Every big Austin weekend on the calendar, ACL in October, F1 right after it, and Austin Tech Week closing the run, gets its return from work done months earlier. Larry’s version of the off-season is not rest but assembly: build the list, build the pitch, and build the one-page pipeline plan before anyone is in town. This is house money thinking from Richest Man in Babylon, the 70/20/10 split that gives you a cushion so you are never negotiating from empty pockets once the season starts.
A cushion means you can walk into a summer mixer without needing that room to pay your rent, which changes how you sound once you are in it. PQRST, Larry’s prep checklist of preview, question, read, summarize, and test, works the same in July as it does the week of the event. Preview the venues, question who is actually attending, read whatever materials exist, summarize your fuzzy points, and test them on someone before the room fills up.
The External API move here is simple: instead of inventing your own Austin event, you plug into ACL, F1, or Tech Week’s existing pull and build your machine around their calendar. Larry says he built relationships for months before ever asking for anything, so the ask in October is really the payoff of the ask he never made back in the spring.
Publishing early matters too, since a Web12 post written and syndicated months before the season has time for Google to credit the page before anyone searches for it in a panic. The machine itself is boring by design: a spreadsheet of names, a folder of notes, and a short list of who owes you a follow-up and who you owe one to.
Karma tracking belongs in the off-season as much as the on-season, since a quick thank-you note sent early in the year still compounds by the time October arrives. Nobody sees the machine getting built, which is exactly why so few people bother to build one before the season starts.
Details: Watch Larry on off-season prep
#OffSeason #HouseMoney #Web12