00:00:13:19 – 00:00:41:12

Good Monday morning. Do you realize it’s November? Stop. November. I need to buy my Thanksgiving turkey. November the 2nd: you do turkey. We do steak. I can’t do turkey. What did we do last year? Tenderloin. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think I’m going to do that again.

00:00:41:14 – 00:01:19:17                                   

That’s a good idea. Yeah, well, that’s a good idea. I can tell it’s November because obviously now fall finally got here. It skipped October, right? It did. They were talking about the, the, October. Yeah, yeah. The, I mean, think about it. Last week, it was like 80 degrees. It was beautiful. Yep, yep. I had well, as you know, I was on a vacation during a couple weeks in October to see my granddaughter in Prague and went to Germany, and they were already having, like, fall foliage, like their leaves were already changing.

00:01:19:23 – 00:01:39:21

And it was kind of cool there. So I came back to Oklahoma and I was like, oh, it’s still kind of summer here. I mean, it wasn’t, it was at 90, but it was in the 80s. Okay, then I have to share. Okay, so my wife and I, we, we like to dip our toes into, you know, gardening and all that kind of stuff.

00:01:39:23 – 00:02:00:23

We would like to have, you know, something that we could, you know, tomatoes and, wouldn’t do cucumbers. You mean. Oh, no, I’m talking, I’m talking hardy. So we planted a tomato plant mid to late spring. So it was just right at that where it was starting to get hot. Yeah. Planted it. Put up timed watering.

00:02:00:23 – 00:02:30:16

So it watered twice a day. And that it had the whole cage, the whole nine yards didn’t do anything. It looked like it was dying. Yeah. So about a week ago, I realized this stupid plant had quadrupled in size and had probably 30 blooms on the stupid thing. And then last week, now it’s growing tomatoes.

00:02:30:22 – 00:02:52:05

What? I thought tomatoes grew like in the hot weather. I did too, but I guess it has to have that coolness to get it started, I don’t know. Its stupid, is a stupid plant. But yeah, it’s got a little tiny tomatoes on it. Nice. That’s okay. Let’s see. Well, if squirrels don’t eat them.

00:02:52:06 – 00:03:13:13

But I mean, I wonder if it was like, a weird late season blooming tomato plant. Have you heard of that? No, I haven’t either. That was hilarious. But, yeah, I was like, congratulations at your green thumb. Thank you. That’s really awesome. We put fertilizer on it during the summertime. Yeah. It’s nothing.

00:03:13:15 – 00:03:35:16

That’s it. Wow. So, anyway. Yeah. Gotta love the weather. Yeah. So here we are. It’s fall. I guess I’d be having tomatoes and, Honey, we got salsa for the wintertime. Yes, that would be awesome. I don’t think I have the patience. My husband could do it.

00:03:35:20 – 00:03:55:03

We have, a banana tree. I know we got to get to our stuff, but we have a banana tree that we gotta split off from. My mom. Oh, yeah. And for what? And so we keep it out by, you know, we have a koi pond. You’ve been around, and we have a koi pond. And so, for whatever reasons, the bananas, trees just exploded this year.

00:03:55:03 – 00:04:17:16

Just like we have a banana growing on it. No. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Isn’t that crazy? You need to share pictures of that. I do, because we have a I mean, we’ve had that forever. John actually takes them all up, puts in garages, in the winter. So this is something that’s crazy because my mom’s been gone years.

00:04:17:16 – 00:04:38:06

Right. I don’t know, 15 years ago. First year global warming. But it’s all about. Yeah, I will take a picture. So cool. Okay, okay. Let’s get down to the business. Yeah. Let’s do what we’re supposed to do.

00:04:38:11 – 00:05:00:14

You know what? Usually I’m so obsessed with this, but I think I’m just. I’m weary. But tomorrow is elections. So everybody get out to vote. Darn. I should have worn red, white and blue today. Yeah. Oh, well. Yeah. So elections are tomorrow, so final midterm elections will be in Oklahoma. We’re going to be voting on our big state offices.

00:05:00:15 – 00:05:32:07

So governor or lieutenant governor, attorney general, labor commissioner, insurance commissioner. Yep. All all the big state offices and then whatever offices are open in the state legislature. So there’s a lot of musical chairs going on. So as always though, everyone just needs to get out. Just go. So one point. Yeah, I mean even say, oh, I want to do absentee or you want to do early voting, I, I don’t know, I kind of like going on the day of the election.

