The script fell apart on shoot day. We built the course anyway.

Jacob coaches executives through high-stakes negotiations, mostly Fortune 500 and Inc. 5000 leaders, and more recently people negotiating with foundational AI companies. He has secured over a billion dollars in financial lift for his clients. Most of his business comes through referrals, which makes sense for work that sensitive.

He found us through the production work I was running at Amp Creative and said he wanted to film a course. He had a trademarked negotiation framework and a copywriter who had written him a genuinely good script.

Three to four hours in, we had not made it past the first module.

Nothing was wrong with the script. Reading a teleprompter for four straight hours is a skill, and it is not one most executives have had a reason to build. Talking directly to a lens for an entire course is harder than it looks from the other side of the camera.

Our executive producer took him for a walk and told him we were changing the plan. Instead of reading, he would answer questions about his own framework, and we would build the course from his answers. We rebuilt it on the floor that day.

What came out of that was the PACE negotiation course, built from his answers rather than his script. He was happy with it, his clients were happy with it, and it has since passed 100,000 views.

It was not the first impression any of us planned on. It is the reason he trusted me with the writing later. Watching someone solve a problem on the day tells you more than a pitch does.

When I took over his LinkedIn, the first thing I did was read everything. His 31 best performing posts from the previous twelve months, plus the weekly articles he had been publishing.

The value was all there. Anyone who read to the end got something real out of it. The problem was that almost nobody was reading to the end. He was burying the lead, the hooks were soft, there was no promise up front and nothing structured to deliver on one. Posts ran as long as the character limit allowed.

So we simplified. Every post written at roughly a sixth grade reading level. Complex negotiation tactics broken into pieces someone could actually use that afternoon. A promise in the first line and bullets that paid it off. We studied who was doing this well in his space, borrowed the structure, and put his voice on top of it.

We also pushed him to share the wins and the personal side of the work, then point people toward his courses and his coaching instead of ending on a thought.

Inside the first 60 days, a post brought in a client who closed at $120,000. I wrote the post, he closed the deal. That division of labor is the whole idea.

He has renewed twice since. He also brought me in to film the first episode of his podcast, and flew me out to shoot principal footage for his group and for his book launch.

Deep expertise works against you on social. The more you know, the more you assume, and the assumptions are what lose the reader in the first two lines.

Writing simply is not writing down to anyone. A negotiation tactic explained plainly enough to use tomorrow will always beat the version that proves how much you know.