the pre-interview was the test

i booked fifteen minutes with a founder to see whether we would do a show together, and i could not hear a single word he said.

the audio scratched and roared. the picture washed him out into a bright shape. i said hello about nine times. he tried moving his laptop around the room. at one point he asked whether it was any better and i had to tell him i had no idea what he had just asked me.

so i told him the truth. you could have the best company on earth and there is still no show. then i offered him a slot the following tuesday and meant it, while knowing i am booked solid for a month and it might not happen.

and then i sat there afterwards feeling grateful, which surprised me.

the pre-interview exists for a list of stated reasons. agree the title. get the introduction right. work out whether the person is worth an hour of a stranger's attention. but the real reason is the one i had never had to use before that call. it is a test of whether the thing can physically happen.

a gate only earns its keep on the day it closes.

if we had gone straight to the stream, three things break at once. he burns his one shot, live, with no editing, because a live stream has exactly one edit available to it and that edit is delete. i burn an hour i cannot get back in a month that has no spare hours in it. and i put something bad in front of people who watch because they trust that i only put up things worth their time. that third one is the expensive one and it is the one nobody counts.

every process you run has one job it does not actually perform until the day something real fails it. the rest of the time it looks like overhead, and it is easy to argue for deleting overhead. people delete the step right up until the week they wish they still had it.

there is a second thing in here about generosity. the kind move was not pushing through and being nice about it. the kind move was telling him plainly what was broken and holding a slot for him. pretending it was fine would have cost him far more than the awkwardness did.

which step in your process are you about to cut because it has not saved you yet?