The picture at the top about sums it up as I sit here in the dark and work on the Blog. You can see the celebration in my office from Friday and see both some of the build out in the office as well as my new personal office. I went in to the office after golf on Saturday and got all of my furnishings moved in and pictures and memorabilia up on the wall. I have a plaque that has both of the Sports Illustrated copies from the Giants World series wins in 2010 and 2012. Now I have to go out and have the new one framed as well. It will arrive on Thursday of this week and feature Madison Bumgarner on the cover. That was one of the best performances by a pitcher in World Series' history. Just amazing!
We had a pumpkin carving contest on Friday. The RIP pumpkin was my teams' and I added two others, A Niner pumpkin with a Dallas mini pumpkin in it's mouth (That team will not be getting raises this year). Also, the Chik-Fil-A pumpkin carved by the farmer and her two cows shown above.
We had a pumpkin carving contest on Friday. The RIP pumpkin was my teams' and I added two others, A Niner pumpkin with a Dallas mini pumpkin in it's mouth (That team will not be getting raises this year). Also, the Chik-Fil-A pumpkin carved by the farmer and her two cows shown above.
I had our IT staff and one of the Real Estate Managers in the office this past week to help me with our move in to the new space. The two IT guys got all of the computers, phones and monitors set up in the new space and helped move the individuals in the office that were backfilling the spaces where people moved. The two guys in the office that were the happiest to see the new space open are our two newest hires that have been making their home in the conference room for the last two months. They finally have cubicles and the staff that complain about the noise in the cubicles need to walk a mile in their shoes.
My new office is bigger and has windows on two of the walls and is truly a corner office. My staff has very good timing and we just finished our best month of the year. We were up 33% over 2013 and up 22% on our budget, which actually brought our year to level with our budget. We are on track to finish the year at $27,500,000 which will be up about 17% over 2013. My first act as a Vice President was to meet with a representative from the Giant's Triple A team here in Sacramento and order season tickets. We bought 4 seats behind home plate on an 18 game package and will use the tickets for marketing purposes. We had seats back in 2009 when the team was the A's affiliate and we actually had trouble using them back then. I was pretty fried with my underwriting staff at the time for not planning outings with our agents and vowed not to buy them again. Back then I had 12 employees and three of my producers were women that had no interest in Sports. Now I have so many young people and producers and will give it another go this coming season, which starts in April. I will use some of the tickets as giveaways at some of our agent events and also as rewards for hard work from my staff.
Pete, my Underwriting Manager, flew out to St Louis this morning and sent me a picture from St Louis. I sent him a thank you and told him that it must suck to be a Niner fan in St Louis after that performance by his team in SF(Santa Clara) today. Dallas was without Tony Romo today and his absence really shined a light on just how critical he is to our success. The Cowboys are competitive and border on elite with Tony in there. With Brandon Weeden, the drop off was substantial and really underscores the importance of Tony to the team. Hopefully, he is back under center next week in London against the Jaguars. The event in St Louis is a gathering of professionals from the Excess and Surplus Lines industry. Harvey wanted me to send one of my younger employees and I fought for Pete to go to this. He is too often overlooked in my office and is a key performer and one of the big reasons for my success. he knows I have his back and appreciates it. he was picked as a team leader for the group back there and I'll be excited to hear how it goes for him.
I took our visitors out to dinner on Thursday night and my Operations Manager was on me about my choice for dinner. I wanted to take them to our new Korean barbecue restaurant in Roseville and she was thinking (in her mind) that I was taking them out for Mongolian Barbecue. She calmed down after we got there and the group had a blast cooking up all of the rib eye, chicken and pork. We also enjoyed all of the sides and the Sapporo on tap for $8.50 per pitcher. It was a fun night and one that they will remember better than another night out at a steakhouse.
I did play golf on Thursday as Pete had set up a round with Bob Telford, an agent that I've done business with for about 35 years. He brought out his son and we played his home course at Rancho Murietta outside Sacramento. I had to take the commute that I used to take to work in Rancho Cordova and it made me appreciate the new office even more. I shot a 47+41=88 and struggled on the narrow course. I did play better on the back and was encouraged when I finished. We stayed on for lunch and I was back in the office by 3 PM and able to take the group out to dinner that night.
We had a storm front roll in Thursday night and had a constant rain on Friday. Darla and I had our annual Halloween date and shared a burger at Mel's Drive in followed by the movie Gone Girl starring Ben Affleck. It was good, but not great. I did enjoy the burger though.
Saturday was mixed weather with rain showers expected off and on all day. I did have a tee time on Saturday and 2 of my guys bailed, but Paul, my bachelor buddy, was game for golf. we got out there at 9:30 and the sun was trying to sneak out. It was deserted at the course and Paul and I zoomed through tte first seven holes and then ran into three groups trying the navigate their was through the eighth hole led by a father-son duo that looked like they were both playing their first round of golf ever. We bailed out and headed to the 10th tee and worked our way through the back nine in about an hour and 20 minutes. We finished 18 and headed back to number 8 and there was a nice gap in the golfers who were filtering out to the course as the weather improved and the sun came out. I birdied 8 and managed a par on nine for a 39+42=81. Paul shot 78 and we finished 18 holes in three hours. It is the pace I'd love to play every time out and it is one reason I played as well as I did. I'm a rhythm golfer and like to keep moving.
Well, dinner is about ready. I keep asking Darla what we are having and she says it is a surprise. I guess I'll be surprised. I hope you are all doing well. I think dad and Shirley should be back this week. I look forward to catching up with them. Ciao.
I did play golf on Thursday as Pete had set up a round with Bob Telford, an agent that I've done business with for about 35 years. He brought out his son and we played his home course at Rancho Murietta outside Sacramento. I had to take the commute that I used to take to work in Rancho Cordova and it made me appreciate the new office even more. I shot a 47+41=88 and struggled on the narrow course. I did play better on the back and was encouraged when I finished. We stayed on for lunch and I was back in the office by 3 PM and able to take the group out to dinner that night.
We had a storm front roll in Thursday night and had a constant rain on Friday. Darla and I had our annual Halloween date and shared a burger at Mel's Drive in followed by the movie Gone Girl starring Ben Affleck. It was good, but not great. I did enjoy the burger though.
Saturday was mixed weather with rain showers expected off and on all day. I did have a tee time on Saturday and 2 of my guys bailed, but Paul, my bachelor buddy, was game for golf. we got out there at 9:30 and the sun was trying to sneak out. It was deserted at the course and Paul and I zoomed through tte first seven holes and then ran into three groups trying the navigate their was through the eighth hole led by a father-son duo that looked like they were both playing their first round of golf ever. We bailed out and headed to the 10th tee and worked our way through the back nine in about an hour and 20 minutes. We finished 18 and headed back to number 8 and there was a nice gap in the golfers who were filtering out to the course as the weather improved and the sun came out. I birdied 8 and managed a par on nine for a 39+42=81. Paul shot 78 and we finished 18 holes in three hours. It is the pace I'd love to play every time out and it is one reason I played as well as I did. I'm a rhythm golfer and like to keep moving.
Well, dinner is about ready. I keep asking Darla what we are having and she says it is a surprise. I guess I'll be surprised. I hope you are all doing well. I think dad and Shirley should be back this week. I look forward to catching up with them. Ciao.
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