You CAN. You WILL.

This past weekend, my life forever changed.

You see, I have posted before about being scared. Living small. Staying comfortable so that I can reduce the risk of judgment or criticism or ridicule. For so long, I lived with such a deep need for approval that I held myself back in just about every area of my life.

Since getting sober, I have been pushing myself outside my comfort zone and over the last two years since starting this blog, I’ve put things into hyperdrive!

I have wanted to run a wellness show for a long time, but several things kept getting in the way. Mostly ME. In December, I finally said, “Let’s just DO it!” and Roger and I began the process of putting our own show together. Now, granted, we had helped his family run over 20 shows down east already, so we had an idea of the work involved, but we had never undertaken the task ourselves, and we may have underestimated just how much work goes into building a first year show.

I will be honest with you, there was a time, in those first few weeks, where I doubted myself; where I started to realize how much work it was going to be to make this thing happen.

First, there was the time thing. Most shows are planned at least one year in advance.

We had 4 months.

Then, there was the manpower aspect. Most shows have a team of people working on the various moving parts.

We were a team of 2.

But with these major factors working against us, we also had so much working for us. We had a vision for what we wanted to achieve with the show, and my background in sales and marketing allowed me to pick up the phone, every single morning, and stay on it until offices closed at night.

Luckily I am “one of those” who LOVES cold calling. And while I did know some of the people I was contacting, most I had never met. I relished in meeting new people over the phone, and I would lay in bed at night thinking of the kinds of exhibitors I wanted to see in the show and I would scour the internet, Instagram and Facebook researching companies that could be a fit. And I would make lists of people I was going to call and I would wake up before my alarm, jump out of bed, make my breakfast and get back on the phone for another day of calling.

I used my cell phone, and I wore ear buds for making calls so I could make notes to my CRM while talking, saving me precious times between calls. After a couple of weeks, my ears started bleeding. Ear buds are super comfortable while listening, but not so great if you plan on talking for hours every day. They began to chafe my inner ears, so every morning, I would just have to shove them in quickly, bearing the pain, and keep going. I used the analogy with Roger that it was like a breastfeeding mother whose nipples are cracking and bleeding, but who has no choice but to feed her baby!

Failure was NOT an option.

I won’t lie. About 2 weeks in, I got worried. I had only secured about 30 exhibitors and I wondered how on earth I would be able to get over 100 more in only a few months. I started to think we were crazy. I began to doubt my abilities. I started to lose faith.

I remember waking up early one morning and walking into our living room. We live in the penthouse of one of the tallest buildings in my city and as the sun was coming up over Ottawa, the sky started to become the most stunning colour of blue and orange and yellow and I raised my arms out and I asked for help. I asked the colours and the sun and the city to help me–to help me share my vision and to bring the people who needed to be with us, to us.

I didn’t tell Roger I was worried. He was so busy building the website and developing the marketing plan and securing our volunteers that he had enough on his plate. He didn’t need to know how scared I was.

I just kept going…chafed ears and all.

Because once I had made the decision, there was no turning back. I now had 30 people who believed in us and our vision… and failure was not an option.

Soon after, momentum really started to build. As each day passed, more and more people would hear the vision and decided to join us.

They took a leap of faith.

They decided to believe.

They put their faith in us.

And every single decision made about this show has been with them in mind. We know that THEY are our customers; and the attendees are their customers.

So, as long as we took care of my customers in a way that made them feel valued, supported and loved—then we knew they would do the same for the people of Ottawa who chose to come through the doors to see our show.

And they did.

I have never been as proud of people the way I was with this group. I couldn’t believe the energy they brought into the space and how beautifully they all supported one another. I am still receiving messages about many of them planning to work together now that they are connected.

It is amazing.

I cried more tears of joy this weekend than I have in a very long time…and I am a crier!! But these were tears of sincere gratitude and love for the incredible men and women who worked their butts off to make this show a tremendous success.

We are on to something BIG here, and we are beyond thrilled to have launched The Healthy Brain and Body Show with the most amazing people of our nation’s capital—both exhibitors and attendees.

If you came as an attendee, thank you. We hope you enjoyed your time with us and we are grateful to you for helping us raise almost $4,000 for our charity, Heroes Equine Learning Program (H.E.L.P.).

If you sponsored the show, we are deeply grateful. Your investment allowed us to inject the kind of marketing dollars we needed to see thousands and thousands of Ottawans through the doors.

And if you came as an exhibitor, I love you. I love you for trusting us and believing in the vision for this show and for working so hard all weekend! I am so glad it was YOU who got to be in on the ground floor of something BIG. I will never, ever forget what you have done.

So, if YOU have something you have always wanted to do and you are afraid that you can’t, I want you to remember Henry Ford’s famous quote: “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

I am so glad I thought I could. Even though doubt was trying to take me down. Even though the voice was getting loud asking me, “Who do you think you are?” Even though fear wanted to hold me back.

