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30 NO B.S. Time Management for EntrepreneursCHAPTER 3 / HOW TO DRIVE A STAKE THROUGH THE HEARTS OF THE TIME VAMPIRES OUT TO SUCK YOU DRY2. Don%u2019t serve refreshments.3. Circulate a written agenda in advance.4. Have and communicate a clear, achievable objective for the meeting.This refreshment thing%u2019s a big tip, by the way. My friend Dave Petito, a great TV infomercial producer, and I both used to get paid to attend meetings for the same company. These took place at the firm%u2019s palatial Beverly Hills office or sometimes its CEO%u2019s home. At either place, the table was laden end-to-end with a fabulous array of food: bagels, five flavors of cream cheese, salmon, imported cheeses, sandwich meats, croissants, muffins, cookies%u2014really good grub. Having the food there added at least an hour or more to every meeting%u2014after all, you can%u2019t advise with your mouth full. This company has long since gone out of business. I wonder why.If you must attend a meeting, you also have some stakes available so you can slay Mr. Meeting.1. Determine in advance what information you are to contribute, and then do it with a prepared, minimum-time maximum-impact presentation. I don%u2019t necessarily mean a formal, fancy PowerPoint presentation. Better is one page of facts and brief narrative that you can speak to without aid of a series of slides that suck up hours in the making, extend the meeting time, and bore people into a quasisomnambulant state. At Amazon, Jeff Bezos forbid use of PowerPoint presentations in meetings, insisting that they were a giant waste of time, and that employees should %u201cknow their stuff%u201d and be able to express their thoughts cogently. By this, other abnormal practices, and an explosive temper, Bezos is judged very difficult to work for by many. His answer is: %u201cWhat we do is hard. I don%u2019t want this place to be a country club. This is not where people go to retire.%u201d (For a