Insider Guide: Suzan Pleva

Suzan Pleva is the owner of Metro Media Consulting Group, an online multi-media marketing company. She grew up in Lapeer and went to school for elementary education. She had also played the piano her entire life, so once she finished school and found she had a hard time finding a teaching job she sat down and did some critical thinking. “I asked myself, what do I like doing? What do I love doing? What am I good at? Piano and education came together so I said well, I’ll try this out.”
 
She started by running a piano lesson business out of her home, Melody Piano. She went around the community posting flyers trying to get students but found that wasn’t really working for her. So she taught herself how to build a website and how to use the web for marketing, and found she was getting good at it. “The more I was teaching myself the more interested I became and realized I was good at it.” Others did too – she was recruited by the director of a multi-media marketing firm where she worked for two years and learned even more, then decided to branch off with a co-worker to do it for themselves where they could make all the commission and have the final say in all the project management. Now theirs is a national brand with clients all over the country. (And she still teaches piano on the side.)
 
As she built her own businesses, Suzan got really interested in what was happening in her own community, so she got in touch with the Chamber of Commerce and that “really deadlocked me in the community … it’s strange because I grew up here but never spent a lot of time [invested in it].”
 
Suzan notes that Lapeer and neighboring Metamora are surrounded by lakes, which create a lot of outdoor recreation opportunities, especially in the summer. She recommends the Lake Inn and Lake Nepessing as a really cool place right on the lake with live music – a popular place just to hang out and relax. Abruzzo’s Piano Grille in downtown Lapeer is also a “really cool hangout” with live entertainment and vibrant nightlife. River Street Music and Café is a music store that offers music lessons (the owner is a master luthier and covers all the string instruments) and the School of Rock, but also has a café that hosts open mic nights. Over in downtown Metamora, a quaint, picturesque historic village, the historical White Horse Inn is “an amazing place; very well-known locally.” It is more of an upscale inn and restaurant, and they even offer horse and carriage rides (with hot chocolate in the winter).
 
Lapeer is also surrounded by farmland, so the Lapeer Farmers Market is a huge draw full of beautiful locally-grown produce supporting local farmers. Lapeer and Metamora both host their own very popular festivals: Lapeer Days is “a huge deal for a lot of people,” a big festival run by the Chamber and sponsored by local businesses with a carnival and a huge fireworks display over the high school’s athletic field. Downtown Metamora has Metamora Country Days – which includes the launching of dozens of hot air balloons, a “really cool sight to see.”