Brett Willms

Laetro

CEO, Co-Founder

Indeed.com

Developed Indeed.com/Lead and Indeed Work Happiness Score.

VP Marketing, Experience

Google

Director of Marketing, Google Fiber

Bitty, Inc.

Bitty automatically builds mobile websites for small businesses using information and assets  available across the web.

Co Founder

Gusto (formerly ZenPayroll)

Named Gusto.com. Built the Brand. Developed core marketing engine incl. Gusto for Accountants.

CMO, Growth

Leads strategy, brand, customer acquisition and retention programs for Google Ads & suite of small business products.

Director of Small Business Marketing, Americas

Leads strategy, program development and operations of digital performance marketing / new customer acquisition for Google Ads & suite of small business products.

Director of Digital Customer Acquisition, Small Business (O-Force)

Country Marketing Manager, Canada

Let's get creative with AI.

I've been creating things, every minute of every day, ever since my mom turned around in the front seat of the car and said, "Let's play a game". She explained, "Every time you notice something neat in the world, notice what's missing. Notice how things could be even better. Imagine what you would create if you could create anything, and we'll daydream about it together. This is inventing." I fell in love with inventing at that moment, and have never stopped.

Malcolm Gladwell said it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. I've been inventing deliberately, non-stop, for over 40 years. I have thousands of inventions and have brought hundreds to the world: a collaborative online market research platform that's still around today, Canada's first performance advertising network, a machine that makes websites in 10 minutes, Google's (and Gusto's) approach to customer acquisition, and Google Partners – Google's largest money-making marketing program ever, now generating billions annually.

Above all, I love inventing ways to help others flourish. Like the Indeed Happiness Score – a program we created at Indeed to help people be happier at work, and let everyone know where all of us are actually happiest working.

What would make you happiest at work?

For me, it's having the freedom to create. And in today's AI revolution, I see an unprecedented opportunity to give everyone that same freedom.

So, I'm building Laetro AI. The all-creative AI platform transforming how brands produce marketing assets. By orchestrating the latest state-of-the-art creative AI models, we enable marketers to generate their entire suite of marketing materials faster and more efficiently than ever before, while maintaining their unique brand style and tone.

What makes us different is our commitment to both creativity and fairness. We've built an ecosystem where professional creatives are compensated for contributing their unique styles to our AI system, creating a library of authentic, ethically-sourced creative approaches. Brands can either tap into these curated styles or develop their own unique AI style, ensuring their marketing materials remain distinctively theirs.

All with no quality compromises, just pure creative potential realized.

Whether you're a brand looking to revolutionize your creative process or an innovator excited about the future of AI-powered creativity, I'd love to connect. Let's explore how we can make the creative process more efficient, more inspiring, and more human together.

Let's ride!

The new way for brands to get Creative.

Matthew Hunt

Demandii - LinkedIn Demand Generation Agency

Demandii.com helps busy CEOs create all their content for LinkedIn from a monthly 1-hr interview so they can stay top of mind with their warm networks and become micro-celebrities in their niche. 

🚀 HOW WE DO IT:

Step 1: (CaaS - Content as a service)

We meet with the busy CEOs monthly and interview them.   We ONLY need them for 1 hour. 

This interview creates 20 snackable pieces of content:  video posts, text posts, image posts, etc. 

Then, we send that content to the CEO for approval and feedback. This process takes them about 30 minutes to put any final touches on it, so the voice is on point.  

Then, we schedule and post (do all the tedious stuff CEOs should never do) to ensure they are consistent on LinkedIn. 

Step 2: (LI ads)

Should our clients want more eyeballs on their content from their ICPs, we help them sponsor it.

This helps them be SEEN and become micro-celebrities in their niches. 

Step 3: (Leads)

Should our clients want more leads, we help them create a monthly LI event (long-form content) to get more inbound leads and build demand for their products/services. 

🤝 WHOM DO WE WORK WITH:

We work with anyone who sees LinkedIn as a core channel. We work directly with the CEO or founder. 

🌐 LEARN MORE:

Demandii.com

Founder

People love having me speak at their conferences, virtual events, and on their podcasts because I have a no-bullshit approach to helping others avoid the mistakes I've made over the years. 

