# LinkedIn — Ready to Post (Top 3) *Selected and polished: 2026-02-07 | Status: DRAFT — awaiting Michael's final approval* *Focus: Michael's story. 30 years on the tools. Built something different.* --- ## Post 1: "The Receipt" (The Opener) **When to post:** First. This is the opening shot. **Audience:** Both — workers and contractors **Suggested time:** Tuesday or Wednesday, 7:30 AM AEST **Estimated read time:** 90 seconds --- I've been in construction for 30 years. Steel fixer. Formworker. Started when I was a kid in Ireland. Moved to Sydney. Spent decades carrying steel, tying rebar, pouring slabs in 40-degree heat. I know what it feels like to work 12-hour days and wonder where the money goes. So I did the maths. When a contractor hires a labourer through an agency, they typically pay $60-65/hr. The worker gets $38-42. The difference — $20-25 every single hour — goes to someone who has never set foot on a construction site. Let's keep going: $25/hr × 8 hours = $200/day. $200 × 5 days = $1,000/week. $1,000 × 50 weeks = $50,000/year. Fifty grand. Per worker. Per year. For answering a phone call and sending a text on Sunday night: "Be at Parramatta, 6am." I watched this happen for three decades. Watched mates get underpaid. Watched contractors get overcharged. Watched agencies make a fortune off blokes who do the hardest work in the country. So I built something different. RateRight. One flat fee: $50. Paid once by the contractor. Workers set their own rate and keep every cent. Not $50 per hour. Not $50 per day. $50 total. No percentage. No margin. No middleman clipping the ticket week after week. Someone had to say it. Someone had to build it. After 30 years on the tools, that someone is me. That's the receipt. 🧾 #constructionaustralia #labourhire #tradie #constructionjobs #fairpay #sydneyconstruction #steelfixer #hiring --- **Posting notes:** - This is your credibility post. Lead with your story. - Expect agencies to push back in comments — let the community defend you - Pin this to your profile if it performs well - Reply to every comment in the first 2 hours --- ## Post 2: "Set Your Rate. Keep Your Rate." (The Worker Post) **When to post:** 2-3 days after Post 1. **Audience:** Workers / tradies **Suggested time:** Friday, 12:00 PM AEST (lunch break scroll) **Estimated read time:** 60 seconds --- I spent 30 years as a number on someone else's books. Labour hire sends you a text. You show up. You do 10 hours of the heaviest work going. And somewhere between your sweat and your payslip, $200 disappears. Every. Single. Day. Nobody tells you what the contractor actually pays for you. Nobody shows you the bill rate. You find out by accident one day — overhear a conversation, see an invoice left on a desk — and you realise someone's been banking $40-50k a year off your back. That moment changes you. It changed me. I'm a steelfixer. 30 years. Ireland to Sydney. I've worked through agencies, for subbies, gone direct. I've seen every version of how this industry moves money around — and I've seen who always loses. The worker. So I built RateRight. Here's the deal and there's no fine print: → You set your hourly rate. Not an agency. Not an algorithm. You. → A contractor hires you. They pay a $50 flat fee for the connection. → You get paid your rate. The full amount. Nothing skimmed off the top. $45/hr? You get $45/hr. $55/hr? You get $55/hr. $70/hr? You get $70/hr. Zero platform fee for workers. Not now. Not later. Not ever. I didn't build this from a corner office. I built it from a construction site. Between shifts. After 12-hour days. Because I know what it's like to do the work and watch someone else take the money. Set your rate. Keep your rate. That's RateRight. #tradie #constructionjobs #fairpay #steelfixer #constructionaustralia #labourhire #tradielife #bluecollar --- **Posting notes:** - This is your empathy post. Speak directly to workers. - Workers will tag their mates — encourage it - If someone shares their agency story, reply and amplify it - Keep replies short and real — "Exactly mate" > corporate-speak --- ## Post 3: "Why I Built This" (The Origin Story) **When to post:** The following week. After problem + worker posts have landed. **Audience:** Industry / both sides **Suggested time:** Monday, 7:30 AM AEST **Estimated read time:** 90 seconds --- People keep asking why a 30-year steelfixer built a tech platform. Fair question. Here's the honest answer. I've been in construction my entire adult life. Started as a kid tying steel in Ireland. Moved to Sydney. Spent decades on the tools — formwork, rebar, concrete. Supervisor now, still on site every day at 5:30am. I've worked through agencies. I've hired through agencies. I've been on both sides. And I've watched the same thing