Daily Content & LinkedIn Insights • Founder at I.Am.U Media • Content and LinkedIn Consulting for Founders & CEOs

Before joining The 216, most of our clients were struggling with:

→ No clear offer (or an offer nobody understood)
→ An inconsistent way to generate qualified leads 
→ No process to have sales conversations with confidence

Many felt like impostors when talking about their business.
Others seriously considered going back to their 9-5 jobs.

And in general, they were constantly worried about when they would sign their next client.

After joining The 216, they all walked out with clear frameworks around:

1️⃣ Niching and Positioning: Explaining their business in a way that people instantly “get”.
2️⃣ Offer Creation: Building a premium, outcome-driven offer built around real client pain.
3️⃣ Repeatable Outreach System: Having a simple process anyone can follow to start conversations every week using only LinkedIn.
4️⃣ Natural Sales Process: A sales process that feels natural, easy, and with improving close rates. 

It’s the same system that helped:

📌 Adina Samuels (Manuscript Ghostwriter): From corporate job → $200k solo business
📌 Christian Mather (Wealth & Exit Planner): 4× monthly income to $23k in under 10 weeks
📌 Matthew Mercer (Recruitment Coach): Consistent £10k–£15k months
📌 Allison Paley (CS Consultant): From self-doubt → landed a $36,000 client
📌 Efe Buyuk (Data Systems Designer): Made 6× the program fee in under 12 weeks
📌 Priscilla Leigh (Psychoaudiologist): First high-ticket client in 21 days
📌 Chris Corridore (Brand Strategist): First $15k month and best year ever

These are all real people. You can find their profiles in my Featured Section. 

I invite you to message them and ask what their experience was like. 

And if you're ready, and you want a business that runs with clarity, control, and clients you can count on, send me a DM and I’ll share how The 216 works.

—

Mat Lehnhoff

If you're sending connection requests and getting less than 20% acceptance rate, something's broken. Here's what to check:

1. Your profile picture is doing you dirty.

Make sure you're showing your face. Zoom in. And smile.

It sounds wild, but people will literally judge if you're worth connecting with based on this.


2. You're connecting with the wrong people.

The secret is to be as specific as possible. "Coaches & consultants" doesn't cut it.

Use specific job titles. Use specific locations. Pay for LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Some audiences simply aren't active on LinkedIn. 
But you have to test it.


3. Your headline shows zero value.

The first 10 words of your headline are what matter most.

They need to show how you can help your ideal client.

Or at minimum, create some intrigue.

Don't waste that precious real estate writing something like "Loving father". 

Show what's in it for THEM.


Here's what nobody tells you:

Having less than 20% acceptance rate means you'll be able to send fewer connection requests.

Because it signals to LinkedIn that people don't want to connect with you.

Which means fewer opportunities to grow your network and generate leads.

No bueno.

But it's easily fixed if you pay attention to these 3.


PS: If you consistently have 20-30% acceptance rate, you should be able to send 200 requests/week.

—

Grow to $15,000 months with LinkedIn alone • Learn how at The 216

A client was overthinking their LinkedIn outreach, so I reminded them:

LinkedIn has 1.2 billion users 

And you don't need to reach ALL of them.

Not even close.
You just need to reach a handful.

For example:

You could have 10 clients at $1500/month to create a $180k/year business.

That's it. Ten people.

You can run that solo, keep 95% profit margins, and design the lifestyle you actually want.

So you basically can get ignored by a billion people on this platform and STILL WIN.

You can fail 99% of the time, and STILL WIN.

How cool is that?

Here's the punchline:

Stop worrying about reaching everyone.

Start focusing on finding those "ten" clients who need what you offer.

That's all you need.

(And you can always grow from there).

Matt Barker

I make posting on LinkedIn fast, easy and fun. $3M+ revenue driven. 75M+ impressions. 250k+ followers.

I help you grow on LinkedIn using fast, easy and fun to write posts.