00:05:32:07 – 00:05:55:16

I, I think it’s a whole actually it’s a whole lot faster just to go in. Well, yeah, I say it’s a lot faster. Normally it is for me. You just go in, walk in there and tell Sue and hey, how’s it going? And hadn’t seen you too silly in half a year. I live in that. I live in an old, say older neighborhood, established, established neighborhood.

00:05:55:18 – 00:06:15:16

So I feel like when I walk in, I bring down the median age of voters by 20. It just makes me feel so much better. And I’m not young by any stretch of the imagination. And and you get a free sticker. I get a free sticker, and it’s a win win. They’re still like putting pins and two separate bags.

00:06:15:16 – 00:06:39:09

So that way you’re not retouching anyone’s pins. And there is that little guy over there with the with the alcohol wipes. Oh yeah, that’s part I do laugh because I walk in and they’ll say, hey, Denise, hey, hey, hey, we need to see your ID, which I hate. Hey, well, I would I, I you know what? As I feel all states should do that as well, but I know I agree.

00:06:39:11 – 00:07:01:22

Okay. So anyway, I just think it’s funny because we all know each other. The last year about my dad, it may have changed. Maybe. I don’t know now. So vote tomorrow. It’s very important. We’ll have a new so as of tomorrow we’ll have a new insurance commissioner. We’ll have a new governor. We’ll have a new lieutenant governor, attorney general, lots of big state offices.

00:07:01:22 – 00:07:24:18

So, you know, in in my job that affects everything because, you know, we lobby. But it’s not just the legislature. So suddenly you have everyone that has different, agendas that they want to do. So, well, we’ll know the rules after Tuesday and then everybody’s going to be scrambling to get where they need to be. So vote, vote, vote.

00:07:24:20 – 00:07:58:09

So we’ll do a follow up on that next week okay. Education. We had a board meeting last week and Josh gave an education report on our we keep calling that our new program. It’s not even that new anymore. Yeah. Called the Institute. And we have we have I, I don’t know if it’s exorbitant, but a large number of people that have taken advantage of this, I mean, large agencies, small agencies like the value of your big A membership to get to participate in our education program is has been phenomenal.

00:07:58:10 – 00:08:29:02

And I wasn’t quite sure, but holy cow, we’ve had a great response. I was very excited. I, somehow I, I just lost our notes somehow. I, just I just lose our net. Nope, I did that. My bad. Okay. Yeah. So we just have a lot that are participating, and I wasn’t sure. So very excited. They’re getting very interesting designations because they can really do it, focus on their jobs.

00:08:29:02 – 00:08:51:06

And then lots of agencies for the, you know, are taking advantage of the free education. So yeah, us so in the institute saying all that in the institutes, they have what they call learning pathways. And so they kind of give you a direction on, you know, what, what role are you when you know, what are you early in your career or are you seasoned in your career?

00:08:51:06 – 00:09:19:02

Are you an agent? Are you in claims, are you in technology operations. And so very specific pathway. So in the very thing that you can do, you can find applicable applicable say that’s three times by now I knew I shouldn’t have said that. You have you have classes that you can actually take that are going to pertain to your job, which I love this and it doesn’t have to be, you know, anyone holding your hand.

00:09:19:02 – 00:09:33:21

You can figure it out yourself because I think their website is very easy to use. Probably the biggest thing is that they have so many available, it’s hard to figure out, you know, what’s going to be your best. It’s like I am on, when I go to libraries, like, I want to read every book, but you have to narrow it down.

00:09:33:21 – 00:09:53:20

So we are thrilled with it. I hope everyone’s taking advantage of it. Lots of really good classes, which you can either go through the web’s our website to get to it, or you can even type in big e-commerce, the institutes. Yes, I think you’re right to. Yeah. And it has it has everything. Our homepage the home page. Yeah.

00:09:53:21 – 00:10:21:10

And so, you know, I, I think I’ve said this before, but you know where we used to offer two designations, we now offer 31. That’s correct. Yes. What a great benefit for our members. So we’re thrilled. One of the, free classes that we’re offering, we kind of like to feature, I mean, I know that you pull it up and we like to feature a different class, but there is an unlimited webinar focus on November 5th, and it’s just doing my job.

