What You Learn By Sitting By Brett...

Working in a common office with several cubicles is a rich pasture ground for any companies greatest resource: people. I sit next to Brett. Y'all may know Brett, but I'm the only one who sits next to his least favored left. Larry is down the hall to his right, and it's a very appropriate yelling distance. Anyway, sitting next to Brett these last 10 years, uh months, has provided opportunity for:
1) Introspection
2) Reevaluation
3) An occasional funny smell
Among other life shaping things learned:
a) Each and every phone conversation must start with "Hey" (This is southern posturing)
b) It's OK to tell your computer "I hate you" but only several times a day.
c) Xactimate has only 2 syllables (who knew?)
d) It's best if Larry locks his office door before going on vacation
e) If Itel samples are kept long enough, eventually another job will have the same floor covering
f) If he asks you if you've seen the pictures from one of his basement sewage mitigations...you might want to decline
g) All on call schedules are written in stone until the next revision
h) Never go an entire day without at least 1 "Dumb and Dumber" reference

All of this notwithstanding...he may have the most demanding job in this company-responding to emergency 24/7, and doing so in such a way homeowners still want us to do the reconstruction work. I get to follow up Brett and his crew and see the positive results when they help people out of a distressful situation. Maybe his personality makes him perfect for his job.

Actually I wondered how many acronyms on could get from the word B R E T T. Then I remembered I have to blog next month...let me get back to you with that.

Keith Barnhart - Estimator

Do I Really Have To Pay My Deductible?

When you purchase a homeowners insurance policy, one of the decisions to be made is at what price point you want to set your deductible. The deductible is the amount you must pay personally BEFORE the insurance company steps in to cover the remainder of the loss amount. Essentially, you are self-insured up to the amount of your deductible.

When you file an insurance claim, either the insurance adjuster or a contractor, such as Champion Construction, will write a repair estimate. Let's say you had a $500 deductible, and the claim total was $5,000. The insurance company would issue a check for $4,500, with you personally owing the remaining $500. So, now you have a check for $4,500 and you want to know if the contractor can repair your home for that amount ONLY, saving you $500 hard-earned dollars. The short answer is "No", but let's take a step back into history for a moment.

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Fishing With David Or "Is This Really A Vacation?"

Recently, Joel and I went fishing in Alaska with my expert fisherman brother, David. Of course, you are all wondering about our big catch. Well, I learned a few things about myself and also about fishing in Alaska. The first day we spent fishing on a boat out of Homer, Alaska. We were on the hunt for the BIG halibuts! My first two lessons were learned the first day, right there on that fishing boat. First, I learned that I do get seasick. Second, I learned that halibuts are heavy. When you add that incredibly huge and large sinker that probably weighed about 5 pounds, they are even heavier. So, I confess that the deck hand had to help me reel in my halibuts. Joel would have helped but he was busy being seasick and also reeling up his own halibuts. Ditto for David!

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The Busiest Month Yet

There has been a lot going on here at Champion in the past month. But I think that September was the busiest month I have ever had!

To start off the month of September, I married my beautiful fiance' Angelica. The final week of planning, stressing, working, working, and more working was truly a bear. For example, September 3rd, the day before the wedding, was especially busy.

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Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks

 

I just got back from a wonderful trip to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. My husband and I have been before about 4 years ago and we always wanted to go back with family and friends so we finally did. We took my sister and brother-in-law and their 2 boys who are 5 and 8, my cousin and her husband, and our friends Eddie and Jennifer and their 4 year old daughter. We spent about a week in the parks and we had perfect weather almost the entire time. The sky was clear and blue and the fall colors were at their peak. We love these parks and were excited to share them with everyone. Here are a few highlights from our trip...

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What's In a Name - Part III of III

Part III - Previously in 'what's in a name' we explored the most common customer last names that we have had the pleasure of working for, and we explored the similarities of the employee names we have at our company.

A few months before my son was born in March of this year, I was ready to reveal to my co-workers the NAME my wife and I had chosen for him.  I put the first letter of his name 'A' with 4 spaces following on our erase board in our conference room and asked everyone to write down their guesses on the board.  It was absolutely amazing to see how many legitimate guesses they were actually able to come up with (see attached picture - click on it to enlarge it).  And much to my surprise one of the guesses was actually correct.  ANSON came into the world safely on March 8th, 2010.  Thanks again for playing everyone.  Wow there are thousands and thousands of names out there.

