to.

I think, um, yeah, I agree. I think I've recently experienced, so we, we brought on like an ops manager that's helping just internally improve our internal processes and also help me on a sales level. And between myself and him in the first month and a half, we've already 2x the agency in terms of clients and all of that. So I think once you start getting quite a decent level of attention and you just keep like growing slowly, but surely, I think you just get a lot more confidence in yourself and it's like, it's go time now. It's like, so if we're currently waiting on a certain deal to go through, if it does, we probably will be literally advertising a copywriting job on Monday. So it's, um, this is new territory for me. It's, it feels quite scary because you're responsible for the livelihood of other people as your team grows. You have to make sure they internally are upskilling. Are they meeting their KPIs? Are they learning? Are they growing? Like, yes, it's cool to earn money, but most young people should be focused on, am I, am I learning on the job? Am I learning new skills that I can once, one day apply to my own business or my future career? Um, so I think we just had a point now where I know it's like, this is it. Like, I've probably drank like twice in the last 2 months as well. Like just being super disciplined and you have to, I think. Like you said, some people like taking parts of entrepreneurship. It's always like glorified and they're like, remember there was a time in Cape Town where every second person like had entrepreneur in the Instagram bio. It's like, but you watch, you sold some t-shirts and now you're an entrepreneur. Um, not sure I have a date, but like what I'm saying is everyone just wanted, wanted it. Whereas like entrepreneurship, it's not glamorous whatsoever. It sucks sometimes. It's super lonely. Like I'm. My social life also is absolute like zero right now. And I know I have to keep working right now. And it's, I'm okay with the fact that like you sacrifice one or two seasons to set yourself better up for success in the future. But I think for me, Nashi has just come through some personal things I've gone through in the last few months and like just growing as an individual and really just, I think, knowing what I want out of life. I think when you know you really want something, like it almost becomes enjoyable and easy.

Yeah, that's awesome. And so you mentioned like if you sign this client, that's another big shift in the business and giving you more confidence in what you guys are doing. But I'm curious at the beginning stages, was there a particular moment when you realized, oh shit, like this is working and we actually have a business here?

So I think what was quite nice, we didn't have to do much market research or proof of concept because so many people in the UK were doing it already. Um, and how we actually got into it, 2 years ago, I started speaking to a guy called Julius and he was running a private cohort to upskill people with LinkedIn. And then at the time I was like, you know, it's quite expensive. Like, I think it was like 5,000 rand a month or something, but like we risked it, we did it and it upskilled us so quickly. It was so beneficial. The people in the community started supporting my content. My brand started slowly growing, even though it wasn't the ICP commenting on my stuff. I was still getting a bit more like online attention and yeah, we were fortunate enough that one of my best mates' dads owns a big, um, manufacturing company. They call, they are client now still. So you'd say they're called Acepack Automation. They build end of line automation. And yeah, Matt got me a proposal or sorry, an opportunity to propose our services to his dad. Went really well. Like they're still from this day. They use LinkedIn for hiring new talent and they're really finding it enjoyable with that. That client instantly let me work on it full time. And I did have the, let's say, the experience and a bit of know-how of how to sell in like a service from working at my previous job. So pitch deck slides, all that I had experience. So I think it gave me the tools to execute well enough to win this first client. And yeah, dude, from there, we literally just built momentum from there. Um, to the point now also where we're reinvesting now and there's a, another Matt in Australia, the one I think I spoke of already, where we're paying him now quite a high ticket value per month now to coach me every month on outbound sales on LinkedIn and just to become better at what we do. Um, I think also that's another part I've learned about entrepreneurship is I think you get a few people that either the initial success will completely go to their head and that that will distract and derail them, that they lose focus on actually why they started it. Um, and then there's people that I think are willing to put the short-term gratifications on hold rather than reinvest, reinvest. But you know that if you do that and stick to it, like, your long-term success will be so much more rewarding, I feel. Um, so every opportunity we get, we trying to now just reinvest because That'll in turn, and the growth mindset would be, if we offer better services, if we communicate better and we get better and better, all we're going to do is attract higher ticket value item clients. So like, why not reinvest? Like, what do we actually have like to lose if we've got some cash flow at our disposal? So yeah, it's, it's cool to see where we've come from. And after that Julius guy on the community, I then through Julius got referred to Coach on Matt's cohort in Australia. And I mean, These are the parts where I'm sure people don't see either. I have to do them at 12 AM in the morning till 2:30 AM every Monday. So my Mondays, I do a full day's work and then I try to have a sleep or go to gym just to wake myself up. And then I coach throughout the night, but that then led to us also meeting a female agency owner in my content room. And now she's just about to become a client of ours too. So it's literally just like slow burning, showing up every day. And eventually you meet the right people that are keen to do work with you.

