In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, the wonderful Sophie Milliken, MBE, the founder and CEO of Moja, is chatting about the importance of getting noticed through awards and writing books. Something that makes many people uncomfortable, we discuss why winning awards matter and the common mistakes to watch out for when you are nominated for an award. Sophie also talks about how writing a book can help boost your business's visibility. Plus, we share tips on how to tell if an award is legit or a scam, and how to make your submissions stand out. If you're a course creator, coach, or membership owner looking to grow your brand, this episode is full of useful advice and strategies.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• The Power of Awards – Winning awards can significantly boost your business’s visibility, but it’s important to submit thoughtfully and avoid common mistakes like submitting for the wrong categories or ignoring the submission guidelines.

• Writing a Book for Business Growth – Writing a book can be an excellent way to increase your visibility and credibility, positioning you as an expert in your field while attracting new opportunities.

• Spotting Legitimate Awards – Not all awards are created equal. It’s crucial to be able to differentiate between genuine awards that will add value to your business and those that are simply out to make money off unsuspecting participants.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Sophie Milliken on Instagram or LinkedIn Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Teresa: Have you ever thought about going for an award or been put up for award and didn't get it? Do you wonder whether it's worth the effort because sometimes we have to go to a fair bit of effort in terms of putting a submission in and convincing them why we need to get it? Or maybe you don't even think about going for them in the first place because you're thinking I'm not good enough to win an award. In today's episode, we are talking about the importance of getting visible and specifically around awards and winning them, how to know whether they're worth it, how to know what you should look out for when you're putting together an award submission, and And some of the common mistakes that people make. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Theresa Heath, wearing as always. And I just want to thank you so much for spending the time with me and listening to this episode of the podcast. It really does genuinely mean the world to me. Obviously I sit and record it on my own when I do solos and things. And sometimes you can feel really disjointed from the people listening. So I just want to say a big, massive, thank you. I really appreciate you being here on today's episode. I am talking about. One of my favorite areas, or one of my key [00:02:00] areas that I talk about, we're talking about visibility and how to become visible. You, if you've listened to this podcast before, we'll know that this is a big thing that I teach. It's a big thing that I talk about because if we're not visible, if people can't see us and they don't know that we exist. exist, then they're never going to be able to buy from us and becoming the go to expert is really important in terms of growing an online business. And that's exactly what we talk to today's guest about. Although we do talk about it in a slightly different way. Today I'm interviewing Sophie Milliken. Sophie is an MBE. I mean, that's like so impressive. And the founder and CEO of Moja. I think I've said that right. It's M O J A. She worked with entrepreneurs and senior executives to amplify their personal profiles and become the authority in their industry. As I've said, this is very much in my wheelhouse, which makes this a great conversation. She's a multi award winning businesswoman [00:03:00] and a proud mom. She also enjoys supporting the North East region where she lives in the UK. and is a co founder of City Ladies Networking, a networking group for women in business running a monthly breakfast events in Newcastle, London, and Paris. Very fancy. So, Sophie came on to talk about visibility and we kind of ended up going down to like roots or two rabbit holes, which I'm super glad that we did because these are two things that we've not really talked about before. And the two areas of visibility that I don't talk a lot about because these aren't my zone of genius, but they are for Sophie is we talked about award winning, which yes, I won some awards, but I wouldn't say that I'm an expert in award winning things. And we talk about writing a book and how these two things can be huge for your visibility and help you show up as the go to expert. So when it comes to [00:04:00] awards, we talk about are they worth going for? How do you know if you are good enough to go for an award? What should you look out for? And what are some of the common mistakes that people make when applying for awards? And then from the book point of view, we talk about what it takes to actually write a book. She's written three. We talk about how long it will take and what it will do for your business and for your visibility when you have a book. So this is a really nice rounded conversation about two areas that Sophie is really, really smart in and gives some really good insight to both of those things, whether you're looking to go for awards or write a book, I still think you're going to find this a really interesting conversation in terms of getting visible and how important it is for your business. So without further ado, here is Sophie. Sophie, welcome to the podcast. Sophie: Thanks for having me on. Teresa: My pleasure. I'm excited about today's conversation because we're talking about something that always