The Unlock with Oliver Bruce

Oliver Bruce
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Biweekly

What does it really take to build a business that wins? The Unlock Podcast with Oliver Bruce delivers candid conversations with game-changing business founders and entrepreneurs, revealing the decisions, failures and uncomfortable truths behind their success. As the founder and CEO of PinPoint Media, an investor and speaker, Oliver has spent more than a decade building, scaling and exiting businesses. In each episode, he uncovers the marketing strategies, growth frameworks and scale-up methods that actually move the needle. Expect unfiltered founder interviews, hard-earned lessons and solo episodes where Oliver breaks down real business problems submitted by listeners. Honest conversations and practical insights you can use to grow your business, or build your next venture. Previously known as Success Is In The Mind. Sponsored by Incard — helping entrepreneurs make more money. Sign up for FREE. More Value: Follow on YouTube for deep-dives & video episodes: www.youtube.com/@TheUnlockOliverBruce Need a 1-2-1 with Oliver or want to be on the show, visit: www.oliverbruce.co.uk Read more information on key points in Oliver's newsletter: The Brucey Bonus newsletter  Follow The Unlock & Oliver's socials: LinkedIn | TikTok | YouTube | Instagram | Apple Podcast | Spotify podcast

  1. 6d ago

    How AI Voice Agents Are Replacing Contact Centres: PolyAI CEO Nikola Mrkšić on Customer Service AI, Leaving Apple and the Future of Voice

    AI voice agents are not replacing contact centre jobs. They are answering the calls businesses stopped picking up years ago. In this episode, Oliver Bruce sits down with Nikola Mrkšić, co-founder and CEO of PolyAI, the London-founded company building AI voice agents for customer service. PolyAI answers the phone for FedEx, Metro Bank, NatWest, Caesars and Gordon Ramsay's restaurants, and around 80 percent of its revenue now comes from the US. Nikola joined Apple's Siri team when it acquired his previous startup, then left to build something smaller that actually worked. He explains how an AI voice agent handles a real customer call, why response times under 300 milliseconds matter less than understanding the UK's 63 dialects, and why contact centres with 200 percent annual attrition were never a safe place for people anyway. Most companies, he argues, have spent a decade deflecting customers rather than serving them, and AI is finally reopening the phone line. The conversation also covers what makes an AI business sustainable and profitable, why PolyAI owns its own models rather than renting them, why a B2B company spent millions on a Super Bowl advert, why raising venture capital is harder in the UK than the US, and where voice, gaze and Neuralink take us once the keyboard starts to fade. In this episode, you'll learn: How AI voice agents work in real customer service calls Whether AI is replacing contact centre jobs Why latency and dialect recognition decide if a voice agent feels human What makes an AI company sustainable rather than hype Why PolyAI ran a Super Bowl advert as a B2B business Why raising capital in the UK is harder than in the US How voice, gaze and Neuralink could replace the keyboard Why vibe coding is a phase and the one person company is a distraction Key takeaway: The AI companies that last will be the ones that own their technology, distribute it widely and give people the tools to transform their own businesses. Full episode notes and more episodes at https://www.oliverbruce.co.uk/Sponsored by Incard. Sign up now. All your finances. One platform. For 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Here's your promo code: UNLOCK2026 https://www.incard.com/?fpr=theunlockMore from Oliver: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oliverbrucefounder/ PinPoint Media: https://pinpoint-media.global/ Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-unlock-with-oliver-bruce/id1526266908Connect with Oliver: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverbruceonline/

    How AI Voice Agents Are Replacing Contact Centres: PolyAI CEO Nikola Mrkšić on Customer Service AI, Leaving Apple and the Future of Voice

