Chief Financial Officer:
As we were continuing the process of building this new business, there were certain lines we had to fill in with information.
Our Office Manager said that she was putting Jonathan down as CEO of the company, and asked if that was alright. Of course it is alright as that is what he is. Currently, he is CEO, Chief Transportation Manager, Head of the Mechanics division and several other things.
As Office Manager, Suzanne handles all billing, all bidding, and most things in between.
I, have struggled with finding "my place" in all of this. As far as this business is concerned, I have told people who asked that I sit around looking pretty, oh, and sign checks.
But today, the questions on this form continued needing specific answers. Suzanne asked, "Who should I put down as CFO.. and what IS CFO? The answer?..... ME!! Well, yes, I sign most of the checks around here to pay the bills so sure, call me that.
But that got me to thinking, what IS a CFO? The easy answer is Chief Financial Officer. That lead me to beg the question, what does a CFO even DO? My uncle, I believe is CFO of a banking company in Texas. You see people on news programs and such labeled CFO. Still, that really doesn't answer the question, so that is leading me on another search.
So far this is what the internet has told me. " Want to be a chief financial officer? Business experts and CFOs themselves say
your first priority is to become a business strategist. You have to move from an
accounting focus to see the borders of the big picture—and beyond. You have to
understand all aspects of your business, from the sales goals to the marketing
plan to your company’s position in the marketplace through to the strategic
plan. You have to be familiar with distribution channels, public relations and
all other functional silos. You have to understand the latest technology and be
able to share your IT savvy with your colleagues. In other words, “You can’t
rely on just knowing the ABCs of accounting,” explains Diane Albergo, manager of
member career services at the Financial Executives Institute (FEI), a membership
organization for CFOs and senior financial executives in Morristown, New Jersey.
“You need a strong business sense.” " (Taken from the Journal of Accountancy.com)
Oh boy do I have a LOT to learn. Again.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Time to go back to school.... or something
. I have decided that the best thing I can do for myself is to use this space to take notes on the things I need to learn and am learning, so I can keep track of those things in the future. This whole chapter in my life is very overwhelming for me on an every day basis. I have come to the realization that no one else has to understand WHY this is overwhelming for me and in what ways it is overwhelming. None of that matters to anyone else but me and that is quite all right. I just have to find some ways to cope with the whole thing myself and to find calm in the midst of it all. I just have to find ways to keep it all to myself, put a smile on my face and pretend everything is a bowl of cherries until I can make it so. That will be much easier for all around me to cope with ME.
I have very limited experience in the area of hiring and firing. Personally I have not even been in a job interview for myself in lets see.. over around 20 years. Yep, a bit rusty I would say. Not to mention, as I tell people, MY degree is in Elementary Education with my major emphasis as Special Ed. I do not have a business degree, I'm not a mechanic, I'm not proficient in logistics, no experience in HR. Have I mentioned that I'm barely proficient in turning a computer on and off, much less could I be considered an IT specialist. Oh yes, Then there is the 3 inch binder sitting beside me here on the bed titled Fleet Safety Compliance Manual. Nope, I'm not a safety specialist either.
So, tonight, here I go. I am starting my note taking and haphazard education with an article titled Finding & Keeping Drivers.
According to an American Trucking Assns white paper from last year, the United States currently is facing a shortage of 20,000 to 25,000 drivers in the for-hire truckload market and during the next ten years, could become over 200,000 if something is not done.