100%. Yeah, I like that. And, um, so we touched on like, well, you mentioned a few times about the hard or difficult sides of entrepreneurship. Um, but I was curious, like a lot of people in my network or people I went to school with love the idea of running their own thing, but they never really get around to starting. And what do you think separates the people or like the dreamers from the starters?

It's literally just, I think, execution, eh, and putting your actions where your words are, basically. Or I like, I think I mentioned in my post that at least one trip in years, like, they just, they want the, want it, they like the idea of it, but I think lots of people do not realize what it actually like takes to, to do it. Um, I'd say it's, it's just they should just purely focus on movement. I like to use the example of, um, networking, let's say you're a bit more introverted, you're a bit shy, you don't have confidence of like speaking to people in a room, fair enough, everyone's different, it's totally fine, but we know how important networking is for growing businesses and communities and things like that, it's almost something you kind of can't avoid, so instead of going to like a big networking event, just go invite one person for coffee every week, build your confidence from there, then maybe, I don't know, invite 5 people to go on a morning coffee and walk. And like network like that, then go to an event. You know what I mean? You don't have to go like straight into it. And I think also another thing, I think certain people are only willing to do things if there's a financial transaction. So I'm not going to work with you because you're not willing to like meet me at my rates or something. And they let the ego get ahead of them. Like the, the way to sell and how it's going with these personal brands is like serving is selling. So. I'm going to give you XYZ free actionable value because I know it's going to show you that there's so much more than meets the eye, let's say, when it comes to LinkedIn personal branding, but I'm giving you enough insights for you to give it a go, for you to essentially enjoy it and actually to benefit from it. Um, we've had countless clients come back to us where I just hopped on a call with them, saw they had opportunities on their LinkedIn, they had potential, gave them free templates and a free discovery call. For them eventually 3 weeks later to come back and be like, my goodness, I see the value here, but I don't have time for it. How much for you guys to do it for me? So it's literally just, I think people let the egos get in the way of themselves too. Sometimes you sometimes have to do things for free and go, you know, above and beyond before you like really can start like getting consistent income in, I feel, for anything you do. And I guess you just got to give up no matter what and you have to focus on your mindset over your emotions. Like, you can't let your emotions control your mindset with entrepreneurship.

100%. Um, and have you had to make any, like, tough decisions so far while running the business?

Luckily not, no.

Okay, that's good.

I think, um, no, like, I mean, even this email we have to go back to with this one potential client, it's like there's small things here and there where we get asked certain questions that I've never had to answer before, but I kind of take it on board positively. I'm quite a competitive person by heart, but I just literally see it as this is an opportunity to like increase my communication skills, negotiation skills. Like I just see it as like room to improve. At the end of the day, if you keep ticking away and showing up, you'll find enough clients to make something out of your business, I do feel. But it just takes that grit and persistence and just, I guess, Sounds cliché, but literally showing up on those days when you are tired and you don't feel like showing up.

Yeah, definitely. And what's been your experience like building out your team?

I'd say the thing we have to worry about the most, I guess, is you've got capacity and content output as our main driver. So that's how clients measure our performance. I think as any, anyone going through it and like when you start out, yes, you miss deadlines, you forget to email a client, like natural. But I think we've got a lot more structured now with proper internal processes, doing daily standup calls, end of day updates on Slack channels, just to ensure everyone's on the same page. Um, I'd say that's probably where the biggest challenge is. It's, it's simply knowing when to hire, hiring well, upskilling well, and ensuring client outputs is at a high level of, um, quality. But I think, yeah, so far, I think since we got Chris, who does operations, in, it's given me more time to work on the business as opposed to in it. So yeah, I think it's just making sure you hear the team's concerns. And we are a little tight-knit team, so it is easy for us all to like, you know, have our say around the table. But I think the challenges will come a lot more when the team scales, because I think, yeah, we aim to reach full team of 5. And our goal is, I'd say, by the end of the year to be about 12 to 15 people. Nice.

