President’s Message

We held our first in person meeting of 2023 on Friday, April 14th. The most important business conducted at this meeting was the election of our Board of Directors (BOD). No election actually took place as we had more board seats than applicants. I’m happy to share with you that the your BOD remains the same with one additional member (Jaime Zabala) who decided at the meeting to apply and he was voted on and approved by the board.

We tried a different format for this meeting returning somewhat to our roots and held the meeting at a restaurant instead of a hotel. We added a spin by also doing it in two locations (Ft Lauderdale and Naples) and zoomed the two sites together so each location could interact with each other. We had a combination of in-person and zoom speakers/presentations which allowed for more overall participation of speakers and attendees while limiting travel time and expenses. All of those who attended felt the format was different yet affective.

The meat of the meeting as always is the speakers and topics we bring to our members and we felt we hit a home run with speakers and presenters. We kicked off the meeting hearing from Tim O’Neil explaining the recently rolled out “My Safe Florida Homes” program. His presentation was followed up by Cesar Avila talking to the group about the always scary “Cyber Attacks on your Business”. While lunch was being served and all the members enjoying their lunches served by Brio Italian Grille, we heard from David Dilley from GWO giving us insight into the upcoming 2023 hurricane season. And last but certainly not least, we received an update from Kari Hebrank filling in for our scheduled speaker Joe Belcher. Kari gave us an update on the local licensing issue effecting many of our members who are licensed at the local municipalities and don’t hold a state license.

If you weren’t at this meeting, you missed a lot of valuable information that can impact our businesses on a daily basis in many different ways!! Don’t miss our next meeting where your BOD remains committed to working for our members and bringing you the most up to date information on topics effecting our industry.

Respectfully,

President Tim Robinson

Global Protection Products, LLC