EP 54: From Overlooked to Award-Winning: Lauren Clemett Reveals the Secret to Getting Clients
Description:
What if your next client trusted you before you even spoke to them?
In this episode of Meaningful Marketing, host Chantal Gerardy is joined by personal branding and awards strategist Lauren Clemett of The Audacious Agency, who shares how entrepreneurs can use credibility, visibility, and the right kind of awards to go from overlooked to in-demand.
Whether you’ve been burned by vanity metrics or feel stuck trying to prove your worth, Lauren’s approach will help you build recognition that moves the needle, not just decorates your website.
Inside this episode:
- How trust is the new currency in business and how to earn it
- The difference between ego-boosting awards and credibility-building ones
- Lauren’s method for choosing award categories that match your message
- Why award applications are a goldmine for content, clarity, and confidence
- What to know before stepping onto the stage and how to leverage the win
🎯 Follow Lauren on Instagram: @lauren_clemett
📘 Explore Lauren’s work: The Audacious Agency
📥 Download your FREE Marketing Guide: chantalgerardy.com.au/free-downloads
🎧 More episodes: The Meaningful Marketing Podcast
Learn more: onlinebusinessmarketing.com.au
Transcript:
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Let’s do this. Hey, and welcome to another episode of the Meaningful Marketing Podcast. I am your host, Chantel G, and today I’ve got the amazing Lauren Clemett from the Audacious Agency and she is a super awards writing. How do I say it? Awards writing writer. Where? Australia’s premier profile building. Go for it.
Yep. Agency.
Perfect. So it’s all about profile building. Absolutely.
Profile building. Yeah. And credibility is such a huge, important thing when it comes to online marketing.
Oh, especially today. I mean, look at how much fake stuff is out there. All that AI stuff that’s just being generated and. All of a sudden you can put your voice to a video and it’s not even you anymore.
It’s so much fake stuff out there. Yeah. So yeah, credibility and visibility is becoming harder and harder.
Yeah. I think though, I mean, especially after COVID and now with ai, I think more than anything people are actually craving connection. So I think that this is an amazing opportunity for purpose-led business owners and people who’ve got a voice and a message and wanna make an impact.
I think it’s a really good space for us to be in right now because people are craving it. So credibility. And doing awards such a great thing. But what I would like to know is how did you get into award writing and like when did you like write your first award? That’s a very good question.
So you’re right.
I think that craving connection is a massive part of humanity, and we noticed it really during COVID, didn’t we? When we couldn’t connect, all of a sudden we realized that one of the. Basic needs is humans need to work with humans and more than ever, personal branding is becoming a really powerful weapon, especially for professional service providers.
Anybody who wants to be seen as an expert, anyone who needs to have that level of credibility that people trust. So someone who’s offering a service that’s not tangible, it’s not a product, and it’s not a try. Before you buy situation, you need to trust that someone’s gonna be able to deliver on their promises, so that credibility and that trust factor, I think trusts become.
More important currency than money these days. ’cause people will only pay you if they trust you. But my background in awards is interesting. I was a production manager at Saatchi and Saatchi’s, which is one of the world’s leading advertising agencies. And when I worked there in Wellington in New Zealand, they were in probably the top 10 creative agencies in the world.
So they had Kevin Roberts running the show. He went on to move to New York and write and write the book, love Marks. And he is just this global guru around branding all these incredibly creative award-winning people working at Archie’s. And they had a creative lounge. It’s about the same size as the room we’re in today.
So a tiny little lounge supposed to be the space where the creatives could go and chill out and come up with ideas. In reality, the creatives went to the bar. They went to the pub, they went somewhere else to come up with ideas. They certainly didn’t sit in this little room, but it was a beautiful little room.
It had this beautiful kidney shaped coffee table. That was inlaid with power shells, so those beautiful greeny blue shells, and it was lacquered, it was gorgeous. And these little arm chairs, and you could go and sit in there and have meetings, and it was a quiet space in the agency and in the corners were these really big bins like Grover, the Grouch on Sesame Street, those really big metal bins full to overflowing of awards.
There was. DA and d, pencils and cans, lions, all these trophies just overflowing. And on the wall there was so many certificates in their frames that they’d run outta space to put any more in. So they’d put these spikes on the wall, and they were basically just impaling the certificates onto these spikes.
