Rockhampton business owner Beck Smith launches The Accolades 2021 Business Awards

A Central Qld business owner has teamed up with two other small business champions to launch a new business awards initiative. Find out how you can get involved here.

Rockhampton business owner Beck Smith has launched The Accolades 2021 Business Awards.

Rockhampton business owner Beck Smith is on a mission.

When she looked around at her business connections, she realised many never got the recognition they deserved by entering business awards, because the process was too involved or complicated.

So in a bid to shine a light on incredible and innovative businesses, both locally and from afar, she decided to create a new Australian business awards program, with two other women in business she met during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, that recognised and celebrated those in small business.

The Accolades 2021 Business Awards recognise the nuts, bolts and moving parts of business – and rewards those who never give up.

The awards will honour the market leaders, movers and shakers and those who are working hard every day.

“When I talked to people at my Beam In Business networking events about awards, so many said many of the current business awards were involved that they didn’t have time to go through the process,” Ms Smith said.

“But they wanted to because they know how valuable the process is.

“During lockdown last year, I met Annette Densham and Hayley Birtles-Eades who are both huge champions of small business.

“We got talking this year about how we could fill the gaps in the business awards space, and The Accolades – Australian Business Awards was born.”

In particular, Ms Smith wants to shine the light on Rockhampton – the businesses and the people who have made an impact on her.

“I have met so many incredible business owners locally that I really wanted to use these awards to show Australia the innovative and creative people who live in regional towns,” she said.

“By aligning the awards with a Rockhampton based business and sourcing judges from Rockhampton, I want to show the country good things can come from regional areas.

Ms Smith said the awards were easy to enter.

“People can self nominate or be nominated in one of 10 categories and then they only have to answer three questions,” she said.

“These three questions are thought provoking and are a great opportunity for the business owner to reflect on all they have accomplished in the past 12 months,” she said.

“Now more than ever, small businesses need to find ways to stand out; there is so much content and noise in the marketplace. People are looking for market leaders to work with and awards are a great way to do this.”

The Accolades 2021 Business Awards has 10 categories from start up to outstanding business of the year. Is that you? What do you want to pat you on the back for this year.