Let's do lunch

I have an upcoming day in DC wide open, except for the dozen or so offers of coffee, chats, lunch, breakfast or dinner.

You want to accomodate all, but that get's awfully unrealistic. So how to prioritize?

One is a foreign government. Is that just national PR or something real to pursue?

Another is a big national association, but not one that deals with security affairs really, except it's a retired three-star that's asking.

Then there's the think-tank types and the impassioned mid-level officers. In some instances I'm sure it would lead to something, in others I'm sure it would go nowhere. At what point do I stop the just-talking-to-anyone-who-rings-me-up thing?

On some level, if it's not pushing the vision or creating a business opportunity (which gets me money so I can keep pushing the vision in non-paying venues that count), then it gets awfully hard to keep justifying the time on the road. I don't want to sell retail one-by-one. High-end, yes.

These are tricky decisions and rule sets. You want to focus your time and use what you've got for maximum impact, and that means, if you're successfull, that your threshold for interactions should be getting higher over time.

But at what pace does that climb unfold?

And no, these are not self-indulgent or self-congratulatory notions to ponder. I take the visionary thing very seriously, because my guys (and gals) are never out of power and their lives are always on the line--somewhere, somehow. If I'm going to do the vision thing, I'm going to pursue it as a real deal, one in which interior strategizing is as valid as anywhere else.

I'm not interesting in gliding. I'm interested in getting somewhere right as quickly as possible.

You either get busy saving or you get busy wasting.