Yep, back after the marathon that is our annual leadership meeting in Detroit. I left on Tuesday morning and flew through Dallas, stopping for lunch in Dallas before flying on to Detroit and arriving at 5:30 in Detroit, after leaving Sacramento at 7:00 AM. There were a group of female firefighters that were on my flight from Dallas to Detroit. I was impressed with their dedication, but there was one woman that had to be close to 280 pounds. She was loud and obnoxious and when the flight attendant asked her to buckle her seat belt, she told her it wouldn't reach around her. When they brought her an extender, she sad, "Hey, those are for fat people." Really? She took it and stuffed it in her front seat pocket and shoved the loose belt buckle up between her waist and the armrest. I was a little concerned as she was ahead of me and I didn't want her hurtling around in the bulkhead in the event of an emergency.
The meeting was really pretty good this year, although I was probably a bit more quiet than normal. We are down just over a million in premium and about $350,000 in income this year. I was content to take my lumps this year and try to learn from some of the offices that are doing better than I am. My goal and pledge is that this will be a one year anomaly. I had so many people approach me and want to talk about Matt and how we are doing without him. He was beloved in the company and a hard guy to replace. I told anyone who asked that no, I haven't replaced him, but have back filled his position with two younger employees and we are doing okay. We finished October with a record revenue and income month and I feel that we are close to being on track. Of course, headaches abound. Wendy, who stepped up as a producer when Matt left, is out on maternity leave and has some complications with her pregnancy and is in the hospital now. She is due in early December, but they are ready to induce her delivery and get the baby into surgery. She won an Outstanding Service award at the meeting and was thrilled when I texted her a screenshot of her award.
I was able to get Pete taken care of at the meeting as I discussed his situation with our CEO and I think we're locked in with him for awhile. It is one less headache for me and allows us some stability going forward. I'm excited about the future and I plan to hire a young man who interned for us this past Summer. He graduates from the University of Arizona in December and I hope to plug him in next year. I see some of the same things in him as I saw in Matt: determination, ability, attention to detail and speed. He is still working for me about 12 hours a week remotely and I hope to lock that down by December. I talked to our Director of Compensation to make sure we won't have a problem getting him a good starting salary as I'm currently paying him $12.50 an hour.
I've added a few screenshots from our network app from the meeting. You can see the gang that were waiting at the airport for our flights out on Saturday. There were actually about 10 more people there, but they were at a different bar. I flew home through Phoenix and had a late dinner at Bog's Big Breakfast in the Sky Harbor Airport. It is one of the best airport restaurants that I have eaten at. They specialize in breakfast and the portions are large and delicious. I had eggs, bacon and potatoes and they included two huge slabs of marble rye toast on the side.
It is always difficult to fly East and have early meetings. I got into the hotel at7 :00PM and ended up hosting a group of six employees for dinner, including folks from Arkansas, Denver, Kansas City and Cleveland. I happened to head down for dinner and ended up the highest ranking person in the group and bought the dinner as a VP.
You can see the picture of Alan and his family on the screenshot above. His son, Danny was promoted to Senior Vice President and named to the board of directors for the family owned company. His daughter, Jody, was named a Corporate Vice President and is the Director of Canada. They are both very good at what they do and are both lawyers, Jodi having practiced for seven years in Toronto before joining the family business.
It is raining here and Darla fixed a nice tri tip roast, mashed potatoes and gravy that we ate while watching the Dallas game. They just lost AGAIN and are unofficially out of the playoffs. I feel for Tony Romo as he doesn't get any younger, but tonight's loss was firmly on the defense. They couldn't stop anyone when it mattered. The offense played their first complete game since Tony was hurt and it meant nothing. When the overtime coin toss came up Eagles, I had a bad feeling. Oh well, it's just football.
No golf as I was exhausted after the trip. I had a good night's sleep, but still slept out on the couch for about two hours today. Darla put away my suits and shirts as I slept. I have to do the handicapping for the Turkey Shoot next weekend. We have 90 players signed up so it's a bit of a PIA. I may work on it tomorrow.
I don't think I have added Sam's soccer picture before, but if I have, so be it. Very cute. Jennifer has all of their passports taken care of and will buy Sam's plane ticket next week. Looking forward to all of the fun in Mexico with the kids and Dad and Shirley. It will be fun. I rode the last leg of my flight lat night with a couple who live in Grass Valley who were returning from Cabo. There excitement about their trip, go t me fired up. Now that the Leadership conference is over, I can start looking forward to the trip. I think Darla and I will have Sam swim with the dolphins at the Vallarta Adventures compound down the street from the resort. It will be great and only about four weeks until we leave.
I have a Continuing Education seminar that my office is hosting on Thursday. This is the third straight that Markel has hosted and we have bought the lunch and provided the venue and the retail agents. Markel has a guy who has been in the business for 40 years and he is hilarious. We have our agents calling us to see when the next event is. We also have our annual Holiday Open House on December 3rd. We have our Water Remediation contractors lining up to host our open bar every year. Their customers are the retail agents and they will do anything to get in front of them. I look forward to those two events before we fly off to Puerto Vallarta on December 5th.
Well, I'm tired and ready to watch some TV with Darla, so I will bring this to a close. I hope you are all well, living in the footsteps of our LORD and living a life you desire. Be well. Ciao.
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