makes me cringe when I say it. [00:05:00] When someone says about my business and I say I'm a personal brand, it always makes me feel like, like my ego is all on show there. Like, yeah, I'm a personal brand. Like it just feels horrible. However, Well, we're going to get into this about why we need one and what it is. And that's the thing, but let's start with what do you describe a personal brand as? Sophie: So I have this love hate relationship with the term personal branding because it's just bandied about all the time now and people are always going on. You've got to have a personal brand and you see all these personal branding coaches pop up all over social media and it's just become a bit of a thing. So I think what people, a lot of people think is is just doing a banging LinkedIn post or an Instagram post that does really well, and you get loads of likes on it, and that's kind of what people associate with personal branding. For me, the social media part of it is actually the very last bit, because A [00:06:00] social media post doesn't really last for very long, whereas all the other stuff that I think underpins someone's personal brand will be around forever. So I often say to people, you know, Google one of my clients, for example, and all the stuff that pops up should be stuff that we've helped to put there. And it might be things like an award win. It might be that they've spoken at an event or Or they have a new book out, or they've got a podcast, or they've been on someone's show, or they've been on TV. So all those different things that will raise someone's profile, make them more visible, which they can then talk about on social media. Teresa: Yeah. And in my experience, this becomes a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy in this fact of you have to, and I think this is where people get the mistake or make the mistake. They think it just happens. They think that I wake up one day and just get an award or wake up one day and get invited on a podcast. That is not the case. What they haven't seen behind the background is all the work that's going into it. But the more you [00:07:00] do, the more you put out, the more people invite you to do things. Is that your experience? Sophie: 100%. It's like a snowball effect. And the way I got into this as a business is quite interesting because I had my first business was a graduate recruitment and employability consultancy. So we used to design assessment materials for big employers like JP Morgan, Marks and Spencers. And then we did some really cool stuff with the universities to prepare students to get graduate jobs. So it was super niche. And when that business really took off and started doing really well and scaling up massively was when I was doing all of these activities. However, there was no plan. It wasn't intentional. It was a mistake. So what happened was actually that I Uh, had a co founder who was a bit more shy and retiring than I am. And he was afraid of the limelight, I suppose. Whereas I, I could see that by being more visible, it created opportunities. I just didn't really [00:08:00] realize that there should be a strategy behind it. So one of the things that I did when he exited, exited the business was to have awards as part of my marketing strategy. And they were good quality awards, which have fantastic communities. So they weren't scammy ones, which I warn people against. They were good. Teresa: This is a whole question I'm about to ask, but let's go on. Sophie: It is. It is. And, and what happened with that is we start getting shortlisted for stuff. And then there was it, there was this one year where I literally won everything that was going. It was got to the point where it was a bit embarrassing, if I'm honest, but it all paid off. And to be fair, we, we had in that the business was flying. It was really successful. All these things were happening. But then what happened is I was saying yes to more things and it was this snowball effect. So my first book came out and I did a couple of book launches. I got offered two TEDx talks off back of this book launch. I'd never even watched a TEDx talk at this point. Didn't really know what one was, thought I did, said yes to the first one. Then figured out how I was [00:09:00] going to do it. And literally it was the most scariest thing I've ever done in my life. But then off the back of that, I got offered a column in a magazine and I got, you know, all these things that happen and you'll have experienced this. You know, when you do one of these things, five more opportunities pop up. So this was, you know, it just made my profile really high. And then what the beauty of it was, because there's a bit of a, so what question to this, like, why are we doing this? And what happened was. I was then rocking up to sales meetings with prospects and they felt like they knew me because they'd seen me at various things and they'd seen that I was sharing I'm at this thing on LinkedIn or whatever and it just made the conversations really natural and really easy because they felt like they knew me already when they didn't. So it made sales really easy and it created more fun opportunities. So then fast forward a few years and I sold that business and stayed on And then decided I wanted to leave and I couldn't operate in my old industry anymore because I had 5, 000 [00:10:00] restrictions as to what I couldn't do for a period of time. And I was chatting to a friend and said, she said to me, what are you going to do now? And I said, I've got this idea. Don't really know what it is or what to call it, but I feel like there's a process in all the stuff that I did to raise my profile. And I feel like I can do that for the founders. And that was how my current business Mojo