December 31, 2010 | By Chris LoCurto | No Comments">No Comments
We can’t thank you guys enough for your prayers and incredible comments. The only change is that they have completely taken her off of sedation. Now we’re just waiting for her to wake up. Please continue to pray!
December 31, 2010 | By Chris LoCurto | No Comments">No Comments
Tomorrow is a brand spankin’ new year! And with each new year, comes resolutions. In our business, we have two New Year’s: one at the beginning of each year, and one when the kids go back to school. Both times of year people decide that they are going to get their finances in order. It’s a funny phenomena. It’s like people wake up one day and think, “Oh crud! My finances are whack!” Or something like that. Then they seek out any possible way to try and get back on track, as if they were on the tracks to start with. There’s a lot of midnight cable watching, brother-in-law asking, get rich scheme talkin’ goin’ on. But for a select percentage of the population, they actually get on a plan that changes how they handle their finances for life: our plan! (Insert guy with pearly white teeth and a single “DING” sound.)
But let’s go back to the other FANTASTIC ideas that will help people stop their horrid spending habits and get focused on the things that will truly make them rich. Like the three wallets that fine folks at M.I.T. came up with. As Michael Koretzky reported, they developed some wallets to combat “our consumer impulses.”
As I read this I couldn’t help but think, “These are some great novelty items.” That’s right, novelty. “But Chris, wouldn’t that stop my over-spending? Wouldn’t that keep my bank account full? Wouldn’t that get me on the path to financial freedom?” Uhhhhhh, no. It really wouldn’t. Disciplining yourself to be on a budget that allows you to spend for what you need AND (here it comes) want, will get you on the path. Yes you can actually budget the things that you want as well as need. Actually having a plan of how to live on less than you make will get you on that path. A trick wallet that tells you how dumb you’ve been lately isn’t the thing that’ll do it. Pretty soon you’ll just get tired of the wallet telling you what you can and cannot do, and you’ll toss it for the one that was more spender friendly.
Please…pleeeeeeease start your year off right and get on a plan. It’s really not that hard to do, and you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes.
December 30, 2010 | By Chris LoCurto | No Comments">No Comments
Not a lot has happened since yesterday. They turned her sedation down and she’s not as agitated with all of the equipment as she has been. They say that this is a good sign. It means that she can tolerate her injury with almost no sedation. They also sat her up for a while and her breathing was good with minimal use of the ventilator.
We’ve received a lot of messages about you guys praying. We can’t tell you how much we appreciate and feel that! We’ll take as much prayer as we can get.
December 30, 2010 | By Chris LoCurto | No Comments">No Comments
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Southwest Airlines is my favorite airline! In the past ten years I have been on somewhere around four hundred Southwest planes. One year I was on one hundred planes in a one year period, so they sent me a companion pass. That meant that someone could fly anywhere with me for free anywhere I went. Pretty cool! In all of those flights, I have had maybe a dozen flights that I would consider to be late ones, more than a few minutes. And of those, only a few really late. For the most part, the Southwest team always treated me well. A couple of people have had some bad days, but compare that to the other airlines that I’ve been on, and you would see why I love Southwest!
Yesterday I posted about my Mother-in-law’s accident to keep a bunch of you up to date. We found out about it while we were on the slopes back in my hometown in Tahoe. Needless to say, we were in a bind. We really didn’t have much info, and we needed to get home quickly. Now imagine this: we are in Tahoe, needing to fly out of Reno, two days before Christmas, with six people. We had seven, but one of them, Anna Watkins, had to go home early and was actually at the airport at that time with a canceled flight due to freezing rain. She said that the airport was a mess with canceled flights.
Debbie got on the phone and called Southwest and explained the situation. They told her about how bad it was in Reno, but that they would see what they could do. A few minutes later, all six of us were booked on a flight leaving in three hours and they said they weren’t going to charge us the fees that are attached to a flight change like that. YOU’RE KIDDING ME!!! We rushed to get packed, changed out of all of our ski clothes and equipment, loaded into a transport, and headed for Reno.
Now, there’s no doubt that God was watching out for us! But it’s great when His kids work out the process. They totally didn’t have to do that. We would have understood that it was a crazy time to make a request like that. That getting us on plane that we hadn’t booked, during Christmas, in freezing rain, is one of those impossible situations for companies to help with. But this is Southwest Airlines, and they laugh at impossible! (And they love my bags!)
As a leader, your reflection is in the actions and reactions of every team member working for you. If you have a team that takes care of customers like Southwest, then you get loyal customers like Chris LoCurto. (That’s me) It is a sad day when I’m going somewhere that they don’t have the flights or schedules that I need, (like OKC from BNA!) ’cause that means I am flying a different airline with a track record of letting me down. Can Southwest take care of every issue that comes up with the tens of thousands of people who fly them every day? Heck yeah! Okay, of course not. But they sure were there when it counted for my family! That’s the true meaning of customer service! Try it today with your customers…your team members…your family! See what happens.
December 29, 2010 | By Chris LoCurto | 3 Comments">3 Comments
A lot of you may know my Mother in law Dorothy Wood…Dot…Nanny. If you haven’t heard yet, she had a terrible accident last Thursday and I would like for you to know and pray for her. She was going out to her car that morning when one of three things happened: she had a heart attack, her blood sugar caused her to faint, or she just fell. Either way she fell, hit her head, and fractured her skull. She was taken to the hospital and was sedated. There was a lot of bleeding on her brain and some swelling as well. Since then it has been kind of a crazy waiting game. At least once a day they take her off of the sedation to see if she will wake up and respond to commands. So far she hasn’t. We haven’t received a lot of information, but today I asked the Neurosurgeon to tell us something. He shared that this is normal. That the brain will heal to a certain level of what she was before the accident, and that it only heals one percent a day for the first ninety days. Obviously, we’re hopeful and prayerful.
If you don’t know Nanny, let me say that she is an amazingly beautiful woman of God. Her heart is as big as the sky, and as full as the ocean. She loves….boy does she love; her family, her friends, strangers, and above all her God! To see her without a smile is a rare occasion. She has a way of saying the right thing at the right time, as well as a way of always messing up analogies. My favorite to quote is when she once said, “Well that’s where the rubber meets the……..sole!” Both her and her mother could hug you and pat….slap you on that soft spot above your kidneys until you had to let go. I never could understand how women so small could bring my side so much pain. 
I still don’t fully understand how a woman so small could give me so much love!
She taught at Christ Church Nashville for over fifty years. It is always a treat to hear people talk about how much they loved being in Mrs. Dot’s class. And the stories of how when Donnie and Debbie were messin’ around in church how her hand would go up and a single snap of her thumb and middle finger could be heard all the way in Kentucky. Of course Pastor just thought she was praisin’ the LORD.
She also has an affinity for coins. Yes, it wasn’t uncommon to take her purse while helping her up some stairs and wonder what in the world weighed so much. It was usually about ten rolls of quarters. Everybody thinks she just loved quarters, I think it was her first line of defense. LORD knows she once laid out her brother Raymond with a piece of firewood to the head. Which he then blackmailed her for weeks and made her do all of his chores.
The recovery process is slow. We…I feel it’s still pretty vague. We do ask that you join us in praying for Nanny. We would love to see her better than she’s ever been. It’s in His hands.