  2. Aug 31

    How To Roll Out AI In Your Business Without Wasting Money

    Most AI rollouts fail because businesses try to automate everything at once. The fix is to start with one tiny test. Oliver Bruce gives the exact step-by-step playbook for rolling out AI inside a business, testing it without burning budget, and building a system that gets smarter every day. The problem is not the tools. Founders open a blank chat window, type a generic prompt, get a generic answer, waste twenty minutes fixing it, then repeat the same thing tomorrow. AI has zero compounding value without a system around it. Oliver walks through the Tiny Test Framework: find one specific, repeatable, high friction task, map exactly how a human does it today, write a brief with identity, goal and rules, then run AI and human side by side and compare. He then explains the part most businesses skip. When the output fails, you do not fix it manually and move on. You go back to the prompt and add a constraint. That is what turns a tool into a system. The episode closes with a real example from Pinpoint Media, where one twenty-minute recording now produces native content across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube in fifteen minutes instead of three hours. Key topics covered: Why most AI rollouts fail before they start How to find the right friction point to automate first Why you must map the manual process before touching AI What separates a real brief from a wish Running AI and human outputs side by side Building an iteration loop so failures improve the prompt Using Claude Projects to build a compounding knowledge bank Turning a validated test into an SOP anyone can run The difference between using AI as a gimmick and using it as a lever Compressing months of onboarding into days Key takeaway: the goal is not to replace your thinking, it is to scale your execution. Sponsored by Incard. Sign up now. All your finances. One platform. For 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Here's your promo code: UNLOCK2026 https://www.incard.com/?fpr=theunlockMore from Oliver: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oliverbrucefounder/ PinPoint Media: https://pinpoint-media.global/ Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-unlock-with-oliver-bruce/id1526266908Connect with Oliver: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverbruceonline/

    How To Roll Out AI In Your Business Without Wasting Money

  3. Aug 24

    Data For Optimisation. Intuition For Direction. The Decision Framework

    Predictive analytics fails at exactly the moments that matter most, and this episode explains what to use instead. Every predictive model ever built is trained on historical data. It looks backwards to tell you what happens next. That works brilliantly right up until something happens that has never happened before, and then the model has nothing. Oliver walks through the last decade of black swan events that no algorithm saw coming, and the operators who felt them arriving anyway. This is not an argument against data. Oliver runs PinPoint Media, a performance marketing agency that lives in the data every day. It is an argument against the uncritical worshipping of it. He covers the three specific ways data misleads decision makers, the difference between optimisation decisions and direction decisions, and a five-step process for making the calls that models cannot make for you. The framework is simple. Data for optimisation. Intuition for direction. Feedback loops for everything. Key topics covered: Why predictive analysis fails at inflection points The three ways data actively misleads decision makers Survivorship bias and why your data only shows you the survivors The correlation and causation collapse that quietly wrecks strategy Recency bias amplification in volatile markets Why intuition is compressed data, not the absence of data How to tell an optimisation decision from a direction decision The five-step process for making direction decisions How to run a black swan stress test on your next forecast Building a decision journal to calibrate your own judgement Key takeaway: the businesses that win the next decade will not be the ones with the best models, they will be the ones with the best judgement. Sponsored by Incard. Sign up now. All your finances. One platform. For 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Here's your promo code: UNLOCK2026 https://www.incard.com/?fpr=theunlockMore from Oliver: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oliverbrucefounder/ PinPoint Media: https://pinpoint-media.global/ Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-unlock-with-oliver-bruce/id1526266908Connect with Oliver: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverbruceonline/

