The perks of traveling for work

If you keep up with me on Facebook, you probably have already realized that I travel a lot for work. I enjoy traveling to our clients' offices and being able to observe their day to day activities to ultimately create a 200 page analysis on their entire business (it's what I do!). September has been hectic with a lot of travel - I started off by going to Las Vegas for our annual Fall Summit that we host for our clients and their staff. We host workshops that are geared for every staff member within each Audiology practice. This year, we had 650 attendees at this event, which has now ranked it the 2nd largest event in the Audiology field behind AAA (American Academy of Audiology). After Las Vegas, I headed over to Carlsbad, California for an onsite visit. This week, Brad and I are headed to Chicago for a Northwestern alumni Leadership Symposium (pics to come after the trip).

There are definitely some perks associated with traveling including having gold status with Delta airlines (soon!), virtually unlimited Starbucks, and some expensive and delicious meals. And then there are extra-cool perks associated with my travel, which are shown in the pictures below. Audiologists (and their staff) sure know how to have fun!
We start with my trip to San Diego for AAA's AudiologyNOW! convention back in March (THE largest event in the Audiology space). We stayed in the Gaslamp District, which is the hip area of San Diego. One night, one of our partner manufacturers (Oticon) hosted a party at Stingaree Nightclub with food, open bar, and Cheap Trick playing live! I was wowed by this event...until I attended our other partner manufacturer's (Starkey) party the following evening. They rented out the entire USS Midway ship and had the Beach Boys (or Boy...since I believe only one original member is left in the band) play a live show for us. They ended the show with a large fireworks display!
It was a large crowd in attendance that night, but a coworker and I pushed our way to the front to get a close up of Mike Love, the only original Beach Boy member still in the band. I think I ended up only being a few feet away from him! And of course...no Audiology concert is complete without providing its attendees with ear plugs so as not to hurt our hearing ;)
Now on to more recent travel...here's a pic of the strip in Vegas.
One of the perks of the Vegas trip was staying at the Palazzo, which is part of the Venetian hotel but with all suites. And man were the suites nice! See below pic.
A pic of my suite...I decided not to include a pic of my marble bathroom in the blog, but it was gorgeous and huge!
We were so busy running the Fall Summit that I pretty much had 14-16 hour days the days I was in Vegas. I did squeeze in some free time to walk around the Venetian, and I loved the canal they have in the hotel for gondola rides.
We had a special speaker come speak to our clients and their staff to open the Summit named Michael Gerber. Some of you might recognize the name because he wrote the infamous E-Myth series that has been recognized by INC. He came to visit our corporate office a few months ago because he has recognized my company to follow exactly what the E-Myth states. He believes in my company and its purpose that he actually agreed to do this speaking engagement completely free.
Of course the Fall Summit wasn't all work. We got to see the show Le Reve at the Wynn...it's similar to Cirque du Soleil but with water. Our closing reception consisted of Cirque performers (as pictured above) as well as a live band, seated dinner, and dancing! And man do those Audiologists sure love to dance.
Last week, I traveled to Carlsbad, CA. I had never been to this part of California and everyone kept telling me how pretty it was. It really was gorgeous there...perfect temps in the 70's and sunny. I got a run in along the beach and we had dinner with our clients at a really nice seafood restaurant on the beach. I'm now looking forward to our visit to Chicago in a few days to catch up with some close friends and Kristy, Pat, and Elliot!