The Board is coming, the Board is coming!
I work for what I would call a medium-sized corporation. It is big enough that the company's stock is publicly traded on Nasdaq, but we are not so big that you would be familiar with us or that you would have ever heard our name probably unless you were in the industry. We do have a Board of Directors with some members that have some pretty impressive credentials. Out of the eight Board members, we have several CEOs, retired Generals, and even a billionaire (and I'm sure most if not all the others are millionaires). They were taking time to travel to all of the corporation's locations to see the operations side of the company for which they make decisions as the Board of Directors and they came to our location yesterday. Having arrived by private plane, they were to spend the day touring our work site. You would think that I should be very nervous about this wouldn't you? Well I wasn't. That's because I no longer work out at our site which is about 30 miles outside of town. I work in a small office we have in town and the Board was not supposed to come to our office. Notice I said not supposed to. After their tour, they told our General Manager who was showing them around that they wanted to see our town office where he and I and two others work. Fortunately, I looked presentable enough yesterday for meeting these men and I still wasn't too nervous since I figured they would just be stopping by and I would at most just have to shake their hands and meet them. Well, they did just stop by for about 20-30 minutes, but they spent at least 10-15 minutes in my office asking me questions. Our corporate President and CEO who is on the Board introduced me and said "whaaaat!, I hate to put you on the spot, but why don't you explain a little about..." and went on from there with several questions for which I was grateful that I knew the answers and I feel I was somewhat able to answer in an intelligent manner. Whewww. Maybe it was best that I didn't know ahead of time so I didn't get nervous and try to prepare and worry about saying the right things. All these guys were actually kind of nice and weren't all snooty and things, but seemed like regular guys. Yeah, regular guys with a lot of power and money, but you really couldn't tell. One in particular that asked me more of the questions was only maybe 10 years older than me and was wearing jeans which I noticed had a ring in the back pocket from a can of dip. He must just be a good ol' boy who made it big time, but who is still just a good ol' boy. Have you ever had an experience like this? Have you ever shaken hands with a billionaire, a retired several star General, or even a CEO? Well now I can say I have and it didn't even have to be that big of a deal.
posted by whaaaat! at
8:32 AM
4 Comments:
As a matter of fact I have. I met and spoke with Paul Allen and Bill Gates on the same day. Same situation, but it was at a reception. Pail Allen was standing by himslef and a third board member suggested I speak with Mr. Allen because it would be a wonderful opportunity. And I did. Like you said down to earth and obscenely loaded with cash. Mr. Allen was great. I asked if he ever thoguth his idea would lead to what it had and he quickly and decisively said, "Oh no, never I never thought it would ever be this big."
~Jef
By
Anonymous, at 10:32 AM
Wow Jef, now that is a cool story that you can impress your kids with. I'm impressed.
By
whaaaat!, at 12:26 PM
It's just as well you didn't know, indeed. By not worrying you saved yourself from not growing an inch taller because of it.
I think I know what I meant.
By
Joe, at 12:52 PM
I was lucky enough in my corporate career to be a part of many different "road shows" that featured big named speakers. It doesn’t matter who were; I was always happy to meet and talk to them for a few minutes.
My most amazing experience was to be able to talk to Bill Cosby for about 15 minutes prior to one of those gigs; he was very down-to-earth and made me feel very comfortable.
By
Fred, at 9:08 AM
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