And has sort of those capacity calculations evolved and changed with AI? Um, cause I mean, writers can now sort of output more. Um, so previously it was like, you know, take a few hours to write some posts, but now you can get, get it done a lot quicker.

True. So one example is we got different types of clients, so We're testing different things. So I know because our exchange rate here is so cheap, let's say compared to like the pound that we can offer, let's say a third of the price with the same level of quality. So we've even tested instances where we're like the ghostwriter of the ghostwriter. So we will write the client's copy for them. They white label, they send it to their client. So with those sort of ones, they would write their posts kind of for us. And like, we charge just a fee for refining and optimizing the post for LinkedIn. So with things like that, you could write their first batch for them. And then with the second batch, with their ideas and our batch that we really refined, you might as well just upload that to Claude or something with their new batch and say, write me posts that sound like the ones we wrote for them previously. Then we'd probably do that. And then we'd refine those posts and just make sure it's got the personal touch and all of that. But in theory, we did do the normal copywriting job with the first batch. Now we're just using AI to be a bit more smarter. In a way of just creating less work for ourselves. And when we've already done the work, like another example, we sell workshops. Matt and I spent hours and hours and hours building out a workshop 1 and 2, just based on like the, how granular they go. But now we've got a workshop product for a few months. So when a new client wants a workshop, we just tailor a few slides, but most of the work and lifting has been done already. That the only technical overhead is our time spent presenting the workshop.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And would you say Claude is a better tool than ChatGPT in terms of writing or much for much less?

So I use one completely different called EasyGen and it's created by a guy called Ruben, but he created the AI purely where it writes for LinkedIn. So I use that one for my brand, but I've, you can set up filters like what sort of tone you want, you can add documents to it. I think I've just got really good at using that one to prompt it right. But I'm sure with any of them, I've heard Claude's a lot better. We've only used it a few times, but Claude sounds like it's a lot more modular and a lot more smarter. But then again, didn't some AI get launched by Elon Musk, Gonk or something, or I don't know.

Oh yeah, Croc.

Yeah. It's just like constantly new ones. And I'm like, if you never actually just learn to use one really well, you're always just going to be bouncing around and using them on the surface, right? We like, it's like, I guess a project management tool as well. You either, you just run with one till it keeps working. And if it really just breaks, then you just have to, I don't know, maybe use something else, but it's, I try not let all these tools distract us too much. We just try always still stick to relying rather on ideas from our clients and using genuine copywriters to write the copy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

But in instances, always, I think, yeah, it can always just be used for refinement.

And what's your approach to leadership? You mentioned a bit earlier, like you consciously take into consideration, you know, your employees' learning and like improving and growth and like how they're feeling in the business. So like, do you have a certain approach or are you sort of just evolving and trying to do the best job you can?

I think, um, How to put this? As an individual, I'm quite an empathetic person. Like, I'm with my, with my, like, mates. Like, let's say my, yeah, my friends. I pride myself and I try to be as loyal as possible. And like, that's just my morals. Um, I mean, I know in the past as well, everyone goes through, let's say, phases where, let's say, I partied too much. And I reflected on it actually recently, but like, I was not actually impressed with who I was then. But I know who I am now. And like, I've worked for different people. I've been screwed over in business before and all of this. So I just want to be that person I wish I had when I was younger that I could fully rely on and trust. Um, and I think the, the measurement for how your team should be measured is simply, you know, if they're meeting KPIs and if they're meeting their output requirements, like, I don't care if you write your 10 posts on the, on the beach, like, I'm not going to hold you to your performance based on how long you sit in an office block for. Like, it's more purely based on outputs and like how they show up, if anything, if you ask me. Like, if someone has deadlines and they're able to smash them out in half the day and want to take it easy, I'd rather them go for a walk in the forest and clear their heads and look after their mental health because we're in this for the long run, right? I'm not looking to quickly scale this business and like jump ship. Like we want to make this a really longstanding thing with the team and with the clients. I think agencies are always like, some agency owners try flex like, oh, we grew our team to X and like revenue in X amount of time. And then like 6 months later to a year, like you, you hear they've retrenched half the team and lost half their clients because they scaled it too quickly and they didn't actually reinvest in the current people that were there already.

100%. Yeah, I can really— sorry, yeah, go for it.

No, I just said, I think it's just, it's a collection of learnings I've had from the past through multiple experiences with working with multiple people that I've just come to realize how I would want it to be if I was working for me.

