The pictures above are of Yocha Dehe Golf Course in Brooks, CA, a Troon facility and one of the best kept courses in Northern California. I was invited to play by one of my agents, Caleb, who is a member of the Summerhays family. His father is a golf coach at one of the local high schools, his sister, Hannah, is an Assistant Golf Professional at Yocha DeHe and he has an Uncle, Bruce, who was on the PGA and Senior PGA tours and two cousins, Daniel and Boyd, who currently play professional golf, Daniel on the PGA and Boyd on the Nationwide tour. So, there I was at 8:30 on Thursday morning playing in a group with Hannah, Caleb, and Chris, another Assistant pro at the course. The only good thing is that my round was comped. The first tee sits high up on the mountain above the practice facility and the sight that you see when you tee off is the first picture above. I pulled my drive dead left into the number 9 fairway. I was able to blast a 6 iron to the front of the green and made par to match Hannah. Hannah's drove from the same tees that I did (we played at 6700 yards) and was routinely right next to me or slightly behind. She can hit the ball for a 24 year old. Caleb and Chris were bombing their drives to about 300 yards. I ended up shooting 43+43=86 against matching 77s for Hannah and Caleb and a 78 for Chris. We were the first group off the tee and felt like we had the course to ourselves.
We finished in 3 hours and 20 minutes and I invited everyone to lunch. There were four of us and the total bill for four sandwiches, drinks and sides at the golf course grill was $15.88. Hannah and Chris have their food comped by the course and Caleb and I got a 25% discount. I left a $10 tip and got out of there. Caleb paid me back for that "expensive" lunch with a $90,000 account that I'm working on for his office right now. This was the fourth time I've played Yocha Dehe and I swear it gets more immaculate every time I play it. The greens were smooth and fast and the fairways pro tour conditions. There wasn't a bad lie anywhere in the fairway and the course, being a resort course, is fairly wide and user friendly.
I leave for Detroit on Tuesday morning and five days of intense meetings. This year I will help to lead one of the breakout sessions on our Centers of Excellence. We have six in house centers of expertise where underwriters can send in their accounts for quotation. The VP, Marla, that is putting on the session called and asked me to join her, because my office is in the top three of three of those centers and she wants me to talk to the other managers about how I have grown my premium writings through the use of the Centers of Excellence. I worked up five examples of accounts that have been written through the COEs and will help Marla lead the 45 minute breakout sessions on Wednesday afternoon. There will be five groups that will sit in on our session that afternoon. It should be fun.
My office has grown from a branch writing $8,000,000 in premium and losing $600,000 a year in 2004 to one that will write $18,000,000 this year and be close to a $1,000,000 profit. It is a good story and certainly one that lends itself to job security. Anthony from my office will be there at the Manager's meeting this year as one of the top producers and Andy is there with the KELP Management Trainees for a two week session (KELP stands for Kaufman Emerging Leaders Program). Anthony will be speaking to the KELPs on Tuesday about his success as an underwriter with the company, how he started out as an Assistant and is now in the top 25 of producers in the entire company. Anthony will also be involved in the Manager's portion of the meetings and Andy will be at the Awards dinner on Friday night at the Henry in Deerborn.
The office continues to do well and after missing our budget lunch last month are back on target to exceed our numbers again. We are already over a$1,250,000 in written premium and $200,000 in income. The team continues to work hard and make it happen. Fun stuff.
I did not make it out golfing this weekend. All of my buddies had other engagements. I had planned to go out and play Saturday afternoon, but I had problems with my iPhone. I tried to upload the newest operating system and the entire phone shut down. When I called Apple, they told me I had to buy a $30 service ticket. I ended up taking it over to AT&T and they put the old OS back on the phone. The tech there said that the new operating system is designed for the iPhone 4 and the older models aren't fast enough to run the current OS. What a scam by Apple to get you to buy their new phone. My phone runs just fine on the old OS and I'll leave well enough alone. I will look to get the iPhone 4 when my contract is up next year. I ended up fooling with the upload for two hours Saturday morning and then had a bunch of yard work I wanted to get done. I trimmed all of the bushes in the backyard back and trimmed the ground cover. I also transplanted some African Daisies from one side of the pool to the back flowerbeds.
Jennifer didn't grace me with any pictures of Samantha, but if you haven't seen it, check out Jennifer's Facebook and Sam's reading of the "monkeys jumping on the bed". Very cute and well done by Miss Samantha. She gets done and before her Mom turns off the video, you can hear her say, "I want to do that again!"
Darla has made plans for the Mexico gang to get together for dinner tomorrow night at Chevy's. Debbie was out of town this weekend and I don't get home until Saturday night, so Monday it is. We will be in Puerto Vallarta in two weeks. I'm definitely looking forward to it and to seeing the redesigned back nine of the golf course at The Grand Mayan.
Well, that is short and sweet, but all the news that I have to tell. Our I Day at the Convention Center went well on Tuesday, but it is getting a little stale for me with the same groups and booths every year. It is what it is as my friend Neil would say. I hope you are all well and I will bring tales of Detroit next week. Have a good week. Ciao.
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