I pushed back.

I told doubt to beat it! I shut that voice up with my own voice on the phone. I turned fear into courage when I just. kept. going.

I am not special. I am not unlike anyone else. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. I chose to believe more than I chose to doubt. When things got hard, I worked more, not less. I knew that whether I thought I could or I thought I couldn’t, I was right.

So I just kept thinking I could.

I want the same for you.

Because if you want something badly enough, it’s yours.

Because if you have a dream and a vision, don’t stop until you get it.

Because I want you to love your life one bite at a time.

P.S. I love you, Roger. You are my rock and my soft place to fall. You never let me doubt myself. You never stopped believing. I wouldn’t have wanted to do this with anyone else on earth. xo

P.P.S. This is a picture of The Zen Zone, an area in the show that came to me in a dream. I wanted a “cave” inside the show where attendees could relax, meditate, and feel loved. It was entirely enclosed, lit by Himalayan Salt lamps and flameless candles. Simply Meditation decorated it and turned it into the most incredible space for the entire weekend. People enjoyed meditation sessions, music, singing bowls, yoga demos and tuning fork sessions. It was a truly special space.

P.P.P.S. And HERE is what one exhibitor thought of her experience. With her permission, I am sharing it with you. If YOU have a business that you feel would be a perfect fit for our show, we are doing the whole thing over again next year, Earth Day Weekend, April 21 & 22 at The EY Centre. I would love to hear from you! Email me at Sarah@SarahTalksFood.com and we will go from there.

“Hi Sarah,

I wanted to be sure to send a note of thanks to you and your team while everything was fresh in my mind.

In the spirit of transparency, Tease Tea has done dozens of shows to date. Some fantastic, some just absolutely terrible. As with all things, you win some, you lose some and it’s all a part of learning what works/makes sense for your business and what doesn’t.

When you approached us for the Healthy Brain and Body Show, we didn’t have the budget as we’d already invested in our allotted shows for the upcoming season. That said, I’ve been a big fan and advocate of yours sense the day we met and I found a way to make the show happen for us, simply because I wanted to support you and your vision.

I had no expectations, and a very open mind as result. Being the first year of the HB&B show, I honestly expected it to be more of a local exposure opportunity, and a smaller/intimate event for us overall.

In short: You and your team totally over exceed our expectations in every way. So much so, here I am taking the time to write my first email of thanks to a show organizer. 

Top of mind, this is why we are so happy with the show:

• Quality of vendors: It is clear a lot of thought went into curating high quality, local businesses.
• Quality of guests: We had an overwhelming amount of guests who were sincerely interested in knowing about our product, brand etc. It was refreshing in comparison to some shows we’ve done where most guests are mostly interested in free samples and moving on to the next vendor.
• It did not go unnoticed, all the work that was done in the marketing of this event, the show bucks were also a very clever touch to create extra guest engagement.
• Funny moment: A young girl came up to me yesterday and said “Did you want to use the bathroom or anything?” I was baffeled, I didn’t know why she was asking me this. Then she replied “Oh, I’m a show volunteer, I’m here to help relieve vendors who are working alone if they need a break” I was honestly blown away. In my years of doing trade shows, never once have I been approached by a representative in such a thoughtful, and helpful way.
• Yesterday, the show ended at 6 – I mixed up the time and thought it ended at five. I was frantic for a moment as I didn’t know if I should abandon our booth or be very late for the commitment in Stittsville. One of your kind volunteers, Sydney, offered to watch over booth for the last 45 min without hesitation.
• Sales: As mentioned earlier, we looked at this as more of a local exposure opportunity vs sales opportunity. I could not have been more wrong. We had one of our best weekend of sales, ever. We sold more at your show than any show that we’ve done in the past two years.
• Coaching: You and Roger worked so hard to give local businesses opportunities to present themselves in the best way possible leading up to the show. I did not take advantage of this as much as I should have, though it was incredibly impressive the time you both took to coach vendors on everything from producing quality video content to highlight their business on your social media pages to general FYI’s that aren’t so general if you’ve never done a show before (Preparation considerations, presentation suggestions, etc.) You and Roger essentially acted as small business coaches to the vendors, which is really just above and beyond.
• Leading up to event: I always felt very in the loop – all of your emails were very detailed and very helpful. Often times, vendors can be left in the dark when it comes to the details leading up to shows like this.

It’s very rare for a show organizer to put just as much thought and care towards vendors as they do to guests. Thank you so much for a great experience this past weekend and for and for inviting us to be a part of this show. I would absolutely be honoured to be a part of such a high quality and enjoyable show in the future.

I can only imagine how hard you’ve worked to execute such a quality event. I hope you are going to take some well deserved time to relax, and soak in all of your success.

Sincerely,

Sheena Brady, President of Tease Tea”