Take Every Meeting Rule
Use low-probability meetings to compound contacts and surface surprises
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 93%
Joe Wallace uses a deliberately open meeting policy to discover opportunities that conventional screening would reject. He accepts that roughly eight out of ten conversations may produce nothing immediate, but he still gains a person for his network and occasionally finds an outcome he could not have predicted. The mechanism is cumulative: take the meeting, hear the person out, avoid judging them by appearance or status, and retain the relationship even if the proposal is weak. Over time, those contacts form a network that can reveal introductions, deals, or knowledge through indirect connections. The rule treats an unproductive pitch and an unproductive relationship as different things; the first can fail while the second still compounds.
Origin
Extracted from Coffeez for Closers
Core principles
- 01A meeting can be valuable even when the immediate idea is not
- 02Every new contact can connect you to an unexpected opportunity
- 03Appearances are unreliable signals of a person's value or resources
How to run it
- 1
Open the door
Accept conversations that appear plausible even when the source or proposal looks unconventional.
Pro tip Include people outside your established business circles.
Watch out An open meeting policy is not the same as committing money or endorsing a deal.
- 2
Hear the proposal
Let the person explain the idea before deciding whether it has immediate value.
Pro tip Ask what they know, who they know, and what outcome they want.
Watch out Do not substitute appearance, clothing, or apparent wealth for diligence.
- 3
Separate idea from relationship
If the proposal is not useful, still consider whether the person belongs in your network.
Pro tip Capture enough context to remember why the contact may matter later.
- 4
Let the network compound
Stay open to later introductions and opportunities that arrive through the contact rather than the original pitch.
Pro tip Review unexpected wins to reinforce which types of meetings are worth continuing.
In the wild
A friend called Wallace about a man he had met at a car wash who wanted to build something in sports. Wallace took the conversation, flew to Seattle, and was hired to help build the venture and recruit a prominent board. The company later collapsed after the founder was arrested, so the story also shows why openness to meetings must remain separate from diligence and control.
→ The unlikely meeting created a major business role while also teaching Wallace not to place his future entirely in another person's hands.
Common mistakes
Judging the person by appearance
Wallace says apparent wealth and actual resources often do not align, so surface signals can cause bad filtering.
Treating a weak pitch as a useless contact
Most meetings may produce no immediate deal, but the person can still become useful within the wider network.
Confusing access with trust
Taking a meeting creates optionality; it does not replace verification before accepting claims, investing, or joining a venture.
Is it for you?
Best for
Entrepreneurs, investors, and business developers who depend on a broad opportunity network.
Not ideal for
People who cannot protect enough time to screen and attend speculative conversations.
From the transcript
“And one of those guys that takes every meeting.”
“And listen, eight times out of 10, it's nothing.”
“You never know who knows who.”
From the episode
Joe Wallace