And she's wearing me out.
Who is she, you might ask? Well, she's the owner and founder of Suzanne Evans Coaching, LLC. Determined to be all that she could be, she started with a secretarial job to build a business that surpassed the seven-figure mark in just over three years. Today, she supports, coaches, and teaches over 30,000 women enrolled in her wealth and business building programs. She has a huge coaching and money making team, and she's all about showing everybody else how to do it.
This weekend she hosted her 4th Be The Change Event, a conference that gathered 900 plus business owners and entrepreneurs to teach them how to make the most of their businesses. Because I'm training as a Profit From Your Passions career coach, I was invited to come.
Even though I haven't actually started my new business yet, I thought, why not? I'd never heard of her before my coaching course, but Suzanne seemed determined to get everybody to come to Orlando. I instinctively knew I could learn something while spending a little time in a nice hotel - maybe get a little sun and a swim at the pool. I also knew these conferences could wear one out if you're not prepared for an intensive schedule so I came ready for bear - but I wasn't prepared for Suzanne's energy and drive.
Her event has gotten so popular she was able to get enough sponsors, big and small, to create an almost one million dollar 4 day weekend, and she filled every minute of it with activities. It's now Saturday and I'm worn out. So far today we covered email sequencing, product offers and having your own events. We listened to an Infusionsoft spokesman (Infusionsoft is a marketing software company that Suzanne speaks highly of and is a big part of the sponsorship of the event) and broke for lunch. There's much more to come after lunch.
I arrived on Wednesday so that I could take my time registering for the event and exploring the Peabody Hotel, famous for it's twice daily duck walk through the lobby. In the 1930's the general manager of the original Peabody Hotel decided to let ducks live in the fountain. It became a popular attraction for tourists, and ever since then they've let farm raised ducks lounge in the fountain by day and sleep off their hard work in the arboretum at night. Every morning and evening the ducks are led to and from the fountain with musical fanfare as if they were the royal family. People love to watch the duck parade and line up along the red carpet to take pictures. Today I was one of them.I finally got to see the royal ducks arrive this morning, but Thursday morning, because I had a little time before the first event session, I got to go swimming with a pair of ducklings in the pool on the recreation level. It was almost as fun as swimming with the dolphins - something I did years ago in the Bahamas and want to do again. I glided through the water so not to scare the little tykes away, and together we swam up and down the length of the pool until I ran out of energy.
After that, though, my time to lay back and enjoy life came to an end.
The first thing we did that afternoon once we finished settling down in the giant conference room was stand to the Star Spangled Banner. A high school marching band filed down the isles, playing very well I might add, followed by a troupe of cheerleaders waving flags and marching to the music.
Then an announcer read the names of all of the sponsors, speakers and coaches that were contributing to the event as they filed onto the stage as if they were the team football stars. Finally Suzanne Evans came on with great fanfare - "And Now, The SENSATIONAL Suzanne Evans!"
She has a big personality and a Minnie Mouse voice, perfect for an Orlando conference. Smart and exuberant, she also cussed like a sailor. I found her entertaining as well as informative. She proved to be a pretty good teacher and through the course of the rest of the weekend I learned a great deal from her.
There were two big video screens on either side of the main stage, which branched out into the room in three directions, runway style. Suzanne used every inch of it as she walked around talking and motivating us. She welcomed us to the game of business. The music flared as the marching band
She talked through the afternoon, introduced other speakers who just happened to be part of her coaching staff, had a DJ in the back of the room playing very loud dance music during the breaks, and had us working through a series of workbooks she left under our chairs. Suzanne announced, "I'm definitely not the smartest person in the room, but I'm definitely the most awesome person in the room!" She was alluding to the amount of teamwork it took to help her create her successful business with her leadership. She said she had to turn away 25 sponsors to the event because they didn't represent what she wanted to portray as a business woman and announced that she didn't care if we didn't like her. She just hoped to help us grow our businesses exponentially.
"The way you do anything is the way you do everything," is Suzanne Evan's motto, which apparently means she does everything over the top. She warned us that we need to pay attention to what we do in our private lives because it reflects how we will be with our businesses.
She topped the evening with a guest speaker and a book signing. Bert Jacobs, the older brother of the "Life is Good" empire, came to lecture us on optimism, and even though he confessed he was not a professional speaker he was pretty damn inspiring. He slipped off his shoes, threw a few autographed frisbees into the audience, and talked us into loving him and his company. At the end of the evening he mentioned that he and his brother started a publishing company and sold us a book. He got us with their children's charities - they didn't know what else to do with all the money they were making ("Life Is Good" was worth $100 million in 2010) so they decided to help children in need. He mentioned that 1/2 the proceeds for the book went to the kids. We ran to the desk in the back of the room and bought all the books he brought.10:30 that night he was still autographing the books for us.
The rest of the weekend was much the same. Suzanne talked, her coaches coached, and we went on breaks with our heads spinning. Friday night we were entertained by a family of Russian acrobats. Tonight we're recognizing and giving awards to the members of her 10k club - people who payed to learn from her coaches and were able to earn $10 thousand dollars or more in a week. Some of them earned 6 and 7 figure yearly incomes under her tutelage. They're to be given awards and a champagne party later. I may not be able to make it to the party.
All day we are fed lots and lots of information and somehow we're supposed to retain all of it. We go to bed exhausted, but our brains are so busy we can't sleep. I suspect that what Suzanne is doing is wearing us down so that we won't be able to resist her sales pitch on Sunday. She is a smart woman with a plan.
Next year Suzanne Evans plans to take over a whole hotel in sunny Las Vegas for her next Be the Change event and fill the whole thing with potential clients. I wouldn't be surprised if she were to hire the Cirque du Soleil to demonstrate how teamwork works. I don't think I'll be making that show, but I'm glad I came to this one. Every business owner should experience Suzanne and her energetic business style at least once, if only to witness a master in action.
I'm so glad I took some time to enjoy the ducks. They know how to live - gliding through life on a calm pool of warm chlorinated water without a thought about how to conduct business.
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