An on-ramp for the community,
without waiting on Mike's calendar.

The Redneck Connecktor and the community he built around master attracting.

Mike Ashabraner is the founder of the Hounds of Business Community. He calls himself the Redneck Connecktor and runs what he calls master attracting group coaching plus a media network that funds and amplifies the community.

Mike spent years inside enterprise sales and channel development before he ever called himself the Redneck Connecktor. The work he does today is the inverse of that career. He helps coaches, consultants, experts, entrepreneurs, and small business owners attract the right clients without doing the LinkedIn pod humping, the cold-DM volume play, or the generic one-size-fits-all programs that have already burned most of them once.

The Hounds of Business is an ecosystem for farmers, not hunters. That phrase is load-bearing for Mike. The traditional sales motion in his industry is cold DMs, pitch slapping, bothering people, posting kitty memes for engagement. He builds the opposite of that: a place where heart-centered high-level professionals who do not feel very high-level lately can rebuild their authority through real relationships.

High-level professionals who do not feel very high-level lately, getting burned by the same playbook.

The members coming to Mike are not new to business. They are attorneys, doctors, fund managers, founders, coaches at the top of their craft. They are posting too often, second-guessing what to say, and being sold tactics that do not match how their actual clients buy. Most of them have already paid for at least one LinkedIn course or engagement-pod program that did not work, then been told by that program that the failure was their fault.

Mike's read on this is direct. They are buying the wrong thing, or the right thing at the wrong time. Nobody diagnosed the actual problem before prescribing the solution. The cost is not only money, it is heart. By the time someone reaches the Hounds, the question is no longer just how do I market. It is how do I get my work back to the people I am actually here to help.

A voice-first protégé that is the on-ramp for the Hounds of Business Community.

Mike's protégé carries the diagnostic-first conversation he runs at the front door of the community. It walks a member through the same questions Mike would ask, in his voice, on the member's schedule.

The four Cs of master attracting: clarity, connections, community, conversion.

Mike does not pitch the four Cs as a clever brand. He calls them principles, not things he made up — packaged so business owners can actually use them.

Clarity is always first. In Mike's words, everything hinges on it. If a prospect lands on a website, a profile, or a networking introduction and cannot say in one sentence who this person helps and what problem they solve, nothing downstream works. Most of his diagnostic time is spent here, because the member usually believes they are clear when their audience hears blah blah blah.

Connections is interacting with the right people in the right places for visibility, exposure, and a common purpose. This is where Mike's flip-the-script tactic for LinkedIn lives: instead of cold-DMing prospects, you bring value to them publicly so they come to your profile, see your branded positioning, and connect with you. He calls it bug zapper versus dog catching.

Community is the Hounds of Business itself. Members heading the same direction, supporting each other from the bottom up, not the top down. The community is where trust is built before any sale is asked for, and it is also where Mike refers members out to specialists when his own scope is not the right fit.

Conversion is the right message, the right community partners, and the right offers turning prospects into paid clients. Conversion is last on purpose. Without clarity, real connections, and a community to amplify trust, the offer never lands.

Mike compares the framework to gravity. The principles do not change. The execution can: parachute, hang glider, airplane, all valid. The diagnostic conversation decides which one a given member needs, in what order, on what timeline.

The diagnostic conversation, in Mike's voice, on the member's schedule.

When a member arrives, the protégé does what Mike would do in person: it diagnoses before it prescribes. The structure of that conversation comes straight from his onboarding interview.

Foundation, kept real and simple. What is working in your world right now, and what is just feeling heavy. Mike opens here because the business question is downstream of the human one. People lose heart before they lose revenue, and pretending otherwise wastes everyone's time.

Clarity on purpose. If you had a magic wand, what would your day to day look like in six months. Who do you really want to help. What kind of results light you up when you deliver them. The answer reveals whether the member needs a positioning rebuild, a referral to a branding partner, or just permission to keep doing what they were already good at.

Filters and red flags. Tell me about the last marketing thing you tried and what about it felt off to you. Did you feel like a dog being told to meow. The answers identify which programs and which voices have already burned this member, so the protégé does not blindly recommend something adjacent.

Energy leaks and support needs. Where are you spending time that does not pay you, financially or emotionally. What would it feel like to have support that actually fits your rhythm, not someone else's pace. This is the section that most coaching templates skip, because it surfaces the cost of staying on the current path.

Alignment check. Is the real issue strategy, messaging, audience, or something else entirely. The protégé will not flatter the member into believing the answer is whichever C they came in already wanting to hear.

Clean slate. If we had a clean slate today, what would you not bring with you into your next chapter. What do you not want to have to do in order to get what you want. The exit question of the diagnostic, and often the most useful one. The member leaves the session with a preliminary strategy, an honest read on whether Mike is the right next step or whether a referral is, and the framing to come back when they are ready.

The branding expert: $200K of revenue, 4,200 followers added.

Mike met an elite branding expert who saw him in a comments section back when he was first daring to be the redneck financial coach. She introduced herself, helped him define his brand without charging the rate she usually charged, and became one of the early support systems that made the Hounds possible. He returned the favor by teaching her his connection methodology.

Instead of cold-DMing and engagement pods, Mike taught her to tag the right people, engage meaningfully on others' posts, and let curiosity bring prospects back to her own profile. The profile itself had to be branded for humans, not the algorithm: a clear call to action, copy that resonated with the right people and pushed the wrong ones away.

Across the next nine months she generated about $50,000 in the first three months and another $150,000 in the following six. Roughly $200,000 in revenue from a follower count that grew by about 4,200. Mike stops at this story when he is asked about results because it makes the same point as his framework: vanity metrics are not the same thing as business outcomes.

The sponsor who hired Mike on the spot.

A man came into the Hounds of Business after one of Mike's group calls and started a sponsorship conversation. Mike laughed mid-conversation. The man asked what was funny, and Mike said: I created the Hounds of Business so I would not have to do this. The point was not to refuse the sponsor. It was to point at what the system is supposed to do. Members come into the Hounds, discover that the people inside are not full of it, figure out what they need, and then come to Mike if they want to. The sponsor heard that and hired Mike on the spot.

Mike's time goes to the connecting. The protégé carries the structured guidance.

The practical win is a cleaner split between the work Mike protects and the work he delegates. The protégé becomes the first stop for members. Mike becomes the second stop only when the session genuinely calls for him.

A member with a marketing question on a Wednesday evening does not have to wait until Monday for a calendar slot. They land on Mike's page, get into a voice conversation in seconds, and walk through the diagnostic in his voice on their schedule.

When a session needs Mike directly, the protégé routes there. When it does not, the member walks away with a concrete next step framed in Mike's language. Either way, the community's standards stay consistent as it grows past what any one person could meet with in a week.

How Mike got here.

• Before the HoundsMike spends years in enterprise sales and channel development, then becomes a financial coach. He daringly leans into the redneck-financial-coach positioning that becomes the seed of the Redneck Connecktor.
• The communityMike founds the Hounds of Business Community. The community becomes the place where members rebuild trust, get real diagnostic conversations, and learn the four Cs of master attracting.
• First protégéMike ships his first protégé on Apex Replicant, built as the on-ramp for members who want structured marketing guidance between his own conversations.
• Continuous refinementEach session is reshaped from real conversations with members. Mike rewrites an instruction, the protégé regenerates and redeploys against that change.
• April 2026Protégé is live and positioned as the member on-ramp. Measurement window opens the week of 2026-04-22. This page updates on the same URL once validated data arrives.