I've had to build the accounting and finance infrastructure over the last eight years. When I came in, people wore many hats. One of the first things I had to do was to get the company to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley within the year. The company had not done a single thing toward this end. I had less than a year to put the processes in place, implement the reporting structure, and build an internal audit department. But I also built the financial discipline. We didn't have any models to look at, for example, return on investment on a piece of real estate. So we had to build those. We didn't have a long-term strategic plan; I helped build the first one and it's continued to evolve. We didn't have a cash forecasting process. We started, soon after I joined, buying back some of our shares. We wanted to give back to our shareholders, so I put in place a share buyback plan.

When I joined, Famous Dave's really didn't have much credibility in the marketplace in terms of what I would say is a corporate perspective. To be honest, it was a bit of a mess. We had an accumulated deficit on our balance sheet of $9.9 million; today we have retained earnings of $26.1 million. So, it's been a hard-fought battle over the last eight years to bring credibility and respect to the organization.

One thing I love about working at a small company is that our CEO gives me latitude to help provide value to the organization in areas outside finance. Some of the fun things that I love doing are out of my wheel house. We had an incentive club for our restaurant operators called the President's Club. Predominantly based on sales performance, the reward was a trip to a phenomenal resort destination for two, and it was a large cost to the company. I took it upon myself to really change the plan. First, I changed the name to "The Ring of Fire." We also made the club available to franchisees. I'm a really big believer in a one-system mentality; if you're going to be a franchisor, you want to make sure that your franchisees are operating at the exact same standards as your restaurants. So I wanted the same rewards plan for them. It was also important to me that it wasn't just sales-based. Now we have about ten different metrics. So, sales is a component, but so is profitability. It's one thing to drive sales, but we need to have profitable sales. We also look at protection of the brand, food safety, and other metrics. We really look holistically at the operation of a restaurant and reward the general manager for doing the right thing.

I have a pretty broad scope of oversight. I have finance, accounting, internal audit, legal, investor relations, purchasing, and IT reporting to me. I really believe there's very little aspect of the company that doesn't touch finance, because at the end of the day we have to deliver results, and we have to be able to measure those results. And so at the core, we have to provide accurate and timely accounting results, while in finance we have to interpret those results so we can provide insights, suggestions, and solutions to move the business forward.