I was explaining how I go about finding deals yesterday to a friend of mine and I thought I ought to explain it to everyone.
I write this blog. It's like a broadcast channel of "what is interesting to me." I market it every way I know how and I get somewhere between 70k to 100k unique readers of it every month between web, rss, and mobile.
As a result, I figure entrepreneurs and others have a pretty good idea of what I want to see and what I don't. And I believe they can self select. And for the most part, they do a great job of that.
Given that dynamic, I take meetings, as many as I can. I went back over my calendar for the past few weeks and it seems that on average I take ten meetings a day. I don't filter my calendar that much to be honest. I try to meet with as many people as I can.
I know that if I filtered my calendar more carefully, I'd get a better successful meeting ratio. But instead of spending time on vetting meetings, I spend time taking them.
So maybe I have a 70% success rate, seven good meetings per day, three bad ones.
If I spent a considerable part of my day reading business plans, referencing people on the way in, I might be able to take five or six meetings. But even if they were all successful, I'd still get less successful meetings that day.
So I don't bother too much about vetting meetings. I just take them as much as I can.
That's how I do it. Thought you should know.