Greg Ahlstrom - Accounting Manager

Hiking the famous Kalalau Trail

If you have ever been to Kauai and are a hiker there's a good chance that you didn't pass up hiking at least some part of the Kalalau Trail. There was no way I was going to miss it. Why fly 4,600 miles and pass it up? But pass it up is what we almost did. We saved the hike for the last day of our trip. We woke up early that day and it was raining like every other morning but you could tell this rain was set in and it sounded like it could rain all day. (The other mornings it would stop by sunrise and didn't do much harm to our plans.) I was thinking I should have listened to my wife who said "You shouldn't wait until the last day, what if it rains?" We went back and forth and ultimately decided to just go for it. The trail in its whole length is 11 miles. We had decided to do the first two miles to Hanakapi`ai beach and then take a two mile spur trail to Hanakapi`ai falls, 8 miles round trip. It was sprinkling as we started on the trail but the it soon stopped as we gained elevation. The start of the trail is very rocky and gradually goes up and then you reach the dirt or in our case the muddy part of the trail. The trail hugs the cliffs for awhile offering views of the coastline and the cliffs ahead. After a few slips and falls and crossing the river for the first time of many, we made it to the beach. The ocean at the beach is very dangerous to swim in and there was actually a sign that was notched every time someone drowned. We took a break and then hit the trail to the falls. Pretty quickly the trail became narrow and muddy.

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Kauai Highlights

So I just got over my jet-lag and I'm already ready to go back to Kauai! I can't think of more idyllic settings: lush tropical forest, beautiful golden beaches and  majestic sea cliffs. Kauai is the oldest of the Hawaiian islands so it's beauty has had more time to be perfected. Unfortunately, we only got to enjoy Kauai for one week but we got to do and see a lot so I thought I'd share our highlights with you.

BEST SHAVE ICE: First things first: I love shave ice (it's not "shaved" in Hawaii) so I was very excited to try the real deal while we were in Kauai. We tried 4 different places and we all agreed that our favorite was Jo-Jo's in Waimea. It was amazing! I got the triple berry special with vanilla ice cream on the bottom and vanilla cream on top and I loved it. My sister got the Haupia special which was coconut shave ice with macnut icecream on the bottom and coconut cream and coconut flakes on top and she said it was one of the best things she had ever eaten. Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of Jo-Jo's to share with you but this is Wishing Well in Hanalei which was my second favorite but the lady there is really cranky.

BEST BEACH: We loved Tunnels Beach! To be honest, this is the beach we stayed at and we only visited 3 others very briefly but it was so perfect we never felt the need to go anywhere else. First of all, it has the back drop of the NaPali mountains and the famed Bali Hai. Second of all, it is surrounded by huge, half moon shaped reef about 1/8 mile off shore. This reef not only provides excellent snorkeling and diving, it also creates a barrier from the rough surf conditions and strong currents. You can snorkel right off the beach and see beautiful fish, colorful coral, eels, sea turtles and even sharks

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My Favorite Vendors

As the Marketing Support person, I have the fun job of ordering all marketing supplies for Champion. This is part of my job that I really enjoy as long as I have good companies to work with. If the company turns out to be no good - that can can really make my job difficult and stressful. Over the past eight years of working at Champion I have tried many different companies and here are a few of my favorites. These are companies that have a simple ordering process, great customer service, great prices, fast turn-around and are quick to handle any issues we have with the product. I hope this list of vendors will help anyone out there to avoid any unscrupulous companies.

My all time favorite printer: http://www.printingforless.com/ This company is AWESOME! I have been using them exclusively for about 3 years for all of Champion's business cards, brochures, folders, etc. They print pretty much anything. They are located in Montana but you would never know it. Their customer service makes you feel like they are right next door. They even send goodies from time to time to thank us for our loyal service. Out of everything they've printed for us over the years, we have only had a couple of issues and they fixed them quickly for no charge.

Best Marketing Giveaways:

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Meet Champion's New Marketing Rep

SuAnne Evans has joined Champion Construction Services as our newest Marketing Representative. She is a native of Atlanta, and a graduate of The University of Georgia. SuAnne is married to Craig Evans, and has two children, Scott and Shelly. Her background includes real estate sales for Prudential, pharmaceutical sales for Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, and Territory Mangager for Revlon, Inc.

SuAnne is very excited about this new opportunity and is looking forward to meeting all of you!