049 | You’ve Just Become a New HOA Board Member… What’s Next?

Julie Adamen: 0:00

These are the type of things that you need to know ahead of time so you can make a decision. And I can tell you this is very unpopular, but it's the truth if a board cannot make a decision within about three minutes of the item being brought up, so it's old business landscape beds, and the board can't make a decision within three minutes, I would say five at the outset, you're not ready to make a decision. Table it until next month till you get more information, or have more time to review.

Announcer: HOA Insights: 0:29

Common Sense for Common Areas, exists to help all 2 million volunteer board members nationwide have the right information at the right time to make the right decisions for their future. This podcast is sponsored by for companies that care about board members, association insights and marketplace, association reserves, community financials, and Kevin Davis Insurance Services. You'll find links to their websites and social media in the show notes.

Robert Nordlund: 0:59

Hi, I'm Robert Nordlund of association reserves.

Julie Adamen: 1:02

And I'm Julie Adamen of Adamen Inc and this is HOA Insights where we promote common sense

Robert Nordlund: 1:07

for common areas. Well, welcome to episode number 49, where we'll be talking about becoming a new board member, we were all new board members at one point in time, and a healthy Association should regularly have new board members. So what expectations should you have? And what are the things you need to be knowing? What are the things you also need to be teaching? Well, this is a follow up to episode number 48, another board hero feature with Calvin Ball from Maryland, board members carry this entire industry on their shoulders. So we want to spend plenty of time praising you for the work you do for your association. And every week spent some time with you to help encourage and equip you for your hard work. Well, if you missed that episode, or any other prior episode, take a moment after today's program to listen from our podcast website, www Hoa insights.org, or watch on our YouTube channel. But better yet, subscribe to this podcast on any of the more popular podcast platforms, so you don't miss any future episodes. Well, we enjoy hearing from you responding to the issues you are facing in your association. So if you have a hot topic, a crazy story or a question you'd like to have us address, you can contact us at 805-203-3130 or email us at podcast@reservestudy.com. So Julie, for today's program, let's start with one of those listener questions. One that shaped this episode. This question comes from Joe from Santa Fe, New Mexico. And he says I'm new to the board. Everyone else has served many years. So it's all old hat for them. What do I need to do to get up to speed and contribute?

Julie Adamen: 2:51

Well, the first thing I'm going to say what you need to do to get up to speed and contribute and to be able to contribute is the first thing I would tell you to do is read minutes from previous meetings, I mean a year, maybe two years, they're not very long, they shouldn't be very long, but they're not very long. And that will really give you an idea of what the board has been through for the last 24 months or so. You should also make sure and read the governing documents the CCNRs, I know they could put you to sleep. But there are salient points that you do need to read. I mean, there's a lot of where withdrawals and declare and did this and that. But it but there are some meaty parts that you need to read your bylaws as well that the bylaws typically govern what the Board of Directors does is how they hold elections, very important for all board members to read. And they aren't as long as the CCN Rs, typically, and if you have a management company, and you will have been provided board packets, or the board has previously for the last year. So it'd be great to get your hands on some of those to see how information is being presented to the board through the management company. With all of that you should have some decent idea of what has been going on

Robert Nordlund: 4:05

that kind of getting up to speed on the rhythm of what's happening at the association up to speed

Julie Adamen: 4:09

on the rhythm. And you know, it's pretty funny, you should say that, Robert, because associations operate in a rhythm. I know for some people, you're thinking, oh my god, there's no rhythm. It's just insanity. And it certainly can be but boards do operate. And associations typically operate in a rhythm, whether it's a monthly rhythm, or a bi monthly rhythm, because that's the rhythm of the board meetings. So let's just say you meet monthly. That means things have things happen at a board meeting items and tasks get assigned to either management or management and different board members or committee members then the next meeting, there's a follow up to that or the should be a follow up to that but usually there is everyone kind of has an idea where tasks and projects are month to month so there's reports on how they've been completed or reports on what the progress is very, very important. Very important because then the And the rhythm of the board meeting allows you as board members to understand that maybe I shouldn't wait to the last two days before the board meeting to go through all the paperwork or maybe start the project I was supposed to do. So if you have to, yeah, go ahead.

