Mike Pierce · 7 August 2026

The System

Everything we decided, in the order you said it should go.

First, the frame

The plan doesn't need
to be perfect.
It needs to be a North Star.

Everything is going to go wrong. Nothing goes the way it's planned, so there's no sense planning too far out front. What you need is a map good enough to make you move.

The only thing that matters right now is talking to people. Everything outside of that is noise.
Before anything else · one hour

Get the result you
already have in writing.

A man who'd been a camp director for seven years. No sales background, no training, selling safety shoes. Sold nothing in February. Eight weeks with you and he cashed a five thousand dollar commission cheque.

That's the whole proof, and right now it lives in your head. You can't send anyone your memory. The first person who asks what happens when someone works with you gets an anecdote instead of a number.

Call him this week, while he still remembers the dates.
What he was before$0
Weeks with you8
First commission cheque$5,000
In writing, in his words1 page
Decision one

One platform. LinkedIn.

Being really good at one is better than doing five, and it isn't close. Five platforms is five different algorithms, five different audiences, five different rhythms — and your energy split five ways accomplishes none of them.

The one you focus on becomes the best one. You already know how to post there and how to message there. That settles it.

You still gotta have something to do in the quantity. That's the next five slides.
Decision two · the bottleneck

Thirty conversations,
before anything else

You can't build the marketing until you've had these. Not because the marketing is hard — because until you know what these people are actually afraid of and what they actually want, every message you write is a guess.

It takes fifteen or twenty hours. And everything after it gets done better because of it.

Do it poorly and everything downstream is poor. There's no way around this one — it's the bottleneck, not a step.
Conversations30
Pain points, in their words10
Dream results, in their words10
Hours it takes15–20
Everything after depends on itall
Decision three · the vehicle

Make them podcast interviews.

Audio only. No video. Nobody's going to your YouTube. Raw and unedited — tell them at the top, we do this off the cuff, I'm not editing it, that alright? Nobody has ever said no.

Zoom recording → pull the audio → upload. That's the whole production.

Record eight before you release one. It gives you sixty days to work out how to release them, with eight people already waiting.
Where the guests come from

Find shows that already
interview your person.

Go and find podcasts that interview the people you want. Their guests have already proven two things — they're your avatar, and they're willing to talk publicly. You're not gambling on a cold name.

Then you just reach out. Ten reach-outs gets you two yeses, at least.

450 episodes. 40% said yes. 20% actually got on the show. That's the rate.
The reach-out
Hey — I saw your episode on [their show]. I really loved it when you were talking about [the specific thing]. That genuinely changed how I think about [X]. Thank you for sharing it.

I have my own show — it's called [name]. I've interviewed some really good people, [names]. I thought it'd be great for my audience to hear from you.

Feel free to say no. I appreciate you either way.

That's the whole pitch. The specific compliment is what makes it work — it proves you actually listened. Do it ten times.

On the call

Three questions,
asked thirty times

You called it a discovery call and you're right — it's the same thing. The only difference is the frame they entered under, which matters at the end.

Write down their words, not what you think they meant. Their sentence is a hook already written. Your summary of it is nothing.
What problem do you have?①
What does that problem feel like?②
What does your world look like when it's solved?③
Then: who else should I talk to?④
After the call — this is where it pays
  1. A specific compliment. I loved it when you said X — I wrote it down, it's going to change how I do Y. Now they feel great.
  2. Ask for feedback. What could I have done better? What did I suck at? They'll tell you how great you were. Nobody has ever said otherwise.
  3. Ask for three referrals. You must know ten people who'd be good for this. Would you be comfortable sharing three names?
  4. Give them a marketing plan. Takes me two weeks to produce. I'll write you a plan for sharing it — you don't have to use it, but we get ten times the listeners when people follow it. Write the posts for them.
  5. They ask who you are. I help people with the exact problem you described earlier. That's the door, and they opened it.
Turning it into a sales call

Ask permission first.

They entered under a research frame. If you flip it, you flip it out loud — otherwise you've done to them exactly what you'd never do to a prospect.

You mentioned [their problem, their words]. If you'd be open to a longer conversation about it, I could get you a strategy for solving it.

