Mohegan

The past three days I have been at Mohegan Sun casino for a MetLife leadership conference. The meeting started at 12pm Monday and did not get over until 6pm tonight. There were roughly 200 people at the meeting from all over the country. The days were long, with the conference lasting from 8am - 6pm, team dinners from 6-8 and then "activities" until the wee hours of the morning.

The conference this year was great. We had a motivational speaker come in to spend two days with us talking about the key characteristics of being effective leaders and drive a businesses bottom line, while improving employee satisfaction. Sounds pretty boring, but much of the things learned the past two days impact not only work, but ones personal life and the relationships with family and friends.

Dan Desalvatore, who was the lead speaker, was a former foreman, working in New York City. Having worked a grueling job occupation with minimal job appreciation, Dan decided to start his own company. He and his Team travel over 200,000 miles a year (roughly 150 days a year) all around the world, speaking to the Leadership Team's of many of the Fortune 500 companies on how to be more effective leader's, improve employee job satisfaction, become better listeners, situational managers and improve a company's bottom line.

MetLife is currently a Fortune 50 company and is the #2 disability insurance company in the world. By 2010, the goal is to be the #1 carrier, which means we would be #1 in Life, Dental and Disability. As such, the hope is that by investing in the leader's of the Disability business, it will improve not only the bottom line, but also move us into that leading spot.

Monday night we spent the evening in the "The Dublin," which is an Irish pub in the casino. We did not stay out too late though knowing our meeting started at 7am. After our conference ended at 4pm Tuesday, we had a Team building event, which went from 4-7pm. The Team building consisted of making these ridiculous hats and running around the casino doing a scavenger hunt. The hunt had us running around the casino floor, mall and on various of the hotel floors. After the scavenger hunt, we had a formal dinner while listening to our President speak. The evening festivities consisted of drinking homemade wine in someone's hotel room (I felt like I was 16 drinking Boon's). At 10pm, I met up with our President, VP, CFO, Assistant VP and various other Executive Leaders for drinks. What started out as 10 of us ended up being roughly 40 by 1am. We did not leave the bar until 2am. Today was our last day of meetings.

I am sure I bored you with this blog.....sorry. I decided to take a break from responding to my 300+ emails. These next couple of days are going to stink because Kris and I know we leave Saturday and the only thing between now and Saturday is two days of work!

Kristin went to the walk in clinic this afternoon because she was not feeling well. She found out she has a sinus infection, which stinks. Hopefully, she gets better before we leave because flying will not be enjoyable nor will the trip. After hearing Jared's experience with traveling with Kristin to the Grand Canyon, I might be inclined to not got to CA!

Okay, random change of subject....I heard a story this week, which was hilarious....This man attempted to rob a convenient store. He walked into the store with a face mask and asked the cashier to empty the register. The robber then asked for the money in the safe, which the cashier advised was locked up. The robber responded by providing the cashier with his business card and said "Have the owner/Manager call me when he gets in." ARE YOU KIDDING ME??????

Mmmm-Kay....I've bored y'all enough for this evening. I am going to go enjoy the rest of my evening listening to TaTa snore, click and make the other lovely sounds she will be making all night. Maybe I will record the TaTa Orchestra tonight and post on the blog tomorrow.

Buenos Noches!