Robert Nordlund: 5:12

There's a lot to do.

Julie Adamen: 5:13

There's a lot to do. Even if you have management, it doesn't matter. I cannot tell you how many board members I talked to. And I know, Robert, you do too. And you've been a board member, like I have about they're like, Oh, I thought it was just going to be, you know, a couple hours a month. In I'm sorry, it's usually several hours a week, just because there's a lot of stuff to do. I mean, there's way more to managing and administrating a Community Association, then most people realize a lot more.

Robert Nordlund: 5:41

Right. Right. While you've been talking about kind of the stream, the ongoing rhythm of what has been happening, I'm thinking also in a couple other levels, there's the annual pace, that association goes the start of the fiscal year, the end of the fiscal year, the annual meeting, things like that, that go on in their seasons, where depending on where you live, the seasons may make a night and day difference about what's going on at the association, if you're in an area where there's a lot of snow, and you have to winterize the pool, that's very different than a southern location where it's more temperate climate through the year. So you've got all these different rhythms going on at the association. And it's very

Julie Adamen: 6:19

true. And you know, what a lot of board members don't think about is that large, the projects and things that happen around those seasons, and whether it's you have to do things off season. So where I live, I live in Arizona, and you're in Southern California. So for us, the offseason would be well for us the offseason is the summer, because lots of lots of people go home, right, they go back Easter, they go back to the Midwest, and they leave their homes here in Arizona. And a lot of projects get done like street street projects, slurry sealing, you know, crack filling, they tried to do that when there are so many people here. And of course, conversely, in a place where it might be colder, the season is summer, so the winter, other projects get done. And you know, let me bring up something really quickly here, that's a good thing for board members to do. Now, most good management companies provide this through their manager, if you don't have a management company or manager, that's fine. But you all should have an annual calendar that shows the rhythm of all these projects. So meaning, not only it could be a big whiteboard, or however you wanted to do it, especially if you're not if you're self managed, that would be a good way. So the whole board can see it at a meeting. And or just make sure everyone has a copy of it. But the fiscal year is attached on there, when taxes have to be filed as put on there. You know, slurry sealing is going to be at this need to get bids at this point in time. That type of thing, including all the meetings and all the small projects in our world and management world is called a master calendar. Very, very helpful, very helpful,

Robert Nordlund: 7:46

right. And I'm thinking of some friends in Minnesota at a condo, who their summer season to paint and to do the roofing and the asphalt that's short, whereas in a warmer climate, you can do that most of the year. So that becomes real significant. And then if you spend the time to set up that calendar, and then I'm also thinking maintenance, then you can anticipate what is going to happen. And so you get bids at the right point in time so that when you do have an opportunity to get something done, you've talked to a vendor, you have a service provider that is set to go you have the specs, you're on their schedule, and you don't you're not in a situation where saying, oh, we should, let's say paint in July or August, and by then the painter that he's busy, are all busy. And yeah, they're all busy. And they're they're done for the year. So there's those things and I'm thinking also about the preventive maintenance, do you want to? Well, you need to remember to clean the gutters and clean the asphalt sweep the asphalt could be

Julie Adamen: 8:53

pressure washing in the Pacific Northwest. I'm sure it is in the upper Midwest as well. Pressure washing is a big deal, but it has to be done. Well. It can be done in kind of sort of the offseason for us, we didn't get snow up there. But if you have snow, that's not a good time to be pressure washing, you know. So another thing I was thinking what would be great, especially for self managed boards is that it as they are doing these master calendars, what I'd suggest is they keep the calendars from year to year so they can revisit them and go whew, we should have started looking for bids a month earlier than we did. You know, just so they have an idea about that if if it would certainly promote corporate memory that soon as a new board takes over seems to fly out the door. It's natural, it would fly out the dark or

