Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hi, welcome to Big Sexy Chat.
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I'm Crystal, I'm Murph.
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We're just two rad fatties sitting around chewing the fat Twice a month.
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We'll be chatting about current events hot topics sex, sex toys, fat politics, fat community cannabis, cbd you name it.
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We're going to talk about it.
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We are very excited to have you a part of our community.
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Welcome and enjoy.
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On this episode of Big Sexy Chat, Crystal and Murph are joined by the Full Figured Industry Awards' very own, Tawana Blassingame.
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She dropped by to chat about how the 2023 awards went and update us all about the 2024 fires.
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So time to roll out the red carpet.
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Welcome back to Big Sexy Chat.
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I'm so excited.
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I'm here today with my lovely co-host, murph, and we have extra special guest, tawana Blassingame, who is involved and actually the executive producer of the Full Figure Industry Awards, and she's also very involved with Queen Size Magazine.
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So we're going to learn all about Tawana and all her goodies that she has going on this year.
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Welcome, tawana.
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Thank you, thanks for having me.
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Hi, murph.
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Hi, we're so glad to have you back, tawana.
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Thank you.
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I'm so excited to be back.
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The only other person I know who we've had on twice is Tigress.
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We've had her on two times.
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Oh man, then I'm going to have to get on here four times.
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So before we went online and started recording, I was reminding Twana that I was the one at least I don't know how, for there are other people but I recommended Tigress last year for the community.
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Is this community Community service?
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People's Choice, community Service yeah.
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Once I saw that I was like oh, I know that's Tigress Osborne for sure.
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Was that your first time meeting Tigress?
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It was, isn't she wonderful.
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She is.
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She's amazing.
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I'm mad I didn't get to see her afterwards because she was in New York, I think, for about five days after the awards.
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But, I think I was asleep for the next five days, oh sure.
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Totally understandable.
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It looked like you guys had a great time.
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Beautiful photography, beautiful imagery, beautiful everything was so gorgeous, thank, you.
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We had a blast.
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It was amazing.
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Thank you, we had a blast.
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It was amazing, thank you.
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What would you say was your favorite part from last year?
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My favorite part is always the speeches.
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It's always that response is never going to change.
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It's always going to be the speeches, the acceptance speeches from everybody.
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It's just so touching you get to.
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You get to learn a lot about people in their, their journey, like I know about people because you know people have to submit, have to read bios.
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But you know, just getting up there and just listening, you know to the to it come out of their mouth is just.
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I've cried through a lot.
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So I will just let our listeners know that we did get nominated last year and it was a big surprise to us.
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We're so excited because we're so new at this.
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But we did not win.
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But we lost to a very worthy opponent I don't know if opponent's the right word, but the Big Gay Pod, that's what they call Big Gay Pod.
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They won.
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They're terrific.
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I'm so happy that they won first of all, you guys did not lose.
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Let's just say that yeah yes, exactly, we're excited to be nominated again this year and uh, congrats thank you, you, you guys, I think you changed up the way this is working this this year the nomination, the voting um the.
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I think the categories changed maybe a little bit.
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What can you tell us, what do you want to tell us about that, and why?
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did you change it.
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So the categories are all still the same.
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We haven't changed that, but the process itself we have changed.
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And the reason why we changed it is because what we find, that people nominate other people and they're probably nominated most likely nominated in categories that they don't belong in One because they're probably not qualified.
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And let me stop saying probably.
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This is the reason why they are not qualified to be in the categories.
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We have the guidelines written out for people and so, for an example, if you know the guideline says the criteria says that you know you have to have been working in that particular field for, let's say, three years and you've nominated somebody who's been doing it for one year.
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They don't qualify to be in that category.
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So that's one of the reasons why.
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And then you know people was just nominating people in all of the categories, like I didn't feel like there was enough time taken to the nomination process, and then you know they're doing whoever they are nominating a disservice, because then they're automatically disqualified.
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We are not going to for the people who have nominated people in all the categories, from big and tall down to podcast, and the person is a makeup artist.
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We're not going to sit there and go through to figure out which category that you belong in, because we get hundreds of nominations.
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So it's not fair.
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It's not fair to the person that's nominated and it's not fair to us to have to do all that.
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You know what I mean.
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One thing I just want to interject here.
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I did notice there's a lot more detail about each of the categories this time.
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That was very helpful.
