“The most inspirational Entrepreneur of the Month we’ve ever had” is how Nigel Botterill referred to me to the audience of 500+ business owners at the Entrepreneur’s Circle national event in Birmingham yesterday!
Wow!
What an amazing day! Thank you to Nigel and his team for putting on such a fantastic event at the National Motorcycle Museum and for the lovely speech he made as he presented me with the Entrepreneur of the Month award.
We recorded the whole presentation and you can watch it here. It’s about five minutes duration and you’ll be able to see Nigel’s speech in full and see me apparently become the first person to ask him for the microphone to make a speech of my own – well I figured that my attention seeking is renowned and I couldn’t let the side down could I?!
Those of you who were there yesterday will have heard Nigel sharing his brilliant wisdom and strategies for making 2012 our best ever year in business. I would like to add to what Nigel said yesterday with my own insights which I hope will provide even more ideas to get you thinking.
If you want to receive recognition for yourself or your business, there is no magic radar that will find you – you’re responsible for making your own noise! I was chosen by Nigel to receive the award because I created the opportunity to make it happen. There are many people in this world achieving amazing success and who are much more deserving of the inspirational title that me. However, most people in life are quietly getting on with what they do and are not making any noise about it!
If you take Nigel as an example – how many people do you think would have joined the Entrepreneur’s Circle or invested in any of his other successful businesses if he was the shy, retiring type? How would the media know that Nigel is a thought leader for UK business owners if he wasn’t sharing his knowledge and making lots of noise?
Exactly! How would Nigel have known of all of the EC strategies I implemented for my Reigate Local Xmas event if I hadn’t told him what I had achieved and made sure my local Business Growth Advisor knew who I was and what I was doing too? How would the Surrey Mirror know I was the ‘go to’ social media person in East Surrey if I hadn’t made sure I got their attention in the first place? You get the picture right?
IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT if you get noticed or if you feel nobody is recognising your efforts – make it happen!
Recognise opportunities and make a quick decision. At the marketing critique session on Sunday evening, Nigel announced that he would critique any marketing material handed to him in the next 20 seconds. I was happy with the flyers we had created for the Xmas event but I recognised that by having our flyers critiqued, the 100 people in the room would all see the event info and some of them may even be our customers on the day. 19 seconds later our flyer was in Nigel’s hands!
When it came to my turn I made another quick decision. Do I stay where I was, not particularly visible to the rest of the room or do I stand up and go to the front of the room with Nigel? I went to the front! Now everyone can see me and I’m wearing my branded t shirt which is being seen by the 100 attendees too. Fortunately Nigel was impressed with the flyers but was able to suggest a couple of minor improvements for future events. Nigel was ribbing me about the noise I was making for the event and from the front of the room I decided to ask if anyone had any TV contacts who might be able to help us get even more coverage which made everyone laugh! Nobody could help with the request but there could have been someone there with connections and if I hadn’t asked I would never have known!
To be successful you need confidence with an absence of fear. Personally I think this one is what most people struggle with. It can be difficult because often outsiders view this trait as arrogance but the reality is you really do need to make the decision not to care about what negative can come of your decisions if you can see a positive reason for making that decision. So what if one or two people think you’re arrogant or a show off? Most people won’t and at the end of the day, it’s you and your business that will get the results – not the minority who are criticising you!
In the beginning, the thought of having enough balls to get a kiss from Rihanna or stand in front of 500 people and insist Nigel lets you speak is daunting for most people. I’ll let you into a secret – a year ago I was physically sick at the prospect of standing up in front of 20 people and talking for 60 seconds at my first ever structured networking meeting. Yesterday I was momentarily nervous when my conscious thought process kicked in and reminded me how many people were in the room. Remember Nigel talked about that yesterday too? If I’d allowed my conscious thoughts to dictate my behaviour I would have sat down and said nothing! There will be many times in business when your conscious fears attempt to dominate your decisions and actions. Be confident and push those fears away. Do whatever it is that you want to do if it might make a difference to your business success – you’ll be so glad you did and you never know what positive reaction you’ll receive!
If being forward and making stuff happen is not one of your natural traits, use social media to build your confidence! If you don’t believe you are ballsy yet but wish you were then social media is the greatest training ground you will ever find! Why? Because on social media nobody can see you! You can go ahead and ask that person if they can help you, start building a relationship with your dream client, make an approach to the person you’d love to mentor you, make friends, build networks, whatever it is you would love to do in real life but fear is holding you back – go ahead, do it on social media and see what happens! What’s the worst thing that could happen? The worst case scenario is that they won’t reply – their loss. But guess what? They could reply and everything you wanted can happen – that’s got to be worth a punt eh?! Practice being ballsy on social media and you will become ballsier in real life – go ahead and give it a go!
Finally, here is the article that appeared in the November edition of Entrepreneur’s Circular detailing the reasons why I was chosen to receive the award…..
Page 1
Page 2
Make 2012 the year you become the Entrepreneur you want to be and push your business on to super success! I look forward to seeing you up on the stage with Nigel being presented with your award next year! Connect with me – let’s make it happen!
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Thanks Suzanne! It seems like every month I grow some more! When I look back now to November when I won the award it feels like years ago! So much has changed since then too. Amazing really….
Brilliant video Veronica. You have achieved so much. You must be very proud.
Veronica brilliant video of you receiving your award, which was well deserved. Your speech afterwards was inspirational.
Veronica, what a fabulous recognition of your talent and determination.
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Inspirational.
Well done and keep doing what you’re doing!
Nigel Botterill is the leader of a cult. He has great marketing expertise, but then so do most con artists!