The Business Awards Show

A table of enthusiastic strangers, a front page photo and a new way of seeing her business. Karen Webber shares what Awards have really given her. Karen, founder of Goodness Marketing, won Gold for Best Marketing and PR Businesswoman at the 2025 Best Business Women Awards. She shares how a career in marketing agencies left her at odds with her values. Consequently, she built an ethical marketing c...

Erin Thomas Wong started out in TV production and grew up in a world full of award ceremonies. She considers how business awards compare, and how to spot the ones worth entering. Erin, founder of A Life-Friendly Business, discusses moving from television production into eighteen years of running businesses around family life. She shares how her confidence dipped when she left a respected career, a...

Yolande De Vries has won awards and knows the photography world well, yet she still has mixed feelings about its biggest competitions. Our latest episode reveals why.  Debbie Gilbert talks to Yolande, an award winning personal brand photographer, about a career that began with a camera in Namibia. She shares how she retrained after the 2008 recession closed the door on photojournalism, moved from...

Kitty Lai has won awards, been a finalist and sat on a judging panel. She tells us what each side taught her about business and her personal brand. Kitty, an award-winning branding and packaging designer and founder of Me Brand, talks about her journey from senior roles at Ted Baker and Cath Kidston to running her own branding and packaging design business. Kitty shares how redundancy led her to s...

Kayleigh Clover helped her clients win awards for years before she dared enter one herself. She tells the Business Awards Show what finally convinced her to have a go. Kayleigh, founder of Little White House Marketing, built an agency from her kitchen table during lockdown, developing it into a growing team based in Bournemouth. She specialises in human first marketing, explaining why it beats AI...

Saira Mishru read her finalist email again and again, convinced it had to be spam. It was not, and it changed how she saw her business. It's inspiration for any aspiring young entrepreneur, as the women's nutrition coach reflects on winning Silver for Best Young Entrepreneur at the Best SME Awards allied to a Shining Star award. Both have boosted her confidence, credibility and client trust. Saira...

Hayley Plumb entered her first ever award full of excitement. What followed was a night she will never forget, for all the wrong reasons. Debbie Gilbert talks to Preston nail technician Hayley, founder of Nailed It by Hayley, about her first ever experience entering business awards. Hayley shares how she built her nail technician business from scratch after losing her job while pregnant, building...

Rosie di Lecce has worked with global brands and budgets to match. However, what genuinely excites her is watching a small business win its first award. Rosie, founder of the award winning agency Saia Creative and sponsor of the Best New Business category at this year's Best Business Women Awards, tells us why. Rosie shares the mindset shift that led her to start her own agency, and the three mist...

Winning the award is easy compared to what happens next. Keely Armitt explains why so few businesses actually cash in on their win, and how to be one that does. Keely is founder of Keely Armitt Business Management, and discusses her journey from a career in sports management into becoming an accredited online business manager. In this episode, Keely explains the common operational problems that ho...

Helen Kenworthy has spent thirty years telling people of course you can. She explains why she finally started believing it about her own award entries too. Helen, founder of Of Course You Can Coach, Education Selection Box, RYTC Creative CIC and co-founder of Give Get Go Education, reflects on thirty years of building organically connected businesses rooted in confidence, creativity and inclusion....

Behind every credible award entry and engaging acceptance speech is someone who has learned how to communicate with impact. In this episode, Helen von Dadelszen shows us how. Helen is founder of Present Potential and author of 'Courageous Action', the ideal book for helping people communicate more confidently. She tells Debbie why nerves are normal, sharing practical tips on reading the brief care...

Pete Rhodes never liked networking events, so he built one that actually works. And consequently, Meet for Good won the Gold Award for Best Networking Group at this year's Best SME Awards. Debbie Gilbert speaks to Pete, founder of All for Good and Meet for Good, about nearly twenty years in sport, including roles at the Youth Sport Trust and Team GB. That experience led him to build a business con...

Natalie Roukin and Jenna Stopforth have never chased awards. Their priority was to make every client feel special, and the trophies followed. The founders of By Two Studio, an award-winning St Albans-based interior design business, share how they built a business founded on customer service, having met while training as interior designers.  They also explain how getting involved right at the archi...

