Megaphone: System Definition and Offer Canon (v1.0 FINAL, 2026-08-08)

Status: CANON. All open calls resolved by Michael 2026-08-08. Filed to the brain at Megaphone: System Definition and Offer Canon (v1.0 FINAL, 2026-08-08) with decision page Megaphone system definition and offer canon; offer canon section added to the megaphone-studio-platform skill. Format mirrors the JOLT system definition. No em dashes anywhere in this document or any derivative copy.

1. The line and the vocabulary

One-liner (LOCKED): Be the name in the room.

Owned mechanic name (LOCKED by pattern): Forward Deployed Strategist, the family parallel to JOLT’s Forward Deployed Creator.

Owned term (LOCKED as trial, Michael 2026-08-08): pull. The contrast line is canon: “JOLT builds reach. Megaphone builds pull.” Definition line for copy: Pull is when the market comes to you: the inbound DM, the intro you did not ask for, the candidate who already knows your name. Usage rules: lowercase in prose, no gated definition ceremony (that ritual stays Hard Calls’). Pull lives in the contrast line, the Scoreboard, and sales copy, and is deliberately kept OUT of module names so a later term swap costs a copy pass, not a structural rewrite (trial means trial). “Standing” remains ordinary supporting vocabulary: standing is the state, pull is what it produces.

Boundary canon, one paragraph: JOLT sells reach, getting strangers to find you through algorithmic discovery on camera platforms. Megaphone sells standing in the industry you are already in, through the written surfaces where that industry forms opinions: X for investors and the deep startup world (dealflow), LinkedIn for hiring, partnerships, B2B pipeline, and big tech, email for the compounding inbox relationship. Standing produces pull: reach makes strangers find you, pull makes the market come to you. Same founder can buy both. Neither cannibalizes.

2. ICP

Primary: B2B founders and execs whose buyers, backers, and hires live on X and LinkedIn. Best customers, weighted in all targeting: VC funds and later-stage founders (funds refer portcos when served well; see Fund Partner Program). Founder accounts are the product; company accounts are a supported secondary surface inside Studio, never the lead offer.

3. The Megaphone System (module set LOCKED)

Eight modules, four layers, same skeleton as the JOLT System. One module set shared by every tier with identical names (module parity rule: a rename applies everywhere at once). The OS teaches the self-serve version of each module; Deploy installs the same module with staff and tooling.

AIM

1. The Standing Map. Where you sit in the industry conversation: what you can claim, what is contested, which rooms matter for you (dealflow, hiring, partnerships, pipeline) and which one is primary. Names the 25 accounts whose respect moves your business.
2. The Voiceprint. The written voice spec: sentence shapes, diction, banned phrases, exemplar posts, positions you hold. The artifact that makes drafts sound like you instead of a writer. Fixes the exact churn complaint the old model earned.

CONTENT 3. The 5-3-1 Slate. The weekly mix: five X posts, three LinkedIn posts, one long piece (newsletter issue or section, article, or essay thread). Cadence drawn from what actually held across the Studio book. 4. The Format Bank. Proven written formats from the Viral Examples corpus and the Hook Library, matched to the Voiceprint so nothing reads template-y. Refreshed continuously from what is working in the feeds now.

OPERATIONS 5. The One-Hour Week. The founder time cost, stated honestly: about ninety minutes a week during voice calibration, under an hour once the Voiceprint locks. One twenty-minute pull session, the rest is approvals from your phone. Nothing ships without your yes. 6. The Extraction Loop. The embed. A Forward Deployed Strategist inside your Slack and relevant standups, plus a content brain ingesting your meetings and metrics, pulling raw material out of the business itself: the number that surprised you, the support ticket that says something true, the debate from the product meeting. Other firms interview you once a month. We are in the room every day.

REVENUE 7. The DM Pipeline. Where standing becomes pull: reply craft, proactive and reactive engagement queues, connection targeting, and the DM motion that turns respect into conversations with investors, candidates, and buyers. Human-executed, always: no automation ever touches your account. 8. The Scoreboard. Pull metrics, zero vanity: inbound DMs, booked calls, “saw your post” mentions on sales and fundraise calls, speaking and podcast invites, follower quality in the rooms that matter. Weekly report.