And to me, that was just obscene. It was just over the top. Egotistical driven. Look at us. Aren’t we amazing? And I was a production manager, so I knew all the hard work that went on behind the scenes. And a lot of the awards in this room were won for pro bono campaigns. And pro bono is like for charity organizations and so on who don’t pay for the creative.
They pay for the media placement. That’s where the agency makes their money. But they didn’t pay for the creative. So what happened was the creatives had. No brief, they could do whatever they wanted. ’cause money was no object, basically. So they were coming up with these amazing, arty, incredibly creative television campaigns that didn’t have a need for a sale because it was for a charitable organization.
They could do whatever they wanted, they were let to run, right, basically. And then they entered those into these awards and they were winning awards because they could do whatever they wanted. So I always saw that as a bit of a, an ego trip and a bit of a, you know, this isn’t really very viable and I don’t really understand it until.
One of the departments I worked with was the direct selling and direct marketing department, and one of the clients was a telecommunications company, and we won an award for effectiveness of a campaign, and that was based on how many calls, how many sales, how many connections were made, what actually was the outcome, the impact of this campaign, and they won for it.
And that to me, spoke to my heart. And that was an effectiveness award. This is an award for saying, Hey, yes, it’s creative. Yes, it’s awesome, but it actually got results. And that changed my mind around the viability of awards and what they meant. But it wasn’t till 20. 16 when I went for my first Stevie Award, um, and it was an Asia Pacific Stevie Award and I won a silver and it was up against lots of other bigger advertising agencies like Accenture and these big global companies.
And there’s a little of me who’s created my own approach to personal branding, and I built it based on. My knowledge of branding from working in those big advertising agencies, but it was accessible for small to medium sized businesses and professionals. ’cause I saw a need, people would step into a role, like they wanna be a real estate agent, or they wanna be a consultant or a coach or whatever.
And they got a passion for what they do, but they did not understand marketing. They really struggled with positioning themselves. So I built this whole personal branding process, uh, program. I put people through it. I beta tested it. I got amazing results, and I was building a business. So I put it up for an award in terms of brand reputation and brand management.
And I won a silver and it was like, oh my God, this does work. This feels really good. And then with the Stevie’s, as you know Chantelle, you get the judges’ feedback. So to be able to read through that and to see these people saying, oh my God, this is amazing. This is really worthwhile. You need to keep doing this.
It’s a great service. You’re making something accessible that people normally wouldn’t be able to access. ’cause it’s normally a big agency that would do it. Keep going. Every time I looked at that and I looked at that trophy, and I’ve still got it in my office, that it’s a bit ragged these days. The box is falling apart, but still there.
That’s the one that probably means the most to me because I’ve gone on to win. I mean, as an agency, we’ve won the Telstra Awards and Australian Small Business Awards and Stevie Grand Awards and so on. I think we’re probably the most awarded awards agency in the country, which is hilarious. But we do practice.
We walk what we talk. Yeah, but I think it was that very first award. That still means the most to me.
Yeah, I think that’s amazing. There’s so many good things inside there. I think now with social media, there’s so many choices out there. So everyone is out there pitching what they’re doing and posting about what they do.
We need a way to close that sort of sales gap and to build that trust and awards is one of those ways, because at the end of the day, I always say, whoever does marketing best gets the customer right?
Yeah, yeah.
And now people are taking longer and longer to like make a buying decision. So how are we gonna close the gap?
Between when they actually see you versus when they actually decide to invest in you. And I think that’s so important. And awards can certainly help you with that.
Well, they want ROI don’t they? I mean, that’s all idea. If I’m gonna pay you X thousand dollars to do something for me, whether that’s cleaning my house or creating an ad campaign for me, or helping me build a brand or whatever it is.
You wanna know that you’re gonna get a result. I’m gonna 10 x whatever I spend with you in results. Yeah. Now one of our clients, the lovely Anton Guinea, he once said to me, not that long ago, actually said, look, my, my website’s covered in amazing awards. It’s covered in all these articles and media I’ve got, and all the rest of it.
He says, but it doesn’t pay the bills. You can’t hang your hat on, Hey, I’ll win an award. I’ll get in the media, I’ll stick it on my website, and all of a sudden the phones will start ringing. It’s not the case. As you know, you need to have a strategic approach to building your brand and building a reputation so that it’s not just shortening that sales cycle, which definitely happens when you’ve got credibility, but it’s also creating what I call an avalanche of influence.
