Darla and I are off Thursday for Washington, DC and my responsibilities as a board member for the Western Insurance Agents Association. We get in at 10 PM on Thursday night and are about ten minutes by car from the airport. We are staying in Arlington at the Hyatt Regency which is across the street from the mall in Washington. We have a breakfast meeting on Friday morning and will be turned loose about 11 AM to visit Washington. We have dinner in Georgetown on Friday night at a nice French restaurant and then have the rest of the weekend to tour the monuments and sights and attractions of the area.
Last week was an interesting one at work as I had one of the corporate VPs in to work with a couple of my newer Underwriters. Michael has some great ideas and is a whiz during marketing calls. He is Caribbean and you have to force him to slow his speech pattern down or you won't understand him. He has worked as a manager at two successful offices, Tampa Florida and Scottsdale Arizona and is now in charge of Sales and Development for the company. He reports directly to our CEO, which would make some managers nervous, but Michael understands the unique pressures that the Managing Directors are under and the problems that we have as a corporate entity in retaining our younger talent. He is very impressed with the staff that I have, but realizes that you can't lose a top ten producer for the company and replace him right away. It takes time and it may take two or three producers to completely replace his production in the office. It's also tough when those people you lose are out there competing for business every day. We'll see. I appreciate the help that he brought to my office and both of the individuals that he worked with said that he was a huge help to them.
We finished the week with a golf outing on Friday to Morgan Creek Country Club. Michael is a lefty and rents clubs when he travels. He took some time to adjust to the Srixon set that was available to him and shot 46+37=83. I had 42+43=85. Our agent, Tabb (who is the tournament director for the Trusted Choice junior event that I'm working in August) shot 80. Pete had 93 and it was his first trip back to the golf course since his triceps surgery six months ago. I had to get back to the office in the afternoon as I had an interview.
I still am working on my interviewing skills and the biggest dilemma I have is people with great insurance skill and zero personality. This is a sales business. I interviewed a lady last week that has been with her company for 17 years and is an underwriting whiz. She is as bland and boring as you can imagine. She could take the job and do great, but never move into a production or marketing role. The lady I met Friday has insurance experience from both a company an agency side, but has worked in the financial services industry for the last 10 years. She has a sparkling personality and would be a tremendous marketer for Burns. I am getting background checks on both individuals and will let Harvey meet them and see what he thinks. My inclination is to hire the second interviewee and see how that works for us. She will come at less cost and a higher potential upside.
You can see the picture of Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell above. Muhammad Ali is well known for his social causes and his worldwide celebrity, but I remember him for his sense of humor. There is no way that Cosell and Ali should ever have been friends, but Ali loved Cosell and vice versa. Strange bedfellows, but tremendously entertaining for those of us that got to witness it.
The pictures of Sammy are there because this is my blog and I like to dress it up with pictures of my granddaughter.
I played in the Net Amateur qualifier on Saturday and had the first tee time with Neil and John Parola because we were supposed to go to Luke's 5th birthday in Folsom. Darla's mom had taken a fall last week and wasn't up to travelling so we decided to push it off two weeks until we are back from the nation's capital. I am stuck on 85 like I used to be on 83. I have shot 85 the last three or four times out and shot another 43+42=85 on Saturday. It is a net 71, which gets you an "attaboy" around here. The qualifiers each shot 64 and 65. There were some good scores shot over the weekend. John, who was a mess when he first joined the club, shooting a 116 in his first event with us in Monterey. He is retired now and plays three days a week and is now a 15 handicap. He shot 45+37=82, net 67. I was able to stay and handle the skin contest. We had 39 players in the skins at $5 apiece, so I was working with $195. I almost paid the wrong guy a $40 skin, but caught myself right before handing it to him and saving myself $40. I didn't play skins this week and was just helping out, but avoided calamity. I was panicked for a minute when I realized I was $40 short.
Darla and I were up early today and off to church. We are still working with another local church to see if they can help us get back right side up. We were losing $80,000 per month and going into near liquidation. We have since added 1000 regular attenders to our numbers and are breaking even. We are enjoying the strength and skill of our benefactor and will vote on officially becoming the fifth campus for that group in October. It has been a wild ride with the Texas group coming in and then dropping us like a hot potato and our original pastor leaving the church. Things are settling down and we are getting healthy both emotionally and financially. The service was great today and we recapped what Christian organizations have accomplished over the years with the YMCA, SPCA, prison ministries, hospital ministries, mental hospitals and Christian counseling services the first of their kind when they were first introduced. Always proud to see those things.
I talked to Jennifer this weekend and talked to her about work. She is happy to be staying home with Sam this Summer and will maybe look for work in the Fall. She had "butt dialed" me and I called and talked to her. What she said touched me so much that I called McKenny on my way home from golf and thanked him for the love and support that he gives my two girls in Vegas. He was happy that I had reached out to him and I was definitely emotional when I talked to him. It was a great conversation and he is such a good man and a Godsend for Jennifer and Samantha. He is one of the hardest workers I have ever met.
Darla and I will talk to Dad and Shirley again tonight. This process with her teeth has been a nightmare in getting posts set in her mouth and then the teeth themselves causing serious blisters and sores in her mouth to the point that she couldn't wear the device and it had to be altered, not once, but twice! Obama wants all of our medicine to be controlled by government. No thanks. Darla and Shirley were communicating over e-mail and it sounds like the latest alteration is good enough that it was still in her mouth from Tuesday. I guess that is a victory. She mentioned that the teeth will still need some tweaking, but may be a go long term. Here's praying that she gets used to them and they fit well and work as they are supposed to. Pour thing. We love you, Shirley!
I will be back next Sunday with tales and pictures of Obama's hometown. We also fly through Chicago.
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