How To Win The Top Prizes In All Sorts Of Competitions

Transcript

www.ebookofknowledge.com 1 How to win the top prizes in all sorts of competitions Adapted by Brian Morris from books by Shaw Finn, Al Benge and Bill Fitzgerald. Proudly brought to you by the world’s best ebooks website www.ebookofknowledge.com 1 page 1 www.ebookofknowledge.com 2 Please Read This First This is an ebook, not a free book. You must not pass on or distribute any part of it in any way. You bought the book to learn from the information it contains. That’s all. This book is an overview of a complex subject and the content is based on several authors’ experiences and research. This book is for education and background information only. Readers must accept that they take full responsibility for their own decisions and actions which might be prompted by what they read in this book. The author, publisher and distributors do not offer any specific advice on medical, legal or financial matters. If you need advice, consult a qualified professional in your own area. The author, publisher and distributors do not accept any responsibility for any decisions or actions taken by readers. Recommended Resources: www.ebookofknowledge.com The winners’ cheque says $100,000. • Website Hosting Service • Internet Marketing • Affiliate Program 2 page 2 www.ebookofknowledge.com 3 How to win the top prizes in all sorts of competitions Contents Please Read This First About The Big Winners Who Inspired This Book Introduction Why NOT You? Why They Don’t Win and YOU Can The Only Competitions You Can't Win What's In It For YOU? What's In It For THEM? Prepare Yourself Mentally Success Is Possible and Almost Inevitable Organize Your Campaign Your Tools of Trade Having A Filing System Is essential My Ledger My Success File Other Files and Useful Books Useful Links Information Storage Select Your Targets Entry Forms Proof of Purchase Your Entries Pack Your Entry Carefully The Coding Secret Second Chance – Best Chance The Competitions Drop Your Entry In The Box Email Contests – NO Thanks! Phone-in Competitions Mark The Spot Spot The Difference? Putting Items In Order Of Importance Calculate The Numbers Complete This Sentence Write Creative Captions Produce Better Answers Faster! 3 ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... page 2. 5. 6. 7. 8. 11. 13. 15. 16. 17. 20. 20. 21. 22. 24. 26. 27. 28. 30. 31. 33. 34. 36. 37. 38. 39. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 46. 47. 48. 49. 3 www.ebookofknowledge.com 4 How to win the top prizes in all sorts of competitions Contents continued Keep A Notebook Handy How To Be Creative And Original Winning Words Practise Playing With Words Read The Rules Check The Innuendo Potential Rules Give You Official Protection International Competitions What You Can Expect The Rules Will Cover Points About Some Common Rules Always Read The Fine Print And Conditions Check Your Tax Liability Wow, You WON! OK, So You Didn’t Win Better Luck This Time ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... ........... 51. 52. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 62. 64. 66. 67. 69. 71. How I Won The Australian Mastermind Quiz ........... How To Get The ‘Mind-Set’ of a Quiz Show Winner ........... How To Soak Up The Information You Need In A Day ........... Where Do You Get FACTS From? ........... We’re Individuals, But Good Technique Is Universal .......... My First Lecture Had A Big Purpose ........... Why Did They Learn The Stuff I Taught So Easily? ........... The Price We Pay For Speed Reading Is Too High! ........... Stories Lock Facts Into People’s Brains ........... Website www.ebookofKnowledge.com ........... 72. 73. 74. 74. 75. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. Special Bonus Report, Section 2. By Bill Fitzgerald 4 page 4 www.ebookofknowledge.com 5 About this book and the authors who inspired it This book is an arranged blend, a creative combination, based on the knowledge and personal experiences of Shaw Finn, author of Competition Commando; Al Benge, author of Winning Ways; and Bill Fitzgerald, author of How To Win Big Prizes At Pub Quizzes And Other Competitions. Shaw Finn says “I prepare carefully, I never give up. The prizes and the mental entering a variety of competitions makes worthwhile – and profitable. It’s a nice my day business.” attack strongly and I exercise I get from my time and effort very change from working at Al Benge says “Unlike gambling or betting on horses, you don’t stand to lose money by entering competitions. For such a minimum of effort the results can be excellent. Over the years I’ve won two cars, more than a dozen holidays with spending money, assorted household appliances, clothing, sports equipment and cash.” Bill Fitzgerald says “I had a slight advantage over the other competitors when I won the Mastermind Australia competition on TV in 1980. I used to be a teacher and university lecturer, so I knew how to organise information. This is precisely the skill I’m happy to pass on to anyone who reads my book. Believe me, it’s not rocket science. But it is something which will give your whole life a boost when you master the technique.” Brian Morris says “My function has been to bring together the amazing knowledge, experiences and special skills these three people have gathered and mastered. Whether you win lots of valuable prizes or not, what you learn from this book will change your life. If you’ve been pottering around wondering why you’re still in Struggle Street, soon you’ll have a new focus to your life, an exciting new hobby. It will make you a more interesting and knowledgeable person. That has to be a winning combination. The prizes