So you’ve got all these other people noticing you. And seeing what you’re doing and referring to you because you’ll only refer to somebody that you trust. Yeah. But if you’ve got a partner in your business world who’s won awards for what they do, you’re gonna be more likely to refer them because you know they can deliver on their promises.
Yeah.
So I love that. So good. And I think that, you know, with what you said there with about. Winning awards, and then it’s about the repurposing of those awards. It’s fine to have them and to hang your hat up on them, but at the end of the day, it’s what do you do with those awards? Yeah. Yeah. So for me, when I went out and I was looking to get awards, it was around, I was choosing the name of the award that I wanted to win.
Yeah. So I wanted to win, like out of the box marketing, innovation, customer service, professional services. There were a couple of actual names that I was like. I’m going for that one. I’m going for that one. I’m going for that one. Because I was like, when people come to me and they wanna see my case studies and when they’re investing in me, I can say, well, I’ve also won this award in that thing.
Yeah. So it’s about then taking that content and repurposing that content as well. Yeah. It’s not just about just having it sit there.
Absolutely. It’s very smart. The way you approached it was Exactly right. We always talk about starting with the end in mind, so. What’s the reputation that you want in the marketplace and find those awards and those categories that are gonna back that up.
So I, I won a Gold Entrepreneur of the Year Award absolutely perfect for what I do. ’cause I work mostly with entrepreneurs and they respect the fact that I’m an award-winning entrepreneur for what I do. I knew how to win that category. I knew exactly what the judges needed to know, and I was a little bit surprised on the night, but I put a really good entry forward.
So, so yeah, you’re quite right. Choose what you want your reputation to be. Look for those categories. Is it Maverick? Is it women Helping Women? Is it a tech award? What is it that you really want to be known for? Customer service, whatever it is, find that thing first and then go for those particular categories.
But you are right. Just winning the award is only part of the process. And we also say to people, look, we never guarantee there’s never a guarantee you’re gonna win. With the awards we help people with, I will not help people enter guaranteed award wins because they’re just paid ego trips, right? They’re vanity metrics and you can put ’em on your website and that’s fine, but you can’t leverage them very well.
You can’t go. Oh my God. Look at our team. Aren’t they amazing? We’ve won this award when you’ve paid two and a half grand to have a logo, basically. Yeah.
So let’s just step back a little bit because some of our audience here might not get what that is, so let’s talk about paid awards for a sec so that they can understand it a bit better.
Yeah,
absolutely. So I call ’em Vanity Metrics, and it’s when you get an email that says, congratulations, you’ve been selected as top. 10 women with blonde hair who work in Australia in the branding and marketing who are aged 50 plus. I mean, hello. Yeah. You know, they say you’ve won. Oh, and by the way, in order to claim your trophy and get your place in the magazine or whatever it is, it’s $250,000 or whatever it is, or 2,500, or you haven’t done anything to enter those.
You weren’t nominated, you didn’t put anything. So there was no judging criteria that you’re basically buying, uh, a vanity metric to put on your website. And it’s okay, you can do that. Mm-hmm. There is a place for paid advertising and I, myself, I’ve bought magazine covers in the past ’cause it is chicken versus the egg, right?
You wanna get known as a professional, you wanna get known as a credible leader in your space. And it’s like you have to go out there and achieve stuff in order to enter awards. To look like you’ve achieved stuff. Right. So I do think there’s a place, but, and certainly go ahead. If you’ve got the budget and you wanna spend $997 and get on the magazine cover and that sort of stuff, that’s fine.
Just don’t go out there saying, oh, I’m all surprised and I’m so grateful and I was featured. And don’t act like authenticity. Yeah. Just use it and say, Hey, I’m really proud to be on the cover of this magazine. I wanted to be part of this because I believe in this mission that they have and I’ve shared my story.
And if you wanna read it, go and read it.
And so then what do you think about, ’cause there’s another way as well, which is kind of like paid media as well, where it’s like, oh, go nominate each other. Go nominate each other, which is basically a list building activity. Yep. Right. So they’re getting more like-minded people onto their list.
So I get the purpose of that, but then it’s like, okay, you’ve been nominated, but now in order to do the award, you’ve now gotta pay. Yeah. So again, that’s. Like an entry fee to pay. Yep. Then on top of it, there’s the entry. The entry into the actual award as well. Yeah. Yeah. And we were talking about it earlier.
