The Magnet Initiative · Confidential

What your business looks like
when it runs itself.

A plan to take Magnet Productions from organized chaos to a company that operates smoothly — whether you're in Zihuatanejo or on the show floor.

Built on the work already in progress Powered by BizLadder

01 — The Destination

Your Monday morning,
twelve months from now.

You open your laptop from wherever you happen to be. Here's what you see — without calling your assistant, without digging through the calendar, without remembering to check anything.

7:14 AM · Auto-generated

Weekly Status — No action needed

All 4 active shows are on track. 23 contractor agreements signed. 2 exhibitor passes still outstanding for World of Concrete — your team has been notified.

On demand

"Find me a crowd gatherer in Vegas with food service experience."

Three results. Availability confirmed. Headshots and CVs attached. Last worked with Magnet: 8 months ago — status verified last week.

Automatic · 6 weeks before every show

IC agreements sent. Passes applied for. Deposit confirmed.

The checklist runs itself. You get a summary when everything's done — and a flag when something isn't.

Inbound inquiry · Yesterday

Draft response ready for your review.

A prospect asked about trade show talent for a mid-size booth. A reply is drafted in your voice — services, range, Calendly link. Review and send in 60 seconds.

The goal

At the end of the month, someone says:
"Want to go to Machu Picchu? I think it just got paid for."

That's not a fantasy — that's what happens when the business of running the business stops requiring you to hold it all in your head. Magnet has the relationships, the reputation, and 30 years of know-how. What it needs is a system that's finally caught up to all of that.

02 — What We Heard

The things that keep
getting in the way.

Tap any item to see what it looks like when it's solved.

📋
IC agreements sent too late — or forgotten Show risk +
When a show is booked, an IC agreement triggers automatically via DocuSign. Status is visible to the whole team in real time. If it's not signed within 48 hours, a follow-up fires. This never falls through a crack again.
🎫
Exhibitor passes not submitted in time Show risk +
Six weeks before every show: a pass application reminder fires automatically to each contractor. Confirmation gets logged. If it's not done two weeks out, the whole team gets flagged. No pass, no floor access — and now that never happens.
🌏
12-hour time zone gap breaks the workflow Efficiency gap +
Tasks are logged, visible, and flagged in a shared system — not dependent on catching each other online. Your team starts each day knowing exactly what needs action. You see confirmation when it's done. The time zone stops being a liability.
🗃️
Talent database is a folder, not a system Revenue loss +
"That person would've been perfect — but they weren't in the folder." Every contractor gets a verified record: city, skills, availability, last contact, headshots. Searchable in seconds. A database-wide status check goes out quarterly to keep it current.
📊
The weekly status report is written manually — every week Efficiency gap +
The report generates itself — pulling from active shows, contract status, and outstanding tasks. The report generates itself — so your operations team stops spending time on formatting and gets that time back for work that actually grows the business.

"I have a color-coded Google Calendar that I've been using as a CRM for twenty years. And you know what? It worked."

— Ken Newman, Founder · Magnet Productions

That instinct was right for 20 years. The tools now exist to give you everything the calendar gave you — the memory, the color-coding, the drag-and-forget — plus everything it couldn't: automation, visibility across the team, talent matching, and a system your whole team can act on without waiting for you to wake up.

04 — The BizLadder Role

The tools are a starting point.
The architecture is the work.

The foundation is already in motion — the data is going in, the structure is taking shape. What BizLadder adds is the layer above that: the workflow logic, the guardrails, the integrations, and the intelligence that turns a well-organized database into a system that actually runs the business. That's the work.

🗺️

Workflow Mapping

We document how Magnet actually works — every touchpoint from first contact to post-show follow-up — and translate that into logic the system can automate reliably.

🔒

Guardrails & QA

AI is confident even when it's wrong. We define what it can and can't do, build checkpoints so humans stay in the loop, and make sure the system surfaces the right things to the right people.

🧩

Integration Architecture

We connect the pieces: Google Calendar into Airtable, Airtable into automations, automations into Claude, all of it into a dashboard that the whole team actually uses. Not theoretical — already built for our own operations.

📈

Ongoing Iteration

AI tools evolve fast. BizLadder stays current so Magnet doesn't have to. As better tools emerge, we layer them in. The system gets smarter over time — not frozen at the version it launched with.

🎓

Training & Handoff

Your team is already doing the right things. We build on what's been started, bring everyone up to speed on the intelligence layer, and make sure the whole team can use this without needing BizLadder on every call.

📋

Audit Trails & Accountability

Every automated action is logged. Every agreement sent, every reminder fired, every status change — visible, traceable, and defensible. Important for a business that's navigated contractor classification law for 30 years.

Not theoretical — already running

We built this for BizLadder first.
Here's what yours would look like.

We recently walked through a live version of Cortex — BizLadder's own internal intelligence dashboard — with the Magnet team. The reaction was immediate: "You don't have to apologize for selling us something that works." It reminded them of familiar project tools, but smarter and connected to how their business actually runs.

We didn't build Cortex to sell it. We built it because we needed it ourselves. Every client call summarized, every action item tracked, every priority visible in one place. What we're proposing for Magnet is that same system — mapped to how your business actually runs, with your operations team at the center of it.

Ken Newman reacting to the Cortex demo on a Zoom call

"Hey — does seeing this make you as excited as it makes me?"