you win are merely the icing on the cake of life.” 5 page 5 www.ebookofknowledge.com 6 Introduction We all dream of having more money, a nicer car, maybe an ocean cruise – all expenses paid - and an improved lifestyle without too much extra effort. Some people say “That’s being greedy” but competition winners don’t say that. They use the contests to sharpen their mental skills and have some fun. The prizes they win are a bonus! This book can be your guide to winning competitions consistently. In this book we don’t cover every type of competition. We’ve concentrated on the main types which you’ll find in stores, magazines and newspapers because they’re the ones which almost everybody can enter and have great success – yes, almost everybody! If you have particular skills, or you enthusiastically pursue a hobby, you’ll probably find magazines, specialty shops and groups related to your hobby have competitions too. Of course, most of those will probably invite you to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge in that area, whether it’s beermaking, doll-making, cooking or landscape painting. Tips in this book will also help you prepare, present and keep track of your entries in all the competitions you enter. 6 page 6 www.ebookofknowledge.com 7 Why NOT You? I don’t know you, I’ve probably never met you - but I can tell you a simple truth. You can be a competition winner even if you don’t believe it yourself right now! Consider: the egg you came from won The Great Sperm Challenge against very high odds. So you were bred from winning stock! I’m sure you have had many other victories since then. Like most of us - including me – you have had more small victories in the years since. Maybe not so many large ones. Hey, no-one wins every test in life every time. Even if it seems you’re destined to be the exception who loses every time, I’ll prove that really is not so. Next time you find yourself walking past a stack of brightly coloured entry forms offering a chance for you to win something, give yourself a chance! Enter. If you don’t enter, you know precisely what the outcome of that competition will be. Someone else will be the winner. We’ve put enough tips in this little book to get you really close to the winner’s podium. It’s all based on our combined experience, research, combined with the advice of many other winners. Fact: We are basically no different or luckier than you but: • We enter more competitions than you. • We enter those competitions more often. • We’re probably a lot more methodical in how we do it. • We’re selective about which competitions we put our effort into. • We put more effort into every competition we enter. • We keep records of every competition we enter. • We learn something new from every competition we enter. • We have fun with every competition we enter. 7 page 7 www.ebookofknowledge.com 8 Why They Don’t Win And YOU Can! The main reason why most people don’t appear in the lists of winners is really simple: 1 They don’t enter enough competitions 2 They don’t take enough care with their entries. Ask your friends about their experiences with competitions and you’ll probably hear the same unhappy responses I have: A) “I entered a competition once but I never won anything.” That’s like asking someone for a date and if that first person said “No” you declare to never ask anyone else ever again. You’ve got to keep trying, whether you’re after romance or a new car. You must keep in the chase or you will never win! That’s logical, isn’t it? B) “No-one ever wins – it’s mostly a trick!” Competition sponsors and promoters invest substantial sums of money and effort in competitions to promote their products and services. That’s their prime goal, but they also do everything they can to give their customers a great experience so that, whether or not they win this time, they will be left with a positive impression of the sponsor’s product and their way of doing business. Sponsors love winners because the publicity they get in giving out the prizes will often appear in the editorial section of the media for free as well as in their paid advertising. This helps boost the public image of the company and their products. . . . The only thing these people have in common is: they’re all smiling. State and federal regulators take a keen interest in ensuring that consumers are not misled, that all prizes offered are awarded and distributed, and that everything is conducted in a transparently fair way. Surely you’ve seen this line on tickets: 8 page 8 www.ebookofknowledge.com 9 “Drawn under Police supervision.” Someone official watches how the winners are selected. Part of the rules in most jurisdictions is that lists of winners must be made available to entrants and anyone else who wants to get them in a reasonable time. Usually, the lists will be published in the major newspapers of each state where the competition ran. The lists usually may also be obtained by sending a stamped, self-addressed envelope to an address which is provided by the promoter, or the list can be viewed on the sponsor’s website. C) “They only want to make you buy their product.” Of course. That’s a prime motivation for any company, but the promotional competitions only succeed if many of those who buy the products for the first time when they enter the competition continue to buy and use the products, even if they don’t win. Consider the extra costs for the sponsor in staging the competition: * Special packaging with the entry forms and tokens * Legal services to ensure compliance with all those regulations * Hiring extra staff or consultants and training them to handle the entries and distribution of prizes * Promotional