Sometimes if you don’t actually attend that event, you actually then won’t be up to win that event. Yeah. Which is some of the stuff ’cause you’ve and obviously an awards judge. I’ve done an yes. I’ve also judged awards before, so
we know what goes on by, we know what goes
and we said we’re not gonna talk about it, but that’s about as sneaky we want as that’s not, we won’t
name names.
No, exactly. Look, I think the thing is read the Ts and Cs. Like if you are not, and I don’t have any hesitation to nominate myself for awards, and I don’t think anyone listening to this should either. If you nominate yourself, yes, you want to nominate yourself, believe in yourself, go for it. The self nomination a hundred percent, absolutely fine.
And I also believe there are awards you should pay to enter, and there’s some awards out there. I mean, at the moment, the Stevie Woods for women in business are open. They’re one of my favorite awards. They’re like the Oscars of business. They’re held in New York. We go every year. It’s just phenomenal to see the personal growth with the women who attend those and what happens with their businesses.
And there’s a fee to enter them. I think 30 of the 120 categories are free to enter. So go look. But it, my thinking is this, if you enter a free category, that’s fine. You are also gonna get lots of other people entering category of people. For sure. Yeah. So deal with the fact you’re gonna have lots of competition to win that one.
So you should therefore also enter one of the paid categories. ’cause it gives yourself, and as you did, go and find the niche, go and find the niche category you really wanna be associated with. Write a really good entry. Make sure you mention all of the stuff you are doing. Make it really clear and concise so a judge can understand in a millisecond exactly what you do and the impact you are having.
Don’t just tell the judge what you’re doing. Show them what’s the problem, what’s your solution? What’s the impact that you’re having? And 90% of awards out there. Don’t ask for financials. That’s one of the biggest myths that is out there. A lot of people go, oh, I’m not ready for awards yet. Haven’t done enough.
90% don’t wanna know what your sales figures are.
I’m just gonna stay. Say this though, if you don’t know your financials, please
make sure you do a lot of, you’re not gonna be able to grow a business. Well, yeah. Look, growing your business is all about understanding the metrics for sure. Yeah. But. When it comes to credibility, if you wanna be known as Maverick of the Year, that’s not about saying how much you’ve earned.
That’s about saying how you are breaking the rules a hundred percent. If you wanna win women helping women or a tech award, all you’ve, and you haven’t even launched your tech. We’ve helped a lot of people who haven’t even launched their business. Kimberly Sumner came from New Zealand. She came up with a concept for She Prosperity.
It was about closing the gender pay gap in corporate. She won a Gold Stevie Award. She haven’t even launched her project. Oh. Love it. It was just a concept. We’ve helped people with products that they’ve had, uh, a trademark for. They’ve not even put them in production yet, and we’ve gone for design awards for them.
So let’s just talk about that a little bit for the listeners because they’re going, okay, well, how do we do this? Because if it was that simple, we would just all enter an award and we’d all just win, right? Mm-hmm. And we were talking about this earlier, and it really does come down to effective communication.
Effective communication of what you do, who you help, how you help them, but then also the title of the award that you’re going for. So for example. Like I wanted to go for like innovation. I wanted to be known as an innovative marketing strategist because that is obviously gonna give me credibility in the field.
I’ve now gotta prove that. So I’ve gotta effectively communicate that in the application. Yeah, and I’ve also gotta provide evidence of that as well. So many people will go in and a couple of things, I’ll useche BT or two where it says add in support resources. They go, ah, too hard basket. And they don’t do it.
Yeah. And I’m like. Oh my gosh, yes. There’s the evidence. There’s the
evidence. There it is. There’s forgotten to provide. Yeah, it, I mean, anything you, again, it’s like any marketing, isn’t it? You’ve gotta be concise. You’ve gotta communicate very clearly and succinctly what it is you do, how you do it, why you do it, who for what the problem is that you solve, and what’s the impact that it’s having.
In such a way that even a 12-year-old could understand it. You’ve just gotta be able to do that. And then you can wax lyric a little bit. You can talk about your drive and your passion and what led you to this and the storytelling, and you can weave that in as well. But you’ve gotta have the metrics that matter.
As you say, if you wanna go for innovation, you’ve gotta paint the picture. Well, this is what the rest of the market’s doing and this is what I’m doing differently. This is a case study that shows how effective that was. You can’t just say I’m being innovative, you’ve actually got to show it.
Oh, I love that.
