Back from St Louis

I'm back from a week in St Louis and happy to be home. That being said, I met some great people at school and learned a great deal about our industry, other markets and practices. Of course the big lesson was how to use Airtime 500's selling system and all the good things about guarantees, warranties and doing business on the up and up. I know that's a unique concept, but the organization and associated companies are actually making money by providing real quality products and services, then backing them with great guarantees and warranties. (which actually mean something)

Enough preaching! I'll come down off the soapbox and show you a few more shots of St Louis, my classmates and one of our team poster. (Thanks to my artistic Canadian friend and team mate Paul) Oh, our team took top honors at the school. (with no thanks to me, I tanked pretty much every exercise)

Anyway...... Here's the goods.

We were fortunate to be in one of the smallest classes given. We had just ten students. Usually the classes are 40 or so. This meant extra attention and more info. In the middle in the red shirt is Paul from Canada. At the far right is Ray from Phoenix. In the back is big Al in stripes and his tech/comfort adviser Randy in the front row in black. We were taught during this class there are certain words to never use during a presentation. Whenever Randy would speak one of the forbidden words, Mike Dolan would stop his instruction and say "Hit him Al." May sound stupid but it was pretty damn funny. In the back row in the cardinals cap is Sal from Jersey. The guy in the suit is Mike Dolan our instructor.This was a very diverse group and it made the class more interesting to hear about their markets and challenges. Of course the most fun was just getting to know them a bit. Because I'm cheap ( I stayed out in Westport in St Louis county and commuted in each day), I didn't get to spend much time with them out of class. What little time I did spend with them was very enjoyable.

As promised above, here is our team poster. I came up with the cheer (Moonpie is our team name, Comfort and quality our claim to fame) Paul did the artwork and the slogan; Our guarantees and service are out of this world. No, we didn't get to choose our team names. The instructor Mike Dolan did those for us. He is a genuinely nice guy but an inveterate smart ass. If he wasn't ripping you then you really had a problem. As you can see from the scores I wasn't kidding about my numbers.

Another shot of the downtown area. I was impressed by how clean the area around the Drury Plaza was. Of course Busch Stadium is just a block away, so it's no wonder they keep it nice.

One of the great views I had each morning as I walked from the parking garage to the hotel. Every day I saw something interesting in the city.

I got stuck for a few minutes on the interstate in Nashville on the way back. ( I missed the turnoff for the beltway) Here's a view of Nashville's Skyline from my car. For some reason I kept making wrong turns on the way back. I missed the first turn out of St Louis and ended up backtracking a few miles after I figured that out. I should have printed out another set of instructions with exit numbers like the one I had for the first part of the trip. The upside is that I saw some different things on the return drive, the downside is that it took longer and I ended up with more night driving. I've learned as I've gotten older to drive less after dark, at least when going long distances.

Speaking of which, my total trip was 1549 miles from door to door, including of course the 4 days of commuting from my motel to school. Overall gas mileage was 33.54 mpg and this had over two hundred miles of commuting driving on it. So I'm feeling like a champ in the gas savings department.

All righty then, are you sick of hearing about St Louis? Well good, cause I'm ready to get back to life in good ole Hickory, NC.

The Daily Husband