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Yes, and moving on to the details, in previous years we were doing all of the work.
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We have a team of people who go through all the nominations and collect all of this data on people.
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It's a lot of people, so we have asked the nominees to do the work themselves.
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So there is a list of, depending on the category that you are in let's just say photographer, because I always go to model, so I'm going to use photographer this time.
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So for photographers, we've asked send us your portfolio that consists of 15 images showing your range.
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We've asked for them to submit their bio.
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In previous years we could not find the bio or all of the most important things that they want to be considered for is not really online, so we don't see it.
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So we have asked the nominees to do the work.
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You submit to us what you want us to consider.
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So that's how that process has changed.
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Gotcha.
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That makes sense, I imagine, just like the whole process is just it's a lot, right, you're having to do so much, but then it's like okay, trying to gather all this information, data, like to help supplement the nomination, or the press release, or all those little pieces that builds up to the awards.
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I'm just thinking of the small amount that we did at FatCon and just like how time consuming that was, and you know.
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and so it's like oh, but this is a whole award show like that's going to take on its own, like it's going to grow legs and just get away from me if you don't so that had to be a difficult decision, but I'm sure it's going to save you on the back end of it.
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It does, and you know people.
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There were some people who complained that you know this is a lot of work, and I get it.
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It's it is a lot and I get it.
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It is a lot.
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But imagine us having to do that for hundreds of people in across 14 different categories.
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It's a lot for us too.
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You know what you have done.
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You should have access to your portfolio, all this stuff and I think, low key.
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To be honest with you, I wanted to force people to do that as well, because I did it for myself.
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Someone asked me oh well, can you show me an example?
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And I was thankful that they did, because what I did was I went and I created this PR folder for myself that had my portfolio.
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It had my bio.
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So you know I did it and it is extremely helpful.
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I have all of my accomplishments.
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I put you know, all of my media interviews that I've done in there, so when people ask me for it, I have it readily available.
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This is going to help people in the long run.
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It's not just about the show.
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This is like a resume long run.
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So you know, I want to force people to kind of elevate as well.
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That's a great.
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Yeah, I did notice that you and your team talk a lot about your email and your phone number should be on the top and the top corner of every website that you own, Like how do we get in touch with you?
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Why are you burying that information?
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Make it easier for us to find.
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I know that must be very frustrating.
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It is.
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I don't.
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I'm not really sure why people want to hide.
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If you have a business and you want people to hire you, how do people find you?
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Like, how do you have all of these clients and you don't have your email address or your phone number anywhere for people to contact you?
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I just don't.
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I don't understand that.
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And then the private pages.
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I want to see your work.
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You don't have a website.
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Your social media page is private.
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How does that help you?
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Forget me, because you know the award show is once a year.
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How does that help you?
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And so we just try to remind people that you know this is the proper way to conduct business front facing.
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These are all the things that you should have.
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Yep, it's like always having your resume ready.
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You just never know.
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You never know.
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No, tawana, I'm so curious how many people help you get this done every year, because I saw so many people in all the recordings and all the photos and, like I'm sure, a lot of them are volunteers.
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Probably some of them are paid.
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It must be a large team.
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That's funny?
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No, it's not.
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It's not a lot of us, but from year to year we've all grown together.
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So I have probably there's eight of us collectively, and that's not including the volunteers.
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We have core six core volunteers who have come on to help us every year, but we have the blueprint already set.
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We've learned from year to year what to do and what not to do.
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Everybody has a corner of this show to produce and we do it.
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Everybody does what they're supposed to do and at the end of the day, in November, we all come together.
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Everybody has done their job and you know we can execute.
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That's kind of how FatCon was set up, don't you think, murph?
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They seem to each have their own sections, their own expertise, and then yes yeah, that way.
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It wasn't in question who's doing this.
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Right, Absolutely.
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And we have calls as well, because everybody knows what each other does, Because you know, God forbid something happens, and you know the first Saturday in November come, regardless of what year it is, and somebody is down or somebody's sick, somebody's in the hospital, whatever the case may be, the day of somebody should be able to step in and say, okay, I know what to do here.
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So you know, we communicate on a monthly basis to just really talk about what everybody's role is, Just remind people.
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That's smart.
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Yes, Redundancy in every system is so important, so okay.
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So just to understand where you are at now with this process.
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So just to understand where you are at now with this process we and others have been nominated.