services * Extra advertising Unless the competition was well executed this investment would be wasted. Also, the regulators limit whether entrants must buy something to enter the competition and, mostly, require that you can obtain one free entry form for most competitions if you want to. D) “The odds against winning are too great!” The odds against winning are high but, generally, nowhere as stacked against you as, say, Lotto. The people who use this excuse for not entering are probably buying a stack of $10 lottery tickets every week. You could reduce the odds of winning any competition you enter by following the tips in this book: 9 page 9 www.ebookofknowledge.com • • • • 10 Be organized Prepare your entries carefully Maintain a positive, cheerful attitude Persist. Remember, there are more and more competitions every week which you can enter to increase your chances of winning. Many will only cost you the price of a stamp and, maybe, buying something which you buy some brand of anyway. 10 page 10 www.ebookofknowledge.com 11 The Only Competitions You Can't Win Here are the only competitions you can’t win: × Crooked competitions. That includes ALL those competitions with which spammers fill your email box, especially those where they say you may already have won a major prize in a foreign lottery and they’ll follow it up for you if you just send a small authorization fee to them. Avoid them. They have S-C-A-M written all over them. × Competitions where you are unable to meet the entry criteria. × Competitions where you try to get around the rules. × Competitions where your entry breaches the rules. × Competitions you don’t enter. The odds of your carefully-prepared entry pulling in a prize in a properly run contest are much better than the chance you will win a prize of equal value in a properly run lottery. The trade-off is that, most of the time, you will have to invest more effort in your competition-conquering campaigns. With the lotteries, most of the work is done for you by the ticket sellers and employees of the lottery organisers. They have to work very hard but don’t feel sorry for them - they are paid well from the proceeds of all your losing tickets! We’re giving you all the help we can from our experience and research, so you can be confident you’re not wasting your time and any money you invest in your competition campaigns. With this ebook, you’re giving yourself a greater chance of winning more competitions or, at least, pulling in some nice consolation prizes while you’re having some fun! Here’s the first of our questions: Q1 Decide up front, early in your research about any particular competition, whether you are comfortable with the effort needed to prepare your entry or entries. 11 page 11 www.ebookofknowledge.com 12 It may be just too time-consuming. It may occur when your time is needed for other important things like getting married; the arrival of a new baby; stock-taking at work; a major pitch you must prepare at work, etc. However, at this early in-training, enter every practise. Think of it as training jog. He does it stage of your career as a contest-winnercompetition you can find, just for the the equivalent of the athlete’s ten mile to GET fit, then to STAY fit. Q2 Would you even want the prize if you won? Most competitions have a rule that prizes cannot be exchanged for other goods or cash. So, if it requires you to do things you don’t enjoy doing, like bungee-jumping, or collecting empty beer cans, think first whether your possible prize is worth the trade-off in your time and effort. Q3 Should you enter just for the fun and practise? There’s considerable benefit at this early stage in trying different types of competitions just for the practise. Some competitions may not greatly appeal to you because of the task involved. Eg: maybe you dislike trying to rhyme words. Remember the Nike slogan: “Just Do It.” Check this website for help with word rhyming: www.rhymer.com But, if the effort is not likely to be great, we suggest you give it a go. If you don’t want the prize, you could quietly donate it to a worthy charity after any promotional commitments to the sponsor are dispensed with. Of course, at that time, you could just as quietly sell it on Ebay and use the money for something you really want. www.ebay.com The rule about not exchanging the prize for cash means the competition organisers won’t give you cash instead of the prize. That normal rule has no bearing on what you decide to do after the prize is delivered and any publicity about the competition which you are committed to is out of the way. One exception is some specific types of prizes such as travel. The travel companies may require that the winner named on their records is one of the people taking the trip for both promotion, contractual and security reasons. Otherwise, the prize is your property and you can sell it privately or give it away if you wish. 12 page 12 www.ebookofknowledge.com 13 What's In It For YOU? The obvious answer is to obtain products, prizes and even piles of cash with little effort. (Note – we never say “NO effort”.) And in less time than just about any other legal method we’re aware of. If you win a major prize such as a car, it’s likely to be the top of the line model with all the extras you might want but maybe couldn’t afford if you bought the vehicle for yourself. You might also get the various on-the-road and dealer preparation charges paid for your first year. You might even find your prize comes with gift certificates for enough gas/petrol to make the first few journeys entirely cost-free! That’s a nice prize. But, there are other rewards for the time and effort you put into