And please say no if that's crossing a line.
Go for the no. Giving them the no is what removes the resistance — and most of them won't take it.
Then, and only then — post

Everything you post
comes out of those ten.

Every post is a gap: a pain, or a dream, or the distance between them. If the conversations you're having don't feel guided by those ten things, you've got the wrong ten things.

Practice creates skill. Volume is how you get good, not how you get seen.
Posts per day1–3
Posts per week15
PlatformLinkedIn
Every post containsa gap
The hook

The first sentence is
80% of the result.

Its only job is to get them to read the second sentence. Not the post — the next line. It points at a problem or a dream they have right now, and it opens a question.

If the first sentence feels finished, it's wrong. There has to be something after it they need.

Then the body does one of two things: takes them from the problem to the transformation, or stays on the problem and makes it hurt more.

The part almost nobody does

Every post gets
a hypothesis.

  1. This is the post.
  2. This is why I'm posting it.
  3. This is what I predict will happen.

Then look at what actually happened. That's it — that's the whole loop, and it's the difference between posting for a year and getting good in a month.

Most people never see the patterns because they never look for them.
Now the quantity
$5,000
a month · two clients at $2,500
÷ 1 in 5 closes
8
people on a sales call
÷ 2 of 10 don't show
10
calls booked
÷ 1 in 5 conversations becomes a call
50
conversations
÷ 1 in 5 answers
250
people reached · over 21 days
Which is
12
reach-outs a day

Three hours a day is more than enough room for twelve. You said so yourself.

2 clients — August2 more — September2 more — October2 more — Novemberminimum
The part the number assumes

Two hundred and fifty
is people, not messages.

You said it yourself — the fortune's in the follow-up. And you're right. But the maths on the last slide quietly assumes you touch each person once, and almost nobody answers the first time.

Every unanswered thread gets touched at least twice more. Not a chase — a different angle. One that references something on their profile, one that's just useful with nothing attached to it.

The man with more people to follow up with wins. Follow-up multiplies the number — it doesn't replace it.
New people reached, weekly60
Follow-ups on no-reply, weekly25
Touches before you let go3
Where the list livesone place
Move the numbers — yours will differ from mine
2.0
clients / month
$5,000
per month
$30,000
by 31 January
What's coming · month three

October goes flat.

Everyone who already knew you is spent by then — the network, the referrals, the people from Justin's room. And the cold work hasn't warmed up yet, because it takes a few months before what you send in week one comes back.

The number drops for reasons that have nothing to do with whether you're any good at this.

This is where most men rebuild the offer or decide it isn't working. It isn't the offer. It's that two hundred and fifty messages hadn't been sent yet. Fifty with no reply is not a sample.
Change one thing at a time, and only after a hundred.
What's coming · month four

Then it works, and
that's the problem.

Eight weeks each, twice a week for the first four, plus calls whenever a deal comes up — with the last one that was every other day for three weeks. Two a month compounds. By November you're carrying four to six at once.

Marketing loses. It always loses, because clients are in front of you and strangers aren't. December and January look fine. February is empty, and you won't connect the two until it's too late.

You spent nine years writing manuals so technicians across the country could do the job without you on the phone. You've said it was your favourite work of your life. You've never once done it for your own business.

By November you'll have said the same five things to six different people. Record each one once. Five minutes, no production. Then the live hour goes to his actual deal.
Active clients at once4–6
Delivery hours a week10–12
Days with zero outreach0
Answers recorded, weekly1
The checklist

What happens now.

Get the Red Wing result in writing — his numbers, his dates, his words.
Name the podcast.
Find the shows that already interview your person. Build a list of names.
Send the first ten reach-outs.
Record the first eight before releasing anything.
After every one: compliment · feedback · three referrals · their marketing plan.
Ten pain points and ten dream results, in their words, written down.
Twelve reach-outs a day on LinkedIn. Fifteen posts a week. Twenty-five follow-ups.
Every post: the hook, the gap, and a prediction.
The one open item

You said you'd start
with a decision.

Three hours a day, starting next week. Twelve reach-outs fits inside that with room to spare.

What day, and what time?

It's really impossible to fail at this. Hit the number, have the conversations, talk about them out loud, and learn from every one. That's the whole thing.
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