Here's my journey:

2000-2007: Acting on stages worldwide, I needed to make more money, so I resorted to serving tables and door-to-door merchant account sales.  

2008: My gateway drug for self-improvement was discovered after joining a spammy multi-level marketing company. Read 100 self-improvement books to get my head out of my ass. I never made a dime with MLN. 

2009: I taught myself how to run ads on Google after reading Perry Marshalls's Definitive Guide to Google Adwords. Then, I became the top salesperson at the payment company because of search ads.

2010: Launched a YouTube channel and taught people how to do Local SEO, then had dozens of small businesses asking me to help. So, I launched my first marketing agency. 

2011-2014: I quickly scaled that agency to 7-figures but barely kept any money because I didn't know what a P/L sheet was.

2014: I merged those agencies with two other local marketing agencies because I struggled to run the business and needed help. I learned from my new partners that my biggest mistake was charging too little.

2015 - 2018: Helped scale Canada's fastest SEM and SEO marketing agency, servicing dozens of Fortune 500 companies. However, my journey got cut short due to partner conflicts, which triggered the shotgun clause.  

2019: I launched a cold outbound agency where we spammed people via email and with LinkedIn bots. I didn't love outbound. 

2020-2021: I tested a new service where I helped busy CEOs create all their LinkedIn content in 1-hour. People loved it! So, I killed the outbound agency and turned it into an LI demand gen agency.

2021-Present: Founder of Demandii.com - a LI demand generation agency.

Entrepreneur, Coach, & Speaker 

Automation Wolf

We started off as a spray-and-pray outbound agency where we automated cold email and cold DMs on LinkedIn; however, after a year of this, we discovered we hated it.  So we began testing, to help busy CEOs create all their snackable content for LinkedIn.  It worked!  We love it! Our clients loved it!  So we are now Demandii.com

Powered by Search

🏦 WHAT WE DO:

We helped enterprise companies make digital marketing work through a new method we called ‘The Intent Engine™’. 

🚀 HOW WE DO IT:

Most online marketers get it all wrong.  They are trying to do SEO, PPC, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, etc.. but that is not the problem.  The era of tactics is over. 

The real problem is, none of it works unless you understand what makes your ideal customer’s tick. 

We have created a new way to to do digital marketing that allows our clients to acquire customers at a profit faster. 

When you can acquire a customer faster and better then your competitors you win.  

🤝 WHOM DO WE WORK WITH:

We serve companies who already are heavily invested in digital marketing like SEO, Local SEO, PPC Ads (AdWords, Facebook), etc , but who have never quite found that perfect agency who can make it all work for them. 

📈 WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT: 

• We are performance-based marketing agency.  So when we WIN, you WIN!

• We ONLY have veterans marketers on our team, who love where they work.  Happy team = happy clients.  So you can have peace of mind you have hired the best talent. 

• We have proven systems and processes that have drive over a billion dollars in sales for our clients, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel & only invest in proven campaigns.

• We removed all the bloat and are agile so you can get the results you want faster without any red tape. 

✅ HOW IT WORKS: 

STEP 1 - It's easy! Contact us for a quick introduction call, where we can learn more about your marketing needs. 

STEP 2 - If we are a good fit, we’ll work collaboratively with you & your team to come up with the right strategy.  

STEP 3 - We will make sure everything is set up to run a marketing campaign that will please all levels of your team from marketing managers to the C-suite.

STEP 4 - We launch a successful marketing campaign & you become another one of our amazing case studies. 

🌐GET IN TOUCH:

www.poweredbysearch.com

CMO, VP of Sales & Partner

COO & Partner

Small Business Online Coach

🏦 WHAT WE DO:
We help small business gain visibility in Google search and Google Maps, so they can show up for search queries that drive immediate sales. 

🚀 HOW WE DO IT:
Most SMBs who are struggling are doing so because they haven’t focused on getting their business in front of hungry buyers who are on the search engines like Google looking to hire a company like theirs.  

We help SMBs gain that visibility they deserve quickly and with a great review reputation, so they can scale their businesses and worry more about delivering a great product/service vs worrying about where the next sale will come from. 

