Two Deserving Small Business Owners Take Top Prizes for Their Outstanding Grit, Determination and Growth

Keap, the leader in sales and marketing automation software for entrepreneurs, today announced their 2021 IKON award winners at the company’s annual customer conference. Shawn Van Dyke of Built to Build Academy and Olivia Atwood of Liv’s Love Pool were recognized for their ability to grow their businesses through grit and dedication to entrepreneurship. The winners were announced during IKON conference’s closing ceremony, which included 383 live attendees and 917 virtual registrants.

“It’s hard to describe the energy and tangible momentum that Keap entrepreneurs bring to IKON,” said Clate Mask, CEO and co-founder of Keap. “I’m especially proud of Shawn and Olivia’s stories. They encompass the true heart of what it means to be an entrepreneur and I’m so glad they’ve chosen Keap to help them grow along their journey. Both the winners and the finalists are deserving of the recognition they’ve received. I can’t wait to see what they accomplish in the future!”

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Here’s a closer look at this year’s winners:

The Rookie of the Year Category: The Rookie of the Year is awarded to an entrepreneur that has experienced rapid and substantial growth in their first year using Keap.

• Winner: Olivia Atwood, founder of Liv’s Love Pool.
  During the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Olivia founded Liv’s Love Pool, a matchmaking service for millennials. What was first created as a way to kill some time and serve her single friends who despaired over their lost social lives, turned into a thriving business. Within mere hours of conception, hundreds of people reached out to Olivia to join the Pool. Today, the Pool has a robust clientele of thousands, and Olivia eagerly awaits invitation to the weddings of couples she matched up.

“Before I started with Keap, I was simply underwater,” said Atwood. “I was literally personally texting over 1,000 clients to set up their dates, then following up again to see how they went and tracking everything within a spreadsheet. My Keap automations have genuinely changed my life and I am setting up easy automations everyday to smooth my business processes. With Keap, I feel confident that my business will triple in the next year. ”

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Entrepreneur of the year: The category of Entrepreneur of the Year was created to celebrate an individual entrepreneur’s growth and innovation. Having used Keap’s sales and marketing automation for at least a year, winners must display stellar results in revenue generation and customer growth.

• Winner: Shawn Van Dyke from Built to Build Academy
  Shawn is a construction business coach, keynote speaker, and author of two books – Profit First for Contractors and The Paperwork Punch List. Shawn believes construction business owners should be as good at business as they are at their craft. That’s why, after twenty plus years of owning and operating multiple construction businesses, Shawn developed a system-by-system framework to help construction business owners grow in a purposeful, profitable way. He now works with construction business owners, executives, and managers all over the world and shows them how to stop losing profits and wasting time. He is the founder of the Built to Build Academy which creates confident construction business owners through business training and coaching programs to help them earn more money and streamline their construction business.

“Keap helped us grow our top line revenue by 10% from 2019 to 2020, and we’re projected to grow our revenue in 2021 by 28%,” said Van Dyke. “Before Keap, the business basically consisted of a few lead magnets, lots of landing pages, hundreds of hours spent on Zoom calls, and thousands of hours writing emails, designing content, and appearing on stages all across the country in an attempt to help construction business owners run a more profitable business. Now, I don’t have to spend half of the year on the road trying to get new leads and growing the business – Keap does the growing for me. Keap allows me to work when I want to, and most importantly, it allows me the freedom to focus on my wife and kids.”

Finalists for Rookie of the Year included Jonathan Edison, Brain Works Training and Rosemary Brown, Help for You. Finalists for Entrepreneur of the Year included Dave Candy, More 4 Life and Eric and Tami Johnson from TechnoRV.

IKON is Keap’s exclusive annual customer event. This year IKON was held both in-person and virtually on November 3-5 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Keap’s founders and product teams, as well as customers, influencers, and entrepreneurial experts came together to celebrate entrepreneurship, learn, network and strategize about the future growth of their business.

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