Correction: The Strike Marketing Manifesto
Well, let’s do this again…
The first send had a mistake in it. I sent Chapter 2 as the introduction.
Here’s the good version, completely complete…
Introduction: The Crisis of Invisibility
You built something extraordinary. Not a toy app, not a pitch deck dressed up as a company, but a real product solving real problems. It’s the culmination of decades of experience, scars earned, lessons learned. You’ve walked the hard roads others only theorize about, and you’ve poured all of that wisdom into code, systems, and software that actually works.
And yet - nobody sees you.
Every day, you’re paying what I call the Invisibility Tax. It doesn’t show up on your P&L, but it drains your business all the same. The deals that should be yours? They’re going to competitors with weaker products but louder voices. The hires you’ve been chasing? They’re accepting offers from companies with more buzz. The investors who should believe in your vision? They don’t even know your name.
The Invisibility Tax doesn’t just slow you down - it suffocates you. And it compounds daily.
For second-act founders, the pain is sharper. You’ve already proven yourself once. You’ve put in the years, maybe decades, of experience. And instead of being recognized as the authority, you’re invisible. Worse, you watch as someone half your age, with none of your expertise, claims thought leadership in your category simply because they figured out how to post every day.
It feels unfair - because it is unfair.
But here’s the deeper danger: invisibility isn’t just costing you revenue. It’s costing you something far more irreplaceable. It’s costing you your legacy.
Every day you remain invisible, your competitors aren’t just stealing contracts - they’re stealing the future that should have been yours. They’re planting flags in the ground, claiming categories you should own. And once the flag is planted, it’s nearly impossible to take it back.
This is the crisis too few founders name out loud: the market doesn’t crown the best product - it crowns the loudest story.
And that should enrage you.
Because you didn’t spend your second act building something brilliant just to be ignored. You didn’t put decades of wisdom into your product so a less capable competitor could define your category. And you didn’t come this far just to hand over your future because you stayed quiet.
The Invisibility Tax is real. It’s compounding. And it’s not just a frustration. It’s an existential crisis for your company.
The good news? There is a way out. But it doesn’t look like what the Marketing Industrial Complex has been selling you.
It looks like striking.
Chapter 1. The Problem: The Consistency Myth
Every movement needs an problem. For second-act founders, the problem isn’t your competitor across town or the flashy startup on TechCrunch. The real problem is an idea - a belief so pervasive it feels like truth:
“If you show up every day, the market will reward you.”
This is the Consistency Myth.
It sounds noble. Work hard, be disciplined, keep publishing. And to be clear, consistency has its place - in product development, in leadership, in customer service. But in marketing? Consistency without impact is a trap.
It’s the hamster wheel of the Marketing Industrial Complex. It keeps you busy but never moves you forward.
How the Consistency Myth Shows Up
Agencies sell it as “content calendars.” A year’s worth of social posts, neatly scheduled, but destined to vanish into the scroll.
Consultants dress it up as “funnels” and “nurture sequences.” Elaborate systems built on the premise that volume equals visibility.
Gurus package it into courses: “How to Post Every Day and Build an Audience.”
The machine thrives on convincing founders that motion equals progress. That if you just keep publishing, keep spending, keep showing up, something will click.
But you already know the truth.
Has a prospect ever told you they signed because of your steady stream of posts?
Has an investor ever wired money because your blog was consistent?
Has a top recruit ever joined your team because you published on schedule?
No. Because consistency doesn’t get remembered. Impact does.
Why It Insults Founders
For second-act founders, the Consistency Myth isn’t just ineffective - it’s insulting.
You’ve already proven yourself once, maybe twice. You’ve led teams, built careers, solved problems others couldn’t. And now, the industry tells you to fight obscurity by acting like a junior marketer - cranking out tweets, scheduling webinars nobody attends, and chasing likes.
The Consistency Myth reduces decades of scar tissue and wisdom to a quota of posts per week. It tells category creators to play small.
And every day you buy into it, the Invisibility Tax compounds.
Naming the Problem
This is why the Consistency Myth must be named, fought, and defeated. It’s not a harmless mindset - it’s the silent killer of second-act founders. It drains their energy, wastes their resources, and delays their visibility until it’s too late.
The problem isn’t you. The problem isn’t your competitor. The problem is the belief that consistency alone will save you.
Until that myth is destroyed, brilliant founders will remain invisible, while louder, less capable players win the market.