Robert Nordlund: 9:33

change of management company. Change it what I'm what I'm seeing here is the annual master calendar that says January through December, and it has the annual meeting on it, prep for the annual meeting. All these financial things, get the budget ready, have the budget finalized, get the reserve study. When did the new board members show up board member training get the committee's going? All these things maybe the half of the side on the right is the details for this particular year. This particular year, we're going to trim the trees, we do that every other every third year, that kind of thing. Look at your reserve study. So you have the regular annual things, open the pool, close the pool, since we have some wonderful fun things on there like the Memorial Day. Barbecue, barbecue, yeah, Labor Day barbecue. Yeah, Fourth of July, sit by the pool and watch the fireworks over the local high school or whatever it is the fun things that help you be a community and help you as a board member be stirring the hearts of everyone who's there and saying, I live in a good one. I live in a good one.

Julie Adamen: 10:35

I really liked that idea, Robert, I hadn't thought about that. My world has been management world. That's the world I came from. And I do other things now, of course, but so the master calendar always was a management function. But then as I said, a board should keep one too, I think it's a delightful way and a really, really good way to keep track not of all just the events and the back time this you have to, you know, put into them. So you know, well, we have to go get bids three months before we have to do it. But to keep your corporate history as as the administration but also to keep the corporate history of what the Association does for fun, the things that actually build community. And when you have those things written down, it's you can hardly help it when they're written down in a calendar, whatever. It makes people, especially board members who very seldom get thanks for anything that they can look back and go we did that last year, that was such a success. Let's do it again. This year. Yeah, yep, let's do it. Or let's we need to move it two weeks, hence, you know, that kind of thing. But it would really and it would also help them stay so much more organized in their thinking for the administrative and operational things. But in their thinking for the funner things or the you know, the community whatever, or things that needed to be done sooner, rather than later around those community building activities. If they're able to do those. I, it's a really good idea. I might write about that.

Robert Nordlund: 11:57

You got me, you got me taking notes here. listeners. I want to go back to a new board member. But you mentioned the two different things. You talked about meeting minutes. I understand meeting minutes. And I'm from what I've seen, that's a page or two per meeting. And so you can go through that pretty quickly. A year should be 24 pages Max, and they start to look the same. The Treasurer's Report, the all these different things, who's their president, you popped aside for Executive Session maybe to talk about the management contract or whatever it is, but not a lot of volume. You do need to know your governing documents who's responsible for what what you can and cannot do, and how that's linked to state law in your area. But tell me the difference between board minutes and board packets? Oh,

Julie Adamen: 12:44

sure. I'm sorry, I probably blew right by that. Yeah. So the minutes are just the the formal record record of the business meeting, which is the board meeting. That's the finance record.

Robert Nordlund: 12:53

That's in arrears. The meeting happened last month. And now we have minutes of it.

Julie Adamen: 12:59

The board of next month, if they meet monthly with so the board can approve it typically the Secretary is actually responsible for, for taking the minutes or causing the minutes to be taken, ie through a manager for Community Association manager. So I mean, that's normally how that would work. Secretary does the minutes or management does the minutes, I think it's about 50. Now, even with managed associations professionally managed, but they should be done relatively soon after the meeting. I always like to go right back to my office and do minutes I could type them out really fast. And I'll tell you what stops people with minutes really quickly making them way too long minutes are not for discussion. They're not for recording who said what and Bob did this and Jay did that. No, no, no, not at all motions approved. That's really all you have to have in there. And follow your agenda called order, you know, approval of the minutes prove the financials, your minutes should follow that as well. And anytime someone says I want what I'm saying in the minutes, no minutes is not for discussion, you may note that there was a lengthy discussion regarding X. But you don't want to make them all doing so the minutes now a board packet is typically what a community that is managed by a management company will receive a couple days ahead of time of the meeting. That is a reflection of all of the a lot of the work that has been completed, but also work that's coming up. So in your board packet you should have and typically these are electronically delivered down back in the old days, Robert and I deliver them I used to put them on people's doorstep, right. But they're electronically delivered and you should go through them before the meeting. Don't be opening up your laptop at the meeting read them ahead of time but it should have the minutes from last month or the last meeting of the financial statements as produced by the management company. And probably the collection report as well. Oftentimes that's discussed if it needs to be discussed that will be discussed in an executive session but usually that'll be right in with the financials and then you go right into things like landscape committee report committee reports different now if the committee has a as a produced a writ report, it should be in there. Usually those committees do an oral report to the landscape chairs there, and she's going to talk about whatever it is. And you just don't Mrs. Smith in the minutes should just say Mrs. Smith reports on the landscape update, whatever that type of thing committee reports, then this is where we get into the meat of it, and where we keep track of how things happen and, and keeping people accountable old business. Well, that stuff that hasn't been completed that the board is still working on, or they're waiting for bids, or they're waiting for results, or whatever it is. So that's the old business. And if it's hesitant,