🤝 WHO DO WE WORK WITH:
We work with all different types of SMBs: Lawyers, Dentists, Chiropractors, Independent E-commerce Stores, Massage Therapists, Accountants, and much more!  

📈 WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT
• We are leading experts in Local SEO, so you can rank well on Google and Google Maps.
• We are experts with Google AdWords and Facebook Ads so we can immediately drive you more leads in as little as 48 hours. 
• We have created a new way to boost your positive reviews online, so more people will choose you over your competitors. 
• We know how to set up the analytics so you know exactly what is driving your sales and phones calls. 
• We guarantee our services and have no long-term contracts. If you don’t get more leads and sales we’ll refund you your money.

✅ HOW IT WORKS:

STEP 1 - It's easy! Contact us for a quick introduction call, where we can learn more about your marketing needs. 

STEP 2 - If we are a good fit, we’ll work collaboratively with you and your team to come up with the right SEM & SEO strategies.  

STEP 3 - We will make sure everything is set up to run a measurable and successful marketing campaign.

Canada Card Processing (Lead Gen)

This was my gateway drug into marketing.

I built a website to produce leads for my straight commission sales of selling merchant services.

I bought a book called The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords.

Taught myself PPC.
Taught myself SEO.
Taught myself how to build WordPress websites.

Then I got inbound leads for credit card processing.

I got 100s of leads per month.
Then would close them over the phone.

This got me out of door-to-door selling and launched my entrepreneurial journey.

Self Employed (Wantrepreur)

various film & theatre companies

Canadian theatre artist who performed various shows across the globe such as 'The Overcoat' produced by CanStage.

Actor

Amber Restaurant 

I served tables, bartended, and worked the door at a busy high-end nightclub in Yorkville, Toronto. Basically, I served rich and famous people drinks and apps, so I could float my theatre career.

Bartender

Merchant Services Companies 

Sold merchant services door-to-door on straight commission.  I ate what I hunted.

Door to Door Salesperson

I help busy B2B CEOs create all their snackable LinkedIn content from a 1-hour monthly interview. -> Demandii.com

I help busy B2B CEOs create ALL their snackable LinkedIn content from a monthly 1-hr interview each month because their biggest obstacle is time.

Once a CEO gets consistent with publishing daily helpful short-form content, the bi-product is:

- Stay top-of-mind with their warm network.
- Soft touches with their team, prospects, and clients. 
- Forces them to become a more effective communicator.
- Leads to speaking and new media opportunities like being featured on Podcasts and Virtual Summits.

Any time a founder can multiply themselves without taking up all their time is a HUGE WIN!

Personal branding on LinkedIn is an evergreen and compounding strategy that ALL B2B founders need to invest in.

I have battle-tested this process with over 150 CEOs.

It works.

We have the data to prove it.

We have driven over 30 million free impressions for our clients and taught them how to build demand for their services without being slimy or salesy.

See over 100 client testimonials and case studies here: https://www.demandii.com/case-studies

You can see my whole LinkedIn GTM strategy in this 12-minute video at Demandii.com

---

If you are interested in working with me, DM me on LinkedIn 

OR 

book time with me via Demandii.com

Demandii.com helps busy CEOs create all their content for LinkedIn in 1-2 hours per month so they can stay top of mind with their warm networks and become micro-celebrities in their niche. 

🚀 HOW WE DO IT:

We start with three 1-hr workshops to better understand your business and what makes your ICP tick. It's the foundation for creating compelling content.

Then, we meet with the busy CEOs monthly and interview them on a tool like Zoom.   We ONLY need them for 1 hour. 

This interview creates 20 snackable pieces of content:  video posts, text posts, image posts, etc. 

Then, we send that content to the CEO for approval and feedback. This process takes them about 30 minutes to put any final touches on it, so the voice is on point.  

Then, we schedule and post (do all the tedious stuff CEOs should never do) to ensure they are consistent on LinkedIn. 

🤝 WHOM DO WE WORK WITH:

We work with anyone who sees LinkedIn as a core channel. We work directly with the CEO or founder. 