Results:

- 50+ clients helped since January 2022
- 2,500+ customers served
- £70k 4 day course launch (The Digital Copywriter)
- 2 x £100k+ digital products launched
- $3M+ in new client revenue driven
- 75M+ organic social views earned
- 200k+ LinkedIn followers gained
- 10,000+ LinkedIn posts created
- 13,000+ email subscribers driven

If you'd like to work together on growing:

- Your LinkedIn profile
- Your team's LinkedIn profile
- Your brand's LinkedIn profile

And growing in a way that is fast, easy and fun to do?

Just DM me so we can discuss how I can help you do that.

Writer

Join 11,000+ readers who get daily tips on attracting dream clients online with digital copywriting.

In 2 months I'll become a first time dad. I'm excited and scared all at once. I can't wait to teach a brand new human about the world. But I'm scared about this:

Keeping a brand new human alive 😂

I've always wanted to be a dad. 

But weirdly the more I've become a teacher over the last 4 years, teaching people how to write on LinkedIn, the more I've become excited about TEACHING my child.

And the idea of being the first man in her life:

That's a BIG deal that I am not overlooking for one second.

It's already giving me a new purpose and new set of "rules" for me to be following internally. And she isn't even born yet.

Not that I was being a rascal or doing mad shit or being a lousy guy. But it makes me think even more about what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, why I'm doing things in certain ways and how that will impact her perception of, not just me, but men in general.

Business wise, I've made some changes and I've been planning.

I'll be taking a break from working 1-1 with clients from March to June. I'm doing this so I can free up my calendar while I figure this whole first time dad thing out. Super blessed to be in the position to do this.

Extra focus will be going into my scalable products. 

Community, products, group teaching.

I've planned my 2026 in business out and it's looking pretty cool.

Excited to see how I can execute to that and make it even more successful than I plan, AND make all the time in the world to watch my daughter grow every day.

Excited to write to you more about this whole journey too.

✌️

Dads: what's your weirdest dad-ing advice?

Ladies: how do I be the best dad / male role model possible?

Matt Barker 

I teach Fast, Easy & Fun LinkedIn Writing. Taught 3,602 people to write on LinkedIn. Investor @ MagicPost. Click ‘Books, Courses + Trainings’ below to get my free books on LinkedIn Writing.

My life looks boring:

No swanky office. Barely any meetings. Calendar usually empty. Amateur photography for content.

And most of my days look the same:

Coffee time with my wife.
Write some posts.
Audit / feedback my client's posts.
Comment and DM people on linkedin.
Run / gym / walk. 
Eat. Watch TV. Think.

I'm on at 9/10 and done by 6 normally.

But my life is anything but accidental.

I built a business from writing. I turned writing into leverage. I make money without being on calls all day. I help people build reputations that open doors. I wake up without that intense feeling of dread. I stop working when I’m done not just to clock in the hours.

While everyone else is enjoying saying how busy they are.

I'm over here enjoying saying how not busy I am.

Why is my way not the norm??

All my LinkedIn writing books, courses and trainings here: https://lnkd.in/eWRj-pd9

I teach Fast, Easy & Fun LinkedIn Writing. Taught 3,602 people to write on LinkedIn. Click ‘Books, Courses + Trainings’ below to get my free books on LinkedIn Writing.

Today, I've got 188,402 followers on LinkedIn. 

But if I search my name on ChatGPT:

I’m STILL pretty much invisible.

Can ya believe it? I’ve put the effort in:

- 4 years of consistent posting
- Published 2,578 posts
- Gotten 59.5M impressions

And my personal brand is STILL not strong enough to be the first name when someone searches for “linkedin writing experts” or “best copywriters to follow on linkedin” or “who to follow to learn copywriting”.

So, simple question:

How do my competitors appear in AI overviews / searches over me?

I am absolutely clueless with this kinda thing.