chasing those prizes. Most of us are not using our brains to anything like their potential, especially in our spare time. Albert Einstein said “Most people use only about 10% of our brainpower.” He knew how to use all of his brain power. Look what you can improve: • Your organisational skills. You’ll learn how to keep track of competition dates, entry forms, second-chance draws and announcements of results. • You’ll always file copies of both your winning entries (for claiming prizes) and losing entries (because they contain your original work. Sometimes you can recycle parts of your previous work in future competitions. Note: You can’t do that if you submitted the earlier entry to a competition where the rules state: “All entries become the property of the sponsor”. Check the rules because it might say: “All winning entries become the property of the sponsor”. • Your general knowledge and ability to locate information by searching for answers to questions in the competitions. • You’ll learn how to check the accuracy of your answers. • You’ll learn how to improve your mental agility and ability to express your thoughts in brief, interesting ways. 13 page 13 www.ebookofknowledge.com 14 That will all help you have a happier and more successful life all around. Reading your mail, and probably your email as well, will be more interesting. When the announcements of your successful entries start to arrive, that will help to compensate for the spam and junk mail which blight all our lives today. 14 page 14 www.ebookofknowledge.com 15 What's In It For THEM? The sponsors want the competition to help sell more of their products and to encourage people who currently use their competitors’ products to try theirs. If the product is at least as good as what the customer has been using previously, the sponsor knows, from market research, that a significant percentage of these new users will keep buying their product until lured away by the competitor’s contests or other inducements. Of than will will course, if the users believe the sponsor’s product is better their previous choice, then the percentage of new customers rise sharply. The word of mouth from those happy, new users generate many more long-term customers. With all their advertising costs increasing rapidly and their battle for space on shop shelves growing more intense and expensive, contests and prize draws give sponsors a chance to get their promotional message into the editorial sections of the media among the articles and stories which generally have a higher credibility with readers. Stories about winners, especially if they live in that newspaper or magazine’s circulation area, are usually popular with editors because it’s good news which helps to balance the dramas which fill so much of the media today. 15 page 15 www.ebookofknowledge.com 16 Prepare Yourself Mentally We think you will greatly improve your chances of success by preparing yourself mentally for the competitions. We’ve all noticed our mental attitude and focus has had a great bearing on the successes we’ve had. Many former losers say much the same thing: “The negative focus I used to have was probably a factor in my earlier lack of success with competitions.” A revised focus will influence the outcomes you experience. Most importantly, you should decide that you’re doing all this for FUN and mental stimulation. That’s particularly important when you start, because you may have to put in a fair bit of effort without seeing any quick return. Like any other activity which you take up, it’s easy to get tired and discouraged at the start especially if you have to do it as a solo effort. 16 page 16 www.ebookofknowledge.com 17 Success IS Possible And Almost Inevitable If . . . Many competition entrants find their results improve after they read self-help articles or books. Click here for recent titles: www.articlecity.com/articles/self_improvement_and_motivation/ Click here for 5 Tips to Overcome a Lack of Motivation One author posed a significant question, “Can you accept success?” The normal reply is “Just give me some success and you’ll see!” You would probably say much the same if you were asked that question. Here’s the point: Many people are conditioned to believe they are doing as well as they will ever be able to. Their parents, teachers and other family members, often their close friends and work colleagues too, pigeon-holed them as being unable to achieve more than anyone else in the group. That made everyone else feel comfortable and un-threatened. They don’t want you breaking out of the mould or straight-jacket. This situation is expressed in statements which they repeat several times every day. Often they form their view of their own reduced abilities by blocking others from progressing above the normal expectations of their peer group. Frankly, your friends might say empty words like “Yeah, go for it.” But in reality they don’t want you to win big because it will show them up as do-nothing, go-nowhere losers. Test this theory in this way. When Your friends are gathered around chatting, say “I’m planning on going to Cairo to see the pyramids for my birthday. Who wants to come? You’ll need about $5000 and we’ll have a marvellous time.” Dead silence. Betcha. When Shaw Finn told a few people he was starting his own business (a dream he’d had for a long time but always put off to concentrate on making a living in his regular job), he got another example of the obstacles friends put up. Their views expressed, or perhaps subtly implied, that:
It was too big an undertaking. 17 page 17 www.ebookofknowledge.com 18
Maybe he wasn’t up to it. After all, why leave a well-paid job for the unknown?