was born. It was just this random idea and it is now growing into, into a full offer. So that's the, the long version of that story. But I think it's, it's interesting, isn't it? Teresa: And it's super helpful to understand the difference this can do for someone's business, because sometimes it does feel a little bit frivolous and, or. On some of these things, which I have to say is like most marketing that I talk about, you're not going to necessarily see the results on day one or minute one. You, this is like, I liken it cause I'm a big gardener. I grow my vegetables. My audience know this. I'm obsessed. But anyway, this is like planting a seed. You know, I have to plant the [00:11:00] seed. I have to love it. I have to water it. I have to make sure it's warm. It has enough light. I have to nurture it in those early days, even though it's doing nothing. All in the hope that at some point it will bring me tomatoes. And if I do it properly and I keep putting that time and effort in, then it will reward me having the summer. But what happens in so much marketing and in things like this is we go, yeah, I didn't say anything. Like we're waiting for the instant result. There's no instant results. So we just assume it's not done anything. Okay. I want to talk about the awards thing because it's very interesting to me. So I have won a couple of awards. I have won a most professional female speaker, which quite honestly gobsmacked me because I was like, of all the things I've been told most professional, I'm not sure was one of them, but I want a female speaker award, international female speaker award. And then just literally last week, I won role model of the year for digital women, which Sophie: congratulations. Teresa: Thank you. And it feels like a really [00:12:00] lovely award to win because like being told you're a role model is kind of amazing for my ego. It loves it. So those awards, very honestly, uh, the digital women awards, I was nominated by other people, but in order to actually put yourself in for the award, they contact you and say, you've been nominated for these awards. And it was actually about four or five awards. And then I just went for two that I thought were the most, you know, kind of like a chance of winning, not even chance of winning, but ones that mattered to me. Like some of the others, it's like, actually, they don't matter to me and what I do. And then I had to submit a whole thing as to why I think I would be a good person for that award. And the other award was just a submission. So I submitted my thing and it feels sometimes like, is this a bit. Like, and obviously with lots of awards you have to pay to go to the event and all this sort of thing and, and some awards you just have to outright pay to be part of them. How do we know whether it's worth doing Incredible and how do we know [00:13:00] when it's literally just a, a kind of tick in a box. Sophie: A money making scam or a tick in a box. Yeah. So I have a few things that I would advise people to look out for. So I think awards should be part of everybody's strategy. I think there's an award for everybody at any stage in their business, whatever industry they're in. But there are a lot of scammy ones. So if I was advising someone to put a strategy together, I would advise them to look for the whole year, to look at what's going on across the whole year. So they're not having any panics around, Ooh, there's a deadline tomorrow, I'm just going to put this thing together so that they can really think through it. And also I would say, don't apply for everything. Choose specific ones that you know are more likely to, to deliver some kind of benefits because the reality is if you are writing your own award entries, it takes ages. It's like doing a really good quality job application. You can't just do this scattergun thing where you put loads out and hope that one of them sticks. You've got to spend the time [00:14:00] if you're doing it yourself. And this is why a lot of people pay us to write their award entries because there's actually a skill to it. And sometimes it's quite hard to step out from your business and look into it. and come up with the stories and the stats and the evidence that a judge is expected to see. But if I was, if someone, if you said to me, Oh, there's these awards here and I'm not sure whether I should apply for them. I would say, well, go and have a look and see who the judges are. Are they credible people in your industry that you either know, or you can see that they have a credible bio, for example. I'd have a look at who the previous winners are. And again, same thing. Do you know who they are? Are you impressed by them? Can you see why they would have won? I'd be looking at things like, are they expecting you to pay to enter? Now, there's a bit of a caveat on this because some industries that is just the norm and it doesn't necessarily mean that they're scammy. So you might need to delve into that one a bit deeper. There's other things that I really don't like about awards where Wandswear, it's a popularity [00:15:00] contest and they expect you to go and get people to vote for you, for example. So I tend to steer clear of Teresa: Because who's got the biggest audience? That's who wins. Sophie: Yeah, it's just weird. Teresa: It's a numbers game. Yeah. Sophie: Yeah, I find that bit strange. Or Wandswear, you have to be at the awards ceremony to have a chance of winning because yes, you should want to go, but it shouldn't be a requirement to even be considered. So there's a few things within there that I think will will help you see if it's a bit of a scam. The other thing is that people should absolutely steer clear of ones where you get an email and I get these three or four times a...