Thats Audacious

Nikki Langman is not your typical leadership expert. Known as the insatiable agitator, she is a speaker, author, and emotional intelligence (EQ) specialist who challenges the status quo by compelling individuals to confront their greatest obstacles. Her journey into this field was deeply personal, born from a 30-year history with addiction and a quest to understand her own behaviours and reactions. In the late 90s, she discovered the emerging science of emotional intelligence and spent the next 25 years researching and teaching it in the corporate world.

Despite her success, Nikki initially kept her skills compartmentalised. She was a master practitioner in emotional intelligence and, separately, certified in the Lego Serious Play methodology - a science-backed approach using constructivist play to unlock innovation. It wasn't until a conversation with a speaker bureau leader, who suggested a merge of Nikki's EQ insight and the Lego Play(™) process. This was a moment Nikki describes as a combination of skills, becoming "the jam to my peanut butter," and the merging of these two worlds created the Unbricklable(™) approach..

Nikki has identified a gap in the mental health and well-being space, particularly within universities. Traditional talk therapy often struggles to engage young adults or those dealing with trauma, as they may lack the vocabulary to articulate their pain. Nikki’s goal was to launch Unbreakable(™) as a proprietary framework combining EQ competencies with the metaphorical language of Lego Play (™), to help people build their way out of survival mode and into a life of purpose. However, to penetrate the academic and corporate markets at scale, she needed to establish immediate credibility and prove that her method was far more than playing with children's toys.

Nikki’s audacious move to validate her concept began at the highest level: the Yale School of Medicine, the ‘Mecca’ of emotional intelligence. Launching her proof of concept there, she received a standing ovation, confirming that Unbreakable(™) was a viable and necessary tool for modern mental health.

To further cement this credibility and scale her business, Nikki strategically entered the Stevie Awards. She viewed this not as an exercise in ego, but as a critical business decision to speak the language that decision-makers understand. The application process itself proved to be an unexpected asset; it forced her to organise her intellectual property, media kit, and business plan into a cohesive narrative, something that had previously been scattered.

The results of becoming a multi-award winner have been transformative. Nikki reports that she now walks taller, and the wins have opened doors to new networks, including influential connections made during the awards ceremony in New York. The recognition has provided the leverage needed to approach universities and large organisations with confidence. Currently, she has interest from 87 schools in the United States alone and is moving toward a "train the trainer" model to scale her impact globally. By validating her innovative approach through awards, she has shifted the perception of her work from a novelty to a serious, award-winning mental health intervention.

Result

Nikki Langman’s innovative work was recognised with prestigious Silver Stevie Awards in the following categories:

• Maverick of the Year (Silver) – Recognising her ability to turn the status quo on its head.
• Most Resilient Female Leader (Silver) – Awarded in the category of Advertising, Business Services, Marketing, or PR.
• Startup of the Year (Silver) – Competing against major global entities like IBM.

Message from the Client

Nikki’s philosophy leads with action and resilience. She emphasises that waiting for perfection is a trap that holds leaders back.

"Stop waiting to feel ready because you never will. Courage is not a feeling. Don't wait for courage before you act. It's built from surviving your own failures."

Regarding her unique methodology, she explains how externalising trauma through Lego bricks facilitates healing:

"The bricks have the problem. The bricks are concerned about something... when you externalise it, you no longer hold the pain or the shame."

Her advice to aspiring award-winners and entrepreneurs is clear:

"Just say the thing, take the seat, build the thing anyway... Stop asking for permission from people who have never built anything worth talking about."

Contact

To learn more about Nikki Langman and the Unbreakable(™) program, or to inquire about her workshops and speaking engagements:

• Website: https://unbrickable.co/ 

Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkilangman1/

Nimarta Verma, the founder of Story Sharing, is an exceptional professional known for her unique methodology that helps clients articulate and share authentic stories to build trust and connection. With a background spanning a decade in leadership coaching and extensive experience in brand and marketing for major global brands, Nimarta brings a deep understanding of communication to her work.

The Need for Authentic Human Connection

Nimarta noticed a critical gap between the corporate focus on "personal brand", which often encourages a polished, impressive, but ultimately inauthentic presentation, and the genuine human need for connection. Her initial business successfully created and articulated stories for major brands, but she realised that this framework didn't translate authentically for individuals.

The motivation to pivot and develop her own methodology, 'Story Sharing,' emerged organically after a stranger, inspired by her personal podcast interview, asked for help sharing stories in the same way. The realisation that applying a brand framework to a human story results in a "cringe" and inauthentic experience was the catalyst for change.

This need for genuine sharing was amplified by Nimarta's own challenging personal experience. While running her business and raising a young child, she endured a period of profound grief, losing six family members in a short time. Instead of maintaining a façade of success, she chose to share her truth, which, contrary to her fears of losing clients, led to more profound trust and even new business.

