Launch Frame
Put a proposal on the table in ninety seconds, then let their questions close it. A live workshop where everyone brings a real ask they owe somebody in the next thirty days and rebuilds it out loud, six times, in front of the room, until it lands.
The problem
A smart person presents for forty-five minutes to an executive who decided in the first five and spent the rest waiting to ask their real question.
You have watched this happen to somebody good. Somebody you hired on purpose. They prepared for a week, they built the deck, and they walked it top to bottom, praying and spraying, guessing the whole hour at what the real concern was. Meanwhile in the first sixty to ninety seconds that executive was triaging: is this urgent, is it practical, is it relevant to me right now. That call got made before slide three, and for the other forty minutes, having sat in both chairs, I can tell you that a lot of executives masquerade as giving attention. So the ask never quite got on the table. It stayed implied. And what came back is the softest sentence in business, the one your person will repeat to you almost word for word: it was not a yes, it was not a hard no, it was more like maybe another time. Then they went back to their tickets, and the thing you needed decided this quarter is still sitting with somebody who never said why. Here is the part that costs you twice. Your person cannot tell you what to fix, because they never heard an objection. They got politeness. They will bring you a theory about budget, the theory will be wrong, and next quarter they will build a longer deck. And you cannot be the one to tell them what went wrong, because you cannot be their cheerleader and their coach in the same conversation, so you say good effort, let's regroup, and you carry it home. They go home thinking they got unlucky. Now count the meetings like that one your company has between today and the end of the quarter. Every one of them is a decision you are not getting, on a clock you do not control.
What happens instead
Stop walking the deck. Put the whole thing on the table in ninety seconds, in four boxes, then stop talking.
Said so precisely they nod in a that's-right way. They know it, they care about it, they agree that is where we are.
The one to three things that changed.
Said as something a person can say yes to today.
In their words, not yours.
Then you ask where they would like to begin. The first thing out of their mouth is their number one decision criterion, handed to you in minute two instead of guessed at for forty-five. Your slides become random access memory: yes, that is slide eleven, let's start there. Even the no's come with the real reason attached.
The model descends from Steven Tomlinson's executive-meeting board, with Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle underneath it, and I credit him by name every time I teach it. What I have added is the rehearsal: six verbal drafts, ten minutes, and the ask is in your body before you walk in.
What happens in the room
I draw the four boxes and the reason each one is there. Then I ask the room what the executive frame of mind actually is, and I write up their words, not mine: task oriented, distracted, analytical, show me the numbers. That is the audience we are writing for.
On a scenario the room hands me, because you should not buy this from somebody who will not do it in front of you.
Not a volunteer for a hypothetical. A person with a real thing due: a venture pitch, an internal initiative, an ask for headcount or budget from an executive who has already deferred it once. Then six drafts, out loud, about ten minutes.
I tell the room this one is supposed to be bad, and I mean it. Three minutes, it wanders, it buries the ask. Nobody gets embarrassed, because the bad draft is a scheduled step with my name on it.
Again, out loud. Your brain sees things your mouth has not had reps at saying. It gets clearer, sharper, and more precise every time your mouth makes the trip.
I mark on the board the words that landed, delete the rest, and they beat on the keywords.
Twenty words, total. I count them down on my fingers and no sentences are allowed. Everyone doubts this one, and every time the whole proposal gets across anyway. Afterward the person says some version of: it boiled down to the core, and now I know what the core is.
Not about the words anymore. This one is to get it into the body instead of the memory.
To hear it come out smooth.
How the first draft comes in. Wandering, with the ask buried.
How the sixth goes out, with the ask on the table and one question at the end of it.
Under three rules I use on them before I teach them. Those three are the workshop underneath the workshop, and your managers keep them.
We also fix the closing question, because the one people default to is two questions wearing a trench coat and it gets a blank stare. It becomes one: where would you like to begin, or what else do you need to see to put this in motion.
Stories told in the room
What they leave with
What changes
Your person walks in with the ask in their body. Says it in ninety seconds. Stops. Hears the executive's real criterion in minute two instead of guessing at it for forty-five. And you watched it happen from the back of the room, with the correction coming from a voice that was not yours.
What the room brings
Every person brings one real thing they owe somebody in the next thirty days: a proposal, a pitch, a deck, a budget or headcount ask, a board update, a pilot that needs approval. Real, dated, and consequential. The one they have been quietly dreading is the best one. Send me three of them a week ahead and I build the drills around those three. If your people say they have nothing, ask them what they are waiting on somebody to approve.
Formats
The model on the board, two or three people in the hot seat with their real asks, all six drafts in front of the room. 75 to 90 minutes.
The model, three to five people on stage through all six drafts, everyone else drafting their own in pairs while I move between them.
Everyone runs all six drafts on their own ask, with video review in the afternoon, plus the harder rooms: the interruption, the hostile question, the executive who decided before you walked in.
The board meeting, the investor update, the reorg all-hands. Same drill, run as six verbal drafts of the one thing you all have to stand in together. Half day.
Priced per room means: tell me the date and the headcount. The natural part two is Executive Q&A, the hour of questions after the launch.
Proof
Who is in the room with you
Isaiah McPeak has coached 1,000+ professionals through their hardest conversations, from Fortune 500 sales teams to founders raising millions, and personally closed $35M+ in deals with these models.
Tell me the room, the date, and the ask that is stuck. I reply myself, inside a day, with what I would run and which dates work.