Shortage Could Spread
I. Currently shortages tend to be long-haul and over the road carriers
II. Issues causing the problem
A. relatively low pay
B. living on the road challenges
C. changes to hours of service
D. Changes to compliance, safety accountability program
E. industry growth
F. retirements and drivers leaving the industry
III. Needs to fill slots
A. on average 100,000 new drivers a year
B. slow job changes
IV. Other exacerbating issues
A. Generous unemployment benefits
B. larger "underground economy" of tax free part time work
C. stricter driver hiring criteria relating to health, safety record and substance abuse history
D. Intrusion of technology into the cab. "big brother effect"
E. Aging driver population not being replaced
F. Exansion of private smaller fleets
G. acute lack of "young blood"
H. Revolving door of hiring training and leaving the industry
V. Solutions
A. No industry norm for solution
B. Companies who find solutions will win.
C. Increasing driver pay.
D. Expecting high qualifications
VI. Changing Mindset.
A. Find and treat quality people above the norm
1. Give quality the chance to demonstrate their competence and realiability
2. Communicate better with employees respect and value
3. Monthly tuition reimbursement payments for tuition loans for quality behavior
VII. In house Candidates
A. SAIA combed its dockworkers o find employees with the right safety mindset and work ethic to start driving.
B. Finish training with seasoned drivers after employee goes to local driver training school if available.
C. Con-Way established its own truck driving school
D. Investing in new attractive equipment.
VIII. Driver wellness
A. Focusing on a drier health and wellness plan to reduce pour health
B. Average lifespan of a trucker is 61 years
1. sleep apnea,
2. high blood pressure
3. obesity
C. Consider bonus pay for meeting health goals.
IX. Consider promotions
A. seasoned drivers becoming supervisor, trainer, dispatcher, or recruiter.
B. inform drivers of these possibilities
X. Summary
A. recruitment
B. qualifying, screening and orienting new employees
C. transition into the job
D. Periodic reviews, accountability and recognition
E. True career path
I have very limited experience in the area of hiring and firing. Personally I have not even been in a job interview for myself in lets see.. over around 20 years. Yep, a bit rusty I would say. Not to mention, as I tell people, MY degree is in Elementary Education with my major emphasis as Special Ed. I do not have a business degree, I'm not a mechanic, I'm not proficient in logistics, no experience in HR. Have I mentioned that I'm barely proficient in turning a computer on and off, much less could I be considered an IT specialist. Oh yes, Then there is the 3 inch binder sitting beside me here on the bed titled Fleet Safety Compliance Manual. Nope, I'm not a safety specialist either.
So, tonight, here I go. I am starting my note taking and haphazard education with an article titled Finding & Keeping Drivers.
According to an American Trucking Assns white paper from last year, the United States currently is facing a shortage of 20,000 to 25,000 drivers in the for-hire truckload market and during the next ten years, could become over 200,000 if something is not done.
Shortage Could Spread
I. Currently shortages tend to be long-haul and over the road carriers
II. Issues causing the problem
A. relatively low pay
B. living on the road challenges
C. changes to hours of service
D. Changes to compliance, safety accountability program
E. industry growth
F. retirements and drivers leaving the industry
III. Needs to fill slots
A. on average 100,000 new drivers a year
B. slow job changes
IV. Other exacerbating issues
A. Generous unemployment benefits
B. larger "underground economy" of tax free part time work
C. stricter driver hiring criteria relating to health, safety record and substance abuse history
D. Intrusion of technology into the cab. "big brother effect"
E. Aging driver population not being replaced
F. Exansion of private smaller fleets
G. acute lack of "young blood"
H. Revolving door of hiring training and leaving the industry
V. Solutions
A. No industry norm for solution
B. Companies who find solutions will win.
C. Increasing driver pay.
D. Expecting high qualifications
VI. Changing Mindset.
A. Find and treat quality people above the norm
1. Give quality the chance to demonstrate their competence and realiability
2. Communicate better with employees respect and value
3. Monthly tuition reimbursement payments for tuition loans for quality behavior
VII. In house Candidates
A. SAIA combed its dockworkers o find employees with the right safety mindset and work ethic to start driving.
B. Finish training with seasoned drivers after employee goes to local driver training school if available.
C. Con-Way established its own truck driving school
D. Investing in new attractive equipment.
VIII. Driver wellness
A. Focusing on a drier health and wellness plan to reduce pour health
B. Average lifespan of a trucker is 61 years
1. sleep apnea,
2. high blood pressure
3. obesity
C. Consider bonus pay for meeting health goals.
IX. Consider promotions
A. seasoned drivers becoming supervisor, trainer, dispatcher, or recruiter.
B. inform drivers of these possibilities
X. Summary
A. recruitment
B. qualifying, screening and orienting new employees
C. transition into the job
D. Periodic reviews, accountability and recognition
E. True career path
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Hows Retirement?
I keep running in to situations where people ask me variations on this question, How's Retirement?
The question may be "So, how is it having your husband around all the time?" Or "Are you getting all the things done that he hasn't had time for the last few years? You know, the retirement Honey Do List?" And the most fun question to me seems to be, " Are you tired of him being underfoot yet?"
I know that HE keeps getting questions about what its like to not have to get up every morning, and what its like to have "nuthin to do."
So let me start with a picture from the official Retirement Party!!!
Then, let me continue by saying that retirement is a blast!! Yep, he doesn't HAVE to get up at 6:00 every morning. He has generally been waking up around 5:30 most mornings voluntarily. As for sitting around, yes there has been some of that. Sitting in his pickup truck on the way to Santa Fe, or Albuquerque to file for CRS Numbers, IFTA permits, HAZMAT Certificates, checking "load Boards". Sitting around on the ground beside the tanker while learning how to change the breaks.