Nimarta’s clients typically fall into two categories: corporate leaders who need to build trust and connection within their teams and for career progression, and entrepreneurs, particularly women, who know they need to share their story but often believe their lives are too "normal" or "boring" to have any stories worth telling. Her goal is to move them beyond the superficiality of traditional 'storytelling', which often focuses on sounding impressive or a 'happily ever after' narrative, to 'story sharing,' which views story as a service, a mirror for others to relate to, and a genuine contribution.

Nimarta’s work addresses the growing paradox of today's digital world: the saturation of AI-generated content is leading people to crave and seek out authentic, human connection, making authentic storytelling the "new coding".

Validation and Amplified Impact

The decision to enter the Stevie Awards was a major personal and professional breakthrough for Nimarta. She experienced the common internal struggle, questioning her worth and the validity of her recently pivoted business. Overcoming this "impostor syndrome" was the first victory, forcing her to stand by her own advice to her clients and demonstrate the courage of sharing her story.

Winning the awards was a significant validation that her work is needed in the world. It also helped to silence discouragement from people who believed it would take a very, very long time to establish her new methodology. The wins affirmed that her idea, though recently birthed, had merit and was significant in its own right.

Attending the Stevie Awards ceremony in New York, described as the "Oscars of the business award," provided a powerful experience, connecting her with magnificent people and remarkable international women. Winning alongside major international brands like TripAdvisor and IBM in her category cemented her confidence and provided tangible evidence that her business had a global impact.

Professionally, the win reinforced her absolute alignment with her purpose, a sense of conviction she had never felt before in her career. For clients, applying her StorySharing framework has led to dramatic increases in engagement, with one client doubling their best-ever impressions on a LinkedIn post. The engagement goes beyond mere numbers; comments show deep resonance, connection, and a feeling among readers that they are not going through this alone.

Result: Stevie Awards For Women In Business 2025

• Mentor or Coach of the Year – Business - BRONZE
• Female Thought Leader of The Year - Business Services - BRONZE

Lessons in Courage and Intuition

"I think a lot of people talk about authenticity. First of all, we've got to acknowledge that the way we've been taught to tell stories doesn't lend itself for that authenticity when it comes to our story."

"The breakthrough comes before that. The breakthrough is like me lying in bed at 2am thinking, 'Can I submit this award? Should I? Can I?' And everything in me going, 'No, who are you to be doing this?'"

"It pushed me to go, yep, I'm doing it. And then the courage it takes to message 30 past clients... and trusting that they're not going to come back and say, no, you were pretty horrible. Which didn't happen BTW."

"I have never felt more aligned with who I am and what I'm doing, and I would tell my old self, younger self to trust her intuition because that's what led me here."

More Info

To find out more about Nimarta Verma and the Story Sharing methodology, please visit:

• https://nimartaverma.com.au/storysharing-workshop/
• https://disruptor-brand.kit.com/leadwithtrust

Angie Dunn, the driving force behind Agile Performance, is a seasoned sales leader with two decades of experience in corporate and start-up environments. After a distinguished career spent building substantial sales revenue for other businesses, Angie made a pivotal decision to focus on her own entrepreneurial dreams.

Her initial business venture centred on management and sales training, a natural fit given her background. However, over four years, Angie observed that her most significant and consistent impact was not on the business structure itself, but on the performance mindset of the individuals she coached - be they salespeople, business owners, or managers. She recognised that regardless of how talented a team was, a business would always hit a ceiling if the leader lacked the ability to build and sustain a high-performance culture and engage their people. This insight led to the evolution of her company from Agile Sales and Management to the newly focused Agile Performance.

Angie's focus is specifically on developing high-performing female emerging leaders, driven by the belief that there are not enough of them and that high-achieving women are pretty hard on themselves. Her overarching goal is to equip these leaders with the essential skills to manage themselves and their teams, creating highly engaged, high-performing environments.

Seeking external recognition to validate the vital work she was doing, Angie made the bold decision to enter the Stevie Awards. While the decision initially brought a mix of self-doubt and fear - a mental experience she notes is common when stepping into a new stage of a personal journey - the outcome was profoundly validating.

Winning a Stevie Award created a crucial proof point that the work Agile Performance is doing to support female leaders is both recognised and important. This external validation helped to quiet the imposter syndrome that even high-level executives experience, a phenomenon she addresses within her program.

The judges' comments were also invaluable, highlighting the importance placed on women helping women grow. This feedback affirmed that her focus aligns with globally recognised values in leadership development.

The experience of applying for the award and the subsequent win reinforced one of her key business philosophies: "You can't sell a secret". After attending a leveraging workshop held by The Audacious Agency, Angie realised she needed to share her achievement more broadly, understanding that she must be her own best supporter to grow her profile. The award win became a powerful tool to amplify her voice, build credibility, and inspire action in others, aligning perfectly with her mission to empower leaders.

