Arrive Thirty Minutes Early and Own the Alpha Chair

Larry’s rule is thirty minutes, not ten, because ten still feels like you are catching up to the room. Arriving early is the physical version of PQRST’s Preview step: you see the space before the space sees you rushing into it. At a place like Capital Factory, meetings can shift rooms or run long, and thirty minutes buys you the slack to adjust without panic.

The alpha chair is not always the biggest seat, it is the one facing the door with a clean sightline to who walks in. Whoever arrives late inherits whatever seat is left, and that seat sets the tone for the whole meeting. Thirty minutes also gives you time to read the room’s temperature before anyone can read yours.

It is the same house money logic Larry uses with cash: build a cushion first so nothing forces you into a desperate move. A rushed arrival carries a scent of desperation that no amount of preparation can fully cover.

Use the extra minutes to run your PQRST checklist one more time, not to scroll your phone in the lobby. Larry says the people who consistently win rooms are the ones nobody ever sees arriving.

By the time the other side walks in, you want to already look like part of the furniture. Owning the chair is really about owning the twenty minutes before the meeting starts, not the meeting itself.