I'm Trying to Be The Change

Suzanne Evans, bless her heart, is a wild woman.

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

played it's way out of the conference room with somersaulting cheerleaders trailing behind.

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.

Oy, My Feet.

I had visions of filling up my free time walking a dog or two or pet sitting on the weekends and making a little extra money.  I found out something really important.

The dog walking business is not all it's cracked up to be.

You have to keep to schedules, walk for hours every day in good and bad weather, clean up after your dogs after every walk, stay cheery for the human parents, clean up messes if there are accidents in the house, dodge traffic, other dogs and unfriendly neighbors.

It's important to be trustworthy because everybody counts on you being there when you promised.  You need a back-up system in case something happens to you.  There's a lot of paperwork and key shuffling when you have several customers. You are needed day and night - there's morning walks, afternoon walks, bedtime walks, and in-between pee breaks.  You have to get out of bed early in the morning, go to someone else's house to walk and feed their dogs.  Then you have to stay up at night to go to someones else's house to walk their dog before bedtime.  Their bedtime - not yours.

You should know how to deal with difficult dogs.  You should be strong enough to handle difficult dogs.  You need to be patient with difficult dogs.

You really should be knowledgeable in doggy CPR, healthcare, and training.  

Like human children, every dog has their own issue and preference.  They might have health issues.  They might have personality problems.  They have fears, anxieties, weight problems, allergies, and favorite foods.  Some are food gobblers and will eat anything that fits in their mouths.  Some nibble and can spend all day eating a bowl of food.   Some like you.  Some don't.

Things get a lot more complicated if you offer other services. Grooming, over-night sitting, specialty treats, taxi services and weekly bed and breakfast services can add to your business, but make you seriously indispensable.  You end up working 16 hours a day and can never take a day off.

You need a good pair of walking shoes.  And hair resistant clothes.  And you can't worry about your own hair.  And you need a lot of poop-scoop bags. 

When I decided I wanted to try the business and supplement my income, I didn't realize how demanding tho job really was.  I was hoping to spend my days playing with other people's dogs and meeting interesting people, maybe lose a little weight with a few walks a day.

It's really hard work!

If you're considering supplementing your income with a little dog walking, I recommend working for someone else for a while first.  You may make only ten dollars an hour, but you'll get a good taste of what it takes to run a successful business.  You might decide, like I have, that you should try to be happy with a dog of your own and find another business that easier on the social life.

I'm still walking dogs, but it's become a way to explore a different avenue of pet care - Reiki.  I can become a Reiki practitioner and have access to some potential patients. It's my next new interest, and as you can tell from my previous posts that I have a lot of new interests.

Reiki promises to be the next big thing in pet care.  It's a Japanese healing technique that practitioners use to transfer universal energy through their palms to induce stress reduction and relaxation.  Even though it was developed for us humans, Reiki allows for self-healing and a state of equilibrium that works as well, maybe even better, for animals as it does for people. 

Yes, our pets get stressed.  And like with us, stress leads to health issues and emotional problems.  The difference between us and our pets is that our pets are more open to the energy flow of their environment.  Their ability to block or ignore environmental stressful situations is nothing like our

ability.  It's almost non-existent.  It makes them more susceptible to health disrupting negativity.  Reiki, which is as beneficial to the practitioner as the client, attracts a positive "life force" energy flow to help us heal ourselves. 

It's been a popular practice since the 1920's and I've known about it for years.  I can't believe it's taken me so long to decide to do it.  Even though my primary reason for learning it is to help animals,  I hope to make a daily practice that I can use to help me with my other new business, becoming a creative career counselor.

A whole new set of blogs to come.

Anyhoo,  if anyone out there is thinking dog walking may be a fun new career, think some more.  Be prepared for the hard work and dedication you're going to need.

Remember that those dogs are going to become dependent on you.  So will their parents.  Be ready.

And have a good pair of shoes.