And that’s why a new path is needed.
Chapter 2. The Enemy: The Marketing Industrial Complex
If invisibility is the disease, then the marketing industry’s prescription is poison.
For decades, founders have been told the same tired advice:
Publish more blog posts.
Post on LinkedIn every day.
Build complex funnels.
Buy ads until something works.
Stay “top of mind.”
It’s a treadmill disguised as a strategy. And it keeps you running in place while your competitors lap you.
This treadmill has a name: the Marketing Industrial Complex. Agencies, consultants, and gurus have built an empire on one big lie - that visibility comes from consistency. That if you just keep producing, keep spending, keep grinding, eventually the market will reward you.
But here’s the truth: for bootstrapped or angel-funded founders, that advice isn’t just unhelpful - it’s lethal.
Why the Slow Burn Kills Founders
The “slow burn” of content marketing has become gospel. The idea is simple: publish consistently for 18 to 36 months, and eventually, your audience grows, your traffic compounds, and your market begins to notice.
It works - for the well-funded. A Series A startup can afford to wait three years for compounding traffic. A Fortune 500 company can afford to drip content into the void until the algorithm notices.
But you can’t.
You need traction now. You need to win deals this quarter, not three years from now. The slow burn doesn’t just fail you - it dooms you.
Here’s why:
The Timeline Is Too Long. By the time your blog starts ranking, your competitor has already planted their flag. They own the category, and you’re left begging for scraps
The Playing Field Is Rigged. Content marketing was supposed to be the great equalizer. But it’s been hijacked. A 24-year-old with ChatGPT and Google Scholar can spin up “authority” overnight, while you - the one with decades of expertise - remain invisible.
The Budget Drain Is Brutal. Paid digital is the other prescription. But the price of entry keeps climbing. Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Meta Ads - the costs rise every quarter. Every impression you buy is an impression your competitor can outbid tomorrow. For you, it’s not sustainable.
The Energy Sink Is Real. The slow burn demands constant attention. Daily posts. Weekly blogs. Monthly webinars. You become a full-time marketer instead of a founder. And the worst part? Most of it goes unnoticed.
The lie of the Marketing Industrial Complex isn’t just wasteful - it’s cruel. It tells second-act founders, people with decades of earned wisdom, to act like interns cranking out social posts. It reduces your legacy to a content calendar.
And it sets you up for heartbreak.
What Really Gets Remembered
Ask yourself: do you remember the fiftieth blog post from HubSpot? The two-hundredth podcast episode from Salesforce? The thousandth tweet from Tesla?
Of course not.
What you remember are the moments. The events that attracted tons of media coverage. The memorable launches that moved markets. The stunts that shocked the world.
Not the drip-fed content, nor the cold DMs in your LinkedIn inbox. Not the personalized yet forgettable Facebook ads, nor the Instagram livestreams.
That’s the truth the Marketing Industrial Complex doesn’t want you to know: consistency doesn’t get remembered. Impact does.
And until you see that, you’ll stay on the treadmill - burning time, burning money, and burning out - while weaker, louder competitors seize the future that should have been yours.
Chapter 3. The Solution: Strike Marketing
If the Consistency Myth is the problem, and the Marketing Industrial Complex is the enemy, then what’s the alternative?
The answer is Strike Marketing.
Strike Marketing is the opposite of slow-burn marketing. It rejects the endless treadmill of publishing more, spending more, and hoping someone notices. It replaces the daily grind with bold, concentrated moments that make the market stop, look, and listen.
It’s not about frequency. It’s about impact.
Why Strikes Work
Think about the stories that shaped entire industries.
Twitter didn’t tip the market with it's steady drip of 140-character micro-blogs - they did it with their 2007 South by Southwest big screen takeover, a lightning strike that launched them into the limelight.
Nike didn’t own basketball shoes because they “showed up every day.” They owned it because the launch of the Air Jordan became a cultural moment.
Red Bull didn’t dominate energy drinks by introducing a weird-tasting taurine drink - they did it with Felix Baumgartner's 2012 Space Jump.
Salesforce didn’t win with daily blogs. They won with “The End of Software.”
Apple didn’t break through with steady drip campaigns. They broke through with the 1984 ad - a single strike that redefined their identity.
Airbnb didn’t launch with ad spend – they launched with air mattresses at the 2008 DNC, a single strike that proved strangers would pay to stay in each other’s homes.
Nobody remembers consistency. They remember strikes.