🌐 LEARN MORE:

Demandii.com

We are hiring (again)!  Highlights:
-> $90,000 (CAD dollars)
-> Up to $39,000 in performance-based bonuses available!
-> 5-weeks vacation (from day 1)
-> Tons of autonomy
-> Work from Home (100% virtual)
-> Full-time (Mon-Fri)

This is great for agency AEs or B2B marketing strategy directors/leaders tired of the corporate hamster wheel. 

We are looking for people who are great at:

- Building rapport quickly and getting people to open up
- Confidently be able to run a call in a structured way
- Are comfortable sitting at the executive table
- Can coach a CEO (without being intimidated)
- Understand B2B enterprise sales cycles
- Love fast-paced environments
- Understand executive KPIs

Day-to-day responsibilities:

- You will interview (digitally) busy CEOs
- You'll manage a client book of 10-12 clients
- You'll turn that interview into snackable social media content (videos, text, images)

Your team will include two post-production people who will help with administrative tasks, graphic design, video editing, etc.

Bonus points if you have the following experience:

- worked at an agency before
- social copywriting experience
- have participated in Meme battles
- have demand gen experience with B2B
- understand the INs and OUTs of social networking & social selling
- can go head-to-head with other executives & understand C-Suite objectives
- know how to sell into complicated high-ticket B2B enterprise sales environments

If you have all the above experience, I'll (probably) hire you on the spot.

As long as you are not boring or beige. You must have some personality to fit in with our oddball culture.

Do not apply if:

- if you do not live in Canada
- if you don't love social media
- if you can't manage a calendar
- if you can't work independently
- if you don't even know the different C-Suite titles
- if you don't have any B2B marketing or sales experience
- if you are not competitive with board games (you’re out!)


If this sounds like your dream career, then here is how you apply:

1—Leave an interesting comment on this post (or DM if you are worried about your workplace finding out you are applying for this killer career opportunity).

2—Email Matthew at Matthew@demandii.com with a subject line that stands out.

3—In the email, explain why you are perfect for the job with a 60-second selfie video. The video does not need any fancy editing. If you can't make a 60-second video of yourself, you will not be right for this role.

4—In the email, include a link to your LI profile in that email.

5—Do not attach your resume. We don't read them. If you send it to us, we will ding you a point for not being able to follow instructions.

PS—Applying is a small test of your attention to detail. If you can't do this, trust me, you won't be able to do this job.

I help CEOs create all their snackable LinkedIn content in 1 hr/month -> Demandii.com

I started something new a few weeks ago called Friday Founder Walks (in Toronto).

It's been great to see how strong the founder community is.

I love starting my Fridays by walking with like-minded, excited people who are building cool things.

These individuals care about their communities and strive to make the world a better place.

Entrepreneurship is hard AF!

Getting around other like-minded people helps. 

If you're interested in joining the next one, DM me and I'll send over a calendar invite.

What is the Friday Founder Walks (in Toronto)? 

It’s not a mastermind, not a networking event — just founders (or CEOs) walking and talking. 

No agenda. No slides. Just space to think, swap stories, and connect with others who get it.

This is not meant to be an exercise—just a nice chill way to start your Fridays by connecting with some like-minded people. 

When: Every Friday at 7:30 - 8:30 am (rain or shine) 

- It's on the east side of Toronto (meeting location is Withrow Park)
- The walk is approximately 4 km long and takes about 40 minutes to complete.
- Its meeting location is Withrow Park.
- We end at the Riverdale Perk coffee shop (beside Withrow Park), so you can grab your caffeine fix.

Lots of free parking around the park at that time in the morning.

If you’re a founder (or CEO) in Toronto, DM me and I’ll share more details (and a calendar link invite).

Please feel free to attend whenever you get a chance.

This week, I had the opportunity to speak with some notable individuals, including Noah Barlow, Ravin Shah, Matthew Lewis Gallant, Tarik Ali, and Jamil Bhuya.  

PS - If you were there and met someone awesome, tag them and share your experience.

I say, it's irresponsible for founders and CEOs not to be building their personal brand online today.  These stats prove that.

