Board Meetings

So - this may be totally boring to most anyone that reads this but I just have to share my first "experience" with a Board Meeting.

First, let me say, it was boring. I am the only female in the room with 12 men. Some are nice, some are so serious you think their face may crack if they crack a smile, and some had been in the men's card room since 8am drinking beer. I was lucky enough to have two of those beer drinkers fighting for a seat next to me. Lucky me.
So being my first board meeting to present the Financial Statements to the board.. I had no idea what to expect. The first meeting was at 4:30, a meeting with the newly established "finance committee". We were to go over the budget proposal for 2011. Let me paint this picture.. me, our GM (who is a nice guy but thinks everyone on the board hates him), a retired bank president that had been through a 4 hour stress today and really I thought he would crawl up on the table and fall asleep, the most serious of the bankers - face crack guy, and our ever so lovely Vice president of the club - the old super nice guy that smiles while digging a knife deeper.... ya get the picture?

So the first line on the budget (which is 4 pages long) is regarding estimated revenue from the golf shop... first item .. Cart plans. We proceeded to talk/discuss/argue/talk more about cart plans. FORTY FIVE minutes we discussed CART PLANS. Then we had to "adjourn" the finance committee meeting b/c the board meeting was due to start. What was resolved? "We should bring this up to the rest of the board in the board meeting" - Oh boy, yes, lets get the rest of them in on this one. I thought to myself "I should have packed Nathan some jammies".

So the rest of the guys come in with their drinks, beers, wine (and I wanted to pout "where is mine?").. we get started... and they let me go first.

I present the Income Statement and Balance sheet. I go over each section. answer questions and love the one I got... from the old stone face guy... "so where do we get these numbers, I mean what is the variance and how do we know what we're actually spending and receiving." . Um, well, ya see, it all goes into the computer software.. daily.. hourly as a matter of fact and then I create the reports from the software and WHA LA - reports! "yes but, are they right?" - Well, stone face dude, it is what it is... it's a report, based on the daily numbers, so yes. President inserts "they are as close as they are going to get Bob, can we move on?" - and then they started asking me for all this other stuff.. that I didn't have... and I started to sweat. So I took a sip of my tea.. and smiled and said .... (Dad, you would have been proud of me)...

"Well gentlemen.. since this is my first board meeting, and I really don't know you all want need or expect, why don't you tell me exactly what you'd like for me to have here to present to you and I will take care of it. I kind of came in to this meeting blind so tell me what you want to see and I'll have it for you.".

Nobody could tell me anything. They all just sat there and then started with "oh no this is great, and we know the variances are computed" and all of a sudden they grew brains.

I also told them that our software company is coming in to town in January and I'd love to have them sign up to come to the accounting training so that they can ask for specific reports or see how things work and maybe that would help them all understand how our system works. No takers..

I left after my part was over so that my kids could get home and have some dinner, but I wonder if they are all still sitting up there talking about the damn cart plans.

So overall my first board meeting went okay. Not great, Not bad... just went and I'm cool with that.