00:10:21:12 – 00:10:43:08

Ethical risk hidden and every day insurance decisions I love this. We were laughing because it’s like a very long title. However, it kind of says everything you learn. So it’s it’s good intentions, bad decisions, part of part of being in the insurance industry is a lot of times we are working with people when they’ve had a terrible thing happen to them.

00:10:43:08 – 00:11:09:07

Their house burns down or they’ve been in a car accident. So how do you have the best intentions and make the best decisions as you assist them? So every day, responsibility sometimes can become ethical blindspots as six workplace personas advocate closer, fraud, hunter, company loyalist, customer pleaser or process purist. I think that’s kind of funny. So everybody has a different role and usually they just want to help.

00:11:09:07 – 00:11:35:08

But you know, you have to remember the rules are the rules. So, you know, I think it’s a little bit of a personality thing. What’s an ethical draft? You know, recognizing, you know, the pressure of, you know what what what you’re what your job is and real world insurance scenario. So you have a few examples and then, ethical bottom line pride, prioritizing honesty, fairness, transparency and professional responsibility.

00:11:35:10 – 00:12:00:10

We, in the simple version of our industry is that we are just selling contracts. So we have a contract with the consumer, we have a contract with the company, and we have to remember that that we have to follow the guidelines of the contract, just like an attorney would tell us to do that. So, but we’re also helping people because we want them to be brought back to where they were before their loss.

00:12:00:12 – 00:12:25:17

November 20th, put this on your calendar. We have free Friday Ethics, which is also free. Did you say free? Yeah. Free. Free. November 20th. Very exciting. So, take advantage of that. Put it on your put it on your calendar. You get some you get some free credits just by being a big I’m member. But this gets you a couple of ethics hours that are definitely very beneficial.

00:12:25:18 – 00:12:49:01

Catlett you know, Shania is a big proponent when she goes out to agencies showing the benefit of cattle. It. If you haven’t done a tech assessment on Catlett, you are missing out because your agency should should be the most up to date with technology because it is changing the world of insurance. And Cadillac can do that. And let me throw this out, if I may.

00:12:49:06 – 00:13:16:00

Yeah. The, compensation 360 study. Yes, is back in play there. You should be receiving some emails about that as well. So, that’s up and go, which, they showed some of the, the dashboard and information that they’re gaining and I, I if I was a business owner, I think it’d be very interesting. You know, one of the big questions we have and, you know, in the market we’re in, how much should we be paying?

00:13:16:02 – 00:13:38:17

Whatever a CSR, a CSR. And you can’t do that without data. I can’t just pull a number out of my hip pocket and say, okay, this is the number. So what I like about that study is that it gives you real time data. You can look it up on your dashboard. You can it’s you do have to put in a lot of information, but then you can do it comparatively.

00:13:38:19 – 00:13:59:07

Then you can run reports comparatively with states around you regionally, even nationally. So it’s it’s fantastic information. It is worth the time to put in your data. So that way you have a comparative. And then once you fill in that data you have access to everything. So that should work that you price as a as a member cattle.

00:13:59:07 – 00:14:18:23

It is free to us to Big I members. Yeah. But then at that point, if you want to gain that information without, doing a submission, it’s going to cost you. So you have to do a submission to the comp. 360. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you could get access to all the data. You’re right. You can buy it.

00:14:18:23 – 00:14:36:07

But why buy it whenever you can? Just get it. So I mean, it seems. No it’s great. Yeah. I, I, I mean I think it’s used a lot but I, it could be used more for sure. Last, last week they did the get lit conference. Yes. I watched some of it and it was good. It’s really good.

00:14:36:07 – 00:14:58:00

Good. Yeah. Obviously it was a tech conference, so I like it. I like it too. Yeah. Agents are staying busy. They did their service project for, What was it, free to live? Animal sanctuary. I don’t know if anyone went home with the puppy. I guess we should pull them and see that it would be. Yeah, but, yeah, they do a great job.

00:14:58:00 – 00:15:20:05

So other than that, man, it’s November and lots of little things we’re doing around here. So, follow us here. It’s nice. Well, for the time being, in mean, you can’t get too cold. It’ll kill all my tomatoes, so. Okay. That’s true. Okay, okay. Get your tomatoes harvested, and then we’ll go. We’ll go back to full. So we’ll do okay.

00:15:20:05 – 00:15:25:23

Jerry, have an awesome week. You as well. Thanks.