happen for 30 years: A contractor needs workers. An agency fills the gap. The contractor pays $65/hr. The worker gets $40. And a company that contributes nothing to the physical work takes $25/hr — every hour, every day, every week — for making a phone call. Nobody questions it because "that's just how it works." But it's not how it has to work. Every other industry figured this out years ago. You don't pay a 30% ongoing fee to book a flight. You don't pay a middleman every time you catch an Uber. The taxi dispatchers lost because they were toll booths, not service providers. Labour hire agencies are the taxi dispatchers of construction. So I taught myself to build software. Nights and weekends. After 12-hour days on site. I don't have a CS degree. I don't have VC backing. I've got 30 years of watching an industry rip off its own workers — and a $50 flat fee that makes the whole margin model obsolete. RateRight: contractors pay $50 once to hire. Workers keep 100% of what they earn. It's not complicated. It's just never been done in construction because the people making $50k/year per worker off the current system have no reason to change it. I do. #constructionaustralia #startup #labourhire #tradie #constructionjobs #founder #fairpay #buildingaustralia #steelfixer --- **Posting notes:** - This is your founder narrative. The "movement" post. - Share your learn-to-code journey if asked in comments - The Uber/taxi analogy resonates — lean into it - This post builds the "someone had to do it" story for media later --- ## Alternative Post: "The $50,000 Question" (Data-Driven) **When to use:** If Post 1 underperforms or you want a shorter, punchier option **Audience:** Both — data-focused contractors and workers **Suggested time:** Any weekday, 7:30 AM AEST **Estimated read time:** 45 seconds --- The $50,000 question. If an agency keeps $25/hr on a single worker — which is common in construction — that's $50,000/year. Not $50,000 across the whole business. Not $50,000 across all their workers. $50,000 from one person. **For the worker:** That $50,000 is money generated by YOUR labour that you never see. If you're on $40/hr, that missing $25/hr would take you from $83,200/year to $135,200/year. **For the contractor:** That $50,000 per worker comes off your project margin. Crew of 5? That's $250,000/year in agency fees. Crew of 10? Half a million. **For the agency:** Great business model. If you're the agency. RateRight changes the maths: → Workers keep 100% of their rate → Contractors pay $50 flat fee per hire. Once. $50,000/year vs $50 once. That's not a pricing difference. That's a broken industry finally getting fixed. 🧾 #constructionaustralia #labourhire #fairpay #constructioncosts #tradie #builderlife #constructionjobs --- **Posting notes:** - Shorter, more shareable than Post 1 - Good for testing which format resonates - The numbers do the heavy lifting - Works well with the receipt graphic --- ## Posting Strategy | Order | Post | Gap | Purpose | |-------|------|-----|---------| | 1st | The Receipt | — | Drop the maths. Establish the problem. Introduce Michael's credibility (30 years). | | 2nd | Set Your Rate | 2-3 days | Speak directly to workers. Emotional. Personal. | | 3rd | Why I Built This | 4-5 days | Origin story. Industry commentary. The "movement" post. | **Why this order:** Problem → Empathy → Solution. The Receipt grabs attention with outrage. The worker post builds connection. The origin story gives people someone to follow. **Engagement strategy:** - Reply to every comment in the first 2 hours (critical for LinkedIn algorithm) - Don't pitch in replies — just engage genuinely - If someone asks "where do I sign up?" → "DM me, we're in early access" - If an agency person pushes back → don't fight. Let other commenters defend you. **What to track:** - Which post gets most comments (engagement) - Which post gets most shares (resonance) - What questions people ask (content ideas for future posts) - Who tags their mates (potential early users) --- ## What Makes These Different From The Raw Drafts The original drafts were maths-and-data content. Good for a content calendar. But they were missing the one thing that makes LinkedIn actually work: **a human being behind the numbers.** These 3 posts are Michael's story. A steelfixer who saw the problem for 30 years and built the solution himself. That's not a marketing angle — that's a founder narrative that agencies literally cannot compete with. No agency CEO has 30 years on the tools. That's the moat. --- *⚠️ DRAFT — Do not publish without Michael's explicit "yes." Not a single word goes live without approval.* *When ready to post: Copy directly into LinkedIn. These are formatted for LinkedIn's text styling (line breaks matter).*