From The Contest Queen

At some point after the movie The Secret came out I decided I wanted my picture taken with Jack Canfield, Joe Vitale and John Assaraf.

Last week I won tickets to The Phenomenal View featuring John Assaraf.  On Tuesday we went to the Royal Ambassador Event Centre to see John speak.  After we arrived, while we were getting settled, helping ourselves to coffee and tea, a gentleman came up to me and said, “Hi. I am Frank. We have meet before. We had a close encounter.”  I did not recognize him right away.  Maybe it was because he wasn’t wearing his sumo wrestling suit!

It was Frank Pointek, my sumo wrestling competitor and the fellow contestor who encouraged me to start contest clubs in Canada.  (Read all about our first encounter here.)

He and his wife had also won tickets.  Lucky guy won the grand prize which included lunch with John!

If you have never heard John speak, I highly recommend attending.  He is worth seeing at least once.  I thought he was so good, I ordered his CD course Having It All, so I could continue the lessons we touched upon that day.

I asked my husband if he had any cash on him as I also wanted to buy John’s book The Answer.  Turns out, niether of had any on us.  Then, when we were lining up for our buffet lunch, as we passed the registration table, there was his book with a Post-It Note with my name on it.  I had won his book too!  After the break, I got my book autographed and my picture with John.

Now I just need to meet Jack & Joe!

Contesting: The Name It And Claim It Game - WINeuvers for WISHcraft by Helene Hadsell, the woman who wins every contest she enters.

WOW! If you only read one contesting book, this should be it!  On the surface, Helene’s book is about her contesting journey, but it is far more than a contesting book. It’s a book about how to use the power of your mind to have anything you wish in this life. I can’t even begin to touch the depth of the wisdom she bestows upon the reader in this review.

Helene has a fantastic imagination and gift with words. She loves playing with words to get her point across. To get anything you wish for in life, Helene sugests you use the SPEC method:
SELECT IT
PROJECT IT
EXPECT IT
COLLECT IT

She also has many fantastic quotes. This is one of Helene’s favourite. She actually wrote it out twice.

“Watch you thoughts, they become words; watch your words, they become actions; watch your actions, they become habits; watch your habits, they become character; watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
Frank Outlaw

If you wish to purchase this, or any of her books, email me directly and I will forward you all her information.

Helene was also a guest on my online radio show on Monday August 4th.  You can listen to the archived show here.  She was so popular, I promise to have her on again.

The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio by Terry Ryan is the perfect book for summertime reading and has become one of my all time favourite books. Not just because it is a wonderful true story about a woman who has inspired many a contestor, but because it also changed my life.

In 2003, after seeing several people chat about the book in an online contesting group I decided would like to give it a read. I remember walking around the house, with a duster or vacuum in one hand and the book in the other as I could not put it down. (I also highly recommend having a tissue box nearby.)

Apparently, someone in Hollywood was also inspired and in 2005, Julianne Moore stared in the movie of the same name. As soon as the movie came out on DVD I bought it. I was watching the extras and saw that Dortha Schaefer was still alive, living in Payne OH, and writing for The Paulding Country Progress. I wrote her at the paper, and she me wrote back!

I eventually met Dortha, the remaining Affidaisy members and even became an honorary Affadaisy for a day. I was also lucky enough to interview all of them for my book. (The Winning EDGE Vol 3 Issue 5 and The Affadaisies.) Sadly, both Evelyn, the book’s heroine, and the author have both passed away and I did not meet either of them.

This is not your regular book review. I am not going to give anything away as I want you to run to your local bookstore or library and get it. And, only after have you read the book do I want you to see the movie.

I hope you enjoy the book and movie as much as I do.

The Complete Guide To Prize Contests, Sweepstakes and How To Win Them by Selma Glasser was published in 1980.  What an interesting book.  It’s focus is on contests.  She teaches you how to win by writing all types of verse including; couplets, quatrains, limericks along with naming, caption and slogan contests.

Selma offers up some cute examples:

This book is what contestors need
To help their entries take the lead.

You needn’t be so very wise
To snare a handsome contest prize.
You only need to take a look
At winning lessons in this book.

What I really liked is she gave us a bit more history on the hobby.

We can look back on years of prize give-aways in the United States since 1900.  Of course, there had been some contests-more literary than commercial-in this country before the present century began, but they were too rare to be recorded here.  Even in 1900, contesting was a comparatively unknown hobby, with few followers and with awards amounting to only $15,000.

By 1910, newspaper files show that $500,000 in prizes were offered, and there were about 100,000 contest fans.  Within ten years the number of prize-seekers had grown to a million, mostly attracted by newspaper and magazine contests.