Yeah, I can really relate to that. I think a lot of my career is a whole lot of lessons of what not to do. Like you learn from managers and you really, The things that stick in your mind are the things that really frustrated you or annoyed you. Um, and yeah, like going forward, like managing people and stuff, I've tried to make a conscious effort to do the opposite of that because I know how much it irritated me. So I don't want to be that guy, but I can also relate to the not, not drinking and stuff. I haven't drunk for 5 years. And I also look back on my time, uh, not, uh, when I used to drink and also, um, like cringe sometimes.

Yeah, but it's all part of it. As long as you— I think the people that are willing to admit it, and actually when you see people change, like, I love seeing that. Um, but I mean, like, touching base just on what you've just mentioned now with like the team and Lee, it's small things as well. Like, even because I used to be a really anxious person, I'd overthink everything. Like, am I doing a good enough job for my boss? Like, is he like thinking negatively of me when he suddenly just asked me for a call? On Slack or something, I get super nervous. But now, like, when I message someone, I'll be like, are you around quick for a catch-up? But it's to discuss XYZ, don't worry. Then I know I'm taking that initial spike of anxiety out of that person because I literally just want to talk to you about, like, you're not in trouble or anything. Like, I see us all on the equal playing fields anyway. I don't believe in, like, this— I don't like the term boss, actually. Like, it's just like we're a group of people working towards one common goal together. Um, I mean, any leaders that say this person works for me or says I too much, massive leadership red flag if you ask me.

Yeah, I could relate so much. That example you just gave about the out of the blue Slack message is so relatable, I think, to a lot of people. Um, cause yeah, if there's no context attached to it, you, your mind goes to assume the worst possible scenario.

Oh yeah. I'm a great overthinker. I've got so much better at it though. So like, you just have to realize that people are busy. And I learned that more and more when we're selling for the agency that like, you literally like email, email, email, and the person goes completely off the grid, but then you suddenly follow up and then they actually do, and they're just busy. Like people also take things way too personally these days. Like, honestly, it's like, it's just business. Like, it's just business.

And what's the long-term vision for Unify?

So we want to become more of an overall, um, comms agency. So we would like to get more into like digital PR, email marketing, and things like that. Um, yeah, it's, it's eventually allowing our clients to build their own private audience and not rely on rented digital real estate on LinkedIn because technically they don't own it. So initially leveraging their personal brand, growing their own email database, and then allowing them to sell offerings through it. At the end of the day, if you're able to get someone to grow their audience, who knows, we might be helping clients eventually do events, um, anything tied to building relationships, networking, and creating opportunities. So yeah, I mean, we've got an idea, for example, a marketing idea for us where we're going to Pick 50 creators in Cape Town or entrepreneurs, invite them to some venue where we'll have drinks and snacks and all of that. And then like free of charge, the only thing you have to do in exchange is post about the event or do a post about it the next day. But we're going to do a whole 2-hour workshop with these creators and help them all come up with 1 or 2 LinkedIn posts just to get some more people on the platform. But it's Just things like that, just doing more for other people because I believe, yeah, the more you are top of mind and the more people who have good things to say about your business, the more you're just going to start getting referred people that are actually keen to work with you. So just trying to like give back as much as possible from the word go so that we always keep giving back. Um, yeah, got loads of cool ideas. We've got, I got an idea where I'd love to eventually put to, um, kids that are maybe from a bit more unfortunate backgrounds and put them through university in exchange that they document the whole university life on LinkedIn, let's say, and we help them do it. Like, I'm very excited to do cool things like that and give back and help other people. I'd say as long as Unify is helping individuals grow and better themselves and to reach their dreams, I'm happy.

Those are really cool ideas. Those are awesome.

Yeah. Hopefully they'll happen. I trust me, I will try my best to make sure they become a reality.

Sick. And if someone's stuck on the fence about starting a business, what's the one piece of advice that you'd give them?

