Danny's Desk

Black eyed peas on New Year's Day

When we lived in Texas, it was tradition to eat black eyed peas – Texas Caviar – on New Year’s Day.  They were supposed to bring good luck and prosperity.  

I’m not a big believer in luck (I prefer preparation!), but I still ate them on the first day of every year.  If you tasted black eyed peas made the way my wife makes them, you’d feel lucky, too…

I’m sharing Kathy’s recipe before New Year’s Day so you have time to make it and enjoy any of the luck it may bring you in 2012!

Black Eyed Peas & Ham
The recipe is not precise because the seasonings depend on your taste, but here are the makings that you let simmer all day:

About one pound of black eyed peas rinsed and drained
Bacon grease
Country ham (salt cured)
A LOT of onion cut up 

This may not be very healthy, but it sure is good served with pork roast, cooked cabbage and corn bread. 

Share your good luck charm or tradition (or recipe) below.

What's on your list?

 

Someone gave me a sheet of paper with lines numbered to 20 and asked me to list 20 things I’m grateful for. Easy.

Right off, I thought of my family: my wife, my children and my two beautiful granddaughters. (That’s #1, #2 and #3.)

On the drive home from work (#8: Woodmen of the World; #9: my career; #10: friends at WOW), I kept adding to the list (#26: great dogs I’ve had; #27: my hobby of raising horses) and each thing made me think of another until I got home (#73: garage door openers).

This Thanksgiving (#127: living in a free country), spend some time counting your blessings. It’s heartening and humbling to note all of the gifts we’re given daily.

What are you grateful for? To let me know what’s on your list, add a comment below.

 

Lunch with the Girls

 

I got to have lunch with Warren Buffett (and about 800 others) at a fundraiser for Girls Inc., an organization that provides educational, cultural and recreational programs for girls.

 My favorite Girls Inc. program is their Economic Literacy program which aims to build "girls’ financial competence and confidence to recognize early on that they can exercise control over their financial future.”  

 Wow! Every girl and boy (and man and woman) needs that!

 If you have ideas on how Woodmen of the World can promote financial literacy with young people (Grade school? Middle school? High school?), share those ideas in the comments below.

 Check out Girls Inc. to see how they build confidence in their members. 

Woodmen of the World awarded 2011 Omaha Better Business Bureau (BBB) Integrity Award!

Yesterday, Woodmen of the World won the 2011 Omaha Better Business Bureau (BBB) Integrity Award! In the 'Large Business' category (150+ associates), Woodmen of the World was selected from many local businesses who entered the prestigious competition. These awards focus on demonstrated ethical business practices with key stakeholders including customers, employees and community at large, rather than a company's growth, profitability or popularity. The Integrity Award Winners were chosen by an independent panel of judges consisting of Omaha business leaders and members of the academic community.

 Jim Hegarty, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau, said of the awards: "The 2011 BBB Integrity Award winners have shown that ethics and integrity are core values of their organization. They join an elite group of organizations that realize dealing fairly and honestly with employees, customers and partners are central to profitability and growth. They serve as role models for the business community in Omaha, and the Better Business Bureau Foundation is pleased to honor them with this prestigious award."

We all know that integrity is essential in business; in fact, it is deliberate. Trust, influence and repeat business are all results of doing what you say you'll do and keeping your promises, even when no one is looking. That's how we define integrity at Woodmen of the World, and I'm proud to be part of an organization filled with hard-working, honest people who follow that same standard.

 

Life Insurance Awareness Month

September marks the change from summer to fall – it’s back to school, back to work and  back to routine. We claim to dislike routine, but when its familiar rhythms are disrupted, we want it back. 

All those contributions you make to the daily routine – bathing the kids, walking the dog, maintaining the yard or the car, doing the laundry or the shopping, the keeping the checkbook or the calendar straight – will still need doing even after you’re gone.

Imagine how your family would have to adjust if you weren’t there…how they would struggle to manage without you. Nothing can take your place at the table, in the car, in the church pew or in the bleachers. But life insurance can allow your family to carry on without having to leave their home or change schools, or give up some of the things you worked so hard to provide for them. 

September is Life Insurance Awareness Month. It’s a good time to look at your life insurance and make sure that you’ve got plans to protect your family from a catastrophic change. A good place to start your planning is the LIFE Foundation. They are an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to educating people about life insurance. Check out their Life Insurance Awareness Month campaign, and call your Woodmen of the World Representative if you want a review or a needs analysis to help you evaluate your family’s need.