So let’s just talk about judges. ’cause I mean, obviously you’re a judge and I’ve judged awards before at the end of the day. Judges as much as they do or don’t wanna have it, they’re gonna have their own perspective around how they do it. And then obviously it’s gotta be in alignment with the organization who’s actually doing that award as well.
So I have a, I have actually said no to being a judge with some awards because it just doesn’t sit well with me. Yep. And I think you’ve probably done the same. Yep. Absolutely. And so let’s just talk about those judges. ’cause you know, you mentioned Stevie Awards and them giving feedback, and I’ll just let our listeners know that I think I got a silver award.
It was just after COVID. It was about the impact that I’d made on. Transitioning businesses from offline to online during COVID and I dunno, there were like five judges, and outta the five judges, there were like three who went. The feedback was, you’re amazing. You did such a good job. I love everything that you do.
And the other two were like, brutal. Like literally, you’re a waste of time. Your YouTube channel sucks your content. Is ridiculous. And I was like, like heartbroken. Yeah. And it’s funny is that we listen to that negative stuff all the time instead of the positive stuff. Instead of the positive as well. Yeah.
And, and I’m just like, you know, just take the silver wind and you know, you can’t please everyone. Yeah. So let’s just talk a little bit about if people are writing awards. Yep. What to take into consideration. We said take into consideration effective communication of what you do, how you help. We said gathering evidence to support it.
We said choosing the right title, but what about. Making sure that we position it in a way to a judge who barat is a stranger. Yeah. And may or may not be into what you’re into.
Yeah. Look, and there’s two things there. One is it’s a process. And the cool thing about entering awards, and I get this from every single person that we work with, they’re time poor.
They want the credibility and the visibility. They just don’t have the time to go looking for the categories. They don’t have time to write it, let alone leverage it. They just, I want the credibility. Go and do that for me. But they still have to sit down with us and spend a good hour and a half so that we can dig into their story and find their special source, their unique profile position, and really zone in on that for the judges and figure out what that impact is.
And they go through that process. And quite often in business, we’re so focused on what we have to do. That we don’t stop and think about what we’ve achieved, right? So we force you to go back through that. And when they do that, it’s, and we write them and we send them off. So often we get people on the phone crying and saying, oh my God, you’ve made me sound amazing.
Like, well, you’re amazing. All we did was stop you for a moment and make you reflect on where you’ve come from and what you’re doing. And then you see that process and that journey, and it’s the value of them going, you know what, I’ve now got this incredible. Body of evidence of what I’m doing that I can now repurpose and cut up a million different ways to be blogs and articles and social media and podcast themes and all sorts of stuff that they can be using for years later.
So there’s a huge amount that comes outta that whole journey. So if you enter an award and you don’t win, do not think that’s the end of the world because you’ve just experienced an amazing journey.
Yeah.
And we tell people you can leverage an award a hundred percent regardless of the outcome, and you should be leveraging it from the moment you nominate yourself.
Yeah. Get out there and tell people, oh my God, I’ve just nominated. I’m not sure about it. You know, I’ve got these fears or doubts, but I’m gonna do it anyway. Share the journey with people, because as you said right at the start of this conversation, people want to work with people. They want to know you’re a human, right?
So the other side of things, from a judging point of view, there’s a massive amount of. Uh, unconscious bias. Yeah. I think there’s also conscious bias.
Yeah.
And the funny thing is a lot of people think, oh, I’ll have a go at awards. I’ll just do a little local one. I’ll go for the local women in business community one, or I’ll go for the local Lord mes one, or I’ll go for the local real estate agents one.
Well, I’ll just do a little one first to try it out. My firm belief is it’s actually harder to win an industry or a local award than it is to win an international award because of the judges. Because the judges on an international award do not know you from Adam. And they probably are sitting on their couch like I do when I’m doing my judging, not with a glass of wine ’cause I don’t drink, but they normally sit with a glass of wine on the couch at the end of a very busy day, and they’re reading online all this information.
They’re tired. They might give you eight minutes of their time and unless you can nail it within the first paragraph so that they clearly know. What they’re dealing with and they’re buying into, they’re compelled to want to read more and they’re going, wow, this person’s amazing. I wanna know more. And they then look at the rest of your entry.
They then look at your support document, and they then judge you highly because of that. If you can’t do that, then you’re lost anyway. Right? But if you’re doing it for someone local. And they’re reading it and they go, oh, I know Chantel, she’s saying this. Ah, I don’t, is she really doing that? That’s, I don’t.