By 1930, national commercial advertisers had become convinced that prize contests offered a fertile field for promoting the sales of their products.  During that decade, their ever-increasing offers of cash and merchandise brought the number of entrants to nearly 12 million, and the total value of prizes for the ten-year span soared past the $100-million mark.

Selma also wrote one chapter on recipe contests and one chapter on sweepstakes.  The book is very detailed and I felt like a D student in English class.  While reading I was quietly happy the hobby moved to sweepstakes, because I don’t think I would win a single prize entering contests of yesteryear.

I interviewed many people for my books and I know, without their help, my books would not be as interesting. It turns out I helped another author make his book much more interesting. My story was selected for I Should Have Stayed At Home: Hotels.

My section is entitled Carolyn & Louise. No spoilers here, but I will give you a quick glimpse by reprinting the entry I used in a recent contest describing my worst vacation: 1991, travelling alone, Bora Bora, Club Med, manic-depressive post-op transsexual roommate, cyclone.

Should I have stayed at home? No. Bora Bora was the most beautiful place on earth I have ever been, regardless of the weather and, the trip has provided me with one of the best cocktail hour stories, ever.

How to Win Lotteries, Sweepstakes and Contests in the 21st Century by Steve Ledoux (aka America’s Sweepstakes King) was originally published in 2000 and the second edition was published in 2004. This is one of the few sweepstaking books I review that is still in print.

Our books do differ slightly. Steve covers the hobby as a whole writing much more extensively on lotteries and mail-in promotions, plus he also writes about how to win from game shows. I too cover the hobby as a whole, but focus on entering via the Internet and your cellphone. I even quote Steve in my book as his definition of the differences between lotteries, sweepstakes and contests is the best I have ever read.

How to Win is one of my favourite sweepstaking books because both Steve’s writing style and his philosophy on life and the hobby are similar to mine.

“If you only remember three things from this book, they should be: (1) follow the rules exactly; (2) enter as often as possible; and (3) have fun!”

If that advice sounds similar it was also written about in And The Lucky Winner Is… As I stated before, good advice never changes.

I just finished reading And The Lucky Winner Is… (subtitled The Complete Guide To Winning Sweepstakes and Contests) by Carolyn and Roger Tyndall with Tad Tuleja published in 1982.

It seems some things never change. After interviewing dozens of very successful contestors and sweepstakers, some of which had been entering since the 1930s, they came up with three principles they believed to be the core actions the big winners always took:

Principle One: Enter often

Principle Two: Follow the rules

Principle Three: Think “win”

I find it fascinating that their three principles are the same tips I give new contestors. Good advice remains consistant.

I especially find the third principle interesting because these people were promoting the law of attraction, aka The Secret, and didn’t even know it. I say, “Half the hobby is in your head and if you do not think you will win, you won’t.” Carolyn, Roger and Tad confirm my statement and that positive thinking has been prevalent in the hobby for decades. My advice is not “New Age” thinking, but a thought process all contestors must embrace to be truly successful.

The book focuses on contests versus sweepstakes, features interviews with contestors and judging agencies (including some I interviewed for the American Edition of my book) along with having many tips and tricks, still applicable today, sprinkled throughout.

The final line of their book is almost identical to mine: REMEMBER: FOLLOW THE RULES-and have fun!

So true!

For the past few years my husband has been buying me copies of every book on sweepstakes and contesting he can find. I now have an entire shelf of them dating as far back as 1932. It has been very interesting to read books from different eras, from different perspectives and see how the hobby has evolved and changed over the decades. Over the next several weeks I will review each of the sweepstaking books in my library. Almost all are out of print but used copies can be found on eBay or Amazon.

The first book I will review is The Prize Winners Handbook by Jeffrey Feinman published in 1980. What makes this book a very interesting read is that Jeffrey was the President of Ventura Associates. I was lucky enough to interview Al Wester, the current General Manager, for the American Edition of my book so it was really neat to glance backwards and see how they used to run sweepstakes vs. how they run them now.

I really like the fact this book was written from the perspective of a seasoned marketer. Someone who had created and managed sweepstakes for years. Here are his tips to the Secrets of Winning:

1) Enter often.

2) Follow the rules.

3) Know where to spend your time, money, effort and postage.

4) Judges are human.

5) Be on the lookout for sweepstakes.

6) Set aside a certain amount of time each day to enter.

7) Read the rules.

Some points may not make too much sense in this short list, but he does go into greater detail in the book. Jeffrey’s full explanation of tip #4, Judges are human, I think is the most fascinating because he describes what entrants can do to increase their chances of winning including using colourful, decorated envelopes as the judges can be swayed!