    Data For Optimisation. Intuition For Direction. The Decision Framework

  4. Jul 22

    Building AI Agents With OpenClaw, Manus and Lovable: The Three Ps Workflow

    Building an AI agent starts with one thing most people skip. Purpose. Get that right and the platform choice becomes obvious. In this episode of The Unlock, Oliver Bruce walks through the workflow he has refined over six months of building agents and platforms on OpenClaw, Manus and Lovable, all anchored in a single Claude project. It starts with the Three Ps Framework. Purpose is what your agent is for. Product is how you package that into something you could explain to a client. Prompt is the detailed brief that drives the build. Skip the purpose and you get hallucinations and code you never asked for. The hub for all of it is a Claude project. You upload your knowledge documents and your prompt, then tell the project to treat that prompt as the heartbeat of the build. From there you use Claude Code as a consultant, running a two way loop between the code and your terminal to keep the agent on track. Oliver breaks down where each platform fits. OpenClaw is the most robust and operational, but it needs a Mac mini that stays on and carries some security exposure. Manus, acquired by Meta in late 2025, is the creative engine that plugs into Instagram, Gmail and Nano Banana, but it burns credits fast. Lovable is the lowest barrier to entry and the quickest to monetise, because it ships a real platform you can charge a SaaS fee for. The thread through all three is the same. Start small. Set tight parameters. Ship slowly and methodically. Key topics covered: The Three Ps Framework for briefing any AI agent Why purpose has to come before platform How to use a Claude project as the hub for every build How to run Claude Code as a two way consultant What OpenClaw is best for and what it costs to run Why Manus is the creative engine and how it burns credits Why Lovable is the fastest platform to monetise How to set parameters that stop agents hallucinating Key takeaway: Get the purpose, product and prompt right and Claude will tell you which platform to build on. Start small and ship slowly. Sponsored by Incard. Sign up now. All your finances. One platform. For 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Here's your promo code: UNLOCK2026 https://www.incard.com/?fpr=theunlockMore from Oliver: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oliverbrucefounder/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheUnlockOliverBruce PinPoint Media: https://pinpoint-media.global/ Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-unlock-with-oliver-bruce/id1526266908Connect with Oliver: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverbruceonline/

    Building AI Agents With OpenClaw, Manus and Lovable: The Three Ps Workflow

  5. Jul 15

    Build a Living Knowledge Bank: Using Claude Projects as Your Business Brain

    Stop starting from zero every morning. Build a Claude project that acts as a living knowledge bank for your business and every piece of copy, strategy and decision gets better the longer you use it. In this episode of The Unlock, Oliver Bruce breaks down why most businesses get zero compounding value from AI, how to build a Claude Projects workspace that acts as a second brain, and the iteration loop that makes that knowledge bank smarter over time. Most businesses use AI like a search engine. Every morning you open a new chat, spend 20 minutes explaining your context, get something usable, then repeat it tomorrow. That is not leverage. That is Groundhog Day. AI outputs sound robotic because the model has no context for what you stand for or what you have tried before. The fix is Claude Projects. A project is a dedicated workspace where you upload your core business documentation and train the model on how your business actually operates. Oliver shares how he did this at Pinpoint Media, uploading brand guidelines, tone of voice docs, case studies, onboarding materials and sales call transcripts, then writing a master prompt that turned the project into a strategic sparring partner rather than a yes machine. The real power is iteration. Every campaign result and strategic breakthrough gets dropped back into the project, so it compounds into a living record of what works. It also lets new senior hires quiz the project on day one and compress months of onboarding into days. Oliver shares the five step playbook. Gather your foundational documents. Create the project and upload them. Write the master prompt. Use it for a week and refine. Then feed it results to get the compounding effect. Key topics covered: Why most businesses get zero compounding value from AI Why starting from a blank chat every day kills your leverage How Claude Projects works as a second brain for your business Which documents to upload and which to leave out How to write a master system prompt that pushes back How a knowledge bank compresses months of onboarding into days The five step playbook for building your business brain The iteration loop that makes the project smarter over time Key takeaway: Stop starting from zero. Build your brain, feed it with data, and never explain who you are again. Sponsored by Incard. Sign up now. All your finances. One platform. For 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Here's your promo code: UNLOCK2026 https://www.incard.com/?fpr=theunlockMore from Oliver: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oliverbrucefounder/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheUnlockOliverBruce PinPoint Media: https://pinpoint-media.global/ Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-unlock-with-oliver-bruce/id1526266908Connect with Oliver: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverbruceonline/