And they’ve got all this subconscious bias or conscious bias happening, then Yes. You actually find, I, and I wrote one recently for someone entering the Bendigo Business Awards, and she tried last year and the year before, she wasn’t a finalist. She’s just become a finalist, which is really exciting for her.
And she said to me. The way we wrote it was like we were a third person writing about her. And to have that person step back and look from the outside in meant that when the judges are looking at it, they’re gonna go, oh, I didn’t know that about that person, and it’s impressed me. So you’ve really gotta consider the conscious bias that happens a lot of the time.
And it is almost the fact that when you go for a little local award, it’s too small. People know people and they vote for people they like, and it becomes a popularity contest. So I know it’s really hard. Been there. I experienced it. Popularity. Popularity. There are lots of those out there. The local awards that are run by precedent, you get votes for those.
Yeah, they’re an awesome awards. Oh, I do not
like the People’s Choice Vote ones. They drive me nuts.
Well, I’ve entered them. Our clients have entered them. Yeah. There’s a place for every type of award. Yeah. At the moment, I think I’m up for two. There’s a Women’s Business Club one and there’s the SYMBOL awards that are open.
I’m also a symbol awards judge, so I’m learning everything about those awards. But it still comes down to you putting yourself forward.
Yeah.
With enough information that compels a judge to say, you know what? You are worthy of this and you’ve done the work, and you’ve got evidence to back up. What you are saying doesn’t always need to be.
We’ve, you know, grown by 200% or we’ve done, it can just be, we had a really hard year last year. We had to completely pivot and change our business. Yeah. We lost all our staff. AI has ruined our business, but we’ve done this.
Mm-hmm. You know,
as long as you’ve got that compelling. This is what we’ve done.
This is the problem we are facing. This is the problem we want to solve, and this is how we’re approaching it and it’s different, or it’s having an impact, then you’ll be away. So
I can say that I have actually lost more awards than I’ve won. But you’ve been. I’ve entered there. Yeah. You know? Absolutely.
And we, we’ve got a process now. We’ve got an awards folder that we’ve got and Yep. You know, and we go ahead and we have a crack every now and then. Yes. You know, through all the experiences. ’cause it’s a learning thing. Yeah. And in fact, I’ve spoken about it on other podcasts and blogs where I’ve said to my clients and to other people, you need to enter awards ’cause it gives you such good insight into your business.
And I actually entered Telstra Awards all by myself and they’re one of the hardest awards. And they’re not easy categories. They categories take like a month of hard work to do it. And I learned so much about myself yes. And my business by doing it. I’ll share the story about the first award I ever entered and it was actually through our agency and, and I didn’t win the first one.
I only won the second one. And the first one I took my three daughters. We went into forever new I I was still very. Broken on the bones of my ass at that stage, single three kids, it was really tough growing a business. Took them into forever new. I said, we choose a dress, we’re gonna manifest this, we’re gonna win this award.
And then we opened it up on the Monday, the email, and it said, you didn’t win. You like didn’t even place. And I was like, what the, whatever. I was like, I’ve just invested this money, you know, I’ve done all this stuff. Like, what the hell? And I just went, you know, what example would I be to my children? What example would I be to my children if I didn’t pick myself up?
Mm. And give it another crack and look at what could I do better?
Yeah.
You know, what could I do better? And again, it was about working with the agency and making sure that, like you said, some people don’t wanna spend time speaking to the agency. They go done for you. It’s not done for you. It’s done with you.
Yeah, because we cannot extract the juice and the glitter. No. Out of your head. No. We can extract it out of you, but not out of your head when you’re not with us.
Yeah. We say that a lot of the time. A lot of our clients, when they are doing the awards, they come back saying, thank you so much for the work you did and everything.
It’s like, well, I didn’t do the work. You did the work. Yeah. We just turned it into an award entry that we knew would compel the judges. The interesting thing is I always say, you can’t hang your hat on one award. It’s really strategic. It’s the same with any marketing. So awards are just another marketing channel, so it’s like a snowball effect.
A lot of what people don’t realize, most awards are open for two or three months. Some of them are open for six months, some of them open for a year. So you might enter in January and you don’t learn whether you’ve won them till December. And you’ve done all that work and all that effort and you’ve written the entry and you’ve paid for your entry.
You’ve put it in and you wait for 12 months and don’t do anything. That’s just stupid, right? So the whole process we have is from the minute you nominate, the minute we so right from nomination, get out there, tell people about it. I’ve nominated myself. Don’t be afraid to, it’s funny, when I first went to the Stevie Awards in New York, the New York Marathon had just been won.
