Good marketing starts with people. So does my story.
Hey, I’m Matt.
I’ve been a copywriter, creative strategist, and marketing leader since 2008. I’ve helped build an award-winning agency, led teams of talented creatives, and worked with some pretty incredible brands.
But I didn’t get into marketing because I loved selling things.
I got into it because I loved connecting with people.
Before marketing, I thought I’d spend my career in ministry. That path took me around the world, introduced me to people from all walks of life, and taught me something I’ve carried into just about everything I’ve done since:
If you want to reach someone, you have to understand them first.
Their circumstances. Their motivations. What makes them tick. What keeps them up at night.
It’s a pretty simple idea. And it’s shaped the way I’ve approached marketing for nearly two decades.
Turns out, understanding people is a pretty useful skill when you’re trying to convince them to buy something.
From writing the copy to building the department.
Some of the work I’m proudest of happened when I stopped being responsible for just my own writing.
At Homestead, an award-winning retention marketing agency, I helped build the copywriting department from a team of one (me) to ten talented writers.
I hired, coached, mentored, and developed the people behind the work. I built creative standards, writing frameworks, training programs, and systems that helped our team consistently deliver for an increasingly impressive portfolio of brands.
When I joined, we were primarily working with six- and seven-figure DTC businesses. By the time I left, we were supporting high-eight- and nine-figure brands.
And the bigger the brands got, the more complicated the work became.
Keeping a brand’s voice consistent across multiple writers, channels, and campaigns. Getting new team members up to speed without starting from scratch. Figuring out how to use AI to help our writers do better work without letting it do their thinking for them.
I spent a lot of time working through those challenges.
It’s where the idea for what would eventually become Real People’s Brand Voice OS first took shape.
And it’s where I learned that great creative work needs more than talented people. It needs clear direction, shared understanding, and systems that make everyone’s job a little easier.
I’m proud of what we built.
But eventually, I realized I wanted to build something of my own.
A few familiar names from along the way.
I’ve had the opportunity to write for, develop creative for, and lead teams supporting some pretty remarkable brands over the years.
Here are a few you might recognize.
fine print, up front: These brands reflect my professional experience in previous roles, including at other agencies. They are not clients of Real People, and they haven’t endorsed us.
I missed the craft.
As the agency grew, so did the distance between our team and the people behind the brands we worked with.
More stakeholders. More approval layers. More meetings about the meetings.
That’s part of working with larger organizations. I get it.
But I missed the days of working directly with founders and small teams. Getting to know their businesses, understanding what made them different, and rolling up my sleeves to help solve whatever problem was in front of us.
I missed the relationships.
And I really missed the craft.
I’d been kicking around the idea of starting my own agency for years. When Homestead was acquired in early 2026, a window eventually opened for me to give it a shot.
So I did.
I started Real People because I wanted to get back to the kind of work I love, with the kind of people I love working with.
Good conversations. Interesting problems. Thoughtful creative work. Relationships that go beyond the next deliverable.
I also wanted to build a business where people weren’t an afterthought. Not the clients, not the customers, and not the talented people doing the work.
And frankly, I wanted to do things my way.
Smaller. More intentional. A little less complicated.
Because after all these years, one of the things that still surprises me about marketing is how determined we are to make it harder than it needs to be.
We chase hacks, obsess over tools, and pile on processes until we’ve nearly forgotten what we’re trying to accomplish.
Understand your audience.
Say something worth hearing.
Give people a reason to care.
There’s plenty of strategy and hard work that goes into doing those things well.
But I think we’d all benefit from remembering why we’re doing them in the first place.
That’s what Real People is about.
More human than marketer.
When I’m not working, there’s a good chance I’m cooking something.
My wife loves hosting people, and I love feeding them. It’s a pretty good arrangement, especially since I happen to be a damn good cook.
I’m also a husband, dad, avid reader, sports fan, and enthusiast of just about anything that gets me outside.
Give me a good spy novel, a new place to explore, or a long dinner with friends, and I’m happy.
I also have an entirely unreasonable fascination with aliens, ancient civilizations, and a good conspiracy theory.
Do I believe everything I read?
Of course not.
Will I spend three hours investigating it anyway?
Absolutely.
Curiosity is a bit of a recurring theme in my life. I like learning new things, meeting interesting people, and figuring out why things work the way they do.
Which probably explains a lot about how I ended up here.
Enough about me. What about you?
I love meeting people, hearing their stories, and learning about what they’re building.
Sometimes that leads to working together. Sometimes it’s just a really good conversation.
Either way, I’m game.
If you’ve got an interesting marketing challenge, an idea you want to bounce around, or you just want to talk shop, grab a spot on my calendar.
No pitch deck. No awkward sales routine. Just a conversation.
— Matt