“You might stress out and get too ill to continue!” (Stress is normal but he got through it with proper medical help. And by focusing on the benefits rather than all the new problems a new business brings.) Etc etc! Much of this negative commentary is well-meant because your friends and family are genuinely concerned that you’ll be overwhelmed by the extra work you’ll take on. Or that you’ll really suffer if the project doesn’t become as successful as you hope. But some other people believe you’re just getting ‘slightly above yourself’ or ‘greedy’ or ‘losing touch with your old friends’. This is typical of the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome. Stick your head above the stockade and someone will shoot it off. These people are easy to deal with. Remember: what other people think about you is really not your concern. So long as you’re not breaking any laws or commitments to other people, press on. So when you hear your friends’ views about entering contests being a waste of effort, don’t waste your time trying to put a more positive view to them. Certainly not in the early stages of your contest campaigning. They’re at liberty to think what they want to think. Let your prizes do your talking for you. If you can get the cooperation, not necessarily the active support, of your immediate family, that‘s great. But, in the short term, the only person you need to have in a positive, active mood is YOU. Discussing this subject with your friends, and even your family, can wait until you’ve won so many cars you can’t fit them all in your driveway! You’ll probably find they’ll be a lot more prepared to listen to you then! Seriously, our joint experience has proved to us that consciously focusing on positive outcomes and getting rid of negativity, whenever your mind gets infected by a negative or doubting thought, has real benefits. Write in your diary to re-read this book every month. Make it on the same date as your birthday day, so you will remember it easily. 18 page 18 www.ebookofknowledge.com 19 This positivity definitely helps us to prepare better entries, so our chances of success are improved. It also helps us to accept the inevitable disappointments when some of our best entries don’t get any sort of result. Think of Tiger Woods. Even though he’s the world’s best golfer. he doesn’t win every tournament. Thinking positively seems to have improved how we cope with other physical and emotional upsets. We all get them as we go through life. You’ll realise that maintaining a positive outlook and enthusiasm is a lot easier to say than do but the effort is really worthwhile. Winning competitions is a long term strategy, not a short term fix. There are many ways different people use a positive mental outlook to strengthen themselves. The most famous people who wrote books about doing this are: Norman Vincent Peale, W.Clement Stone, Earl Nightingale, Dale Carnegie, Robert H.Schuller, Rhonda Byrne. Look for their books here: www.amazon.com www.cathedralgifts.com/biographies.html Many people post small inspirational messages, or even pictures of the sort of prizes they want to win, on their bathroom mirror, in their diary, or on their computer monitor, or the door of their refrigerator - or even in all these places. If this field of positive input is new to you, click for free fuel: http://www.wow4u.com/ Here’s a ‘jolt-me’ technique which might help you. Shaw Finn uses it. “I’ve worn a rubber band on my non-watch wrist. Any time I notice some incoming negative emotions, I flick the rubber band to jolt my thoughts back on to a more positive track. “It may seem weird, but those rubber bands, which cost almost nothing, have probably been worth more than packets of pick-me-up pills or energy drinks - and without the side-effects! Because of the positive results I’ve got, I don’t mind the small red marks on my wrist! They’re my badge of courage. 19 page 19 www.ebookofknowledge.com 20 Organize Your Campaign You won’t need to research the history of competitions or the fine details of all the relevant legislation but you will need to make an investment of TIME in setting up the area where you’ll research and prepare your entries, gather the books and other reference material and launch your attacks on the prize lists. Your investment will pay off. Warning: if you fail to plan you’re just planning to fail. Your Tools Of Trade One charm of entering competitions is that your costs are low and you are pretty much in control of your expenditure. But you do need to assemble some tools and resources so you can conduct your campaigns efficiently. Start a new habit of carrying a small notepad (3B1) and a pen. You’ll find some competitions where all you have to do is put your name on the form and put it in the box. You can do all that before you leave the store if you came prepared. Tip: Don’t expect the store to provide a pen. Carry your own. The notebook will be handy for ideas which pop into your head at odd times. Keep one by your bedside for night time ideas. Keep one in your pocket or handbag. Keep one by the TV or radio. Keep a fourth in the glovebox of your car. Keep a fifth on your desk. Put a big number on each notebook cover as ID: 20 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. page 20 www.ebookofknowledge.com 21 Having A Filing System Is Essential! You need to set up a record system for the written details of the contests you enter. Have a box, briefcase, suitcase, filing cabinet or some sort of strong, sealable container where you keep these easy-to-lose items and, most importantly, where you can also find the right ones quickly when you need to. You may decide to use different procedures and devices for