Let me ask you a question that might make you uncomfortable: When was the last time you walked out of a meeting thinking, "Wow, that was the absolute best use of my time"?
If you're like most leaders I work with, you probably can't remember. And there's a reason for that.
Reality: No work happens in meetings.
I've scaled multiple companies and consulted for dozens more, and I've come to a conclusion that flies in the face of corporate orthodoxy—meetings don't create revenue. They don't serve customers. They don't build products. And they certainly don't generate revenue.
Meetings are what we call a non value-add activity. There is nothing that happens in a meeting that directly drives revenue. Its the same as walking in the office, moving inventory across the floor, or eating lunch.... it happens AT work... but it doesn't generate revenue.
The Hidden Cost That's Eating Your Profits
Think about it—what do we actually collect money for? Delivering services. Building products. Solving customer problems. Last I checked, no client ever said, "I'd like to pay you $10,000 to sit in a conference room and debate strategy for 3 hours."
Yet the average scaling company dedicates roughly 15-20 hours per employee per week to meetings. That's half their productive time!
If you're running a 50-person company with an average salary of $75,000, you're flushing approximately $937,500 down the toilet every year on meeting time that produces zero direct revenue.
That's what I call the "Meeting Tax"—and it's probably the biggest hidden expense on your books.
The Cognitive Drain You're Ignoring
But wait, it gets worse.
The Meeting Tax isn't just about wasted time—it's about wasted brainpower. Decision-making researchers like Roy Baumeister have proven that willpower and decision-making capacity are finite resources that deplete throughout the day.
Every time you pull your team into a meeting, you're not just taking their time—you're draining their mental batteries on activities that don't directly contribute to your bottom line:
- Listening intently
- Processing information on the spot
- Trying to formulate responses
- Navigating office politics
- Selling ideas to others
By the time your team gets back to their desks after that 90-minute "quick sync," they've spent a significant portion of their daily decision-making currency on something that produced no tangible output.
The Scalability Problem No One's Talking About
Jim Collins talks about "20 Mile Marches" in Good to Great—consistent progress toward your goals. But what happens when your default response to every problem is "let's get everyone in a room"?
I'll tell you what happens—your 20 Mile March grinds to a 5 Mile Crawl.
Here's why meetings are a scalability killer:
- They create hidden dependencies—decisions wait for everyone to be available
- They don't scale—imagine the meeting load when you have 200 people if you struggle with 20
- They leave no reference trail—knowledge shared verbally disappears when the meeting ends
- They force synchronous work—the opposite of what scaling companies need
When companies like Basecamp, GitLab, and Buffer scaled to hundreds of millions in revenue with largely remote teams, they didn't do it by scheduling more Zoom calls. They built asynchronous cultures by design.
The Asynchronous Revolution Your Company Needs
So what's the alternative? Build an asynchronous-first culture.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
Problem identification happens in writing—Post issues to a shared board where everyone can see them.
Discussion happens in threads—Comments, reactions, and solutions get documented where everyone can follow the logic.
Decisions get documented—The resolution and reasoning live forever, searchable and referenceable.
And when a meeting is absolutely necessary? Keep it to 15 minutes max with a clear agenda and decision to be made.
Building Your Company's Knowledge Base
The most valuable asset in a scaling company isn't your product or even your people—it's your knowledge base. The collective wisdom of how things work, why decisions were made, and how to solve common problems.
But here's the kicker—meetings are terrible at building this asset. Information shared verbally evaporates when people leave the room (or the company).
I implemented a radical policy at my last company: I refused to answer questions directly from new team members. Instead, I'd say:
"Great question. I'm going to document the answer in our knowledge base and send you the link."
Was this extra work for me initially? Absolutely. But by the end of the first month, we had 50+ new documented processes that:
- Could be referenced by anyone
- Became part of our onboarding
- Allowed us to hire in batches of 20+ people
- Never needed to be re-explained by me or anyone else
The Asynchronous Toolkit
You don't need fancy tools to make this work. The simplest stack includes:
- A question/issue tracking board (Trello, Asana, etc.)
- A documentation platform (Notion, Confluence, etc.)
- Screen recording software (Loom, Screencast-o-matic)
- A chat platform for quick questions (Slack, Teams)
The key isn't the tools—it's the culture and expectation you set around them.
Your 30-Day Asynchronous Challenge
If you want to free your company from the Meeting Tax, try this 30-day challenge:
- Audit your meeting load—Calculate the true cost of your meetings (hours × salaries)
- Cut all recurring meetings by 50%—Force prioritization of what really matters
- Implement a "Write it down first" rule—All problems must be documented before discussion
- Create a 5-minute rule—If a meeting must happen, limit it to 5 minutes for decisions only
- Start building your knowledge base—Answer every question with documentation
The pushback will be fierce—humans are social creatures, and we've been conditioned to believe meetings equal productivity. They don't.
The Bottom Line
Every meeting is time you're not spending on driving revenue, improving your product, or serving customers. It's a tax on your company's growth potential.
The businesses that scale efficiently aren't the ones with the most meetings—they're the ones that have figured out how to solve problems and make decisions without them.
So ask yourself: Is your company addicted to meetings simply because "that's how we've always done it"? If so, you've identified your biggest obstacle to scaling.
Build an asynchronous culture now, before your Meeting Tax becomes a growth-killing burden you can't shake.
Your move.
