Chad Thanks Windee Klinger

Hey team, here we are, Thankful Thursday, and the sun’s not quite up. It’s just now coming up, and I’m back here again on my deck. It’s a beautiful summer day, and I want to just remind us all of what Thankful Thursday is really about. As we’re marching into fall, school is starting. All these different things that have been going on. Life is still moving, sometimes at a breakneck speed. We need to stop, maybe even daily, and survey our surroundings and just notice who are we thankful for. Are you thankful for your family? Are you thankful for somebody else on the team that’s done something special for you?

On this Thankful Thursday, we have a team member that just, just in this last couple of days, has hit their one-year mark. That person is Windee Klinger. Windee is our finance director and a part of the executive team. She is instrumental and has been instrumental in this last year. She has worked tirelessly to fix a number of things in the financial areas. And help us process and think forward moving of better ways to operate in a smart way.

I can’t go into all the things that she’s done. But just know this, she’s amazing. She is absolutely fabulous. We are so thankful to have her on our team. To have somebody that works so tirelessly. And more importantly, that is so humble and transparent and cares about the members here. She works hard to ensure that we’re doing the right thing, so that we’re stretching every dollar.

Today with inflation in the recession coming or being here, I don’t know how you would look at it. I know there’s like a tipping point of what creates a recession. But I’m not here to talk to you about economics. I’m here to talk to you about the fact that we all know that we’re either marching into or in the middle of or in the beginnings of a recession. We don’t know how long it’s going to last. We all know that there’s inflation because a bag of groceries cost us 20 or 30 percent more than it used to. A gallon of gas…oh my goodness.

Windee has been instrumental in helping us make sure that we are being very smart about how we’re spending our money and what we’re doing to save everywhere we can and do the right things within our books, and that we’re being wise and disciplined in our financial arena.

For that, we are super thankful, Karen and I both. I can’t tell you how much of a blessing Windee has been to our team and what she does every day. She gets involved. Summer barbecues, Cinco de Mayo, all the different things that Windee has done.

If you haven’t gotten to know Windee very well because maybe your position here doesn’t have a lot of interaction with finance. You might call her up and talk to her about benefits shortly and this, that, and the other. You might talk a little bit of business, and you probably even know how smart she is in that arena, but there’s more to Windee than that. There is so much more to Windee. So at a barbecue or at Christmas dinner when we’re coming up or at our annual conversation about benefits and stuff as that comes up, spend a little bit of time and talk to her.

Windee’s funny. She’s hilarious, she can crack a joke, she can roll with the punches with the best of them, and she’s just a lot of fun to be around. So we were kids. We’ve had the benefit of getting to know her children a little bit over this last year. We’re excited about the future for them and what the company and all of us as a big family can accomplish together again because of our core values and because of our mission and what we’re trying to do.

And so today, Windee, is your day. We are thankful for you, so team, reach out to Windee, say, “Hey, congratulations on your year.” Now when this gets posted, it’ll probably be a month or so behind because I know I’ve already posted a number of others in succession here.

But when this comes up, reach out to Windee, say, “Hey, congratulations on your year mark.” “Hey, congratulations.” “Hey, you know, let’s sit down and have a cup of coffee at the next barbecue or the next Christmas dinner.” Spend a little bit of time and just know that she probably had an instrumental part. A huge instrumental part in that party happening because she puts both feet in and everything she does. So again, Windee, thank you.

All right. The rest of you, let’s go, we gotta get back to work, be valuable just like Windee, because nothing less will do. All right, God bless, guys. I’ll see you soon.