CEOs can't ignore social media anymore

Don’t reward heroics. Reward systems.

A manager pulled off three client handoffs while covering two vacations last week. I told them the same thing I tell every ops lead:

“You did great. But you shouldn’t have to do that again.”

Heroic effort is not a sustainable business model.

Every time someone saves the day, ask: “How do we make sure this never needs saving again?”

Systems win over heroics every time.

Agree?

How can you reach customers when ninety percent of LinkedIn has turned into AI slop? 

I've helped over 250 CEOs build their brands on LinkedIn and published over 50,000 short-form posts, giving me an unfair advantage in seeing what works and what doesn't.

Here is what cuts through the AI slop:

1) Specificity
Talk about one situation, one moment, one mistake. Generic content is identical to AI content.

2) Scar tissue
If you have never bled for the lesson, do not post it. Buyers smell borrowed wisdom instantly.

3) Perspective
Do not recap consensus. Say what your market is afraid to say. The truth travels faster than templates.

4) Proof
Stories, numbers, internal tensions, tradeoffs. The stuff operators recognize immediately.

5) A point of view
Your take is the differentiator. Not your polished corporate jargon speech.

Wrap this into monthly community and events where you meet real people who are craving real human connections, and it's a recipe for growth!

I wasn’t supposed to make it.
I grew up middle-class poor.
I’ve got dyslexia.

If a teacher asked me to read cold, I’d freeze.
I had low confidence in myself as a kid. Thought I was the dumb kid in the room.
But I didn't give up. I'd study for hours. Some teachers gave pity Cs and Ds just for trying hard.

I wasn’t dumb. I just learned differently. I know that now, but back then, no clue.

In high school, I discovered acting because I auditioned for a show as a joke to my buddies.  I discovered that if I memorized the lines, I was actually pretty good at acting.  It led to 10 years of acting on stages around the world. It taught me how to communicate. How to read a room. How to perform under pressure.  But most of the time, I was broke.

Between plays, I worked every kind of blue-collar job you can imagine. And somehow, I’d always end up in management. Not because I wanted to climb. Because I would fix things (without being told).

But two things would happen at some point: every company would not fix some things that seemed obvious to me to fix, so I’d either quit or they’d fire me because I wouldn’t shut up about fixing them.

Turns out, that’s called entrepreneurship.

Later, I tried my hand at door-to-door sales, and that’s where it clicked that I could make money. I was good at selling. All those years of acting made me unafraid of rejection. If you can sell, you can have an unlimited income. It made me want more.

It led me to the internet. I taught myself how to build websites, SEO, run Google Adwords, etc.  I had 12 side hustles in the fire. I’ve got ADHD too, so focus never came easily.  

By 31, after years of talking about starting a business, I finally did it.

It took my girlfriend getting pregnant (now my wife) to force me to jump in with two feet and to focus on 1 opportunity. I’ve learned to focus now — painfully — over time, after smashing my head into walls for years. 

Since 31, I've built 5 businesses now:

The first one, I merged my agency with two bigger ones.
The second, I exited after a shotgun clause due to partner conflicts (that was fun—not!)
The third flopped completely, lost $40–50K and a year of my life, but I wanted to start something so badly to prove to myself I could build a business without my batshit crazy partners. 
The fourth evolved into the fifth — it is what I’m doing today with founder-led content at Demandii.

And this one’s working.
Finally!!!

Twenty years later, it feels like the training wheels are off.

Still making mistakes, but fewer now.
Still learning, never a dull day in building a bootstrapped business. 

If there’s one lesson I can leave you with, it’s this:

Don’t quit.

It’s not about perfection.
It’s about progression.
If you don't quit, you'll get there eventually.

You know your team's levelling up when they don't need you in the room anymore.  

There's a moment every founder hits.
You join a client call out of habit and realize… they've got it handled.

That happened this past week (for our onboarding workshops).

I hopped into a client onboarding and halfway through thought, "They don't need me anymore."

It is a double-edged sword. Not being needed is an odd feeling, but not being the smartest in the room also feels like freedom, to me. 

I've realized that my mission is to build up people's skills.

