I write this post riding quite the endorphin rush, having just met with some of the wealthiest and most influential businesspeople on this planet over breakfast, the Anheuser-Busch InBev Board of Directors. Unbelievable. I’m speechless. Lucky for all of you, I can still type. Talk about practicing what you preach though, when we were promised exposure to senior leadership during recruiting, I definitely didn’t anticipate it to this degree. This being the third time I’ve met with the CEO, and countless other times I’ve spoken with the head of the North American Zone, and interfaced with other top executives. This takes the cake though. I was impressed by how incredibly personable and candid all of them were, not balking at telling us what they really thought, and asking us the tough questions as well. Also pretty encouraging to see that two of them had graduated from the Wharton School (yet not attending homecoming this weekend, unfortunately).

Straight Cash Money, Dharma and Steve (Tyler) lookin good

In other news, last week marked the end of my brewery rotation, which was quite the experience in itself. I learned an incredible amount, had wonderful mentors and managers, and really took to the environment by the end of my stay. Our rotations ended by presenting our culminating projects, in which I was working on optimizing our truck’s outbound shipment weights (the more beer the better) while decreasing “scale-backs” or going over the legal weight as determined by the Department of Transportation. Interesting stuff, and the project consumed my subconscious, evident as I was packing my bags for my trip to STL, and considering their respective weights when stating “I don’t one of them to overgross” (a shipping term for a truck weighing too much on its way out). Overall, incredible learning opportunity, and phenomenal experience.

Can’t say I wasn’t looking forward to a return to St. Louis, however, not only to dive right into commercial training, but to help (re)claim some of my Foursquare Mayorships.

I was quite upset when my mayor title was stripped from the gym at the hotel we stayed at in St. Louis. Not on my watch 'Jon', if that is your real name

My biggest accomplishment to date, stealing the title of brewery mayor from Andrew

Additionally, to stay in the recent Halloween theme, check out the digression of my Shock-Top-O’Lantern into moldy despair

Freshly carved

Hangin in there

Struggling

So here I am, back in St. Louis (after a quick trip this past weekend to Penn for some Homecoming/Halloween action)…

Favre and Jenn Sterger posing for a different kind of photo, spotted at Kappa Sigma at UPenn this weekend

and going through some awesome presentations revolving around our marketing efforts. So if you have any questions about how we target consumers, why we are going to be the “Official Beer of the NFL” next year, why Lance Armstrong is all about Michelob Ultra, or who Vicente Fernández (below) is, let me know. I may or may not be willing and/or able to answer such queries.

The real “most interesting man in the world”