Remember the six-hour board meeting that broke me?

The one where I invented new swear words, lost several relationships, and accidentally founded a company?

Good times.

Well, we just had another board meeting. A Capital meeting — the kind where grown adults stare at spreadsheets and pretend they understand what “covenant headroom” means.

But this time, we ran it through Ripple.

Then we did something masochistic: we calculated what it would have looked like the old way.

The results were… educational.

The Traditional Meeting: A Masterclass in Suffering

Step 1: Schedule the meeting.

“Does Tuesday work?” “No.” “Wednesday?” “Define Wednesday.”

6 emails. 20 minutes. 4 small deaths.

Step 2: Agree the agenda.

5 more emails. 3 ‘reply all’ accidents. Someone suggests an agenda item that belongs in a therapist’s office, not a boardroom.

Step 3: Prepare the pack.

10-15 PowerPoint slides. 90 minutes formatting. 45 minutes debating whether the arrows should be blue or “more of a teal.”

“Can we make it pop more?”

No. No we cannot. Nothing pops. Joy is dead.

Step 4: Chase people to prepare.

“Did you read the pack?” “Yep, will do.”

They did not.

60% of people don’t prepare for meetings. The other 40% are lying to your face.

Step 5: The meeting itself.

90 minutes walking through the deck. (Because nobody read it.) (Because why would they.) (Because this is how we’ve always done it.) (Because suffering builds character, apparently.)

60 minutes on “focus items.” But everyone’s brain is soup by now. The important stuff? You’re too exhausted to think about it.

Someone asks a question answered on slide 4. Someone suggests we “circle back.” Someone says “let’s park that.” We park everything. The whole meeting is now a parking lot.

Steam exits my ears at a medically concerning velocity.

Step 6: After the meeting.

30 min drafting minutes. 30 min identifying tasks. 30 min manually updating 6 different tools that hate each other.

And then — the piece de resistance:

“Let’s schedule a follow-up.”

The wheel turns. The cycle continues. Hope takes early retirement.

Total damage: ~11 hours per person. 3 weeks elapsed. 1 soul (mine, again).

The Same Meeting, In Ripple

Same agenda. Same people. Same decisions. Vastly less theatre.

Scheduling? Smart scheduler. One click. Done. Nobody weeps.

Agenda? One Jam topic. Everyone comments in context. Actual alignment. In one place. No rogue email chains spiralling into oblivion.

The pack? Record short videos. Hit convert. Ripple builds the slides. Your voice provides the context.

Here’s the thing:

When the board sees “Cash down” on a slide? Panic. Apocalypse. Somebody call the lawyers.

When they hear me say “Cash is tight because it’s our slow season”? Ah. Seasonality. We’re fine.

Your voice = context. Context = no one assumes you’re insolvent.

Preparation? You can literally see who’s engaged. Peer pressure, but make it healthy.

The meeting? Everyone arrives briefed. Skip the 90-minute “walkthrough” entirely. 60 minutes on decisions. Fresh minds. Actual collaboration. The part that actually matters.

After? Minutes: automatic. Tasks: captured. Follow-up: not required.

It just… works.

Total damage: ~2.5 hours per person. 1 week elapsed. 0 souls sacrificed.

The Scoreboard

	Traditional	Ripple
Time per person	~11 hours	~2.5 hours
Duration	3 weeks	1 week
Tools involved	6+ fighting each other	1
Follow-up meetings	Inevitable	None
Will to live	Depleted	Intact

Saved: 8.25 hours per person. On. One. Meeting.

Oh, and We Killed 5 Tools

Old stack:

• Slack (for chaos distribution)
• PowerPoint (for font debates)
• Email (for passive aggression)
• Trello (for tasks nobody checks)
• Zoom (for “you’re on mute”)
• Docs (for version_final_FINAL_v3_USE_THIS_ONE)

New stack:

• Ripple.

One roof. Everything connected. Nothing lost in the void.

Slack says people spend 30% of their day just finding information. We eliminated that.

The Point

This isn’t a pitch deck. This isn’t theoretical. This is what actually happened when we stopped doing the Dance of Business and started working like humans who value their time.

Same meeting. Same people. Same decisions. 3x faster. 75% less effort. 100% less soul damage.

I’ve spent 25+ years in this game. Sat through more meetings than hot dinners. And the pattern is always the same:

Meetings drain energy. Ripple protects it.

That’s the whole game.

If your calendar looks like a hostage situation… If you’ve ever had a meeting to prepare for a meeting… If your “quick sync” has never once been quick…

There’s a better way. We built it. We tested it. We measured it.

The cartoon tells the story. The numbers speak for themselves.

This could’ve been a Ripple.