Program Benefits
Recognized as one of the world’s most prestigious business award programs, the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® program celebrates the country’s most transformative and innovative business leaders.
Participation in the program elevates your company’s brand awareness through exposure to other game-changing entrepreneurs, sponsors, influential judges and guests. Many of them may be seeking customers, alliances, M&A or other growth opportunities — the Entrepreneur Of The Year program could be your chance to open those doors.
The program helps you build trust with investors, employees and customers, and gives you the opportunity to celebrate achievements and publicly recognize the invaluable contributions of the team who made it possible.
Entrepreneur Of The Year top regional entrepreneurs and Canadian winners receive great publicity in and beyond their communities, which contributes to valuable network-building. It’s not just an award — it’s a robust ecosystem of leaders and alumni, events, access to advisors, speaking engagements, and media profiles and interviews.
Nomination tips
A strong and well-written nomination is powerful and compelling to the judges. Consider these important points when completing a nomination form.
It’s about you! This is an opportunity for you and your company to receive well-deserved recognition for the many accomplishments of the past few years. The judges want to hear about your accomplishments as the founder/leader of the business, and also the successes of the company as a whole and the team who has supported you in your journey. Bragging is encouraged. This is not the time to be humble.
Understand how you will be evaluated. The judges will consider entrepreneurial spirit, value creation, strategic direction, national and global impact, innovation and purpose-driven leadership. It’s a balanced scorecard. Keep these traits in mind and emphasize them throughout your narrative. Be as clear and thorough as possible, bringing out the energy that made you the success you are today.
Tell your story. Paint a picture of your history, entrepreneurial spirit and accomplishments. Use vivid language and create an engaging story. Nominees who have interesting, well-told stories have an advantage over those who cannot convey the impressive milestones they have achieved. If you have a PR or marketing team, they can be highly valuable in this process.
Be concise. Stay within the word count limit.
Demonstrate results. Make sure your achievements are measurable. Quantify and expand on your growth in the storytelling portion with specific numbers, percentages and statistics.
Be persuasive. This is your opportunity to convince the judges why you should be a Canadian finalist and ultimately an award recipient. So put on your best marketing hat and remember to be authentic.
Polish and edit. Improper grammar and misspelled words distract from the quality of the nomination, so make sure to proof your work. Help the judges understand you and your company better by effectively explaining what your company does in a simple manner. Spell out any acronyms and avoid “insider speak” like company jargon that’s unclear outside your business.
Meet the nomination deadline. Careful planning and preparation will help you get your nomination in on time. Our online nomination form helps to make it faster and easier.