I'd first just try find, um, like mentors or people that have gone and made it. Um, I mean, I only literally take on board opinions from people that are either going where I want to be or that are already there. Um, I, why I like to use the university example. I'm like, you're getting a year to 3 years of someone regurgitating a textbook to you. Meanwhile, I'd rather just go like learn from a billionaire that's like, I don't know, scaled a car company or something. Like I want to learn what did you do? Like, what was your mindset? Like, how did you find your mentors? It's like, basically I just want to know the tools and tips of how you went about doing it. And I think that's one of my ideas, that if our agency keeps going in the positive direction it's currently going, and I have the resources and time, I'd love to actually start for, especially on a South African level, my own just like private cohort where I help young entrepreneurs, basically give them the tools and tricks on top of personal branding, and also just giving them all my other lessons, but doing it in a community format. So I don't know, they'd pay 3,000 rand a month to be on this cohort and they get access to all the resources. I'll bring other coaches on board that like, I don't know, some successful sales entrepreneur versus some successful, I don't know, someone that scaled a pottery business. Like it doesn't matter, but like bringing people on this platform on a community that actually gone and made it. I would pay for that over a degree any day of the year if I knew how it looked like I'm looking on it now if I was younger.

Yeah. Yeah. But that is so interesting because I feel the same when I look back on my university degree career. It's like, I don't think I learned that many practical lessons from it, but at the same time, um, people hiring see that as like a prerequisite and a necessity. So it's like a difficult situation where I feel like I'd probably be better for it if I didn't go to university, but like, I wouldn't have been able to because my parents' pressure was like, you have to get a degree. And then it's, you know, everyone still has that sort of mindset. I think it is evolving and changing, but, uh, we're caught in like the in-between stage at the moment where people still feel the need to go to university.

Yeah. I mean, I'd rather if, if I had an A student who studied marketing versus someone that has a really powerful LinkedIn brand. That even let's say they're not making tons of money off it, I'd still rather hire that person. Like, cause they, they, they had the confidence without even having a degree or any like, you know, pre-success, but they're still shouting about themselves online. And in business, like people that have confidence and back themselves, if they have just the passion and willingness to learn, like I'd hire that person over anyone any single day of the year. Yeah, everyone deserves a chance, right?

Like, yeah, yeah. I feel like before we end, I have to ask you a question that you mentioned that you're curious about to know from people is, um, how do you find your mentors or how have you found your mentors throughout the years?

Um, I think it was just through like just natural social life, um, with my friends and I'd just be very hungry to always just message someone and take them for coffee. So my attitude's always been someone knows completely something that I don't know. And yeah, I just pushed to meet up with as many people as I can where I eventually found people that were willing to, yeah, we either connected deeper and it was more relatable as friends. We had common interests and yeah, they just stuck around and they backed me and believed in me. So yeah, I think I always was interested in in working with younger people that had already made quite a big success of themselves in their early years. They obviously did one or two things right very quickly because they're young still and successful. Like, I, my attitude was, you know, I want to just know how they did it. That's all. Like, don't want your money unless you just want to know, like, what must I do?

Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's awesome. And before I end every conversation, I ask my guests if they have a question for me.

What are your, well, I guess what's your growth plans in Dubai? Do you plan to, you know, grow out your podcast channel there where you have more people in person or like what's, what's the goal with your podcast channel?

Uh, yeah, so I definitely want to do more in-person ones. I feel like the in-person, uh, podcasts, there's more of like a connection. Um, you can get guests to relax a bit more. I've never done. In-person podcasts on this channel. So, um, I've done a few as a guest, um, but yeah, I think the goal this year is to grow my podcast channel, but be more tactical about it. Um, because when I started, it was more just like start the flywheel, make it as easy as possible to get started, which is why I do the remote ones, um, which is why I have my podcast set up like in my office, just set up all the time so I can just switch on and there's no barrier. Um, so just doing all those things, but now I've got the flywheel going and like 70 episodes in, I think I need to focus more on like the growth strategy side of things.

Yeah, true, true, true. Okay, that's interesting. Well, maybe in a year's time when we've got some Dubai clients, I can come on for a second episode in person in Dubai.

Yeah, yeah, that would be awesome. Well, thanks for joining me today, Matt. I really appreciate it. If people want to find out more about you and Unify, where can they do so?

So yeah, it's easiest to just search for me on LinkedIn, Matthew Wheeler-Barrett, or our website is just unify.agency.

Awesome. Thanks again, man.

Sweet. No worries at all. Appreciate it.

Thanks for listening. I really appreciate you making it all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed the episode. One more quick reminder before you go. I have a weekly newsletter by the same name, Another Excuse, where I cover 4 topics: something that has changed my perception, a tool that could be useful to you, content that is actually worth consuming, and a concept that I try to break down and explain. If this sounds of any interest to you and you need a kick up the ass, then you can subscribe. At the link below. Thanks for joining me again, and I'll see you next week.