    Build a Living Knowledge Bank: Using Claude Projects as Your Business Brain

  6. Jul 8

    The High Volume Creative Playbook: Opus Clips, Meta and the Death of One Hero Ad

    Stop trying to make one perfect ad. The brands winning on paid social are building a machine that makes 50 or 100 good videos and letting the data decide what scales. In this episode of The Unlock, Oliver Bruce breaks down why the old model of one big hero ad is dying, how AI tools like Opus Clips have changed the economics of creative production, and the exact testing framework for deploying high volume creative on Meta. The old paid social playbook was simple. Build one hero video, put your budget behind it, let it run for months. Try that today and you burn through budget in a week. The algorithm cares about engagement, retention and relevance, not your production cost. Creative lifespan is now measured in days and hours. You do not need one perfect ad. You need 50. Meta and TikTok are content hungry machines. Give them two videos and the audience exhausts fast, then your cost per acquisition skyrockets. That is ad fatigue. Give them 50 or 100 different hooks and the algorithm finds pockets of profitability across your total addressable market. The friction is production. Opus Clips solves it. It turns one long form recording into 15, 20 or 40 short form clips with dynamic captions, speaker framing and virality scoring. Record one 30 minute conversation and you have a month of creative in half an hour. Oliver shares the four step loop. Record dense anchor content. Extract clips with Opus Clips and quality control the hooks. Run a dynamic creative testing matrix on Meta with small budgets. Then double down on the winners and feed the insight back into your next recording. Key topics covered: Why the one hero ad model is dead in paid social What the algorithm actually rewards now Why creative lifespan is measured in days, not months How ad fatigue spikes your cost per acquisition How Opus Clips changes the unit economics of creative The four step loop for deploying high volume creative How to run a dynamic creative testing matrix on Meta Why fast iteration beats big production budgets Key takeaway: The brands dominating paid social are not the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones with the fastest iteration cycles. Sponsored by Incard. Sign up now. All your finances. One platform. For 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Here's your promo code: UNLOCK2026 https://www.incard.com/?fpr=theunlockMore from Oliver: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oliverbrucefounder/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheUnlockOliverBruce PinPoint Media: https://pinpoint-media.global/ Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-unlock-with-oliver-bruce/id1526266908Connect with Oliver: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverbruceonline/

    The High Volume Creative Playbook: Opus Clips, Meta and the Death of One Hero Ad

  7. Jul 1

    How to Turn YouTube Into a Lead Generation Engine for Your Business

    Treat YouTube as your most powerful evergreen sales asset, not an entertainment channel, and it becomes a discovery engine that generates high intent leads on autopilot. In this episode of The Unlock, Oliver Bruce breaks down why YouTube is the most underused channel for B2B and high ticket B2C sales, and how to turn it into a revenue generating asset using a simple four step playbook. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, owned by the largest. A long form video that solves a high value problem gets indexed and searched for years. Someone finds it at the exact moment they need the answer. That is high intent discovery. YouTube Shorts changed the model. Shorts push high retention content to people who have never heard of you. They earn attention. Long form earns trust. Most brands do one or the other and fail. You need both. Shorts for reach and discovery, long form for depth, authority and conversion. Oliver shares the four step playbook. Define the core problem your ideal client searches for. Record a 20 minute anchor video that solves it. Extract the sharpest moments as vertical shorts. Run a distribution loop that links viewers back to the long form video. By the time a viewer books a call, they are pre sold. If you are a CMO, a business owner or a founder selling a high ticket offer, you do not need a million views. You need 500 of the right people. Key topics covered: Why YouTube is the most underused channel for B2B and high ticket sales How YouTube works as a search engine, not just a video platform Why long form video is an evergreen asset that compounds How YouTube Shorts drive discovery to cold audiences Why you need both shorts and long form to convert The four step playbook for generating high intent leads How to define the problems your ideal client actually searches for Why ICP matters more than vanity metrics Key takeaway: YouTube is not for vloggers. It is a scalable, evergreen sales asset that turns your expertise into high intent leads on repeat. Sponsored by Incard. Sign up now. All your finances. One platform. For 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Here's your promo code: UNLOCK2026 https://www.incard.com/?fpr=theunlockMore from Oliver: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oliverbrucefounder/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheUnlockOliverBruce PinPoint Media: https://pinpoint-media.global/ Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-unlock-with-oliver-bruce/id1526266908Connect with Oliver: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverbruceonline/