Result

• Bronze 2025 Stevie Award For Women In Business - Achievement in Developing and Promoting Women - Advertising, Business Services, Marketing & PR - for the Agile Performance Leadership Blueprint Program.

Message from the Client

Angie's insights, honed by years in high-stakes roles and now applied to coaching, offer powerful lessons for leaders:

"If you engage a great team, you keep them engaged. You'll tap into that top piece of high performance."

"Help them doesn't mean do it for them. Help them means show them and then create the space for them to."

"The act of applying for the award was something I had to push myself to do. And the validation of it coming back has... it has it's silenced them now."

"Continue believing that anything is possible and really let go of the limiting beliefs of what success has to look like... I actually haven't had to sacrifice anything to be successful. It's 100% possible, which is very, very liberating."

Angie encourages leaders to get crystal clear on what success looks like for their team, writing it down for both themselves and their people, as a lack of clarity is one of the most common problems in business. She also advises that aiming for "80% as well as you would do is actually enough" to maintain momentum, provided there is a constant feedback loop.

Contact

To find out more about Angie Dunn and Agile Performance:

• Website: https://agileperformance.ltd/
• Program: https://join.agileperformance.au/

Tammie Rimon is the founder and principal broker of 2020 Finance Brokers and an expert in property and finance, with nearly two decades of experience helping Australians build lasting wealth. She co-founded the business with her husband in 2015, bringing a passion for supporting clients to achieve their financial goals through smart lending structures and strategic property investment. The business name, 2020 Finance, reflects their commitment to providing clients with transparency and clarity, or 2020 vision, regarding their financial goals.

 

Tammie's expertise is crucial because many clients often overlook the complexities of finance, sometimes going directly to their bank only to be rejected due to strict policy, missing out on opportunities. She and her team take a holistic approach, looking beyond just the lowest rate to ensure the client's structure and product align with their short, medium, and long-term objectives. The wrong structure can significantly hinder a client’s ability to move forward with future projects, like retiring or buying another investment property.

 

Tammie’s initial situation revealed a passion to bridge the financial literacy gap, especially for two key demographics: the younger generation and women who find themselves on their own. She recognised that many individuals, particularly women facing separation or retirement without equal financial resources, feel disheartened and believe they may never enter the market. Her desire was to educate and empower these groups to start planning earlier, understand how to position themselves financially, and realise that property ownership remains achievable, even if it is an investment property rather than a primary residence.

 

Leveraging Awards to Build Profile and Impact

 

The journey of building a profile through awards has been a significant positive for Tammie Rimon and 2020 Finance. The process provided much-needed acknowledgement for the team's efforts. Crucially, preparing the award submissions forced Tammie to dig deep into tracking both leading and lagging indicators, providing real data on the business's activities and revealing a weakness she didn't automatically track.

 

The accolades and industry recognition have had a really positive impact on the business and Tammie personally. The wins have generated positive attention, with clients and contacts in her LinkedIn network commenting and even leading to networking opportunities with other winners. The awards are now aiding the business's scaling and expansion, including a move into new commercial premises. Tammie also believes the recognition will help attract a higher calibre of team members, as her last new hire had heard about the business and its accolades came up in her research.

 

In addition to the awards, Tammie has addressed the financial literacy gap by founding the 2020 Wealth Club. She started this as a passion project because she realised not everyone shares her natural interest in property ownership, and many don't know where to start. The club is a free initiative where experts share easy-to-understand information to help people become first-time investors, first-time buyers, or upgraders, focusing on things like avoiding common pitfalls.

 

Through her business growth, Tammie is also driven to bring more women into the finance industry, specifically into broker or broker support roles, as it is a field that supports a positive work-life balance with massive flexibility.

 

List of Achievements

 

2025 Asia Pacific Stevie Awards: Most Innovative Finance Executive of the Year - SILVER

2025 ROAR Awards: Silver Hustle & Heart

2025 Inside Small Business Top 50 listing

2025 International Stevie Awards: Company of The Year - Financial Services - BRONZE

2025 BX Awards Finance - Coaching finalist

2025 BIA (Broker Innovation Awards) Investor lending strategist finalist

2025 Australian Women's Small Business Champion: Financial Services finalist

 

Featured contributor to Dynamic Business, Money & Finance, Authority Magazine and Learn Magazine.

Message from the Client

Tammie's advice, gained through experience, is a key lesson on building a successful team: "I have been most successful when I have recruited someone who's new to the industry but has got the right personality fit, the right culture fit, right attitude, work ethic, and we've taught them the industry... I just have really found that's going to be the only way I recruit moving forward, is going to be new to the industry, but with the right attitude and personality fit."

