One of BNI’s core values involves celebrating success. Recognising the successes of our individual members gives everybody involved in our organisation a “lift” and a reason to celebrate.
We want to take a moment to recognise the success of two members who are finalists for The David Awards this year. In New Zealand, The David Awards recognise the unsung heroes in home and small businesses throughout the country. They acknowledge people whose tenacity, courage and ingenuity place them firmly at the forefront of entrepreneurship in this country.
This year two members have achieved significantly in business by becoming finalists and they are:
- Dr Tom Vaughan, Chiropractor of Boost Chiropractic and member of BNI Warkworth. He is a finalist in the most outstanding lifestyle business category.
- Lisa Garrud, Content Marketing Expert of Isatrin Limited and member of BNI Remuera. She is a finalist for the Solo Meo Award: this Award celebrates a solo business owner who runs their business single-handedly.
Lisa’s Learning Lessons
Lisa was fortunate enough to be mentored by a previous winner of The David Awards – Richard Conway of Pure SEO. He introduced her to BNI and encouraged her to enter into the awards. As a solo operator, Lisa says the recognition and feedback you get from awards is gold. It has helped her develop her business and add high calibre clients.
For Lisa referral networking through BNI is a strong source of work for her. It’s not just what you know but who you know and BNI has significantly improved her connections with the business community. Lisa is now building relationships with more clients who are using her content marketing services regularly and this is helping to grow her budget so she can take on employees.
Tom’s Learning Lessons
This is the first year that Tom has entered the awards. We mentioned the awards in June in an Networking Education Article and from hearing this he decided to enter. Feedback was the number one reason Tom went into the awards. As a relatively new business, Tom wants to constantly improve and the feedback from the awards will help him to improve and grow his business at the same time.
BNI has been beneficial to this process because learning how other people do business helps Tom a lot with his operation. Tom notes that he is a chiropractor before he is a businessperson, so getting that feedback from his fellow BNI members on improving his business has been invaluable. In the 3 years Boost has operated, they have grown from a turnover of nil and running the business from a converted garage, to this year being on track to turnover $250 000 and operating in a town centre location.
Congratulations again to Tom and Lisa – the David Award winners will be announced on the 12th of October, so keep an eye out and consider entering your own business next year.