I've also accepted that, as I do, new people will need to use my business as training wheels to adopt new skills. This means I've become comfortable with bad things happening ... such as great clients leaving, etc.

It's not instant. I've spent months (even years) teaching frameworks, language, and muscle memory. But when it clicks, I get so excited for my team!

The mistake I see most new founders make is that they jump ship too soon. I used to make that mistake, too.

I would abdicate instead of learning the true art of delegation.

Delegating is empowering others by transferring responsibility with clear instructions and support while maintaining oversight, whereas abdicating is abandoning responsibility without guidance or accountability.

This means you need to coach a lot longer than you want to. It can be slog at times, but you got stress their skills in many situations. 

What have you discovered the best founders/leaders do to train up their teams?

Not a million impressions, so I must suck, right?

I don't care if you only get 10,000 impressions in a year.

What impresses me more is if you post helpful content every day.

The results will come if you put the reps in.

As they say, we overestimate what we can do in a year, but underestimate what you can do in a decade.

No alternative text description for this image

I told my team something most CEOs won’t say out loud. “I don’t want more clients next year. I want better ones.”

When you narrow your ICP, your cost per lead goes up. Your volume goes down.
But your retention skyrockets, simply by focusing in on who your best customers are. 

So then your margins expand.
Your team gets calmer, too. 
If the team is happier, better work gets done.
It creates a flywheel of positive energy in the right direction. 

Keeping or selling the wrong customers can lead so much drag in our businesses. 

Never be afraid to redirect your bottom 5% customers each year.
It's good for them.
It's good for you.
It's good for your team.

Everyone loves “scale.” Few understand the cost of scaling in the wrong direction. I witnessed it too many times, that I avoid it now like the black plague. 

I’d rather grow profit with fewer, better clients than chase revenue with the wrong ones.

What's been your experience?

Most people walk into interviews hoping to impress.
Bad move.

Walk in like a strategist.
Ask this one question upfront:

“Before we start, if this interview went perfectly, what would make it a hell yes for you to hire me on the spot?”

Then stop talking.

They’ll literally tell you how to win the interview.
Every answer you give after that just connects back to what they said.

That one question flips the dynamic.
You stop being the applicant.
You become the strategist.

And that’s how you get hired.

I reviewed a LinkedIn campaign last week where every lead magnet idea sounded brilliant, but it wasn't converting.

“Growth Efficiency Scorecard.”
“Owner Churn Calculator.”
“Early Warning Kit.”

All great words.
Just not their ideal buyers words.

Turns out, the target audience was property managers.
They don’t talk like SaaS founders.
They talk like operators ... people who fix toilets, manage cleaners, deal with real guests.

So we stripped out all the corporate jargon, studied how the industry actually talks, and rebuilt the assets using real estate and hospitality language.

Response rates jumped.

Lesson:
Your lead magnet offer isn’t “wrong.” Your vocabulary is.

Before you write a headline, go read how your customers describe their problems.  Review your sales calls transcripts, review online reviews for your business and competitors. Dissect the words they use.

They’ve already written your copy for you.

Everyone glamorizes the early grind.
Everyone fantasizes about the exit.
But nobody talks about the middle.

The stage where you’re too big to be scrappy and too small to have real leverage.

I told my team this point blank: “This phase is where founders have heart attacks.
This is the stage that breaks people.”

Most founders don’t fail at the beginning of the start-up stage.
They fail in the messy middle.
They fail at the stay-up stage.

The only way through is replacing yourself layer by layer.
Admin.
Delivery.
Marketing.
Sales.
Leadership.

One rung per year if you’re lucky.
It takes way longer than most think.
It's painful, especially if you haven't reached 5M yet, which is required to afford senior leadership roles. 

If you don’t overcome the replacement ladder, the business will collapse beneath you.

But if you do make it, you'll reach the scale-up stage, and that's when it gets exciting again.

Founder-led content doesn't work if you don't read the signals of people engaging with it, and then connect and DM them.

taplio

The Battle

Brett Willms

Matthew Hunt

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreMatthew Hunt's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Brett Willms

Matthew Hunt

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);}Matthew Hunt's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMatthew Hunt's LinkedIn Performance