Ken Newman · Live reaction

05 — Talent Intelligence

The right person, right city,
right show. In seconds.

"That person would've been perfect — but they weren't in the folder." With the Magnet Initiative, that sentence disappears. Every contractor in a living, searchable, verified database — filtered by city, skill set, and current availability.

Chicago

Infotainer / Magician

Straitjacket escape Security messaging B2B crowds
Active · Available Q3 2026

Las Vegas

Crowd Gatherer

Badge scanning Booth intro Bilingual
Active · Flight attendant — flexible travel

New York

Presenter

IT / SaaS PowerPoint decks Q&A facilitation
Needs status check — last contact 2023

San Francisco

Booth Staff Support

Lead generation Food services exp. Elevator pitch
Active · Preferred Bay Area

What this replaces

From folder search to 10-second answer.

"I need a crowd gatherer with food services experience in Las Vegas for a mid-size booth at World of Concrete in February." Type it. Get three verified names, availability confirmed, headshots attached. The folder-diving is over.

06 — The Weekly Picture

You open your laptop.
Your team starts their day.

This is what a Tuesday morning looks like — not a feature list, but the actual experience.

🤖

Magnet System

Auto-generated · 7:00 AM

⚠ 2 contractors for World of Concrete haven't confirmed exhibitor passes. Deadline: 11 days. Your team has been notified.

🤖

Magnet System

Auto-generated · 7:00 AM

✓ All 6 IC agreements for RSAC signed and on file. Deposits confirmed for 5 of 6 clients.

👤

Ken

Asking the system · from Mexico

"Which pending clients haven't heard from us in 30+ days?"

🤖

Magnet System

Instant response

4 green-calendar entries haven't been contacted in 30+ days. Draft follow-up emails ready for your review — in your voice, referencing the last note in each entry.

🌏

Operations Lead

Remote · Start of day

Logs on to find a prioritized action list — no status report to write, no waiting to check in. The flagged items are already there. The work gets done. You see it confirmed.

👤

Ken

End of week

Closes his laptop. Everything that needed to happen, happened. Not because he remembered it. Because the system did.

07 — How We Get There

Baby steps.
That compound fast.

Tap each phase to see what BizLadder does — not just what gets built.

1

Clean and complete the Airtable foundation

In progress +
The data entry is already underway — talent, clients, and shows going in. Then we audit together: who's moved, who's gone, what's outdated. Automated emails go to all contractors: still active? Still in this city? BizLadder maps the data structure so everything connects cleanly in the next phase.
BizLadder: data architecture review, relationship mapping, contractor outreach template
2

Connect Google Calendar → live workflow

Phase 2 +
Ken's color-coded calendar stops being a silo. Green entries flow into Airtable as pending clients. Blue entries trigger show checklists. The 20-year system Ken has mastered gets a layer on top of it — not replaced, amplified.
BizLadder: Google Calendar API integration, trigger logic, status mapping from Ken's color system
3

Automate the show checklist — IC agreements, passes, deposits

Phase 3 +
Every booked show triggers a checklist that runs itself. IC agreement → DocuSign. Pass deadline → reminder. Deposit outstanding → follow-up draft. This is where the "oh god, did we forget" feeling ends permanently.
BizLadder: Zapier/Make workflow build, DocuSign integration, exception handling, QA testing across 3 show scenarios
4

Add the intelligence layer — reports, matching, AI drafts

Phase 4 +
Claude connects to Airtable. Weekly reports auto-generate. Talent matching becomes a query. Inbound emails get AI-drafted in Ken's voice. Your operations team's time gets freed for strategy and outreach.
BizLadder: Claude integration, prompt engineering in Ken's voice, report templates, guardrails and human-review checkpoints
5

The Magnet Initiative dashboard — full picture, always on

Phase 5 +
One view: every active show, every contractor status, every pending client, every flag. You see it from wherever you are. Your team sees their action list on the other side of the world. Business runs like everyone's in the same room.
BizLadder: Cortex-style dashboard build, role-based views for you and your team, monthly strategy calls, ongoing iteration as tools improve

08 — What This Becomes

Not a CRM.
A competitive advantage.

Magnet Productions,
running like the show itself.

For 30 years, Magnet has produced experiences that stop people in their tracks — because Ken knows exactly how to put the right performer in front of the right audience with the right message. That's not going to change.

What changes is the other half: the agreements, the passes, the follow-ups, the folder searches, the Friday reports, the 12-hour delays waiting for a time zone to align. The Magnet Initiative handles that half automatically — so you can do the work only you can do, and your team can focus on growing the business instead of administering it.

And unlike a tool you buy off the shelf, this gets smarter every month. Every show added, every contractor verified, every new automation built — it compounds. That's not a CRM. That's the infrastructure for the next chapter.

Shows that run without panic Your team focused on growth Talent matched in seconds Ken in Mexico, business humming Nothing forgotten again A system that earns trust over time

Magnet Productions · The Magnet Initiative · BizLadder

30 years of great shows.
Time to run the business like one.

BizLadder has made Magnet findable. The Magnet Initiative makes it runnable — from anywhere, by anyone on the team, without holding it all in one person's head.

Magnet Productions · The Magnet Initiative Confidential · BizLadder · Not for distribution