Most contestants call me worried about one thing, and it’s not the swimsuit category. They are afraid they don’t have a platform. Within a 20 minute conversation, however, I can always tell what their platform is.
While the platform is different for each woman, she inevitably brings it up. Her voice becomes elevated, she starts talking a little faster, she has more knowledge, or at least passion and desire to know more, about this topic than anything else we’ve covered. She will usually say key words like “Don’t get me started on … ,” or “My friends hate talking about … because I get so excited.”
At this time I point out that this topic is their platform. And then they will argue with me. “But I’m not an expert” or “I haven’t done anything with that.”
But that’s where their passion is. And THAT is what I’m looking for.
You don’t need a beauty pageant to have a platform. In fact, being the director of Mrs. Utah US has made me realize that I haven’t done much with my own platform lately and I want to. I don’t need to be in the pageant to volunteer and care about what I believe in.
So what are some things you can do with your platform?
First, you need to know what it is and come up with that tagline that really describes it. Mine is “Protecting our children, protecting our future. Preventing child sex abuse.”
I looked through my blog and decided it was time to do some rearranging. I like to talk about relationships, business, social media and parenting advice. All of that is fine, but I will be revamping my site so that others can clearly see each of those categories, as well as my platform.
I spoke with several people last week about a workshop I would like to begin teaching and we are working on putting that in place. The goal – to prevent sex abuse and date rape.
What is your platform? What do you stand up for? Look deep inside yourself and ask, what really gets me going? Then stop and define it into one or two sentences. Next, ask how can I bring awareness to my platform and what do I plan to do to help my platform – whether I win the crown or not?
Call Me Jen 