But here’s what I’m gonna do:

1. Sign up to the Ahrefs​ AI Brand Radar
2. See where + how my competitors show up over me
3. Create a plan to make my personal brand more visible
4. Quickly gain more visibility in AI search and start winning

It’s ridiculous to be putting in years of effort:

- growing my personal brand
- attracting more followers
- spending hours every week on LinkedIn

Only to be completely invisible to anyone searching.

If you’re growing your personal brand, check out the AI Brand Radar: https://lnkd.in/ePqpedcW

(don’t even need an Ahrefs​ subscription account btw. totally separate which is cool)

Time to become more visible ✌️

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I’ve spoken to 1,000s of LinkedIn users about how much they network on LinkedIn. I was surprised, because:

If you’re using LinkedIn to grow your career or business, networking isn’t a good to do. It’s a must do. ESPECIALLY in your early stages.

The worst bit? 

Most people don’t know how to begin networking.

Here’s the ridiculously simple (and tbh, obvious) 5 step LinkedIn networking process I used to find interesting people to network with (and connect with them):

1. Go to the search bar (it’s free guys)
2. Type “{target audience}” eg “founder”
3. Hit search
4. Filter by “People” (to remove company pages)
5. Filter by “Industry” (to niche down)

By now, you have filtered a search down to 10,000s from 10,000,000s.

After that it’s a case of:

- Scroll down your list
- Click on profiles 
- Check them over quickly
- Send a connection request with this note:

“Hey name,

I do {service} for {type of clients}.

I post every {frequency} at roughly {time}. 

Hope it’s useful for you!

Cheers, Matt”

If they accept - great, on their radar.
If they reject - no bother.

10 of these 5 x a week (do 20 if you can).
That’s 200 a month.
2,400 a year.

Even if 20% connect, that’s 480 new connections.

More than the 0 most people are doing.

Simple networking like this can hold back your network growth, post engagement and follower growth MASSIVELY.

If you’re using LinkedIn to grow your career or business, are you networking here?

P.S. this is the exact process I used to grow my profile here - Matt Barker​ btw.

I teach Fast, Easy & Fun LinkedIn Writing. Taught 3,602 people to write on LinkedIn. Investor @ MagicPost.

4 weeks ago, Jacob and I booked 60 minutes at a recording studio. Neither of us prepared ANYTHING. Ridiculous. But it was brilliant because:

We just...chatted.

You're probably thinking:

"Matt. Why the fuck would you spend time and money to go and chat to someone without preparing anything?"

Well, reader. That's a great question.

And the answer is surprisingly simple:

Because we wanted to.

I know. SHOCK. How dare we do something, that costs us money just because we wanted to?

Today all you'll see online is shit about how everything you do has to have a clear ROI or everything you do has to play into a strategy.

We obviously didn't do this for literally no reason.

Outside of "because we wanted to", a big reason was this:

In 2025 me and jacob started very intentionally sharing insights and nuggets from what we both do in our businesses. What's working, what isn't working. And it helped us both have amazing years in our business. Not just from a revenue POV but from a overall quality of life POV.

We get a lot of enjoyment out of these back and forths.

So we wanted to see if we can translate that to a recorded conversation.

THAT's why we booked 60 minutes at a studio.

Did it work?

Well we ended up going over the 60 minutes by a whole hour.

And we accidentally recorded a 2 hour month by month breakdown of what went well and what went wrong in our businesses in 2025.

(it's here by the way: https://lnkd.in/e9Zwxh99)

We both had such a good time.

And we're doing it again.

My advice for you:

Do stuff you enjoy.

Not because it makes money or anything.

But because you enjoy it and it makes you happy.

Can't be more simple.

✌️

taplio

The Battle

Mat Lehnhoff

Matt Barker

Followers

Posts

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Performance ScoreMat Lehnhoff's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMatt Barker's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Mat Lehnhoff

Matt Barker

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);}Mat Lehnhoff's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMatt Barker's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMat Lehnhoff's LinkedIn Performance