The SCORE Awards — An Inspiring Experience

by Tinu

Yes, I’m Seri­ous — The 2009 SCORE Awards Were Great

So on Fri­day, I promised that I’d talk more about how Awe­some the SCORE Awards were and the Awe­some peo­ple I met and the Awe­some time we had. I really thought it was an impor­tant thing to share for sev­eral rea­sons. (Besides the sheer Awesomeness.)

First, this doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that would be awe­some, right? I mean some­one says “busi­nesses are going to get awards” and you think, wow, the Emmys with no fast for­ward but­ton. Yikes. I fully expected to feel great about the fact that busi­nesses were get­ting awards, but also to be mak­ing jokes about the “Snore Awards” with my sis­ter the next day. How wrong I was!

This was one of the most beau­ti­ful awards cer­e­monies I have ever been to, includ­ing ones where I was among the hon­orees, which I’ll get into in a minute.

Sec­ond, because of my health I haven’t been to a pub­lic event in over two years. I’ve done con­fer­ences and done some pri­vate cor­po­rate train­ing, but I haven’t been on the lec­ture cir­cuit in any big way, either as a spec­ta­tor or as a pre­sen­ter, since I first got really sick in Jan­u­ary 2007.

I’m always afraid I’ll get sick or have spasms or need help on the stairs and be out there by myself after an event. But then I got the idea to invite my very savvy sis­ter, Temi­tayo Osun­d­ina who is an amaz­ing busi­ness per­son, the Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor of FGS in Lau­rel, MD. (@mds­mall­busi­ness on Twit­ter if you want to say hi.) And with her there I don’t have to worry that I’m going to fall out in the floor or some­thing. I know she has my back.

Third, I think every­one who doesn’t know what SCORE is, should know about them. When we’re online, we often for­get the local tools that exist to help us with our busi­nesses. There’s a lot of free or inex­pen­sive resources out there.

Fourth, I was hon­ored to sit at one of the spon­sors tables, Net­work Solu­tions, as invited by Shashi, their Social Media Swami. They’re also work­ing with SCORE for the Grow Smart Biz con­fer­ence, which is another post altogether.

So, for now, brief overview of what SCORE is and what was so great about the event, and I’ll get into peo­ple I met and ideas that came out of it another day soon.

What is SCORE?

SCORE is a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion that is avail­able to local busi­nesses in local offices nation­wide and to US small busi­ness on the web. Through them you can get free advice for your busi­ness from suc­cess­ful busi­ness advi­sors — peo­ple who have done what you want to do and have already been where you wan tot go. They’ll men­tor you either online or in a loca­tion near you, and both, as I’ve said, are free.

Now, a lot of times, entre­pre­neurs take “do it your­self” to the nth degree. We want to be able to say we did every­thing by our­selves and on our own. What we don’t real­ize, usu­ally until after the first year we’ve been in busi­ness, is that No One does it on their own. Every­one gets part­ners, helps, leans on resources, men­tors, part­ners, even piv­otal clients who send tons of refer­rals after a job well done.

And those of us who think, oh, I am beyond help, or, I’m too advanced or too new to be ask­ing peo­ple for help — how would you like to go from a local busi­ness per­son to an inter­na­tional com­pany? How would you like to go from a suc­cess­ful employed per­son to a suc­cess­ful busi­ness owner? SCORE has been instru­men­tal in mak­ing that hap­pen for each one of the honorees.

If you haven’t been to their site before, or vis­ited their spe­cial resource for women, the very next time you’re con­fused about some­thing, just take a sec­ond and ask them. Or ask them a test ques­tion you already know the answer to — they will impress you. I’m so excited about them that I want to donate ser­vice to them, maybe for all of next sum­mer or some­thing like that.

Why the 2009 SCORE Awards Made Such an Impact

The Score Awards were a won­der­ful thing for three reasons.

1. How/where it was presented,
2. The com­pany I was in, and,
3. The sto­ries, the Sto­ries, THE STORIES! Espe­cially those of the recipients.

This was a for­mal event, held at a top-tier hotel in DC. If I’m not mis­taken it was a five star hotel. Every­one loves to dress up and look ele­gant. Not to men­tion that when you make an invi­ta­tion for­mal, it gives the impres­sion that you’re tak­ing the fact that you’re giv­ing awards, as well as the awards them­selves, seriously.

Another thing that made it work really well is that there was a din­ner before hand with a live jazz band. Then the pre­sen­ter came back on after the din­ner, and between pre­sen­ta­tions would tell us more about projects they did with their spon­sors and part­ners, like Amer­i­can Express and Net­work Solu­tions.  You couldn’t come away from the evening think­ing that com­pa­nies with more resources don’t care about com­pa­nies with less resources. It was absolutely inspir­ing, to think that there are peo­ple out there at the com­pa­nies we con­sider big guys, real play­ers, are reach­ing out, qui­etly, on a daily basis to all of us lit­tle guys.

(Yes, I con­sider myself a lit­tle guy — that’s how I know I can help you, my com­pany is prob­a­bly the same size as yours, if not smaller, and we use the same resources to expand and grow as we rec­om­mend to you.

Maybe I’ll start call­ing myself a big dog when I have 100 employ­ees and a com­pany that gen­er­ates $10 mil­lion a year.)

Also in pre­sen­ta­tion — the whole event didn’t just rely on the pre­sen­ter. They would change who was pre­sent­ing, and they would come with their own sto­ries. And some of it was told in video, on huge pro­jec­tors. Not only that, peo­ple in the audi­ence were in the videos. That’s always really pow­er­ful, to see some­one you’re sit­ting next to on the big screen, doing their thing.

Then the guests we were sit­ting with! I’ll just have to make a whole sep­a­rate post about it. I only wish that I could have spo­ken to some of them longer.

Then, the stories?

Oh my good­ness. If you ever think that you just aren’t going to make it, or that you aren’t good enough, or some­one told you your idea is stu­pid, or you know you have a great idea but don’t know how to make it into a prof­itable busi­ness, these sto­ries can inspire you to feel like you can do ANYTHING.

There was Kim Haas, who started with a mod­est small busi­ness that started out with lan­guage trans­la­tion in Mil­wau­kee, and expanded in unbe­liev­able ways.

There was Yamila Jack­son, who turned poten­tially tragic expe­ri­ence of hav­ing a pre­ma­ture baby who no one thought would sur­vive, into hope for par­ents of pre­emies all over the world.

I feel myself want­ing to tell you every sin­gle story of every per­son who received an award and the com­pa­nies who spon­sored the awards. But instead, I think I should just urge you — if you can be in Wash­ing­ton DC for the next SCORE Awards and find your­self invited, put on your fancy duds and go. And if you need help in your busi­ness, ask SCORE. If you can pro­vide help to busi­ness own­ers, vol­un­teer for SCORE.

In the next few posts, I promise I will get to the whole retweets/comments things, and more about the peo­ple I met at the awards, as well as the resources I dis­cov­ered for SCORE.

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