- Hi, I'm Dan Martell, serial entrepreneur,
investor and creator of SaaS Academy and in this video
I'm gonna share with you the five steps to running
an incredible board meeting
so that you don't have to feel overwhelmed,
nervous or feel like they're not going to be productive at all.
And be sure to stay to the end where I'm going to share with
you an exclusive video.
An interview, a fireside chat really,
with Jason Cohen, the cofounder of WP engine.
They just raised $250 million.
They are at $100 million annual recurring revenue
after eight years.
Trust me, you don't want to miss that interview.
(upbeat music)
So maybe you got your first board meeting coming or
you've been running them and just don't feel like
they're very productive or efficient.
Trust me, I know how you feel.
I've been running board meetings now for my past two venture
backed companies, Flowtown.com and Clarity.fm.
I've even had the pleasure of inviting my little baby,
he's five now but when he was little,
he actually came to a couple of early board meetings just to get
him used to the environment of business.
And one of the things that we're always trying to accomplish is
how to be more effective and efficient and I realized in the
first meetings I had that I was kind of awkward.
I didn't really know what the investors expected.
I didn't know how to communicate,
how to ask for feedback, and what I did I went on a journey
and I discussed this with many of my investors and advisors.
Guys like Travis Kalanick from Uber,
was an early investor in Flowtown.
Our investors themselves and say what have you seen work in other
boards and did a ton of research online and what I've distilled
things down to our these five steps.
Step number one, big picture.
This step usually takes about 15 minutes and
is really just CEO update.
Let the board know what's new at the business.
Highlight certain things that you feel they should be aware of
and talk about, at a high level it's not for discussion,
some of the challenges you may be facing in the business.
It's short, it's sweet, it's to the point.
It's to give an overview of the business.
Step number two, calibrate.
This usually last between 45 minutes and 60 minutes
and it's really about a few key areas.
Number one is you want to talk about your metrics.
You want to talk about your KPIs for the business.
How you're doing, you want to talk about your funnel metrics
to make sure you understand how you acquire customers,
convert them and deliver the value that you've committed.
And then, finally, talk about your performance versus plan.
Every business should have some kind of forward-looking plan and
you want to inform your board how you're doing based on your
current numbers versus, you know,
your actual versus the plan so they can get everybody set from
a financial and a numerical point of view
on the performance of the business.
Step number three, company building.
At a high level this is things like org chart.
Have you made any new hires, key hires,
need to make some hires?
You can just put all that in there.
You also want to talk about the roadmap from
a product point of view.
Let everybody know what you've accomplished so far and
what you plan on doing.
And then also, if it makes sense,
have your leaders from the team update you so that you can
present that to board.
So that can be your VP of product,
VP of engineering, VP of sales just so that the board has an
understanding of the performance of each functional unit and kind
of their plan as things progress and the company grows.
Step number four, working sessions.
So this is usually a 60 minute session broken down
into two parts 'cause you want to identify ideally
one or two major topics.
And these topics can be things like business challenges,
partnership potentials, opportunities that you might be
deciding against and what you want to do is you want
in context present that topic, set a time block for 30 minutes,
present the facts, talk to the board,
get some feedback, understand their experience,
how they've approached those challenges or opportunities,
how to evaluate them, and then finally,
come to a resolution.
So ideally every board meeting you're gonna look at two of
those to keep things on focus and on pace.
30 minutes each so the total working session is about
60 minutes and that'll get you clarity as a leader.
Now, here's a key tip is you never want to go in there with a
challenge or problem and not provide some of your thoughts on
how you can resolve it.
As a CEO and a leader your job is to lead the board,
not look at them as the oracles of answers
to all your biggest challenges.
If that happens, especially if you're in a position where you
don't own control of the business anymore,
they might start thinking to themselves that you're not the
right person to lead the business.
So be sure when you present these topics that you also
present solutions to the challenges or opportunities that
your facing or at least provide an opinion.
Step number five, close the session.
This is a simple wrap up, 15 minutes max,
and it's all around the business formalities.
Maybe you have some decisions to make around stock grants and
really it's just about making sure everybody's commitments.
One my favorite things to do, both investors and
board members, is to actually put them to work.
I mean they're there, they're being compensated for being on
the board typically and you want to make sure that you capture
those action items and set some timelines for when they can
expect or you can expect a return on that feedback or an
answer to your question or an introduction to somebody that
can help move those opportunities forward.
So be sure you just save all the formalities,
the votings, et cetera, plus get commitments
and wrap it up in 15 minutes.
So quick recap, number one, big picture.
15 minutes quick highlights and updates.
Number two, calibrate.
Number three, company building.
Four, working sessions.
And number five, close out the session.
As I mentioned, I wanted to share an exclusive fireside chat
that I had with Jason Cohen, the cofounder of WP engine,
a WordPress platform.
They just cracked $100 million in annual recurring revenue,
raised $250 million and I had the privilege of sitting down
with him at a board room with about a dozen of my coaching
clients that are $2 million-plus in annual recurring revenue so
really scaling and growing.
You know, doubling, tripling every year and Jason just
unpacked some of the uncommon challenges and solutions that
I hadn't heard anywhere before around how to
prioritize product roadmap or opportunities,
how to set culture in your company,
and really how to scale a high-performing SaaS team so
click the link below in the description to
get access to that conversation.
And if you liked this video,
be sure to click the like button,
subscribe to my channel and share it with a friend.
Hope this video finds you incredibly well
and I'll see you next video.
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