Date: 2026-09-04 12:07 PM EDT Attendees: Michael Houck, Blake Stewart
Summary
Quick sync on Emil Barr’s campus tour sponsorship campaign. No bookings have been delivered in approximately two months despite an active retainer. Michael has built a Hermes-powered network graph (61,867 contacts across LinkedIn, email inboxes, calendar, iMessage) as an alternative to Happenstance. The team decided to pivot sponsor outreach from email to LinkedIn and to run a separate email campaign targeting college deans.
Decisions
- Pivot Emil sponsor outreach from email to LinkedIn; email conversion has been poor.
- Run a dedicated email campaign targeting college deans to book Emil at colleges.
- Use the Hermes network graph (not Happenstance) for contact discovery going forward; no usage limits.
- See Emil Sponsor Outreach: Pivot from Email to LinkedIn.
Action items
- Blake Stewart: set up Lemlist email campaign for deans (unblocked when Michael sends list + copy)
- Michael: send dean list and draft email copy to Blake (ASAP)
- Michael: explore using Hermes to manage LinkedIn outreach autonomously for sponsor contacts
- Michael: finish brain site UI for network graph and share with Blake
Notable transcript excerpts
Michael on the network graph: “I fed my entire network into Hermes, and I created, like, a network graph. Basically, like Happenstance, but we own it. And so there’s no, like, usage limits… It’s 61,867 people… it differentiates them between, like, strong ties and weak ties. And has a full history of, like, when I’ve talked to them or where we’ve met.”
Blake on email performance: “I feel like email’s been pretty bad.”
Michael on urgency: “I feel bad about it. He pays me, like, a 5k retainer a month. And we haven’t delivered on this in, like, two months for him.”
Michael on LinkedIn pivot: “If we wanna do LinkedIn, I’m fine with that. In that case, then maybe I can just set up Hermes to manage my LinkedIn and do it itself.”