Westpac Business Excellence Awards

I was browsing the Waitakere Enterprise site last week and spotted this page

There is paragraph there that mentions a few of the winners of these awards -

"For the last 15 years, the Westpac Waitakere Business Awards has honoured local companies, their people and their extraordinary achievements in business. Your name could be among the likes of Babich Wines, Belly Beyond, Phoenix Organics,  and Douglas Pharmaceuticals"

Say what???   Belly Beyond???  I almost fell off my chair to be included in such amazing business company! 

Last year, we won the Best Small Business 2009 and made the finals in the Marketing Excellence category (which we lost out to the fantastic wine brand Te Henga The Westie).

So this year we've entered again, although not in the category we won which isn't allowed, and we have gotten the good news that we've been selected as a Finalist in the Marketing Excellence and in the Young Business Person of the Year!  We get to add two of these little badges to our email signature and the hard work really begins.

Bloom Her Business Woman of the Year

Until we see the official Awards photos here are some behind the scenes shots at the Bloom Her Business Woman of the Year Awards.

Above:  Heidi and Louisa (Mr Belly Beyond's in the background at left and my big sis on the right)

With two of our favourite people at the Her Business Forum, (L-R) Heidi, Anita Newport from Parkes Automotive, Louisa, Kate Coote from the sublime online store Floozy

Another fave from the Forum, Wendy Davie from Totally Organised, Louisa, Kate from Floozy.

Probably Tweeting each other in this shot!

The Awards dinner was the midway point through a two day business Forum and while we loved the awards we definitely also thought that the Forum was such a fantastic event. Heidi and I got a huge amount out of the conference, and it was the proverbial “kick in the pants” we need to focus on getting our business to where we want it to be.

Having the opportunity to listen to the most inspirational women like Mary Devine (ex CEO of Ezibuy), Jane Hunter (Hunter Wines), Jenny Morel (No 8 Ventures) was absolutely fascinating and like a shot of pure adrenalin.  Sarah Gibbs from Trilogy was down-to-earth but came across as incredibly driven and told stories we could relate to.  

Heidi and I were chuffed to be asked to speak at the Cameo point of the day where along with lots of other women we shared our biggest blunder - not the easiest thing to do but as Annah Stretton said if you don't make mistakes you'll never learn anything and the amount of people who got up unprompted after the Cameos were done said volumes about what a great topic it was.  

I also got a chance to speak again on the second day when I did a brief Tips on Social Media.  It barely scratched the surface but hopefully encouraged people to go away and set up their Twitter accounts, get their Facebook pages up and running and to raise awareness around the strictness of Facebooks rules around promotions - no you CANNOT make someone 'like' or tag or upload a photo or do a status update or indeed anything of those things as a means of entering a competition!  (will blog on this soon).

 

The Stretton Publishing team did such an amazing job of running a tight ship, keeping us motivated, well-fueled and ensuring we networked among ourselves meaning fantastic contacts were made and after seeing the passionate Her Business Network Coordinators and members in action the Her Business Networks will definitely be something we will check out.

All in all a wonderful and productive way to spend two days and to take out the Most Inspirational Role Model Award was an absolutely highlight moment for us in business so far.

p.s.  Thanks to Kate for the images above.
p.p.s  Check out Belly Beyond's other award winning moments here