Today Was A Great Day

Today was a great day. I felt so honored to receive the ACG (Association for Corporate Growth), Dealmaker of the Year Award today at a wonderful event in Salt Lake. Former U.S. Secretary of HHS (Health and Human Services), Secretary Michael Leavitt gave the Keynote speech at the award luncheon and he did a fantastic job. I was stunned when they told me that I was the very first woman to ever receive the award. It actually makes me a little sad. This is the third or fourth big award I have received where I was told I am the first woman in Utah to ever receive it – that is crazy – there are so many amazing and talented women in business in Utah! Clearly we need to do a better job of getting these business women’s stories out there for all to hear so they can get the recognition they so deserve!

At REES Capital we have met with several women run businesses that are incredibly deserving of awards! Let me tell you about just a few:

www.jewelkade.com – This company was started by my friend Janet Kinkade. Janet started her a business making necklaces with her daughters out of her home. About four years ago she formally launched her companies distributor network of women throwing jewelry parties from their homes. Janet bootstrapped her company, which means she only spent the money she was making to grow her company. She took no outside investors. This year Janet’s company is on track to do almost $30 million in revenues! Amazing woman, single mother, and killer business tycoon! Janet is unbelievably deserving of an award!

www.steals.com – Jana Francis is like lightning in a bottle! She is the co-founder of Steals.com, an online website that twice daily showcases a major sale on a product. Each product goes on sale for 12 hours and then the sale is gone forever. They have babysteals.com, kidsteals.com, shesteals.com and several other sites. Jana is running her multi-million dollar empire and raising three kids. Her business is growing like crazy, and she too is unbelievably deserving of an award!

www.agift2africa.com – Sabina started her company in 2003. Born in Zimbabwe, Sabina wanted to help the women artisans back in her homeland so she setup a company to sell their products for them in the U.S. The artisans in Africa are able to use the money they make to send their children to school and to feed their family. What an amazing service Sabina is doing for others. And the handmade products are amazing and make the perfect special gift for someone. Sabina is a woman who is acting from the heart in all that she does with her business. In my eyes that makes her especially deserving of an award!

These are just a few of the amazing women running companies in Utah, but we need to get more of these women’s incredible stories out there for all to hear. Utah is full of incredible business women, just as the rest of the world is. Women are amazing. They multi-task their business with raising their families and they still somehow manage to keep the world revolving all at the same time. I wish I could give every one of the Utah Women in Business an Award to let them know how amazing they are!

After my award I had to boogie down to BYU (Brigham Young University) to give a keynote speech to the School of Engineering on Leadership. Can I just tell you that I love love love the students at these colleges. They are so smart and so talented and they don’t even realize it yet. They truly have no idea of just how incredible they already are and they have no idea how big their impact on this world will be someday. They are awesome! Thanks to all the students who came to the reception afterward to shoot the breeze with me. That was a lot of fun and I loved getting to know all of you.  Don’t forget to email me your goal posters! 🙂

Yes, today was a great day. An exhausting day, but a great day. I hope all of you have a great day tomorrow and an amazing weekend! The sun is shining and its warm out for the first time all year and I am LOVING THAT! How can you not smile when the sun is out?? Here comes SPRING!!! Scooby dooby…shooby wooby…lovin it!  And love all of you!

~Amy

4 Comments

  • Mark Hester says:

    I miss you like crazy. Like the old saying goes, you don’t know how great things are until you have lost something important.

    • ARAadmin says:

      Miss you too Mark! You are amazing! Come visit us soon!

      • Kim says:

        Ambition is a gift and incentive drives that gift. You my beautiful and talented sister have the ability to run toward the light every day! Never ending energy is what you radiate. This, I miss about you, everyday. You are the woman that brings the energy to the room! Love you.

  • Brittany says:

    I feel like this phrase fits your personality exactly

    “Scooby dooby…shooby wooby”

    Well I don’t know if it is technically a phrase… but it just seems so fun. Like something you would say while doing a happy dance.

    And if anyone seems like they do happy dances, it is you!

    And I’m doing one now at my desk ‘cuz it’s FRIDAY!!!

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