 

On profile building, Tammie suggests that "The accolades and the recognition from the industry and your peers and the acknowledgement for the efforts that you know you’ve been making can really have a really positive impact on your business and for you as a business leader or owner. Awards also help attract A-grade-quality team members."

 

To find out more, follow the links below.

• 2020 Finance Brokers: https://www.2020finance.com.au/
• 2020 Wealth Club: https://2020wealth.club/
• Tammie Rimon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mortgagebrokerbrisbane/

Laura Furiosi’s journey to becoming a prominent advocate for individuals navigating divorce began with a struggle through her own divorce. When she faced separation, she was met with overwhelming confusion and a significant lack of clarity regarding the legal process, despite being a successful professional.

Laura was fortunate to have a significant resource: her mother, a seasoned family lawyer. However, even with direct legal guidance, she identified a gaping gap in knowledge between the client and their lawyer, and within the family court system itself. The prevailing assumption was that clients knew the process, leading to confusion, unnecessary legal fees, and emotional turmoil. Laura’s deficiency was not a lack of intelligence, but a lack of accessible, plain-English guidance on navigating the complex system.

This personal challenge sparked an audacious vision: to create a better way for people going through divorce. Her solution was to build a profile and platform that could deliver practical, emotional, and legal guidance, ultimately helping people through one of life's most challenging experiences. Her ultimate aspiration was to help more people by expanding awareness of her resources globally.

From Personal Experience to Global Authority

From this need, Laura and her mother organically grew their solution. They first created The Divorce Course podcast, which now boasts over a million downloads. This led to the development of the Divorce Course blueprint and the upcoming Court Companion Course, addressing the need for step-by-step videos and explanatory content to fill the knowledge gaps clients commonly face.

The approach taken by The Divorce Course is unique, combining the legal expertise of a lawyer with the real-life perspective of a client. Laura focused on two strategic areas to build profile and reach:

1. Cost-Effective Legal Navigation: A key insight was educating people on the three ways to use a lawyer and identifying tasks they could handle themselves, preventing them from burning cash on early-stage, non-legal tasks like disclosure and mediation. Laura noted that many people run out of money before they reach the pointy end where legal expertise is truly critical.
2. Addressing Emotional and Personality Factors: The platform delves into the emotional turmoil and how it affects decision-making, even identifying four distinct divorce personalities (manipulative controlling, avoidant, high conflict, and amicable) to help people approach their situation strategically and reduce emotional draining.
3. Strategic Use of Digital Channels: The podcast's growth was significantly amplified by an organic digital strategy. Laura realised that people wouldn't search for complex terms like property settlement disclosure documents. Instead, they used TikTok and Instagram - the top level of the funnel - to deliver short, relatable videos and snippets that captured attention and directed them to the more detailed podcast. This was a crucial method for reaching people who "didn’t even know what they didn’t know" and for providing help quietly, particularly to women in coercive control who may be unable to leave the house to see a lawyer.

The decision to enter the Stevie Awards for Women in Business was a direct action to level up brand awareness and increase their international profile, particularly after realising their content was being consumed globally. The results of this audacious step were immediate and far-reaching.

Results

• Double Gold Stevie Award Winner at the international Stevie Awards for Women in Business.
  • Most Innovative Business Podcast by or for Women
  • Most Innovative TikTok Channel by or for Women

The impact of the Gold Stevie Awards was immediately noticeable:

• Laura was named one of the Top 60 Influencers in Brisbane by The Courier-Mail.
• Her mother received a formal acknowledgement from the Dean of Law at QUT University.
• The awards cemented their credibility, allowing them to reach more people who are stuck in coercive control relationships and empowering individuals globally, even where the law is different.

A positive outcome of the work is the shift in perspective from the legal community. Initially, some lawyers hated the service, but now, many legal professionals and services refer their clients to the podcast to bridge the knowledge gap. The podcast has become a respected, one-stop shop for divorce-related information.

Message from the Client

Laura’s story is a compelling call to action for anyone with a valuable idea to help others, regardless of opposition. Her key takeaways highlight the power of conviction and resilience:

• “The more people who know about it, the more help there will be in the world.”
• “Once you understand why something is happening, it makes it less scary. It makes you able to deal with it better.”
• “Our family motto when we were younger and through our whole life is if you're skating on thin ice, you might as well tap dance.”
• “Don't listen to the people telling you not to do it. Listen to the people who would be begging for you to do it.”

Laura’s willingness to ignore the naysayers, especially those in the legal industry who initially opposed her work, proved to be an audacious and successful strategy that has since been validated by multiple awards and the gratitude of a global audience.

Contact

• Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6nkZUryzIeOI229h3wwvl1
• Website: https://www.thedivorcecourse.com.au/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thedivorcecoursepodcast