The questions about me having him hanging around. Boy, I couldn't even begin to keep up with the paperwork and the phone calls and just trying to get this show off the ground and organized if I DIDNT have him hanging around to show me what I was doing. Just looking up from my desk and seeing him through the window in his office is wonderful. Watching him walk in the back door from "the yard", hands greasy up to his elbows is a great sight. Grabbing a quick lunch together before we head back to the office to start again. Nope not tired of him hanging around at all.
As for getting around to the things we haven't done in the last few years around home? Who is home long enough to know? Yes, there are items on the list that we are going to get to this year. And I know that we will get to them to make this place the best "get away in this part of the world" Just today is not that day.
What you might ask is taking up all of our newly retired time?????
Here is a glimpse. The two on the left are from the business that we already manage for my mom. The two on the right are our new business. There is one more semi tractor, two tankers, three flat beds and an asphalt tanker in the mix.
I enjoy photography anyway, but having new subjects to work with is a challenge and a half. Here we have 909 and 606 looking away from the setting sun.
909. 606 "The Pee" and the International
playing around for me and just having some fun.
And the last but not least of my fun pictures, Jonathan, The Retired Guy!!!
So, just out of curiosity, What does retirement mean in your world?
Monday, October 14, 2013
Our New Venture
Under construction: both business and blog. Check back over the next couple days and there were be explainations
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Maybe this explains something
I am admittedly a strange mixture of characteristics. For those who know me, they know I have what appears to be extensive and major trust issues. (Which I do) But, I also have this extensive and oddly contrasted faith in the ability of people to come through when the chips are down. I am a died in the wool people pleaser, and yet very much a loner. I have excellent "gut feelings" about people and situations.... and yet continue to make decisions and choices that are seldom what those around me would have me do.
So, you may ask, where is all of this conflict leading to?
Someone I know shared a piece written by J. Mary Luti.
J. Mary Luti is Visiting Professor of Worship and Preaching at Andover Newton Theological School, and this from her bio is the some total of what I know about this person. But her comments opened my eyes this morning in a way that I needed to see and hear.
Before we go on, let me mention that I am NOT a cat person, but I understand the anology presented here.
The story began with the idea that from time to time she would unexpectedly drop in to visit her parents and her mother would always say, "Look what the CAT dragged in" I grew up hearing the same phrase uttered by my own father. He used it to explain almost any unexpected sighting of someone you had not seen in a while. Usually, that person came to visit from "somewhere over yonder."
This woman went on to detail that cats tend to do things like kill mice or birds and want more than anything to bring them to you as a good will offering of love and companionship. My dogs have been known to do the same thing, as they know they will get a treat from me if they bring gross stuff to me instead of eating or rolling in it. But cats also will bring wads of yarn, shiney things, gross batches of yuck that make us want to gag, but THEY are attatched to it.
She then goes on to use this verse of scripture to tie things together. "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near." - Ephesians 2:13
This is to remind us that each of us who profess to be "in Christ" were are some point one of those bizzare and eclectic finds to Christ. Maybe we weren't the half dead and bloody mouse, but surely we were each a balled up mess comepletely unable to untangle ourselves.
At some point in time, we were each picked up by the scruff of the neck and dropped into the lap of someone or someoneS who patched us back together or untangled us enough to be functional and productive.
So, that brings me to ME in all of this. If you were to find a way to watch a video tape of my family line back for all the generations I have actual word of mouth stories about, you find that somehow we cant help ourselves but to take on balls of twine to untangle. And you know what the cold hard truth of life is? You cant untangle a ball of twine, or patch up a broken and bloody bird without touching it. There are a great number of people out there who don't see life the way I do. They believe that either, people should just KNOW how to "fix themselves" OR if you tell them they are a mess, they should just fix it. That isn't the way it works. That's why God made us in HIS image. That's one of the reasons the Trinity exists in the fashion it does. Relationship.
What does that mean for me? It means that sometimes I am going to get my hands dirty, my heart broken, my trust violated. I can guarantee that to make some of the people around me happy, and to be able to streamline the business of my life, I would love to be different. There are days I would LOVE to be able to look at the tired, down trodden and messed up people around me and just walk on by... but I know also that to be that person would ultimately not make those same people happy with me either.