4. The ladder

Rung	Offer	Price	Status
Free	Viral Examples (X issue + LinkedIn issue) + the feed diagnostic quiz	$0	LIVE / build quiz
Shelf	Founder Authority OS (X + LinkedIn + newsletter)	$197 one-time	LOCKED
Install	Megaphone Deploy	$15,000 one-time, 90 days	LOCKED
Retainer	Megaphone Studio	from $5,000/mo, optional	Raised 2026-09-22 from $3,995 (see Studio raised to $5,000/mo for both JOLT and Megaphone)
Campaigns	Launch Campaigns	from $2,500, application only	LOCKED shape, mechanics private

Add-on shelf (structures below, section 7): The Masthead (newsletters), Team Amplification, Proof Desk.

Deploy definition of done, signed before kickoff, HC-style:

1. Voiceprint locked: founder approves ten consecutive drafts without a voice correction.
2. System live: the 5-3-1 Slate has published three consecutive weeks, first posts live by week 2.
3. Pipeline wired: engagement queues running, Scoreboard reporting weekly.
4. Handover by day 90: the client owns the Standing Map, Voiceprint, Format Bank, pull protocol, and Scoreboard, with their operator trained, or they continue into Studio. Guarantee: live by week 2 and handed over by day 90 or we keep working free.

Boundary note: the Extraction Loop’s content brain is scoped to content raw material. The full company brain is Hard Calls’ install product ($12,500+). A Megaphone client who wants the whole brain is a cross-sell to Hard Calls, never a scope creep inside Deploy.

5. The embed economics (updated per Michael)

The old model died because one writer blindly covered 3-4 accounts from outside the glass. The new model: the AI spine (Voiceprint drafting, queue prep, brain ingest) does production; the strategist does context, judgment, and pull sessions. Blake Emal is strategist zero and can carry roughly 20-30 accounts with the Hermes system backing him. Bench for expansion, already warm: Austin, Andrew, Tanyo (former writers who have said they want to keep working with us as opportunities come up). Strategist two gets pulled from the bench when the book approaches Blake’s ceiling, trained on the same spine. Capacity is therefore not a launch constraint.

6. Network integration and discretion (LOCKED)

The creator network is an ingredient, never a business, never a public mechanic:

• No public page, pricing, or mechanics for boosting or the network. Site and OS copy say at most “distribution is built in,” unexplained.
• Disclosed on the strategy call after qualification, framed as it works: real people, their own accounts, their own choice to engage, nothing automated, nothing touching the client’s account.
• Case studies cite outcomes only. Campaigns stay application-only. VE and the newsletter never tout boosting.
• JOLT’s boosting (platform-sanctioned TikTok mechanics) is exempt; this rule is Megaphone-specific.
• Studio includes a monthly boost allocation; Deploy includes a week-one jumpstart. Both described in-call only.

7. Add-on shelf and the farm-system doctrine (LOCKED doctrine)

Add-ons are the farm system. Every new motion proves itself as an add-on inside an existing brand; only a genuinely divergent buyer or channel mode earns a spin-out conversation.