your personal system. That will depend on what equipment you have, what you can afford to add and what you are competent and comfortable using. Make the whole process is as easy as possible for yourself. Use an Excel Spreadsheet if your computer has this program. Click this website: www.freewarefiles.com for free database or spreadsheet files. You may want to keep all your records on your computer. That’s fine and should save you a lot of time and effort, especially when you are fully into the swing of competing and have several campaigns afoot at the same time. But, be sure you make regular back-ups and regularly print out and file a fairly comprehensive record which you can refer to if you are not near your computer and for the times when your computer is being serviced or upgraded. Or if it should crash. If you should ever have a serious hardware crash, you should find someone like computer forensics. These people can recover data from frozen or seriously damaged hard drives. However, it is wiser to save, save, save to disk, stick, another computer etc. www.datarecovery.co.nz/ 21 page 21 www.ebookofknowledge.com 22 Your Ledger Personally, I keep a ledger-sized book with each page ruled into columns. It’s OK to say this is very old-fashioned but it’s also simple and foolproof. This is something I started doing when a friend lost the most recent month of her business records after her computer hard drive crashed suddenly, never to be recovered. Whether you keep your records in a computer file or a paper ledger, you need to have the following sections; Date Sponsor/Product Closes Entries Sent Sent 2nd Result 21 Apr 08 Cadbury Choc 30 Apr 08 20 22 Apr 08 12 0 Contest ID Pick the poet Here’s the code shorthand: Date: when I discovered the contest or got the entry form/s. Sponsor/Product: The sponsoring company or product. Closes: Last date when entries must be in by for the main contest. Entries: I check the rules for how many entries are permitted. 1P means 1 per person. 1H means 1 per household. My default situation is there’s no limit. (Yes, they do check and disqualify otherwise worthy entries which break these stated conditions.) In this example, I sent in 20 entries. Sent: The date when I sent my entries. I send all my entries for this particular competition in the same envelope. Some people like to send batches of entries on different dates. I reckon the entries all go into a big revolving drum anyway. Sent 2nd: There was a second draw so I sent another 12 entries. Sent 2nd: Date I sent my 2nd Draw entries. I don’t send them in until after the announcement of the main prize winners. If I won a major prize, I would not feel right trying to get a 2nd draw prize as well, so I even try. I don’t want to look greedy. Others may feel differently but that’s part of my mind-set for all the competitions I enter. Leave something for others. 22 page 22 www.ebookofknowledge.com 23 Result: Whether I won anything and, if so, the details of what I won. I leave 3 lines blank below each entry line, so I can write details in small printing. Contest ID: This is the shorthand title I give the contest. Sometimes it has a proper name anyway. I put this column on the outside edge so I can quickly scan down the pages. 23 page 23 www.ebookofknowledge.com 24 My Success File I’ve got another Ledger book and computer file which lists the successes I’ve had. The ledger is on paper, with pictures of the prizes. But there’s another copy on my computer too. I can do a name or date search faster using the computer, then I go to the paper page to see what else I’ve written. I flick to my winnings page when I want to refresh myself after I’m finished wading through a load of spam or hassles on a forum, or if I’m feeling dejected after a non-win. Reading it cheers me up. Date Sponsor/Product Prize 10 June 08 Heinz soup iPod Value $200 Entries put in Prize received Thank you Contest ID 100 22 Apr 08 23 Apr 08 Souperman Here’s the code shorthand: Date: When results were officially announced. Sponsor/Product: Who provided the prize. Full address details. Prize: I won an iPod, value = $200. Entries put in: I entered 100 times. Prize received: “Thank you Mr Postman!” on that date. Thank you: I sent a nice letter to the sponsor. Contest ID: Same name as I used on my other ledger. I also record their current slogan, properly spelled. Note: I always send a hand-written thank you letter. Firstly, it makes me seem more human than a printed letter would convey. A hand-written letter doesn’t mean you’ll do as well in their future competitions but I think it’s important to show politeness. Besides, hand-written doesn’t make me look like the cottageindustry I really am. I think it minimises their worry that I might be a robot who keeps winning prizes. 24 page 24 www.ebookofknowledge.com 25 Tip: I don’t decorate my entries or my letters. However, I include a picture of the happy prize winner with the new prize and I send it in with my letter. Make the (head and shoulders) photo you send crisp and clear, size 6”x4” is adequate so it can be reproduced in their retail trade magazines or other media. It might even go on the sponsor’s website. This is the system I use now, but I’ve changed it around quite a bit over the years. It could be changed again by the time you read this. My ledger has empty columns on the right side of the page for extra data or comments. I buy a 10 column ledger book from school stationery supplies. I’ll change the purpose of columns or even remove some if I get what I think is a better idea. Doing that with a computer spreadsheet is much easier, of course. Note: If something I do isn’t working for you or it starts to cause you any hassle, give it