Congratulations to the winner of American Express OPEN and NBC Universal’s winner of “Shine A Light,” Sacred Wind Communications. Entrepreneur John Badal helped start Sacred Wind Communications after surveying the Navajo Reservation, where fewer than four homes out of every 10 had access to basic phone service. Sacred Wind Communications is building a state-of-the-art telecommunications network to serve the Navajo people in New Mexico, reaching current customers, and over 6,000 homes without access to telephone service of any kind. The company provides these thousands of people a way to connect to the rest of the world, as well as employment in an area of extremely high unemployment.
As the grand prize winner, John has won $50,000 in grants for his business, and $50,000 worth of marketing from American Express. The two runners-up, HAPPYBABY and Beacon Paint and Hardware, have won $10,000 each from American Express. Thousands of small businesses were nominated for Shine a Light, and I hope they realized that they won valuable marketing support from American Express and NBC Universal too. There are many, many benefits to entering a business competition beyond winning the prize. Count Me In is re-introducing the Make Mine a Million $ Business Competition by opening our applications now for our first event in February 2010. I want to offer you a few hints on how to apply and guarantee you’ll be a winner:
1. Exposure
Competitions are all about excitement, energy and publicity. Almost all business competitions, whether the winners are selected by a panel or the public, offer contestants some kind of visibility through their websites. Don’t pass up an opportunity to get your face and company out there! Shine a Light, for example, created a page for every single business who entered and attracted tens of thousands of people to the competition. Business owners who threw their hat in the ring got lots of new eyeballs on them, plus the implied credibility of being associated with huge names like AmEx and NBC.
2. Network
With the possible exception of some ugly moments on The Apprentice, participants in business competitions are there to boost themselves up, not knock each other down. Being in a pool of other business owners who are ambitiously pursuing growth, and who likely have similar vision and goals, is the ideal place to find partners, clients, vendors, and connections for mutual learning and growth. Being part of a live competition (or being in the audience for one) makes networking even easier. Losing with a lot of friends is better than winning alone.
3. Engagement
Competitions are something everyone can get excited about. Email your customers and colleagues about what you’re doing, and encourage them to get involved by voting for you, attending the competition event, or spreading the news for moral support. Giving your customers a way to get behind you will keep you at the top of their minds and engaged with your brand in the long run.
4. Experience
Most business contest applications have questions in common, and they’re answers you need to have at the ready for other situations – How are you an innovator? What’s your revenue over last year? What help do you need, and how would you use it to reach your goals? Upfront, the application process can look like a lot of work but having these answers ready and written down means you have something already written and ready to improve upon for the next contest, interview, or pitch to a client.
5. Insight
The most valuable part of entering a business contest is the insight you will gain into your business. Many women who enter the M3 Competition have never written down their goals or plans. Some have, but never shown them to someone else. A few had never even thought about growing their businesses to a million dollars in revenue until they started the application. As stated above, if you’ve done the work before, applying for M3 is a snap. If you haven’t, this is work that you must do – and involve other people in - if you want your business to grow. I have heard this confirmed by dozens, of not hundreds, of M3 applicants. Stacey Phetteplace, who was an M3 Competition finalist in 2007 who hit the million-dollar mark a year later, said it best, “I have been looking back over the last year and I realize that the big turning point for me was the application process into your program. The act of sitting down and filling out the application process forced me to consider and outline the steps that were going to be necessary for my business to grow. I truly believe that your program helped me lay down the ground work for where I am today and where I will be in the future.”
Be a winner and apply for a business competition. The application for the Make Mine a Million $ Business Award is open now.
business. I myself was able to get 4 packaging companies to get into a bidding war on my packaging, and thus save about 40% in packaging costs. This would never have happened if the economy was humming along and those companies were fat and happy, or if I hadn’t thought about going to “big” companies to bid on my business, whereas before I thought I was too small for them to care. I realized that even those big companies needed to get as much volume as they could, and might finally be willing to look at my small business AND give me a great price.