• The Masthead (newsletters). The line: the feeds are rented, the masthead is yours (family own-vs-rent frame). Split structure, per Michael’s point that ads-inclusive pricing cannot be flat:
  • Production: $2,495/mo flat. Write, edit, send, ops, in the client’s Voiceprint, fed by the Extraction Loop.
  • Growth (optional): client funds ad spend directly at cost; we build and run the funnel end to end (creative, landing page, tracking, the proven ~$2.00-2.50/sub Meta motion) for +$995/mo management.
  • So the rate card reads: $2,495/mo production, $3,490/mo with growth management, plus your ad budget. Standalone (no Studio) at a $3,995 floor if a newsletter-only buyer appears.
• Team Amplification ($7,500 install + from $1,995/mo, scoped by activated seats; custom by default per Michael). The Wiz-pattern advocacy program: we supply the content library, suggested posts, and engagement queues; employees publish themselves. Compliance-safe by design. Monthly bands by activated seats (indicative: up to 50 seats $1,995, 51-200 $3,495, 200+ custom). Hard qualification gate: needs an exec sponsor and a real culture, or it churns. Premium tier for the later-stage segment, the same slot Reddit occupies for Lore. Expansion staircase: founder, then leadership bundle, then company-wide.
• Proof Desk, priced per case study, not per month. $1,995 per case study (LOCKED): each includes the customer interview, the written asset with approved quotes and metrics, and a derivative pack of founder posts cut from it. No subscription; cadence is the client’s call, though the Scoreboard nudges one per quarter minimum since stale proof pages read as churn to buyers.
• Longform Desk lives in JOLT as a Studio add-on (video ops own fulfillment). Megaphone consumes the transcripts through the Extraction Loop for free. Spin-out tripwire: meaningful standalone revenue from buyers who want podcast/YouTube but decline TikTok.

8. Fund Partner Program (LOCKED, formalizing existing behavior)

Draper and Mantis already run this motion informally; they are the founding design partners and the template. Structure: fund partner on Studio, X-first (their standing is dealflow). Fund perks: preferred Deploy pricing for portcos, a quarterly portfolio standing report to the partner. Invitation framing, no public page. Paper the two existing relationships first, then extend one fund at a time. One fund done well is 5-10 portco installs.

9. Funnel, retention, proof, language

Funnel (standing RV pattern): magnet is the feed diagnostic quiz (“why your posts die in the feed,” six failure modes mapped to six fixable modules), VE issues are the pulse. Thank-you survey: need, fit, budget band. Bonus for completing: a ten-format sample from the Format Bank. Routing: high fit and budget to the strategy call, mid to the OS, VCs flagged to the fund path, lowest band to VE free.

Retention canon (storyarb steals, adopted): a new Season every 90 days (fresh strategic chapter so content never goes stale), Scoreboard reports outcomes only, referral-integrity metric tracked quarterly (target: over half of clients would refer us, or the product is not good enough yet).

Proof stack: build from client approvals before any public use. Sweep the book for five outcome stories in Legacy Builder grammar (outcomes, zero vanity). Perplexity/Comet naming requires their approval; fallback phrasing is approved-anonymous. Network aggregate stats (creator counts, follower totals) are private per section 6. JOLT’s 5.3B stat stays JOLT’s; no cross-brand stat borrowing without a ruling.

Language rules: banned in Megaphone copy: ghostwriting and ghostwriter as self-description, thought leader and thought leadership, personal brand (that is the JOLT and Legacy Builder space; our words are authority, standing, and pull), viral, agency as self-description. Never guarantee leads or followers; guarantee the install (live by week 2, handover by day 90, or free until done). “Strategy call” always. No em dashes. vsl-writing AI-tell rules apply to all copy.

10. Resolution log (all closed 2026-08-08)

Owned term: pull, on trial, contrast line canon, kept out of module names. Studio launched at $3,995 and was raised to from-$5,000/mo on 2026-09-22. OS: Founder Authority OS, scope X + LinkedIn + newsletter. Module names locked. Fund program seeded with Draper and Mantis as founding design partners. Capacity: Blake ~20-30 accounts on the Hermes spine, bench of Austin, Andrew, Tanyo behind him. Newsletter add-on named The Masthead. Proof Desk $1,995 per case study. Deploy $15,000 with embed parity. Network folded in as ingredient with discretion rules.

11. Build sequence

1. File canon: brain entity page + decision page, update the megaphone-studio-platform skill with the offer canon.
2. Founder Authority OS build: curriculum and artifacts from the Hook Library, VE corpus, engagement SOPs, and newsletter playbook, mirroring the JOLT OS shape (modules, lessons, fill-in artifacts, teleprompter scripts, onboarding emails, magic-link dashboard).
3. Site: consolidate Megaphone’s public home onto the ladder (fork the jolt repo patterns: sales page, quiz, dashboard). Kill remaining platform surfaces per the no-separate-platform ruling.
4. Feed diagnostic quiz (clone the JOLT 200-views build).
5. Proof sweep with approval gates.
6. Studio migration map: current clients to new packaging on renewals, with Blake E.
7. Paper Draper and Mantis as Fund Partner templates.
8. Pilot gates: Newsletters with one happy client, Team Amplification after two qualified asks, Proof Desk with the first Deploy client.
9. Deploy VSL last, once the funnel above is live (vsl-writing skill).

