Some pictures from Jennifer. She had promised me some pictures and I texted her today and she came through for me. I think Samantha is absolutely loving having her Mommy back home in Las Vegas.
It is Veteran's Day today and I tip my cap to Jennifer and all of the other soldiers current and past who have given their all for this country. Jennifer finished her career in the military pretty disillusioned with our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan but her experience also prepared her for the great job that she has now. Her prior company had agreed to let her live in Las Vegas, but her work sites were all in Northern California. It wasn't going to be a long term answer for her and she has since found a new job that she started on Monday with a Las Vegas based company that does business with Lucent. I can't drive around anywhere without noticing the rash of microwave antenna sites that are literally everywhere. You don't really notice them generally, but after Jennifer pointed them out to me, it is like a new car, you see them everywhere. I am very happy for her.
Darla is in Dallas as I write this visiting my ex wife and her husband. Diane is having a Silpada party for Darla tomorrow night and Diane's parties are pretty legendary. I think she has a lot of trophy wife friends, who are able to buy the jewelry indiscriminately. Darla is also visiting with Randy and Cake tomorrow. Randy and Cake are both driving into the city from their rural home and will have lunch with Darla tomorrow. I think Cake and Darla will spend most of the day together tomorrow and have a nice visit while Randy is working. Cake was nice enough to get a substitute in order to visit with Darla. I appreciate the kindness to my wife from my family. Thanks, guys.
I have been busy transitioning out of production in my office and taking the underwriters out to visit my agents and meet and interact with them. I have been loathe to give up production, because it is the lifeblood of my office. The problem is that I am so busy with employee issues and administration duties that I have been doing my agents a disservice in continuing to work with them. I am committed to working with the many twenty-somethings in my office that are moving into production. So many of them are really young and have never seen anything but tremendous success and profits in my office. I want to go out on marketing calls with them and also be very involved in quality control of their policies and quotes. We have been growing so fast that I need to take this step to make sure that we continue to grow profitably. My office has grown from $13,000,000 in written premium in 2010 to a budget of $26,000,000 in 2014. I've also grown from 16 employees in 2010 to 26 now. I have plans to continue to add to staff in 2014, but we have to get our build out and lease addendum completed soon in order for that to happen. I am completely out of space and have three employees that now principally work out of their homes because of the space crunch that we are in. Even with the record growth, we have been able to stay on top of our filings and typing. I had an issue with typing because I kept hiring recent college graduates to do the job. Each of them were happy to get an entry level position with me, but were ready to move up within three months of hiring in. I changed my focus late last year and hired in two ladies who had raised families and were ready to re-enter the work force. I brought them both in as policy typists and they have taken my typing unit from being 60 days behind and over 900 policies to current and only 59 policies in queue. It is a great story.
I played golf in the Turkey shoot on Saturday and had a great start to my round. I parred the first 6 holes and felt like it was last week all over again. Well, no. I bogeyed the final three holes for a 39 and then imploded on the back nine for a 45 and 84 on the day. That was good enough for a $20 Raley's gift card that Darla quickly scooped up and used on toilet paper and cat food. My driver left me on the back nine and I ended up getting stuck behind a treeon number 10 and trying a miracle shot that glanced off the tree and went out of bounds. That led to triple bogey and a forgettable back nine. I talked to Neil afterward and he had a similar day shooting a 39+47=86. Brothers in arms.
It will be busy week for me at work with marketing calls both tomorrow and Thursday. Thursday is a follow-up call from the visit we had with a Roseville agency when my CEO was here. Matt and I will take in some personalized marketing materials and make our case to the decision makers in the office.
Well, I have some scores to get entered from the tournament on Saturday that Neil sent over to me tonight. I will call it a night and wrap this up for another week. I hope you are all well and living a Godly life. Be well. Ciao.
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