Grant funding can feel like a locked door, but in this episode we discover how a little recognition can be the key that opens it. Debbie Gilbert is joined by Phoenix Humphreys, founder of Raise to Rise, who helps charities and community organisations secure funding in an ethical and sustainable way. Phoenix shares her unlikely route from a corporate facilities role into fundraising, describing the...

Award entries are part CV, part pitch, and part confession. Rachel Hayward has spent over a decade helping businesses get all three right. Rachel Hayward, founder of Ask the Chameleon, speaks to Debbie Gilbert about starting her business, helping her clients successfully win grants, tenders, and awards, and how she has become a multi-award winner herself. Winner of the Best Solopreneur Award at th...

Ingrid Sanderson didn't win Gold for Best Customer Service at the Best SME Awards by accident. She built her whole business around delighting customers. Debbie Gilbert talks to Ingrid, founder of Principal Business Travel to find out more. Ingrid explains why she set up her own agency in 1999, the licensing hurdles that protected clients from the start, and how losing airline commissions forced he...

In February this year, Ananya Cards won Best Wedding Stationery at the UK Weddings and Honeymoon Awards. It was another in a long list of awards founder Vaishali Shah has won over 26 years in business. And it meant just as much as her first. In this episode, Debbie Gilbert chats to Vaishali, founder of Creative ID and Ananya Cards, sharing how she built her two businesses.  She discusses balancing...

Cat Robson-Scarborough picked up eight awards in her first year of business. But she is not afraid to say that not all awards are worthy of the title. Cat, co-founder of Your Man With a Van, joins Debbie to share how she went from retail leadership to building one of the UK's fastest growing removal franchises, now sixty six branches strong. Our guest shares her honest take on business awards, not...

Not every award is worth the trophy, and magician Oli, otherwise known as Revilo Twist, knows exactly which ones are full of smoke and mirrors. The award winning magician fell into magic after watching a stranger's rope trick aged fifteen and never looked back. In this episode Oli chats to Debbie about swapping a career in asset finance and recruitment for full time magic just three years ago, ins...

Ten years ago, Charlotte and her husband took out a mortgage on a derelict farm with no real money and no concrete plan beyond a hunch that animals could change lives. Thus, Elysian was born. Today, that farm supports over 400 young people across three sites, many of whom had stopped attending school altogether before finding their way to her. In this episode, Charlotte shares the personal experie...

This week, Debbie talks to Natalie Burkinshaw, founder of Crush, a brand and design agency specialising in manufacturing, engineering and tech businesses. After over twenty years in the industry, beset by imposter syndrome, Natalie finally started entering awards in 2025. Within fourteen months she'd won five, including Gold at the Best Business Women Awards. They discuss how brand strategy has ev...

Learn How a Banker Created an Award-Winning Property Business with Michelle McPherson, founder and MD of Hyde and Rowe Property Agents. Michelle has spent over twenty years building a business that does far more than just sales and lettings. She has helped house over twenty thousand homeless families in quality accommodation, managed more than seventy million pounds worth of property, and built a...

Debbie Gilbert chats with The Graphic Designer Who Won a Carer Award with Marie Louise O'Neill, Canva expert and graphic designer. In this episode, Marie Louise talks about how small business owners can show up more professionally online without needing to be a design expert. Our guest stumbled across Canva in 2017 before most designers had even heard of it. Consequently, she shares how she went s...

The 200 th Business Awards Show is here, and we couldn't be prouder to bring you this special episode. Debbie Gilbert, Founder of the Best Businesswomen Awards and The Best SME Awards, talks you through how to avoid being fooled by fake awards companies. There is a proliferation of them in the market, and Debbie campaigning to keep integrity in the awards world, fights back. She warns listeners to...

Discover How an Award Winning Photographer Became a Care Home Owner with Carmel Saulbrey, the owner of Niche Care Homes and founder of The Kindness Code. Carmel won Most Inspiring Businesswoman at the Best Business Women Awards back in 2019. However, she sold her award-winning school photography company, tired of the photographer's life. What did she do next? She took on two children's residential...