Robert Nordlund: 15:34

hopefully getting closer to having enough information you can make a decision you can

Julie Adamen: 15:38

make. Exactly, exactly. So let's just say the old business is landscape beds, you know, because the that the last meeting, the Board decided to go out to bid boom, next meeting, hopefully, there are three bids from landscape companies. And those will be in the board packets, and they're listed right on the agenda. So that would be Oh, and

Robert Nordlund: 15:56

yeah, and you can look and look at the pros and cons. This one does include tree trimming, this one does not this one comes twice per week. This one comes once per week. And you can be prepared to make a decision because you know why ABC is done from XYZ, which is different from third is Fred's landscape company or whatever it is.

Julie Adamen: 16:16

Exactly. Exactly, exactly. And you know, I just want for all your new board members out there, I just the one thing I want to tell you, as always, as do your darndest, do your best to be ready to make a decision if there is enough information and other words, you let's just use the landscape things. So you've got the three bids, you know exactly what the differences are. Because you read your packet ahead of time, two days a week, one day, a week, whatever it is. And you also know what the budgeted amount is, because you've looked at your budget, you can see it right there on your financial statement as well. Is one over our budget is one under our budget, or is one just right? And are we willing to go over? Do we want to save? Or do we want to go with just the right one, these are the type of things that you need to know ahead of time, so you can make a decision. And I can tell you this is very unpopular, but it's the truth if a board cannot make a decision within about three minutes of the item being brought up. So it's old business landscape bids, and the board can't make a decision within three minutes, I would say five at the outset, you're not ready to make a decision, table it until next month till you get more information, or have more time to review. And that's how quickly these things go. Now I know everyone out there is sitting there going, oh my god, we take forever to make a decision well

Robert Nordlund: 17:30

write us better than that. You

Julie Adamen: 17:33

can do better than that. You just need to be prepared. And also also, don't let board members start prattling off about well back when you know I lived to so and so we had an elm tree. And then we had to cut that down and it goes on and on. And always the chair especially should be able to say point of order, let's get back to the subject at hand. And because if you start wandering off, and boards will have a tendency to do it. Sometimes it's social. Sometimes y'all like each other. And you're like to talk a lot. But when other people look at being board members, and we've talked about this before Robert, in previous podcasts, but when they look at I say maybe I should be on the board, but if they go to a meeting, and even if it's not nasty or contentious, it's friendly, but it lasts three hours and it should last one, they still don't want to be a part of that board. Because they don't want to spend three hours doing that plus two hours reading the board packet ahead of time plus plus plus. So think about that be ready to make a decision.

Robert Nordlund: 18:29

A board meeting is action time, not process and think about a time.

Julie Adamen: 18:35

No, no, we're socializing time. Yeah,

Robert Nordlund: 18:36

that's very true. Yeah. Well, Julie. With that, let's take a short break for a message from our sponsor. And we'll be right back with a follow up to that discussion.