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Now you all are taking all of our data and you're going to create something that's going to be the document or the thing that we're going to share with the world and ask our fans and our community to vote for us.
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Right?
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That's the next step.
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Next week, or the week after, maybe?
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So voting starts on April 8th.
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Right now, like you said, we are collecting all of the hundreds of emails from people and just putting all the data together by nominee, and that is going to help our voting committee, not the public, because the public is going to vote on who their favorite is Going forward after we get past the public voting and we get to the committee voting.
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That is when all of that data is really going to come into play, Because when the voting startings, the voting committee is already at work.
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So the top four nominees from the public voting will then go before the voting committee and the voting committee ultimately chooses the one winner.
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So there's like three or four steps in this process.
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Is one step more important than the other?
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Are they weighted?
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Do they have all the same amount of weight?
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I don't know what's the right word is, but so they're all.
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Each step is equally important.
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I mean to the nominees.
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I know the nominees will say that last step is the most important, you know, but you have to help us get to that step.
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You need to submit what we ask you to submit when we ask you to submit it.
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And then the voting process.
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We've gone back and forth with taking out the voting process, but I know that the public wants to have a say in who may go before the voting committee, so we won't take that out, at least not for now.
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And then come the vote, when the voting committee is time for them to vote on everything.
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It's like all those things play.
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It's a step, step by step, step by step.
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So all of those things are equally important.
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They all play a important role in getting to whoever the winner is.
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It looks like you sell out every year.
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Is this your fifth year or sixth year?
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This is year five.
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Year five because we had that pandemic year and you sell out every time.
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Right?
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You sell all the tickets.
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That's so cool.
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Five year five because we had that pandemic year and you sell out every time.
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Right, you sell all the tickets.
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That's so every year, thank goodness, um you and we've scaled back.
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We think about it.
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The first year we were at um 300 people, um, and then we kept.
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We kind of scaled back because of, you know, social distancing, and so we went down to 200, 200.
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And then we're now going back up to.
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Last year was 225.
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We're going up to 250 this year, so hopefully we'll get back to the 300 mark.
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Do each of the winners get to come up to the podium and give a little talk?
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Yep.
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Each and every one of them have their moment to say thank you and give that emotional speech that makes me cry.
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Some people get up there because the winners don't know.
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The only people that know that they are getting an award are the honorees.
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The nominees are completely caught off guard, so they don't know.
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And most of the time they get up there and it's like oh my God, I didn't prepare a speech because I didn't think I would win you know, that's what we want you to say, so just be ready, because you never know.
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You got to stay ready.
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Yep, you have to stay ready, yep, you have to.
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So you have a category.
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I believe that includes more mature models.
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Oh yeah, we have the Silver Fox category.
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Like seasoned.
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Yes.
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I love that.
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And the Silver Fox.
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It's not model-based, and that's one of the things I have to tell people.
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It's not model-based.
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And that's one of the things I have to tell people.
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It's not model based, it's you are over a certain age.
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We're just going to say you know, this is your age and like we're going to honor that.
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You've been doing your thing for this long and killing it, that's great.
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So do you.
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Is there a specific age, or is it just kind of more vague?
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For Silver Fox.
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Yes, it's 50 and over.
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Okay, awesome, I love it.
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The good thing about the Silver Fox category is you can fall into more than one category.
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Sure, so if you are a model who is 50 and over, you can be nominated in the Silver Fox category.
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You can also be nominated in the model category Sweet, that's awesome.
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Yeah, I'm 56.
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Okay, we need more representation.
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Absolutely, Absolutely.
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We want to make sure that everyone feels included, and I will admit there are a couple of professions that are not included, only because it's not a large variety of them.
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It's not a lot of them to create a whole category for.
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So you know, I always say this when I do interviews if you don't feel like you fall into one of the other categories, let's have a conversation and see where you may fall in, or if it's even a category that we can create.
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Last year I saw you had a sponsor Lane Bryant was one of your sponsors which seems like a pretty big deal.
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Will they be sponsoring any kind of sponsorship this year?
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You know what I'm trying.
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We're in conversation, so we'll see Fingers crossed.
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I know you're looking for sponsors, so tell people in case we catch the ear of someone really that knows about this stuff or can make a sponsorship.
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Do you have small packages for people who have lower budgets?
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Bigger packages for the leading brides of the world?