Run that weekend, right? Yeah. And everybody in the city was wearing their medals, their marathon medals on the outside of their jackets. ’cause it’s cold, it’s November, wearing their medals and they didn’t wear them just for the day, the whole week. There were still people in New York wearing their marathon medal love.
On the outsides of their jackets. Now my husband’s run two marathons, right? So I know what happens in Australia and New Zealand. They run the marathon, they get the medal put around their necks, they get a photograph, we take it off, we put it in our pocket and we walk away and never is that medal scene again.
It lives at home and gathers dust. Right? This is the difference between the American way of celebrating success and the Australian New Zealand way of not celebrating anything. ’cause we don’t want haters, right? That tall poppy syndrome.
Wow.
I’m on a mission to change that. Because screw that, right? Yeah.
You’ve worked hard, you’ve trained hard. You’ve just run a marathon. Why would you only wear the medal for 20 minutes if that,
yeah,
why wouldn’t you celebrate that fact? And it’s the same with an award. So from the minute you nominate, don’t be afraid that you might not win it. Get out there and be vulnerable and say, I’m putting myself up for this.
Yeah, because I really care about this. You’ll be amazed at how many people will get behind you, and even the haters will go, oh, you’ll never win that. Whatever. So what? So be it. Yeah. What does it matter? And then when you submit, Hey, I’ve just crossed my fingers. Good luck everybody. Thank you for everyone who has supported me.
Thank you to my clients. Thank you to my amazing team. We’re in, we’re we’ve, you know, we’re in it to win it. It doesn’t matter if we don’t win, but we are really proud of what we’re achieving. We’re repurpose your entry, use it in social media, and then the finalists get announced. You’re not a finalist. So what?
Really sad. We weren’t a finalist, but still really proud of our team. Yeah. With leverage, right? Do not hide your passion and your greatness and your shine away from the world. Oh, love that. It’s so important to just leverage.
So just as we’re coming to the end, let’s just talk about the acceptance speech.
Yes. Because I shared with you. You were one of those people. One of the biggest on the night, one of one of the biggest oopses I’ve ever done in my life. I actually went all the way last year to the Australian Women in Business Awards to support one of my clients. And because she was entering, I entered.
And honestly, I’ll be honest, I half-assed it. Right. I just really did. I was really there for her and I was drinking and I was celebrating with her, waiting for her. And the next minute my name was getting called, whoops. And I had to go up on stage and do an acceptance speech. Like luckily, you know, with all my.
Year, my speaking training, I was able to wing it and I’ve got a personality so I can just kind of make it happen. There is a video online you can see, but let’s just talk about some of the things. I mean, I have before I’ve had it written in my notes, because you can be nervous. So when I was starting out, I was like, if you’ve got an acceptance speech, write it, have it on your phone.
So. If not, if you’ve been drinking like I have been and you can’t, but you read it, but you probably would’ve been anyway. But then you have it over there just as notes as something, so you can just have a quick look at it and at least, you know, have something before you go. So let’s just talk about that acceptance.
Yeah, absolutely.
So acceptance. The ones I really hate, the people who get on stage and say, oh my God, I never imagined I’d win. It’s like, well, why did you enter them? Yeah, exactly. Come on, believe in yourself. I go and slap them. Look, acceptance speech is the. Best ones come from the heart. Yeah, they’re not scripted.
I agree. Absolutely. You need to take time to sit down before you go to an awards event. And again, you are paying $300 for a ticket to go to the gala. You’ve got a dress, you’ve got your hair done, you’ve spent all this. You’ve got the family there, or the team there. So you’ve invested to be there, right? So you need to leverage every moment of it.
So even if you don’t win. Record your acceptance speech. So there’s a red carpet, you’re all dressed up. The team’s there. Get a little lapel mic, plug it into your phone and get out the back on the red carpet where everyone is and go, Hey look, I didn’t win, but. And give your acceptance speech. I’m really proud of what we’ve done.
Thank you to amazing team. We’re passionate about what we’re doing. Did you know that? Blah. And share some facts. Look, acceptance speeches are really interesting. I’m a professional speaker, and acceptance speeches are so different. So when you’re a speaker, when you’re on stage, yeah. Everybody in the audience is listening to you.