Kevin Davis: 18:45

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Robert Nordlund: 19:14

And we're back. Well, Julie, I want to follow up on that decision making you spoke about if you're prepared, hopefully the decisions go quick. You can go What's your thinking about the landscape project, and three out of five people say let's go with ABC and call it a decision. You decide. We pick ABC and you move on and that gap. Is that a wonderful thing?

Julie Adamen: 19:34

That is a wonderful thing. And that's just the way it should be? Okay, well, one

Robert Nordlund: 19:38

twist on that is you said know how much they are and how that compares to budget and I want to come back to that because when I was preparing for this episode, I started going back in memory and in my first couple three months as a board member. I didn't know the rhythm of the financials. I remember. I think it was my first meeting as a board member the manager wanted me to approve probably checks, he probably wanted me to sign some checks. And I was like, you know, aren't you the manager do pay the bills. And I realized I was in the decision line. And I didn't know the answer to those questions. And the comment that you made about is the landscape budget? Or is the landscape proposal on budget above or below budget? I just want to stress that board members need to know their numbers they need to know is this. The reason why we got proposals was because, yeah, the last last a company was on budget. But we're getting new proposals, because it looks so lousy, you maybe we do need to increase our expectations. And that's the interesting thinking that I want to bring to the table here. Knowing your numbers.

Julie Adamen: 20:50

Well, you know, I think when you say that Robert is a pupil Oh, I just about a financial person. And I think that's what I hear from most more board members than not is they just don't like the numbers. And it looks very intimidating. But I'm here to tell you, it's actually quite simple. Let's take a bite of the elephant just Just one bite, not the whole elephant, just one bite. So let's say you're a new board member. And there are landscaping bids and your board packet, right? You know who this is going to come up? Well, number one, what I would do if I didn't know anything about it, I would talk to another board member who's been around and I'd say why are we doing this, I try to get some background, or you could talk to your manager and get some background on on what the problem is. Let's just say it's exactly what you said, we're paying him top dollar paying the landscape company top dollar in our mind, but we're not getting what we consider top surface. So we've gone out to bid. So it's the way the place looks, no matter what we're paying him, it looks the same. So for you as a board member, you're thinking, Okay, I need to know, is it going to be a good company? Is it going to be better than the last company and just like your own budget, like your house payment, or your insurance payment, you need to know how much it's going to cost? As a board member, this is part of your duty. So you think, Okay, where do I find that? I'm gonna find that on the financial statement? Well, look, it's in my board packet, or it's accessible online. Typically, if you're a board member, you can go in to whatever your management companies platform is, and have access to look at the most current financial. So you look under landscape. And right across the top, it's going to say year to date, budget. And so you're going to have an end, then at the end that's going to have what the total year budgeted figure is, don't let all those numbers overwhelm you stay focused on what you have to look at. Don't look at everything else yet. But here's if you're not sure, ask the manager ask another board member, this is the number right, this is what we can afford. Right? Right. Oh, now, you know, you can extrapolate that later when you have other things to look at. But right now, we're just looking at this little piece of the elephant. So landscape, look at that, does it fit in our budget? Well, this bed is about two or $300 a month over our budget. What do we think? And is it worth it? Is it worth it? Is it worth it for you maybe go ahead tomorrow,

Robert Nordlund: 23:01

I was gonna say Joe, while the other board members had the responsibility of calling references. And if everyone for XYZ landscaping is glowing, saying that it's been such a great decision, home values are up, everything looks nice, then you think might be a good idea to go a little bit over budget and increase our budget expectations to guess for our association isn't