Addendum 2026-08-09: Personal asset ingestion (locked)

Ruling: good founder content is personal and authentic, and founders already own most of the raw material (camera roll, launch photos, old decks, screenshots, team moments). Asking busy founders to send assets manually is tedious and fails. So ingestion is now a system feature at every rung:

• OS ($197, self-serve): M6 teaches the quarterly archive mine (30 minutes in the camera roll pulls a month of story-post artifacts) and the six-source capture file (personal archive is source six).
• Deploy ($15,000): kickoff call includes a dedicated asset-ingestion segment (guided walk through the founder’s existing archive while on the call), plus a standing drop zone (as-easy-as-airdrop bar) the founder can flick assets into forever.
• Studio (from $5,000/mo): same, plus optional consented API-based collection (e.g. shared album / drive sync) feeding the Studio platform’s media library directly, so writers pull from a live pool of authentic material. Comfort-gated: founder opts in, scope explicit, revocable.

Build implication (Studio platform): media library needs an ingestion lane (drop zone + API sync + tagging on intake). Logged for the Studio build queue.

Ramp correction (supersedes the OS draft’s 48-hour language): the OS ships the JOLT-esque arc. Week 1 is strategy and setup, first post day 7, full slate by day 21. Strategy before shipping is doctrine, not delay.

Refund standard (this product): no refunds. The free tier is the guarantee. Proposed as the RV family standard; JOLT’s live 30-day policy flip pending Michael’s explicit confirm.

Addendum 2026-08-09 (2): second ruling batch

• Refunds CONFIRMED as the RV family standard: no refunds anywhere in the group; the free tier is the guarantee. Michael ordered the JOLT site flip (prospective only); PR in flight.
• Ramp corrected, supersedes addendum (1)‘s day-7/day-21 line: posting is binary. Weeks 1-2 build the system (Standing Map, Voiceprint, Slate, Format Bank, profile). Posting starts week 3 at the full 5-3-1 cadence and stays on. No lone first post followed by more strategy time.
• Ingestion refinement: API-based collection is OPTIONAL at Deploy as well as Studio (founder-comfort gated at both). Rationale: a live feed of new assets gives the team a standing timely-content lane, commenting on what the founder or business just did.
• Content is visual-forward by strategy: infographics, personal photos, memes, proof screenshots; text-only where the strategy calls for it. A strong visual production process is first-class at every rung. The OS gains lesson M4.5 (The Visual Layer) and a visual-pairing guide in the Format Bank artifact.
• OS surface locked: os.megaphonestudio.com, separate magic-link course home. Studio stays internal; M9.2 references Deploy clients running the system inside Studio as the upgrade surface.
• Lesson format locked: text-first, no filming in this product. Written lessons at 600-900 words; optional screen-demo clips later.

Addendum 2026-09-04: OS is VIDEO-FIRST (supersedes 2026-08-09 text-first)

Michael, Sep 4 2026: “The OS is a video-first product, just like with JOLT… each module needs to be written in Blake’s speaking voice. Blake the human can record the VSL for the sales page and the thank you video, but for the v1 it probably makes sense to have his clone do the videos for the course / in the logged in portal.” The Aug 9 text-first ruling rested on “no filming is inherent to this product”; the HeyGen clone (built Aug 14) removed that constraint. 36 lessons -> 36 spoken scripts (Blake spoken register, 174 wpm, JOLT rewrite law) -> clone renders via the Lore worker (Megaphone un-parked Sep 4). Written lessons remain as the read-along beneath each video. All OS surfaces swept: sales page, FAQ, tier card, emails, portal.