Enduring Financial Strength

 
I've been getting questions from members and even our associates the past few days and weeks as the debt ceiling crisis has been unfolding in Washington, and I want to reassure everyone that Woodmen of the World is in great financial shape and is insulated from these actions. I just released our quarterly letter to our members today detailing our financial numbers for the second quarter of 2011. We continue to monitor the situation closely, but we also know that our conservative investment philosophy has stood the test of time and will continue to serve us well. Thanks as always for your continued trust in our organization.

Flag Day

 

Today is Flag Day, an important occasion at Woodmen of the World. For more than 60 years, we've been presenting American flags to community groups, fire departments, schools, churches and non-profit organizations all around the country. We pledge allegiance to our flag every day, and especially on Flag Day.

Here in Omaha, we made a special presentation over lunch to the Omaha Parks Foundation. We donated 113 American flags to be raised over Omaha's city parks. We were honored to have Amber Miller, the Foundation's Administrator; John Conley, the Chairman of their Board of Directors; Melinda Pearson, Omaha City Parks Director; and Thomas Mulligan, the newly-elected President of the Omaha City Council, all make remarks. Our own Mark Thiesen made the presentation, and said we were up to the challenge of providing flags for all 230 city parks in Omaha.

I hope all of you set time out of your day to observe a moment of silence to honor our veterans, current members of the military and all who have sacrificed to make this country great. There's no more enduring symbol of our American ideals than the flag, and we're proud to honor it today, and always.

Marco...

 

It's been a busy spring. I traveled to several Jurisdictional Conventions, and I had the honor of speaking at the National Association of Fraternal Insurance Counsellors Convention last month in Louisville, Kentucky. It's always nice to go home, and I enjoyed speaking to my fellow FICs.

Next week we'll be in Marco Island, Florida, for our annual Field Trip. I'm looking forward to seeing all of our top Field associates there. To all of our Field associates who didn't qualify: make this your busiest week out of the year. Get your momentum going so you never have to miss another Field Trip.

Throughout it all, our thoughts and prayers are with all of those who have been affected by natural disasters this season. I'm proud of my fellow Woodmen of the World members who have helped tornado victims in Alabama and in Joplin, Missouri. A speedy recovery to you all.

Arm Exercises

I hope you all had a nice Easter weekend with your families. Coming off a holiday weekend is tough sometimes. I know I felt sluggish this morning, and when the alarm went off at 4:30, the last thing I wanted to do was go to the gym. I thought, “What’s one day going to hurt if I miss?”

But I went.

There’s this guy at my gym that I’ve been seeing there pretty regularly. He’s paralyzed from the waist down. Who knows what kind of struggles he goes through just to get to the gym, and when he gets there, the only exercise he can do is on his arms.

It made me think on my drive to work about how I was so reluctant to expend any energy to go to the gym, when this guy has obstacles in his life that are so much greater than mine, and he was there.

If we all got up each morning with the mind set that nothing is going to get in our way, just think of what we could do. We all have the opportunity to make such a huge difference in each other’s lives, in our family’s lives, just by going to work, and yet I know there are days when we just go through the motions.

It’s time to hit that reset button. Today, be energetic. Be optimistic. Be thankful.

Do what you can to help others. We are so lucky to be in this industry, where we can change the lives of families.   

We all have different abilities, but are we making the best of our situation? We are all stronger than we think we are. Use that strength and stamina to make this a great week.

Jurisdictional Conventions

We're in the midst of Jurisdictional Conventions right now. There's one going on nearly every weekend until the end of May -- 27 in all. I've been to two so far: Kentucky and Texas. Both are big conventions, with about 800 people at the banquet for both. It was invigorating to see all these wonderful Woodmen of the World members gathered in one place and talking about how we can make our organization better.

I want to make sure we don't lose that momentum, though. I know how it is, we attend these great meetings, and then we move on to the next thing as soon as they are over. We have the best of intentions, but we're all busy and Woodmen of the World sometimes gets moved to the back burner. I want to make sure we're all motivated to make this an amazing year and that we all work to grow our membership.

It was great seeing all of you in Kentucky and Texas! I'm off to North Carolina's Jurisdictional Convention next, at the end of the month. We have a large membership in North Carolina, so I'm looking forward to talking with a lot of you soon!