some thought and then change it, scrap it, or just put up with it. Winning prizes is my objective. Keeping records is how I keep score. I’d rather win a prize and have untidy records than the other way round. Don’t let the tail wag the dog. 25 page 25 www.ebookofknowledge.com 26 Other Files And Useful Books You will also need the box I mentioned before to securely hold your entry forms, proof of purchases and other miscellaneous but necessary bits. Get yourself a few cardboard files (maybe use different-colour folders or, at least, tabs to clip to the files) to hold copies of your entries and all your entry forms (used and for future use), prize announcement lists and copies of any published winning entries (yours and other people’s for you to refer to). You will probably want a separate diary or perhaps a wall calendar to mark the closing dates, prize announcements and second-draw dates for all the contests you have entered or intend to compete in. They’re already in your ledger or computer spreadsheet but I find a wallchart reminder well worth the extra effort. Having the information for the next couple of weeks in plain sight all the time is extra insurance that you’ll never miss the closing date with a perfect entry which you invested so much time and effort into. Another wise purchase is a wide selection of reference books, either printed or on-line reference sources. If your budget allows, you should look for reference material, encyclopaedias and online links which cover subjects you don’t deal with regularly. 26 page 26 www.ebookofknowledge.com 27 Useful Links: Medical dictionary www.online-medical-dictionary.org/ Musical dictionary: http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/ Hitchcock’s Bible dictionary: www.ccel.org/ccel/hitchcock/bible_names.toc.html Rolland’s Cooking dictionary: http://www.foodreference.com/html/cooks-essential-dict.html Dreams dictionary: www.experiencefestival.com/dream_dictionary Yiddish dictionary: www.yiddishdictionaryonline.com Ask something odd only a librarian could know: www.nla.gov.au/askalibrarian/ Sometimes you have to buy special function software. But click here for the selection of freeware first: www.freeware.com As you discover other useful dictionaries online, list them here. 27 page 27 www.ebookofknowledge.com 28 Information Storage: Store the material you want to keep on CD-ROMs, DVDs, memory sticks or print it out and store the pages in your files. Whichever way you save it, save it! You can save data in the sky, free. Click here for more info: www.data-backup-and-storage.com/free-online-data-storage.html When you’re recording where you found out useful stuff, always put at least the essential references. Put the basic information with any information you have compiled for that competition. Tip: You need to be able to verify any answers you give on your entry forms. Judges might think you had insider information from a friend. Especially if you become known as a regular winner. Having the source listed with the clipping of the competition notice, or a copy of a web page will also mean you can easily and quickly go back and get more information if you need it later. Other books worth having: World Atlas: Search sites are good, but noting beats the actual book to appreciate distances, sizes, contiguancies etc. http://2020ok.com/11450.htm You can expect questions like ‘Which countries are contiguous with Chile.’ Roget’s Thesaurus: This is great for sparking spin-off ideas. Find more interesting alternatives for the key words you use in your entries. Seek better words than good, great, awesome. Books of one-liner jokes. Google for Red Skelton, Henny Youngman, Milton Berle, Walt Whitman etc. Start at www.mustsharejokes.com There are heaps of these sites: www.jokes2go.com http://halife.com/daily/topten.html Reader’s Digest has a jokes section and you know they are always clean and wholesome. http://www.xdocs.com/doc/10815/ReadersDigest-Best-Jokes 28 page 28 www.ebookofknowledge.com 29 Jokes can help spur your imagination and also lighten your mood after a heavy brain-storming session. But don’t camp there. You can find inspiration in humorous graffiti slogans, road signs, clothing labels and witty comments sprayed on walls etc. Keep in mind that these types of reference books may contain material some people find offensive so don’t leave them around for young children to read. Bartlett’s Book of Quotations: http://www.online-literature.com/quotes/quotations.php You won’t win prizes just with the thoughts and witty sayings of famous people. You can expect the judges to know them already. But skimming through a selection of related quotations may produce some useful adaptations, spin-offs or original quips of your own. You can check whether your new quotation was used by someone else a century before you. Many successful competition entries started as famous quotations to which the winner has given a smart, original twist so it tied in to the product being promoted in the competition. Remember, “There’s nothing new under the sun, just new ways of looking at old things”? Also, remember that almost all competitions will never award a prize to any entry which some people might be offended by, even if it catches a judge's eye and everyone falls on the floor laughing. They’ll gather their composure, then throw it out. Having your main research material at your fingertips can save you a lot of time and frustration. When you start working on your competition entries and you are short of time to complete them because of other commitments called LIFE, it pays to be organised. 