In every case, the market didn’t reward persistence. It rewarded impact.
The lesson is clear: people don’t remember consistency. They remember moments.
What Strike Marketing Looks Like
Strike Marketing takes the principle of the Lightning Strike - concentrated, category-defining events - and adapts it for the reality of second-act, bootstrapped founders.
Because here’s the truth: most founders don’t have $500,000 to spend on Elton John at Caesars Palace. They don’t have the budget for celebrity endorsements or global product launches.
But they do have something more powerful: a working product, decades of expertise, and the courage to put a stake in the ground.
Strike Marketing channels all of that into a repeatable system of strikes that turn invisibility into inevitability.
The One-Two Punch: Book + Summit
At the heart of Strike Marketing is a one-two punch designed for maximum leverage:
The Startup Book – Your book isn’t just a marketing tool. It’s a category-defining weapon. It lets you plant your flag, frame the problem, and show the world your unique POV. It’s how you stop being one more founder and start being the founder who defined the space.
The Virtual Summit – This is the strike. A cultural moment that puts your category on the map. By curating speakers, borrowing credibility, and rallying your superconsumers, a virtual summit creates the kind of attention that blog posts never could. It doesn’t take years. It takes days.
Together, the Startup Book and the Virtual Summit form a flywheel: the book defines the category, the summit amplifies it, and each strike makes the next one stronger.
Why Virtual Summits Work
A summit is more than an event. It’s a force multiplier:
Borrowed credibility. Featuring respected voices instantly elevates your authority.
An “I was there” moment. Summits create a shared memory for your superconsumers, one they can’t help but spread.
Rapid lead generation. Hundreds of prospects in days, not months.
Category alignment. The summit makes your POV the center of conversation.
And unlike million-dollar strikes, a virtual summit doesn’t break the bank. With the right tools, you can orchestrate one for four or low-five figures - making it the ultimate low-cost, high-impact strike.
Strike Marketing Is More Than a Tactic
This is the key: Strike Marketing isn’t just a tool. It’s a movement.
It’s a declaration that you refuse to keep paying the Invisibility Tax. That you won’t play by the rules of the Marketing Industrial Complex. That you won’t wait three years for the Consistency Myth of content marketing to maybe compound while competitors buy the narrative today.
Strike Marketing says: We don’t wait to be noticed. We create moments that can’t be ignored.
It’s how second-act founders reclaim their rightful place. It’s how real products finally get the spotlight they deserve. And it’s how obscurity ends - not with a whimper, but with a strike.
This is the fork in the road.
Every founder who has ever built something great faces this choice: keep grinding away in obscurity, or step into the spotlight and claim the visibility they deserve.
The Invisibility Tax isn’t going to shrink on its own. Every day you wait, the cost compounds. Competitors get louder. Investors back the names they’ve heard. Top recruits take jobs with companies that look like they’re winning. Opportunities close. Categories get claimed.
If you don’t act, invisibility doesn’t just continue - it calcifies. What should have been your movement becomes somebody else’s empire.
The Founders’ Rebellion
Let’s be clear: this is more than a marketing choice. It’s a rebellion against a system designed to keep you invisible.
The Marketing Industrial Complex wants you to believe that volume equals visibility. They want you on the treadmill, paying retainers, burning budgets, and confusing activity with impact.
But you know better.
You know that visibility isn’t about who shows up the most. It’s about who strikes hardest.
That’s why Strike Marketing isn’t just a tactic - it’s a movement. A movement of second-act founders who refuse to play small. Who refuse to watch louder, weaker competitors take what’s theirs. Who refuse to let their life’s work fade into obscurity.
The Rallying Cry
The question is simple: will you keep paying the Invisibility Tax, or will you strike?
This is your call to arms. Stop waiting. Stop hoping. Stop grinding on the slow-burn treadmill that keeps you invisible.
It’s time to strike.
Because your second act deserves to be your most visible act.
Chapter 4. The Stakes: Why This Matters Now
Every founder knows money can be raised, teams can be rebuilt, products can be iterated. But time? Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
And here’s the brutal truth: every day you remain invisible, the costs don’t just add up - they compound.
The Compounding Costs of Invisibility
Customers are slipping away. Not because your product isn’t better, but because they’ve never heard of you. Meanwhile, louder competitors are filling their inboxes, showing up in their feeds, and convincing them they’ve already found the answer.
