It's a moment many of us dread. A stranger asks for a phone call -- or worse yet, a meeting. You already have way too much on your plate. Your brain is not just sitting there passively, waiting to be picked. Plus, the mental image of a brain being picked is just gross.
Most people answer this question by asking, "What will I get?" They run a cost-benefit analysis, and base the decision on expected utility. And that's a terrible mistake, because it's impossible to predict the utility of a meeting.
In 1994, a professor named Bill Hamilton was asked to meet with a young entrepreneur who was starting a biotech venture, and consider joining the board. After one look at the business plan, "I quickly decided that I had no interest in a venture with no money and no management," Bill says -- there were "just too many other demands on my time."
But then Bill took a leap of faith. Despite having no desire to get involved, "I offered to meet with him to see how I could help."
Bill asked the entrepreneur a series of questions, and ten days later he had a set of unusually thoughtful, detailed answers in his hands. After several more meetings over the next few months, Bill was impressed enough with the entrepreneur and his ideas that he changed his mind, and joined the board as the first independent director.
Seven years later, just before an initial public offering, they sold Avid Radiopharmaceuticals to Eli Lilly for $320 million. "This was a terrific exit for everyone associated with the company, including investors, management and directors," Bill says. "I was only trying to help, but I ended gaining a lot -- both experiential and financial."
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Bill is not alone. Here's my story (magic trick style, with a full deck of playing cards) of what happened when a financial adviser named Peter Audet went to visit a client with no assets :
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