Hello everyone and happy Thanksgiving Eve! Today we’d like to tell you about our friend Shanna Dickerson. Shanna lives here on island part-time and owns a successful, upscale concierge business. She was recently featured in the Huffington Post, which is pretty darn cool. Check it out:
Shanna Dickerson – Blue Skies and Big Dreams
By: Stacey Alcorn
In 2010, at 30 years old, she was already having a midlife crisis, and was considering a major pivot in her life and career. The recurring question she kept asking herself, “Is it more important to live where you want and find work, or stay where you are climbing a corporate ladder with the hopes of retiring to an amazing place when you’re 60?”
At nineteen years old she launched a career in the music industry after standing on the stage looking out at 30,000 people during a concert of Widespread Panic, access granted from her boyfriend at the time, whose dad was managing the band. Then and there, she decided that she wanted to be on the back end of the concert industry, bringing the biggest artists to people around the world. She then spent her twenties in Nashville promoting and working with such artists as The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Kenny Chesney, Jay Z, The Police, Pearl Jam, Jimmy Buffett, Snoop Dogg, Stevie Wonder, Kayne West, Foo Fighters, Metallica and Tim McGraw. Her most fulfilling job during those years was as tour manager for Steve Winwood in 2004, spending months on the road with him and the band on a tour bus.
By 30, she had achieved her dreams in the music industry and decided it was time to go after another dream. Growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina, her parents often brought her and her brother to the Virgin Islands for vacations. This entrepreneur was craving an adventurous island life, and so, against the advice of her friends and co-workers, she sold all of her belongings, terminated the lease on her Nashville apartment, and used her remaining money to move with her yellow lab, Dakota, to St. John in the US Virgin Islands to start living a new dream.
Her name is Shanna Dickerson and she is the Founder and CEO of Blue Sky Luxury Concierge, a boutique travel concierge and event planning business, which caters to luxury travelers and businesses around the world. She and her team locate and rent-out estates, villas, yachts, private islands and jets for clients across the Caribbean and other luxury escapes around the globe. The menu of concierge services is wide as it also includes hiring top chefs, booking private transportation and activities and planning world-class events. In 2010 she moved to St. John with nothing but her dog and a dream. The first two years certainly didn’t come easy. She missed her friends and family and starting a business from scratch in the Caribbean was filled with challenges. But due to her driven personality, her business eventually began to expand. Today, six years later, she’s living between Charleston, SC and the Virgin Islands, while working for A-list clients like Sir Richard Branson. While we live in a world filled with people who are wishing, hoping, and wanting to fulfill a dream someday, Shanna Dickerson took bold steps into the unknown in order to fulfill her dreams today. She left the comfort and security of the life she knew in favor of following a simple dream to build a life in the Virgin Islands.
I recently spent some time with Shanna in an effort to find out what it takes to up and leave one life for another, how to build an empire that caters to the affluent from scratch, and how to find and live your purpose. Here is Shanna Dickerson’s advice on how to chase blue skies and big dreams:
Click here to read the rest of Shanna’s story on huffingtonpost.com