The Story You Tell Yourself Before the Meeting

The version of the meeting you rehearse in your head on the drive over tends to become the version you get. If the story is that you need this to work, you’ll negotiate like it, whether you mean to or not. Larry’s whole model runs on External API, borrowing a format that already works instead of inventing from scratch, and that changes the story too.

When you know you’re not improvising, you’re running a proven playbook, and the story shifts from hoping it works to knowing how it goes. That’s the same logic behind changing one word, Harvard to Stanford, and calling it a franchise: less invention means less to be anxious about. The story you tell yourself before the meeting should be boring, not dramatic, because boring means you’ve done this before.

House money helps write that story too, since a cushion means the meeting isn’t a referendum on your finances. PQRST gives the story its facts: you already know the material, so there’s nothing left to fear finding out.

Watch how Larry frames a pitch as something he’s already run, not something he’s discovering live. That framing isn’t arrogance, it’s just an accurate account of the prep behind it.

Before your next meeting, notice what story you’re telling yourself on the way there. Rewrite it around what you actually did to prepare, not around what could go wrong.