We spend a lot of time encouraging other businesses to stop for a minute, look at how far they’ve come, pull together the evidence, give themselves some credit and be brave enough to put their work in front of independent judges.
Every now and then, we have to take our own advice.
Last year, that paid off when Launch NW won the Marketing Impact Award at the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce Excellence Awards, recognising the work behind the Wigan Business Awards campaign.
This year, we went back.
This time we entered Micro Business of the Year, and we were delighted to make the final.
We didn’t win, and genuinely, that’s OK.
Rigby Music MCR Ltd took the award, and they are a brilliant business. Huge congratulations to them and to everyone who reached the final.
Of course, we would have loved to hear Launch NW called out on the day.
You don’t put the time into an entry, get through to the final and turn up hoping to come second!
But winning isn’t the only reason we enter awards.
Going through the process makes you stop and look properly at the business.
When you’re busy doing the work, it is very easy to forget what has actually happened over the previous 12 months.
An award entry makes you stop and actually look at the business properly.
What’s grown? What’s changed? What have we done well? What are clients saying? What have we introduced, where have we made a difference and what are we genuinely proud of?
When you’re busy just getting on with the work, you don’t always take the time to think about any of that, so for me, that part alone makes entering worthwhile.
Then there is the slightly uncomfortable bit: putting it all in front of people who don’t know you!
Independent judges don’t know the backstory unless you tell them. They don’t know how hard something was, how much changed behind the scenes or why a particular result mattered.
You have to make the case.
For a business like ours, that takes time and thought.
We work closely with our clients.
We know our reputation locally and we know the relationships we’ve built over the years, but entering awards takes us outside that circle and asks someone else to look at the business objectively.
Sometimes they give you a trophy and sometimes they don’t.
But, both experiences have value.
Making the Micro Business of the Year final this year gave us another reason to look at Launch NW as a business in its own right, rather than constantly looking outward at everybody else’s.
And while we didn’t bring our own award home, it turned into a very good day for Wigan.
ASH Integrated Services, DASCO Construction and Kane International brought four awards back to the borough between them, including Skills & Talent Champion, Growth, Medium Business of the Year and Large Business of the Year.
That was pretty special to watch.
So yes, we’ll enter again.
We’ll keep encouraging our clients to do the same too.
Because there is something powerful about stopping long enough to recognise what you’ve built, putting it into words and giving somebody outside the business the opportunity to judge it.
Sometimes you win.
Sometimes somebody else deserves their moment.
Then you learn from it, keep building and have another go next year.
