About the Meeting Cost Calculator

I built this meeting calculator with Claude Code as a creative exercise — and I won't pretend I knew what I was doing. I learned a ton, and I still have a lot to learn.

But sometimes the best way to figure something out is to just build it.

The concept isn't new to me though. Tracking the real cost of meetings is something I've been advocating for years. Most organizations treat meetings like they're free. They're not. They're a budget line that nobody's watching.

Picture your next town hall - virtual or in person - with 250 employees averaging $90,000 a year. Now imagine it starts five minutes late. Or your COO goes off-script for ten minutes on something that could've been an email. Do you know what that's costing the business? Most people don't. But they should.

Plug in your headcount and average salary, name your agenda sections if you want, and hit "Start Meeting." Watch the clock and the cost run.

Go build something.

I'm not a developer. I'm not even close. But I tried something new, got frustrated, figured it out, broke it, fixed it, and eventually had something I was proud of. That's the whole process.

There's something genuinely satisfying about creating a thing that didn't exist before - even if that thing is a meeting cost calculator that maybe a dozen people will ever use. The size of the win doesn't matter. The fact that you made something does.

So whatever you've been putting off because you don't know enough yet — start anyway. Make mistakes. Fail at stuff. Google things embarrassingly basic. Ask an AI for help and then ask it again when you don't understand the answer.

When it finally clicks, even just a little, it feels really good. Better than you'd expect. That's worth the frustration to get there.