Shannon Burke /// The Sky is the Limit
Our culture constantly reminds us, through commercials and extreme product slogans, that we always need to be ready for an adventure. Usually, the challenges flashed at us by the media are indeed extreme ones – travelling the world on a yacht, or braving a remote jungle. But in reality, there are many different kinds of adventures: the quiet frisson of performance, the honor of serving your country, the daily struggle and joy of raising a family. Sometimes, simply finding something new that you love to do can be an adventure.
Shannon Burke’s life has never lacked excitement. She has pursued four careers over the past thirty years, beginning as a young ballerina who shined on stage for a captivated audience. She eventually traded in her toe shoes for a military uniform, and then again for a nurse’s uniform.
For the past twenty-five years, Shannon has worked as a Certified Emergency Nurse, following her instinct to take care of people, especially the sick and wounded. And although she is now a veteran of the Air Force and not actively serving, her husband remains on active duty, which means that the adventure in Shannon’s life often entails frequent travel abroad. In the Fall of 2010, the couple and their three sons found themselves living on a tiny island in Japan, a sea change from their previous assignment in Australia, and a world away from this summer’s temporary assignment in Alabama.
“I remember asking myself, if I was always gone and my husband’s military career was always calling him away, then who was raising our kids? I hated the idea of my kids coming home after school and spending the rest of their day without me there. I wanted to be the mom who was there to make a snack, and ask them how their day was.” Being a present parent was important to her.
As she considered resigning from her job so that she could spend more time with her three boys, she also noticed that for the first time in her life she wasn’t happy with her appearance. The woman looking back at her in the mirror had dull, tired looking skin, and it wasn’t the face she recognized as her own. Shannon invested in Rodan + Fields® REVERSE products with the hope that she could improve her skin, and at the same time, enrolled as an Independent Consultant with the idea that she could perhaps make a little extra income on the side, and begin planning for her children’s future college expenses. But she got much more than that: a new challenge that would combine her love for travel with her desire to be with her children and would cultivate new friends in new places.
“The opportunity came into my life at the perfect time, because I was looking for something flexible enough to allow me the freedom to be with my kids, and I was also looking for something to improve my skin. This came together for me synergistic-ally.” Shannon’s personal success with the REVERSE regimen garnered a lot of attention from family and friends, and even her husband, who called her over Skype one day while overseas, and noticed that she was glowing. Feeling good about her skin and seeing the business side of her Rodan + Fields venture gaining steady ground, she turned another corner a year after enrolling.
“A year into starting my Rodan + Fields business, I realized that I had something that was going to give me so many hours back with my kids while they are still young enough to need me. We can’t change my husband’s obligation to the military and the hours he can’t be home, but what we could change is my time. That’s when I decided that the sky is the limit.”
Shannon leverages social media tools, primarily Facebook, to make the most of acquiring new business connections as she voyages from coast to coast, and much like the excitement of military life, her Rodan + Fields business has afforded similar benefits when it comes to making new friends. Many of her teammates when she lived in Japan were Americans with whom she only spoke to over the phone or from behind a computer screen. Despite thousands of miles of distance, she has bonded with hundreds of women around the globe. “Growing up with all brothers and being in the military where I mostly worked with men, I didn’t realize how much I wanted and needed interaction with other women. This has given me that companionship.” The friends she has made through Rodan + Fields are the kind she feels will be with her for a lifetime. “I met many of my team members for the first time when I traveled from Japan back to the States and attended my very first event in Dallas. It felt like a big, happy reunion, not an introduction.”
The work-life balance that Shannon sought has become a reality. There wasn’t a disconnect between the excitement of her daily job and the concerns of everyday life. Making the two co-exist, without one negating the other, has become her new adventure.
“I know I missed out on time with my boys that I can’t get back, but fortunately it’s not too late. Now I am not coming in from work just as they are going to bed, or leaving before they wake up. I’m there at the baseball games, and on the field trips. I’m available for anything they need me for and it brings tears to my eyes to think of how wonderful it is that I can be that present parent they deserve.” Her sons are now ages eight, twelve, and fourteen. They, like their mom, get to experience the unique travel that comes with military life. She hopes that her own children will continue to explore the world as they grow up, and she knows that one day they each will take flight and go wherever they feel called. Thanks in part to her Rodan + Fields business, she can enjoy this time they have together now, and eventually, pass on her legacy: the sky is the limit.