An Award Winning Business!

When we first ‘officially’ launched our business in July 2022 we could not have imagined winning the Best Start Up Business category at the Causeway Coast and Glens 2023 Business Awards.

We had of course seen the launch of the awards across all social media platforms and thought no more about it until Annette from Causeway Chamber persuaded us that we should put our names forward and we are so grateful she did.

Actually completing the application was a really useful exercise as it made us take stock of where we had started and how far we had come.  When you are so focussed on the tasks at hand you can easily forget to stop and take stock, see what is working, what’s not and where you need to concentrate your efforts. It’s also an opportunity to see what your business is contributing to the wider community and economy.

The next step was becoming a finalist which felt great and created a bit of a buzz on our social media pages. To be honest the support that we receive from our followers is nothing short of amazing and who doesn’t love a bit of encouragement! Working from home doesn’t offer many chances for a bit of praise and the family are usually more concerned with what’s for dinner or whether the washing is done than how good we are with a spreadsheet 😂

The ceremony itself was a chance to put the glad rags on and get out and meet with other local business owners.  We know from experience that networking is key to any new business and can attribute a fair bit of our success so far to networking, but the gravitas that comes with being an award nominee will certainly do us no harm. Plus you can miss the office parties you know, so it was nice to be out, all dressed up, in a function room eating a lovely meal - the Lodge Hotel did a great job and it was lovely to catch up with our good friend Sindy from Signature Swimming.

Now when our name was actually announced we were genuinely amazed and delighted (you can’t tell from the picture at all!) and we enjoyed our moment of glory. It was also lovely that this particular award was sponsored by Enterprise Causeway as they were a brilliant help to us as start ups. We participated in what was the Go For It Programme (now replaced by Go Succeed) and it really helped us focus on what we needed to do to get the best start. To now be able to say we are ‘an award winning’ business fills us both with pride and we recognise the title gives us a certain amount of credibility – we just need to live up to that!

Most small business owners will tell you there is so much pressure in creating social media content so being included in the award nominations and getting the win meant the posts wrote themselves for a week or two and we can look forward to the throwback posts for years to come.

So, would we recommend applying for your local council business awards? Absolutely, we can’t actually think of a good reason not to!