Are you looking for ways to increase your business and personal exposure as an Indigenous business to Supply Nation members (Gov and Enterprise buyers)? Are you looking for ways to increase the value that you are getting from your Supply Nation certification or registration?
The key in answering these questions is understanding how proactive you are in your relationships and engagements with Supply Nation.
We were fortunate to be given the opportunity to present at the Supply Nation Connect events in both 2017 and 2018. This was a great opportunity for us to gain exposure for NGNY as a business and also our own personal brands. I highly recommend other Indigenous business owners consider opportunities to present at the Supply Nation Connect event to grow their brand awareness and the value of being able to put yourself and your business out there in the spotlight for the event.
For the 2017 event both John and I were invited to sit on a panel that was designed to provide insights from an Indigenous business perspective of working on a joint project with a large multinational enterprise, one that is also a Member of Supply Nation. This was a great experience to share our stories, successes, challenges and views on Indigenous business and the technology sector. We are grateful to share our learnings with our community and buyers. One of the most important things for us during this panel was to present a transparent perspective that highlighted the great work that we were able to do in the project, but most importantly for us was to talk about the challenges that we experienced. These challenges are where we got most of our learnings, in fact there were learnings from both sides of the engagement felt by us and the large enterprise.
In 2018, I was given the opportunity to sit on another panel to discuss the future of technology and how this will impact Indigenous business in the future. It was a great and broad topic to discuss and I was able to sit beside some great panellists in Brett Leavy (of Virtual Songlines) and Angie Abdilla (of Old Ways New). My focus for this conversation was the importance of data, data capture, data sovereignty and data analysis for our people, our community and our businesses.
Whilst we were invited as guest speakers at both events, I think that there is an opportunity for any Supply Nation registered or certified business to seek an opportunity to present at the event as it is really great exposure for your business. Our reason for being invited to speak at these events is because we are a known quantity to Supply Nation as a result of the direct connection and relationships that we have forged with them over the years. Find out how you too can add value back to Supply Nation and forge a relationship with them. I highly recommend that you get on the front foot and connect with your local Supply Nation contact and find your way to building relationships through the Supply Nation team.
Presenting at these events has helped my continue to build relationships and really helped build my confidence as a presenter, which has been a building block for me to present at other conferences, events and even TV. These are the building blocks to increasing your exposure both as personally an individual and as a business.