Over the weekend just gone, I was privileged to attend the annual AusMumpreneur Awards for 2015, in Melbourne, Australia.
In fact, I was invited to sit on the panel of judges tasked with choosing the overall winner for the big gong, the AusMumpreneur of the Year! (Being a judge this year was lovely recognition of my past successes in business and as a previous winner of these awards.)
The finalists for this big award were all extremely savvy and successful business women (and of course, all Mums as well). The calibre of entrants this year was very high. They included: Monica Meldrum of Whole Kids, Vikki Malmberg, Kelly Brown of Little Pieces Photography, Stephanie Wilson of TFI Dentistry (who came in full costume as her role The Tooth Fairy!), Leonie Dawson of Shining Business & Life Academy, Laura Furiosi of Rashoodz Swimwear, Hanna Millward of Bump Models and Stacey Currie of Brand Print Australia.
The stories these women told, about the spark of inspiration that started their business, the hurdles they’ve had to jump through and hard lessons learned, the key decisions they made that lead to their success, and their big visions for their business and their personal lives, were all so incredibly inspiring! It truly was an incredible afternoon that left me feeling more motivated about pursuing my own goals than I have in a very long time.
After listening to all the finalists’ presentations, I learned there was one key factor that was common across all their success stories, and that was that they all had a huge goal, a really big vision for their business.
And actually, digging even a little bit deeper, all of these business superstars had three sides to their big goal: passion, purpose and profit.
Take Monica of Whole Kids for example. She started her business out of a passion for feeding kids wholesome, healthy food, something that was inspired by a trip to Indonesia years ago working with children in poverty. Her goal for her business now is to serve 50 million healthy kids meals! No small feat. She also supports three children’s charities and is committed to environmental sustainability (and has been awarded B-Corp certification for her efforts).
Does her business’ bottom line suffer for giving so much away?
Nope, quite the opposite in fact, as she is now a multi-million dollar company that continues to grow by over 40% each year!
Monica was not alone amongst the awards finalists for her ambitious goals and commitment to her purpose, but her outstanding successes did earn her the title of AusMumpreneur of the Year award.
So I think we should all follow Monica’s example by setting ourselves a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (a BHAG) for ourselves and our business.
I’ll start – here’s mine that I am committing to by stating it publicly:
“I want to teach 100,000 female entrepreneurs with product-based businesses (productpreneurs!) to be more successful and in control, by teaching them how to attract their ideal customers and sell more products online – effortlessly.
My commitment to supporting women in business (in particular Mums) includes a scholarship program where 10% of my time and my course positions will be provided free of charge to enable women who can’t financially afford my services to learn what they need to grow their businesses and generate financial freedom for themselves.”