Julie Adamen: 23:26

exactly or maybe Joe went out and looked at other associations, and it was just a market difference. And you'll find that happens, you know, for a few $100 more because they could afford to put one more person on site in just one more body could make a huge difference. Now not to get too far, we could do this whole financial thing, Robert, but okay, let's just say your association is relatively is doing relatively well, financially, you don't have a huge amount of homes in arrears to their association dues, you don't have bills you can't pay, there are associations that are like that. You haven't had this big huge increase recently or anything like that, and you have a little bit extra money. You might want to look at that, like, well, this is probably okay, that we do this. So that's a part of looking at a process. We have landscape bids, why do we have them? How do I find out we're gonna I'm going to talk to other board members or the landscape Committee Chair, I'm gonna talk to the manager. So I have some background. I also happen to have looked at the minutes which has indicated back when they were going to go get bids that the landscape committee chair indicated he was highly unhappy with the current company, they don't return phone calls, the place doesn't look good, etc. So glucan all this information you actually have that you can glean from now. I'm gonna tell you it's gonna look really overwhelming at first, but you spend a couple of months on the board, you will catch that rhythm. You will catch how things work bids I got to look at the finances I got to look at what other places or what other places look like that the new companies proposed new companies gonna look going to to to help you get to see how Europe least may look, and you put that all together and think now I think it's worth it because you know, these smaller aspects of the whole, don't look at it as this one big thing I have to know immediately. You don't, you don't have to know everything immediately there is a lot to know. And as a new board member, I guarantee you have no idea what's coming at you.

Robert Nordlund: 25:20

Yeah, I've got a couple more thoughts I want to follow up on but the kind of things you were talking about makes me think when I board an airplane, and I look left into the cockpit, it's just an incredible array of instruments. And I think how do they know all that. And one thing I learned from my son who's a pilot is you have your scan, your eyes go from A to B to C to A to B to C to A to B to C, just like we've become comfortable in driving a car, we're looking forward, we're looking at our mirrors. Every once in a while, we look at our fuel gauge, but not all the time. And that's the same way in an airplane cockpit. You don't have to look at all those things all the time. And just like you mentioned, if you're looking for how much can how much are we spending on landscaping, that's one line. And then you set that budget, you select the landscaper, and with a little minor overdose and Enders for a couple of sprinkler heads it got fixed. That's it for the year, you should be generally okay. I also want to follow up on decision points. When you do come to a decision. It doesn't have to be unanimous I want to now have new board members understand that. It's not going to be unanimous. You don't have to expect that everyone is happy and singing Kumbaya and unanimous. Its majority rule and move on and take care of business. And that's it.

Julie Adamen: 26:39

That's it. That's exactly it. And, you know, there's a lot of contention over that non unanimous thing. But the one thing I will tell all the board members is it and I have this in my online courses, Robert, as well as you need to speak with one voice. Now, that doesn't mean you can't disagree. Because what was a pattern? If everyone's thinking like somebody's not thinking, it's never going to be that way. We're human beings, we have different ways. But let's say if a five member board, it's three to five to go with a new landscape company and you or one other, maybe not you maybe another board member who said, I just don't want this, I don't like it. It's a bad idea. Well, he lost if that's you, you got to let that go and move on and move forward as a unit. Now, that doesn't mean you can't tell me that people say, Well, you shouldn't have voted for that. And you say, Well, I didn't vote for that. However, the board as a whole did and we move on that speaking with one voice.

Robert Nordlund: 27:30

Yes. I often hear about associations. I have one board member who is the how do I say this politely the penny pincher, and every board needs someone who's reminding them that's going to cost us money. And that person is going to get voted down. Sometimes that person is going to be the voice of reason. Other times. And that voice is welcome. If you have everyone that is ready to spend money all the time, that budget is going to soar. And maybe that's not the right thing to do. But you may need some people on the board healthy board has people who maybe are visionaries, people who are operational people, someone who has the CCN ours memorized, and someone who is the minute taker, someone who is the penny pincher, those complementary voices come together and help an association. Can I say thrive?

Julie Adamen: 28:25

They certainly can that sometimes it gets a little contentious, right?

Robert Nordlund: 28:28

It can be contentious, but it's constructive, where you have voices

Julie Adamen: 28:33

just to be expected. We're human beings, we're all going to be completely different. And we all have different disciplines, you know, from what we come from.

