My Joy at Winning the Theo Paphitis Small Business Sunday Award!

It was nearly two weeks ago now, but a bit like other seminal moments throughout herstory, I remember where I was when I heard the news!

I was casually browsing in one of the Facebook groups for award winners, when I spotted what I thought was my name, and I had to do a double take, as I couldn't quite believe it! At one time I actually thought I'd dreamt it (perhaps because I'd been dreaming about it for so long), so I had to keep going back to check. Then the good wishes started to filter through in the Facebook group, and my Twitter account, and I knew it was for real!

Abundance Foods, along with six other great small business had been chosen by Theo Paphitis to win Small Business Sunday! Small Business Sunday (shortened to the hashtag #SBS on Twitter) was created by Theo in October 2010. Theo is best known for appearing on BBC Two's Dragons Den, so you can imagine how thrilled I was! 

Each week, Theo rewards small businesses that tweet him @TheoPaphitis and describe their businesses in one tweet including the all-important hashtag #SBS. Only tweets made in the time slot between 5.00 PM and 7.30 PM each Sunday count. Then every Monday night at 8pm, Theo reviews and chooses his favourite lucky six who are then re-tweeted. As he has over 500,000 followers, this provides a massive boost to the chosen lucky businesses!

Below is Theo's competition call out tweet, my winning tweet, and Theo's announcement of his winners.

Theo's Competition Invite Tweet

My winning tweet.

Theo's winners announcement

Since winning I've seen an increase in traffic across my Twitter and Instagram profiles, as well as my website, and orders off the back of it! Everyone who has ever won an #SBS re-tweet from Theo becomes part of a friendly club of like-minded individuals who can share their successes and learnings. The website gives a valuable profile to the winners chosen to date, and offers help to those who have not yet won but want some tips on how to do so. There's also news about the latest winners, plus events and all kinds of activities of interest.

As a long time admirer of Dragon's Den, I've been watching Theo put up resistance to "giving away his children's inheritance" for many a year! To now get the opportunity to meet him and learn from him, is such an abundant blessing! I'm aiming for the female equivalent of Levi Roots and his success! Now wouldn't that start a "bragging war" between him and Peter Jones about who mentored the most successful entrepreneur! The images are on my vision board!!

A particular “Theo-logy” phrase that I love of Theo’s is: “I admire people who have passion and energy. If you cannot bore your friends to death about your own small business then something is seriously wrong.” I love the way he puts it, as it sums me up so well, and it's so true.

But my favourite is:

"I know I have been lucky in business and I am keen now to spread goodwill to others, of course not forgetting that very often, you make your own luck by making use of every opportunity."

So, this is the latest stop on my Abundance Foods journey! I will be writing a press release and the whole experience has inspired me to, as Theo says "make use of this opportunity".