    How to Turn YouTube Into a Lead Generation Engine for Your Business

  8. Jun 24

    How to Write Content for Humans and AI at the Same Time

    Oliver Bruce breaks down the biggest shift in marketing since the internet: you are no longer writing only for humans. You are also writing for AI agents. Google crawlers, ChatGPT web readers, Perplexity indexing systems and autonomous procurement bots that research vendors before a human is ever involved. The problem is these two audiences want opposite things. Humans buy on emotion. They respond to story, humour, design and a little ambiguity. AI agents have no emotion. They want clarity, structured facts, verifiable claims and consensus across the wider internet. Optimise only for the human and AI cannot understand you. Optimise only for AI and the human feels nothing. Most brands sit in the middle doing neither well. Oliver gives a seven-step framework for serving both from the same page without compromising either. How to audit your pages for dual audience readiness, how to write an AI executive summary that orients the machine without disrupting the human, how to use structured data, headings and formatting that both audiences pick up, and how to build the verified consensus that makes AI trust your claims. This is a concrete action plan you can start executing this week. Key topics covered: Why your content now has two audiences, human and AI What humans need: emotion, story and memory What AI agents need: clarity, structure and verifiable facts Auditing your top pages for dual audience readiness Writing the AI executive summary that orients machines first Implementing organisation, product, FAQ and article schema Structuring headings, bullets and bold text for both readers Building verified consensus so AI trusts your claims Why offsite mentions are the new PR for AI visibility Optimising for entity association with consistent language Running a monthly review cycle to track AI share of voice Key takeaway: The brands that win in 2026 will be bilingual. They will speak the language of human emotion and the language of machine structure from the same page. Sponsored by Incard. Sign up now. All your finances. One platform. For 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Here's your promo code: UNLOCK2026 https://www.incard.com/?fpr=theunlockMore from Oliver: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oliverbrucefounder/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheUnlockOliverBruce PinPoint Media: https://pinpoint-media.global/ Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-unlock-with-oliver-bruce/id1526266908Connect with Oliver: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverbruceonline/

    How to Write Content for Humans and AI at the Same Time
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

What does it really take to build a business that wins? The Unlock Podcast with Oliver Bruce delivers candid conversations with game-changing business founders and entrepreneurs, revealing the decisions, failures and uncomfortable truths behind their success. As the founder and CEO of PinPoint Media, an investor and speaker, Oliver has spent more than a decade building, scaling and exiting businesses. In each episode, he uncovers the marketing strategies, growth frameworks and scale-up methods that actually move the needle. Expect unfiltered founder interviews, hard-earned lessons and solo episodes where Oliver breaks down real business problems submitted by listeners. Honest conversations and practical insights you can use to grow your business, or build your next venture. Previously known as Success Is In The Mind. Sponsored by Incard — helping entrepreneurs make more money. Sign up for FREE. More Value: Follow on YouTube for deep-dives & video episodes: www.youtube.com/@TheUnlockOliverBruce Need a 1-2-1 with Oliver or want to be on the show, visit: www.oliverbruce.co.uk Read more information on key points in Oliver's newsletter: The Brucey Bonus newsletter  Follow The Unlock & Oliver's socials: LinkedIn | TikTok | YouTube | Instagram | Apple Podcast | Spotify podcast

Information

  • Creator
    Oliver Bruce
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    99
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Oliver Bruce & Fuimus Consulting Ltd
  • Show Website
    The Unlock with Oliver Bruce