Everyone wants to meet with the CEO.  But getting a meeting with the CEO, CTO, CMO, or any other member of the C-Suite is hard – and many would argue, nearly impossible.  They’re busy. They don’t necessarily think they’re more important than you, they just don’t have time to meet with you unless it’s cost effective.

Think about it in terms of an hourly wage.  According to Chief Executive Magazine, for “…private companies with at least $1 billion in revenue, the median CEO compensation package totaled just under $1.7 million…”.  If we assume a 40 hour work week and 52 weeks a year, that’s 2,080 working hours a year.  $1.7 million divided by 2,080 hours equals $817.31 per hour.  Is your meeting with the CEO worth her spending $800 on you?  Having you “pay for lunch” doesn’t quite cut it.

Recently I published an article on my blog that caught so much attention from Magento (a company acquired by eBay in 2011 for $180 million) that they contacted me.  I’m told that this article ended up on the CEO’s desk and he had the rest of his team reach out to me to get me on the phone so they could talk about it. The article was about how we moved our website from Magento to Shopify Plus.

I ended up meeting with the Chief Product Officer, the Head of Strategy, the Vice President of Product Management, and 2 other executives from Magento.  I can only guess at their salaries, but an hour long meeting with 5 people in their positions had to cost them $2,500 and up. Are you curious about why they scheduled this meeting with me? Do you want to know how you can replicate this for yourself?