Back from Detroit and the Manager's Meetings and it always reminds me of why I live in California. Not that the weather was terrible, just cold, frosty and some rain. It was 80 degrees today with a bright blue sky in Northern California. You can't beat it. The pictures above are of 1. Sammy from Jennifer 2. A picture of Anthony and I with the Michigan office Underwriting manager and a good friend of Matt from my office. (We sent him the picture on Anthony's iphone to let him know we were thinking of him) 3 & 4. Pictures of Darla with the boys from her trip to SLO this week. (She was there Thursday-Saturday). 5. The large and expanding pile of sh*t heaped upon Americans from Barrack Hussein Obama (or a picture from the coast of San Luis Obispo)
The meetings this year were really good and the energy of the meetings was helped by the 12 KELP trainees that joined us, including Andy from my office. All of the management trainees are in their twenties and all have great innovative ideas and aren't afraid to express them. One of the young guys from Los Angeles was discussing the use of social media in insurance and said that when he thinks of insurance, he thinks of a bunch of gray haired guys in suits and ties. Harvey and I looked at each other and rather loudly objected to the obviously dead on description. Anthony from my office really enjoyed himself and was very engaged with the other Branch Managers in discussing marketing and agency penetration and agency profiling. He took a lot of notes and is coming home with a renewed energy about his book of business and he is starting a new marketing campaign for year end with his agents.
It was a long five days and I flew into Detroit in a middle seat next to a "church lady" from Modesto. She was a "chatty kathy" from the minute I sat down until I pretended to fall asleep. She made a comment during the security briefing that her friend has said that she wishes she had an on and off button like cell phones. Really? Really? I turned to my other seat mate for some respite, but he was a twenty year old white guy with shoulder length dreadlocks and he smelled of dirty hair. It was brutal.
The first day is always the worst and no exceptions this year as I went to bed at 11:00 PM (8:00 PM my time) and tossed and turned until about 1:00 AM. I wasn't altogether rested or thrilled when the alarm went off at 7 AM. I handled five forty five minute sessions on use of our Centers of Excellence in Home office with our SR VP in charge of brokerage and our Chief Underwriting Officer. I was asked to take part in the sessions and bring a Branch perspective to the use of these brokerage facilities. I talked about how our office has grown from $6.6 Million in premium (and a loss of $580,000) in 2004 to $17.5 million in premium (and a profit expected to be close to $1,000,000 this year). Part of our success has come from our reliance on co-brokering of accounts with our VP of Brokerage operations in SF and our use of the Centers of Excellence. We don't have the markets in house to write professional liability, excess liability and environmental coverages and it was a natural for us to turn to these centers to write our business. We are in the top three of premium writings with all of the centers. It was an interesting chance to contribute to the education that goes on at the meetings and also a nice chance to share the story of Sacramento with all of the branches. They have seen me up collecting awards at the meeting, but this put some specifics to the reality.
We did win the Bronze Award for Division 2 this year and I was again shut out in the Branch manager of the Year awards. Each of the Branch Managers of the year winners this year are all not producers and only handle Branch Management. They are able to mentor some of their younger producers more effectively and do more hand holding because they don't have any production responsibilities. I can't ignore the quote requests and phone calls at my desk, but will keep growing the branch and making money and see if that is enough.
Anthony did win two awards, the Director's Award for production over $550,000 in income and New Business Award for being in the top 10 of underwriters in the company in new business production. It was nice to have him there and have him be able to go up and collect his award from Alan himself.
Saturday was longer than it had to be as we started at 8 AM and went non-stop until 3:00 PM. We bussed over to the airport and took a flight from Detroit to Salt Lake City and then changed planes for our trip to Sacramento. We were able to grab a hamburger while we were running between planes. I got home at 10:15 spent and exhausted. Darla and I slept in until 8:30 this morning and I did yard work and skimmed leaves from the pool. I didn't get the car washed, but will run it by the car wash tomorrow.
Well, the Dallas game is on, I need to barbecue some chicken and we want to try and Skype with Jennifer and Sammy tonight to see her Halloween costume. Jennifer leaves for a week in Temecula training for her new job on Tuesday. She started last week and has already been climbing towers and took a bucket truck up to replace a module on a cell tower Friday. She is loving it.
As mentioned, we fly out for vacation next Sunday for a week in Nuevo Vallarta, so will be a week off on the blog and then return with vacation pictures. I hope you are all well. Ciao.
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