For me, it boils down to this woman's last sentence. "Having been brought like this from the outside in, how ungrateful we would be to curl up smugly and dream our dreams, while out there so many weird and wonderful treasures wait to be discovered, to be cherished, to be carried proudly home."
If I can make one difference. Through Christ All Things are Possible.
So, you may ask, where is all of this conflict leading to?
Someone I know shared a piece written by J. Mary Luti.
J. Mary Luti is Visiting Professor of Worship and Preaching at Andover Newton Theological School, and this from her bio is the some total of what I know about this person. But her comments opened my eyes this morning in a way that I needed to see and hear.
Before we go on, let me mention that I am NOT a cat person, but I understand the anology presented here.
The story began with the idea that from time to time she would unexpectedly drop in to visit her parents and her mother would always say, "Look what the CAT dragged in" I grew up hearing the same phrase uttered by my own father. He used it to explain almost any unexpected sighting of someone you had not seen in a while. Usually, that person came to visit from "somewhere over yonder."
This woman went on to detail that cats tend to do things like kill mice or birds and want more than anything to bring them to you as a good will offering of love and companionship. My dogs have been known to do the same thing, as they know they will get a treat from me if they bring gross stuff to me instead of eating or rolling in it. But cats also will bring wads of yarn, shiney things, gross batches of yuck that make us want to gag, but THEY are attatched to it.
She then goes on to use this verse of scripture to tie things together. "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near." - Ephesians 2:13
This is to remind us that each of us who profess to be "in Christ" were are some point one of those bizzare and eclectic finds to Christ. Maybe we weren't the half dead and bloody mouse, but surely we were each a balled up mess comepletely unable to untangle ourselves.
At some point in time, we were each picked up by the scruff of the neck and dropped into the lap of someone or someoneS who patched us back together or untangled us enough to be functional and productive.
So, that brings me to ME in all of this. If you were to find a way to watch a video tape of my family line back for all the generations I have actual word of mouth stories about, you find that somehow we cant help ourselves but to take on balls of twine to untangle. And you know what the cold hard truth of life is? You cant untangle a ball of twine, or patch up a broken and bloody bird without touching it. There are a great number of people out there who don't see life the way I do. They believe that either, people should just KNOW how to "fix themselves" OR if you tell them they are a mess, they should just fix it. That isn't the way it works. That's why God made us in HIS image. That's one of the reasons the Trinity exists in the fashion it does. Relationship.
What does that mean for me? It means that sometimes I am going to get my hands dirty, my heart broken, my trust violated. I can guarantee that to make some of the people around me happy, and to be able to streamline the business of my life, I would love to be different. There are days I would LOVE to be able to look at the tired, down trodden and messed up people around me and just walk on by... but I know also that to be that person would ultimately not make those same people happy with me either.
For me, it boils down to this woman's last sentence. "Having been brought like this from the outside in, how ungrateful we would be to curl up smugly and dream our dreams, while out there so many weird and wonderful treasures wait to be discovered, to be cherished, to be carried proudly home."
If I can make one difference. Through Christ All Things are Possible.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Today:
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
With a new day comes new strength and new thoughts Eleanor Roosevelt
With a new day comes new strength and new thoughts Eleanor Roosevelt
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Independence Day 2013
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/c
The link takes you to a readable version of our Declaration of Independence for the United States of America. My personal belief is that every American Citizen and those living here under our flag for what ever reason that are NOT full fledged citizens of this Great Nation should, today of all days, read this document. I believe that every parent should sit their children down and read this document out loud To their children and then, while enjoying that Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness, should discuss what its meaning was and is and will be to come. I believe that every extend family and friend gathering today should include the reading and discussion of this document. This is important stuff, folks. Many of us have neglected the basics for way too long. Those who are seeking "Change" in this nation know what This Document and The Constitution SAY...
Do you?.......
REALLY?????????
The link takes you to a readable version of our Declaration of Independence for the United States of America. My personal belief is that every American Citizen and those living here under our flag for what ever reason that are NOT full fledged citizens of this Great Nation should, today of all days, read this document. I believe that every parent should sit their children down and read this document out loud To their children and then, while enjoying that Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness, should discuss what its meaning was and is and will be to come. I believe that every extend family and friend gathering today should include the reading and discussion of this document. This is important stuff, folks. Many of us have neglected the basics for way too long. Those who are seeking "Change" in this nation know what This Document and The Constitution SAY...
Do you?.......
REALLY?????????
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--
So, now, on a lighter note, excerpting this portion of the document, I share with you my morning. These photos are some of the highlights of our Independence Day Parade.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)