Yeah, right? They’ve paid their ticket to come and hear and learn. When you’re at an awards gala, dinner, as you know, you’re drinking, there’s noise. There’s. Fun. There’s no one’s listening to the speeches and they go, boo, I didn’t
win. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
So, so, so you have to cut through that noise. So the first words out of your mouth in an acceptance speech need to be something that makes the room go, oh my God, I need to listen to this person.
Yeah. So a really powerful statement at the start, not, oh my God, I didn’t think I was gonna win. Right? So, so
my one was I walked up and I went. Who here thinks business is hard. It can be effing hard. Right? The whole room stopped. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. But I did that to
gather my thoughts and think Thank you for, yeah.
Yeah. What do I have to say?
So, yeah, so have it planned. What’s the drop mic drop moment that you can open with that makes people notice? And then who are the people that are important to you? You’ve got your 30 seconds or whatever it is of fame. What are the key messages you want to get across?
Yeah. And
then how do you want to end it?
Because the point of an acceptance speech is if it’s being videoed, you wanna leverage that for years later. Mm. So you don’t want it to be something that’s, oh, I’m I trying to sell something. I’ve got a webinar next Monday. Yeah. You would not do that in an acceptance speech. The best ones I’ve seen have always come from the heart.
They’re people who don’t take notes to stage. They might have, and we always suggest like three or four days beforehand, get some dot points, put ’em on your phone, whatever. Anytime you’re out sitting in the car, whatever. Not while you’re driving, but whatever. Yeah. You know, practice what you’re gonna start with.
Have an idea of the key points you wanna get across. You are never gonna deliver it perfectly because even as a professional speaker and I get up and give an acceptance speech, the adrenaline’s rushing. Yeah. You know, I dunno, I’m gonna win. So there’s an excitement and so on. Yeah. The best story I’ve got is a fabulous woman, Farina Chen.
She’s a wonderful jeweler. She was in corporate. She stepped out, took a big leap of faith and went, no, I love the corporate world. The money’s great, but I hate what I do. Yeah, I wanna be a jeweler. So she went off and started her own business. Yeah, so leap of faith. She was put up for an Australian Small Business Champion Award and she purposely turned up late that evening ’cause she was so afraid of having to get up on stage and give an acceptance speech.
So she won. So I had to go up and give the speech. They’ve actually changed it. Now you can’t give a speech unless you’re there in the room, which is fine, but I prefer that anyway. But I had to go up. I gave an acceptance speech on her behalf, grabbed her trophy, and was on the phone. Where are you? You’ve won, you know, oh, I’m in the Uber and all that.
So she arrived in a normal dress. Nothing too flashy. None of her jewelry. On an evening where she could have really shown it off, and thankfully she got photographs and things with her trophy and so on. To her credit, this very shy, amazing, creative woman came with us to New York six months later and trembling in Palm Sweden that stood on stage and in front of a global audience and gave an acceptance speech and collected a gold Stevie Award and did Amazing.
And you could. Physically see her confidence grow, love it. Now it’s a process, now a journey. Now she’s all over Instagram. She’s got this sense of confidence that she can just jump on and do whatever she, so I think the thing that we. Don’t look at enough with awards is the personal development and the growth and confidence.
And when you’ve got that tangible evidence of all those trophies sitting there that you’ve won.
Yeah. And
when you’re having a down day, ’cause you’re right, business is blooming hard. It sucks half the time, right? But the minute you can look at that trophy and even pick it up and go, I won this, our team won this, you know, we did this.
It gives you that confidence to keep
going. Well, it has been a blast. We could talk for hours. So this is another episode of the Meaningful Marketing Podcast. If you haven’t already, please make sure that you subscribe. Lauren, you have got something for our audience today. Yeah. What will you be putting in the notes?
Absolutely.
So of course, all this knowledge that we have around awards we’ve put into the award-winning guidebook, so it takes you through the whole thing, how to find awards, how to get yourself ready for them, how to write them properly, how to give an acceptance speech, and then how to leverage them.
It’s. All in a guidebook and you can download it. So I’ll give you a coupon code and people can go online and use that and
get it for free. Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Welcome. So goodbye to everyone. It’s been an absolute blast again, and please make sure that you leave us a rating as well.
See ya. Bye. Thanks for listening in. Meaningful Marketing is all about you making your marketing meaningful. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, please hit that subscribe button. But subscribing means that you won’t miss out on future episodes. All about marketing and motivation. Stay inspired, stay focused, and make your marketing meaningful.