Good News!
Much to my delight and surprise, I was named this year to Profit magazine’s W100 list of the top female entrepreneurs in Canada.
This is my third time in this annual ranking, which profiles the country’s most successful female business owners and is published in the November issue of Profit and online at www.canadianbusiness.com. In 2007, I clocked in at #100. Last year, I bumped to #94. This year, I took a vault up the ladder to grab the #58 spot.
While upping my ranking thus certainly puts a smile on my face, I’m happier still that the magazine decided to change the qualifying criteria for 2009, from a pure gross revenue perspective to a combination of gross revenue and three-year growth. This more comprehensive assessment makes the contest more inclusive than before, which explains why the magazine attracted more participants than ever this year.
And I was thrilled to be among them.
Really. I was.
Time and again I’m at the receiving end of admonishments by my executive coaches or members of my advisory board for not taking the time to revel in my accomplishments and actually enjoy the sensation of sunlight on my face. More inclined am I just to plow on to the next achievement or goal, leaving the last uncelebrated in my wake.
So it was that the Profit W100 ranking came and went with scant fanfare on my part.
Still, as much as people might congratulate me on this triumph, I will never file it as mine alone. The Profit prize, as with any, is not a Lynn Cooke award, but a 360 Visibility award. It’s simply not on to take personal credit for this kind of thing when it’s clearly an acknowledgement of the work of a team of individuals, all of us driven toward the common goal of being number one in Canada.
Anyway, my greatest regret around all of this is that they appear to have cancelled the Profit W100 event that physically gathers together the extraordinary women with whom I share this honour, the PROFIT W100 Idea Exchange. Economic conditions have squeezed this day of learning and networking out of the realm of possibility, alas and alack, and I will miss it very much indeed.
But this unfortunate fact diminishes not at all my feelings about the honour.
I’m thrilled to have scored this recognition from such a respected source, thrilled to be included inside such an impressive collection of businesswomen, thrilled to be named to such an esteemed list, and for the third year in a row. Thrilled.
Really. I am.