ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - A psychic business consultant. Hmmm ...
Actually, Suzann Owings calls herself an "intuitive management consultant." But any way you slice it, the question soon arises: Why not put her to the test?
So, with the willingness of Sarah Wilhelm, owner of the Aztec Cafe, Owings set out to prove her mettle. There were no crystals or caftans involved, just two women sitting across the table from each other.
Here was Wilhelm's situation: When she bought the Aztec four years ago, "people were selling dope on the patio," she says. "And people were sitting there all day long not buying anything."
But Wilhelm managed to turn the place around.
"I'm very receptive to any kind of psychic knowledge," she says. "One of my staffer's mothers was a feng shui consultant and I brought her in. Her suggestions immediately changed my business."
But the city's smoking ban added to Wilhelm's loss of business and frustration.
"How long will I keep this place?" Wilhelm asks.
Owings tells her: "You'll be bored with it in five years, but I think you really love retail."
Owings tells her she could be very successful in having a commercial kitchen and marketing products from it.
"You know that actress, the slender woman who wears gloves?" Owings asked.
"Diane Keaton?"
"Yes. Do you remember the movie where she makes jellies?"
"I love that movie!" Wilhelm said.
"I see you doing something like that," Owings said.
In fact, Diane Keaton makes baby food in the movie, "Baby Boom," but that doesn't stop Wilhelm from being really struck by the connection.
"It wasn't that she told me anything new," says Wilhelm afterward, "but that movie ... I had sort of forgotten about it, but it really made an impact on me when I saw it and now, thinking about it."
Owings has been living in Santa Fe for a month, and previously lived in Placitas. She also has longtime roots in California, where she was raised.
Sasha Frank, a health consultant in New York City, talked by telephone about a consultation with Owings concerning a property she was considering purchasing.
"I had had a dream and one of my reservations about the property was in the dream," Frank said. "When I talked with Suzann, she mentioned her reservation, something that was also in the dream, that the property only had one door."
The fact that Owings was having the same image that had been in Frank's dream was very significant to Frank.
Diane Keyes, who lives in Oceanside, Calif., says she has consulted with Owings for more than 20 years. Keyes produces events and is opening an inspiration bookstore in Carlsbad, Calif. Sometimes, Owings' advice has bridged the professional and personal, Keyes says.
When Keyes decided to move far from her two adult daughters, she had many misgivings.
"Suzann said, 'Your oldest daughter is going to get a job transfer to the city of Vista,'" which Keyes had never heard of, but which was nearby, Keyes said. "Three days later, my daughter told me she had gotten a job offer in Vista. She wasn't even looking for a job."
Owings' business experience in New Mexico dates to the 1970s, she says, when she worked on then Gov. Jerry Apodaca's reorganization of state government. She received her undergraduate degree in American studies at California State University in Los Angeles and has a doctorate in American studies from the University of New Mexico.
Owings has been a principal at the Learning Community Charter School in Albuquerque, dean of graduate management programs at Golden Gate University in San Francisco and an assistant professor with the extension service at New Mexico State University.
How does she separate one area of knowledge from the other _ the academic background from the psychic? And how does a client know if he's getting her intuitive-psychic abilities or academic-experiential abilities?
"It depends on what people ask for," she says. "If they want me to work with them on developing a management program, then they get both my intuitive parts and my rational parts."
It isn't that Owings closes her eyes and connects with an otherworldly force.
"I think everybody's intuitive," she says. "I think there really is something called the sixth sense but for whatever reason, some of us are more aware of it."
Owings does most of her psychic consultation over the telephone.
"I was spending more energy being a hostess than being a psychic," she says. "Sometimes, I would have to take them (clients) through all the rooms in my house to make sure they were comfortable."
Using the telephone, "we can both wear house slippers," she said.
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/49769.html
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