VC-backed startups are buying the narrative. They’re plastering their story across ads, media, and stages. They’re coining terms, defining language, and crowning themselves kings of categories they didn’t even build. And once they claim the narrative, you’re forever playing catch-up.
Credibility is eroding. The longer you stay unseen, the more the market assumes irrelevance. Perception hardens quickly: “If they were really that good, wouldn’t we have heard of them by now?” Silence becomes its own indictment.
Opportunity windows are closing. That dream RFP? It never reaches your inbox. The perfect partnership? It gets signed by a competitor. The superstar hire you wanted? They join the company with buzz. These aren’t just missed chances - they’re doors you’ll never even know were there.
The category clock is ticking. Categories are winner-take-most markets. The first to define the problem usually wins. And once a competitor plants their flag, you don’t get it back. Your future is permanently downgraded.
Why Waiting Is Fatal
Content marketing tells you to be patient. To “trust the process.” To grind it out until the market notices. But time is the one thing you can’t afford to lose.
For bootstrapped and minimally funded founders, patience isn’t a virtue - it’s a death sentence.
Because invisibility isn’t neutral. It doesn’t just mean growth delayed. It means growth denied. It’s not a waiting room. It’s a graveyard.
The Urgency of Now
This is why Strike Marketing matters now, not someday. Every day you wait, the Invisibility Tax compounds: more deals lost, more talent gone, more competitors seizing ground that should have been yours.
The stakes aren’t just financial. They’re emotional. They’re existential. This is about your dream, your legacy, your second act.
You didn’t come this far just to hand over your future to a louder but less capable competitor. You didn’t spend decades earning wisdom only to have it drowned out by a twenty-something growth hacker.
The clock is ticking. The window is closing. The time to strike is now.
Because if you don’t, someone else will.
Chapter 5. The Heroes: Second-Act Founders
Every category has its champions. Every movement has its heroes. Ours are the second-act founders.
These are not wide-eyed dreamers hoping their first idea will change the world. They’ve already lived one career - sometimes two. They’ve managed teams, built products, fought fires, and carried P&Ls. They’ve seen what works, what breaks, and what truly matters.
And now, instead of coasting into comfort, they’ve chosen to build again. To take everything they’ve learned and pour it into something new. Something that matters. Something the world needs.
That’s what makes them different. That’s what makes them heroic.
What Sets Them Apart
Depth of experience. While younger competitors chase hacks and playbooks, second-act founders bring wisdom forged in the fire. They don’t just know what to build - they know why it matters.
Product-first conviction. They aren’t in it for the hype cycle or the funding headlines. They care about building something that works. Something that lasts. Something that can withstand scrutiny.
Skin in the game. For many, this isn’t just another startup. It’s their legacy. Their shot at leaving a mark that outlives them. That urgency creates focus, resilience, and courage.
An allergic reaction to bullshit. They’ve seen every corporate fad and consulting deck under the sun. They have no patience for noise. They want real results, not empty promises.
The Pain They Carry
And yet, for all their strengths, second-act founders are haunted by invisibility. They watch as twenty-somethings with no track record dominate feeds, headlines, and stages. They see their own hard-won insights ignored while recycled ideas get rewarded with likes and retweets.
The injustice stings. Not because of ego, but because they know the world is worse off when real solutions go unseen.
Every day they stay invisible, they pay the Invisibility Tax in ways younger founders can’t imagine. They feel the weight of lost opportunities more acutely, because they know exactly what those opportunities could mean.
Why They Are the Heroes We Need
Second-act founders are not underdogs. They are over-prepared. Over-experienced. Overdue for recognition. They’re the ones with the potential to build enduring companies in categories that matter.
They just need the visibility they deserve.
And that’s why Strike Marketing exists. Because these founders don’t need another gimmick. They don’t need another funnel. They don’t need to burn three years on the slow grind of content marketing.
They need a moment. A strike. A chance to show the world what they’ve built - and why it matters.
When second-act founders strike, it’s not noise. It’s not hype. It’s substance finally getting the spotlight. And when that happens, the market changes. Categories tilt. Futures shift.
A Call to Action
Your second act should be your most visible act.
This is the chapter of your life where you don’t just build - you lead. Where you don’t just contribute - you define. Where you don’t just show up - you strike.
Because the world doesn’t need another “growth story.” It needs your story. Loud. Clear. Unignorable.
And it starts the moment you decide to stop paying the Invisibility Tax.
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