Robert Nordlund: 28:39

Yeah. And there's going to be some people who've been there for 30 years, and they still remember when the assessments were $98 a month. And they're $450 a month now. And they still can't get that out of their head. But they may remember that. Oh, yeah. The roofs are 23 years old. And so yeah, it probably is time to redo the roughs. Just yeah. I won't say like the reserves. I said. Another thing. There's the qualities of being a board member, typically an owner, but you and I have spoken about this long ago. There's these human qualities. And we kept coming back to the seas. You have to be curious, what is the right decision? What is best, you have to care about the association? What is good for the community, not just me, courageous. Sometimes you have to make that tough decision. And, boy, you have to do a lot of communicating to say this is what the board this is what the association the community is doing. This

Julie Adamen: 29:41

Yes, communication is i That's always my favorite bandwagon to hop on. I think most associations don't communicate as much as they should or as well as they could. And that's an often that's difficult because people aren't good. I mean, you're not a good writer. Someone may not be a good writer with AI that may be that some of that may be changing. interest? Oh, yeah, yeah, I know, you know, I have been thinking about that. And a lot of management companies are using AI now to do some writing for them. And it takes a lot of time. But for boards, you might want to think about that my

Robert Nordlund: 30:10

staff has asked for a new article on this new article on that, and what takes a lot of time. But they put together an article that was pre written by AI. And all I had to do was clean it up. And boy, that saves so much time. And there's, there's real opportunities. Well, I just want to say welcome to the board. It's a great opportunity to serve your community. There's a lot to learn a lot of ways you can prepare, like Julie said at the very beginning, know your documents, know your numbers, know the meeting notes, get up to speed, ask

Julie Adamen: 30:42

questions, ask don't be afraid to ask questions. Yeah, that's part of the curiosity. Yeah,

Robert Nordlund: 30:47

other board members, manager, if one exists, other homeowners, how can I represent you? Well, you are now in the political arena. So lots of great things. Looking at the time, it's time to wrap this. But Julie, as always great talking with you. Any closing thoughts to add at this time? And I want to remind you, you did mention something about training? Yes.

Julie Adamen: 31:09

And you know, it's funny, we've been doing this, how long have you been doing this Robert, a year over a year, and I don't think we're a year. This is by bad because you know what happens? I think you and I, we get going and we just keep talking. And we could do this for well over an hour or two, actually. But I just want to remind everybody out there to let you know that I have written and produced online courses for new board members, that you can access them at my website, which is Adamen, my last name A D A M E N - I N C adamen-inc.com . Google it if you can't find it. And from there, click the Education tab. I have online courses for community managers and online courses for board members, your board members, it's four hours of information that will absolutely set you ahead of of what most board members get. So they have some idea of how the industry works, how the association works, that goes through minutes and financials. It's quite entertaining. FYI. If I say so myself, because I wrote it and I've recorded its talks like I talk, it can give

Robert Nordlund: 32:13

you that Headstart. So it's not just Headstart, what do I do? It's some simple online training that gives you ideas, what am I up against? How do I prepare? How do I do well, things

Julie Adamen: 32:22

like communication? How do we communicate? Well, how do I get along with board members that are like me, because word members are just all a part of the human race, right? They're very different and how to relate to each other. It's, it's, it's kind of from soup to nuts. It's$75. For four hours of training, you can start and stop it, we'll take it on your phone, take it on your PC, laptop, whatever. Well, there's

Robert Nordlund: 32:44

lots of ways to get on the board. You can be coerced. Someone can twist your arm, there can be a crisis. I think in your history, there was a crisis a guy you want to the board across the board. We want to say welcome. There's resources nowadays to help you get up to speed. Is there to set you up for success one way or another? Well,

Julie Adamen: 33:04

let us know if you need any help. I'm sorry, Robert, let us know if you need any help. Yeah,

Robert Nordlund: 33:09

absolutely. Like we say every week, we hope you learned some HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. We look forward to having you join us for another great episode. Next week.

Announcer: 33:23

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