It will be a week to remember. I have our annual Insurance Association golf event at Serrano tomorrow. We are sponsoring the putting contest again this year and I went out and bought two new Oddysey putters for the winners. I am playing in the event and have Gail and one of her retailers as my partners as well as a guy in Gary's office, Jeremy, who will fill in for Gary, who bailed on me at the last minute. I think he's still sore because I had to drop out of an event when Alan was last in town. I have to be at the course at 9 AM tomorrow to set up the signs on the course and to get the putting contest set up and ready. Shawna will run the putting contest again this year and I will have Linda, my new Personal Lines Underwriter, join her.
.Tuesday I have to be in Walnut Creek in the afternoon to meet with our lawyers to prepare for a deposition that I have on Wednesday morning. I'm staying in downtown Walnut Creek and Darla is joining me. I have the deposition at 10 AM on Wednesday and we should be out of there in 30 minutes. The case is where an insured became ill after ingesting fecal matter from pigeons that were roosting near the air intake for the furnace and became ill. We insure the property management firm and the loss should be paid for by the apartment owner for improper maintenance. We have declined coverage on the claim and they want to deposition me to see if coverage should apply. I'm not a coverage expert, but the duty of care and control of the apartment rests with the property owner. It's a waste of time, but it has to be done.
We will drive back Wednesday after lunch and I leave early Thursday morning for Eureka and the Humboldt County Insurance Agent's golf event. I am playing with my old Assistant Managing Director, Matt. I haven't talked to him since he left, so it should be interesting. We won the event two years ago and are keeping the team intact despite the obvious issues involved. We set up to play after he left and I agreed to pay for one of the agents and myself and Matt would take care of the other. I got a note from the TD this week saying that Matt and Chris hadn't signed up and he could put Jeff and I with another group. Matt screwed up and the guys gave him a ration. They told him that things have gone to Hell since he left BW. Yep.
I drive home from Eureka, CA back to Roseville on Friday and have poker that night. Saturday I have a 10:10 tee time in our final NCGA qualifier of the year, the NCGA Net Amateur. I'm tired just writing it. Eureka is about 5 and a half hours from Roseville.
I took one of my agents to the River Cats AAA baseball game on Thursday. I had given him the tickets, but he couldn't find anyone to go, so gave three back to me. I invited Darla and her girlfriend to join us. We had a great time and the stands were filled with kids, many of them perfect attenders at their school. It was a nice outing, not too hot, but good weather.
After our Memorial Day gig, I was talking to the guys about our pool being a little cloudy this year and subject to algae. Charlie asked me when I'd last changed my filter cartridges and you know what, I still had the original cartridges in the filter. I clean them with a hose about every three months, but they were shot. You can see the picture of the old ones above. I ordered a new set through Amazon. They wanted $350 at the pool store and I found them for $198, no tax, no shipping cost. I also bought a new vacuum for the pool floor and a 35 foot vacuum hose and a 50 pound bucket of shock (hypo chlorite). The damage was another $240, but the good news is that the pool is sparkling again. The PSI on the filter gauge dropped from about 25 to 10 after installing the new cartridges.
The palm garden is absolutely thriving this year. You have to trim the old fronds off the palms when the new growth appears in the middle of the stem. You can see a picture above of the corner palm in the yard before and after trimming. If you leave the old fronds on, it will retard the growth until the fronds turn yellow and fall off. The little ten pound palms that I put in ten years ago are huge now and I have to trim them just so I can get around the pool perimeter to brush the pool or vacuum the floor.
I was talking to Neil at our party and he told that we hadn't played golf together since we were in Mexico together. I think he's wrong, but that was a year and a half ago. He set up a tee time on Saturday at Wild Hawk in Elk Grove for 7:40 this past Saturday. We tried to get a couple of guys to join us, but got no takers, so Neil was at my front door at 6:30 AM Saturday morning and we drove out to the course in Elk Grove. He paid for the round and I bought lunch afterward. I played better than normal, shooting an 84 and Neil had an 82. I used to be a 9 handicap and Neil was an 18. We are now both 17. I am working on getting it back down.
I got a note from corporate this week informing me that our production in Roseville is flat for the year and the company as a whole is growing 15%. They asked me for a brief explanation and an Action Plan to improve our results going forward. Is no one paying attention in corporate or is it a "what have you done lately" mentality? I explained that we have lost 5 high potential employees under the age of thirty in the last three years to competitors and that included the number 5 producer in the entire company. We will get back on the horse, but unfortunately it takes time to train people and it is hard to replace a superstar with a person just entering Production for the first time. I added a bunch of Action steps like agency segmentation and focused marketing, etc., but the bottom line is that I am hiring four brand new people and it will take time to get them up and running. There is no magic bullet and we will see how patient they are with me. Fun, eh?
Neil and I ran across the Polaris Slingshot three wheel motorcycle pictured above at the golf course. The owner works at the golf course and bought the first Slingshot sold in California. It is a belt drive engine and gets 50 MPG. It doesn't have a hard top and you have to wear a motorcycle helmet when you drive it. The cost is $24,000 which compares with the more mundane Can Am three wheel motorcycles that sell for $27,000. The lines and paint on the body are amazing. We had a back-up on number 10 and ended up visiting with the owner of the vehicle for about ten minutes.
Well that is the news that is fit to print today. Darla is on her way home from the Italian Fest in Lodi, CA. I just talked to her and she said she had a GREAT day, so perhaps it will be a great night as well. :-)
I hope everyone is well. Darryl and Cheryl and Randy and Cake are in Hawaii celebrating some 60th birthdays. I wish we were there, I'd love a week at the beach, but soon enough. Looking forward to the trip with Dad and Shirley and all the kids to Nuevo Vallarta in December. Ciao.
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