29 page 29 www.ebookofknowledge.com 30 Select Your Targets Start by deciding the sort of competitions you want to enter and the sort of prizes which would be worth your time and effort. For instance, don’t put hours of effort into winning 20 tins of dog food if you don’t have a dog! At the beginning of your organised competing, you should look at a wide range of competitions. Include some you may feel are beyond your current ability and some that may not have the sort of large prizes you want to win. In the beginning, pick competitions which don’t require major commitment in time or effort. Entering almost any competition in a systematic and determined way during the early stages will help you hone your skills for later, longer campaigns. Spreading your net widely at first will help you find out if there are any types of competitions which are more challenging for you than you thought they would be. You may also be pleasantly surprised to find you’re much better than you thought at some other kinds of competitions. 30 page 30 www.ebookofknowledge.com 31 Entry Forms Gather entry forms for as many different types of competitions as you can, especially when you are just starting out on your contesting hobby. Always check whether or not you can submit multiple entries for each competition. Be reasonable. Don’t take more entry forms than you can use. Always leave some for other contestants. But you should get some spares for the times when you, or your cat or children, muck up your single entry form. It is often a condition of entry that you must use an original entry form supplied by the sponsor or promoter, not a photocopy. You may want to get a reasonable number (like 50) when you first see them for those competitions where you are allowed to submit more than one entry. If you don’t get them right away, you may find no more are available when you go back to that store. They’ll probably try to get more but the smart competitor doesn’t leave things to chance. You shouldn’t have to expend a lot of energy or petrol/gas to gather a bagful of entry forms. When you begin to really look for contests, ie from today on, they’ll spring out at you when previously you never have noticed any! Your subconscious can now spot a competition entry form at 100 paces. There are usually contests promoted in your newspaper, favourite magazines and almost every type of shop will (on occasions) have forms for competitions offered by their suppliers or themselves. Supermarkets are like a competitor’s goldfield with competitions on wrappers, boxes, necktags and more entry forms hanging from hooks beside the sponsors’ products in every aisle. Look on the back of your sales dockets for more entry forms. Some stores gather a lot of the entry forms for the various competitions in one permanently-sited stand in their store. That’s great for you when you are in a hurry but: • You’ve still got to go to the place where the sponsors’ products are to get the specially marked packets or, at least, look over the details about the product and its packaging which might be significant in the competition. 31 page 31 www.ebookofknowledge.com 32 • These racks are attractive to small children, so a lot of the neatly filed entry forms can disappear, or be scattered on the floor. Hence, shops only put out a few of each form. So you may need to ask “What other competitions do you have entry forms for?” • My guess is the sponsors do not get the same sort of response when their forms are not in the aisles where they can help to draw the shoppers’ eyes to their products and draw sales away from the competitors’ products. But that’s not our worry. There are some competitions where you just have to write your name and address details on the entry form and put it in a box right there at the store. Those competitions are 100% luck, but still worth entering of course. That’s why you always carry a pen. You’ll also find some sort of Lucky Draw at exhibitions such as Home Shows, Boat shows, Car Shows, Computer Shows etc. Many exhibitors use those entries to compile a mailing list for an after-the-exhibition marketing campaign. You can expect to be mailed. You may feel differently but, if the follow-up is spelled out on the exhibition stand and is offering me stuff I might be interested in, I don’t mind. They pay the postage. 32 page 32 www.ebookofknowledge.com 33 Proof Of Purchase You may need to send off the wrappers of the sponsors’ products with the entry form/s and keep your sales dockets as proof of purchase if you enter the related contests. That means bits of paper and plastic wrappers - often small, odd-shaped ones - you will have to store, maybe for months at a time. You should mark with a waterproof black marker the contents and any other important details (such as ‘Best before date’) on cans if you take the labels off to enter contests. Otherwise, you could be surprised to find out that baked beans and peaches without labels aren’t the same when you empty them into a pot! 33 page 33 www.ebookofknowledge.com 34 Your Entries Your entry, or entries where the rules permit you to enter more than one, must comply with all the rules for the competition. That’s just common sense but it’s also the deciding point where a significant proportion of the entries in every competition are disqualified. When you have written out your first ideas, put them aside for say, 24 hours and then re-examine them. You’ll probably think of better ones or, at least, ways to significantly improve your first efforts. Your first efforts are ‘Draft #1’ so don’t expect them to be your best work. Don’t worry if your ideas seem very average when you start. You can expect your output to improve as you exercise your creativity more. It would be terrible to think you will never produce anything better than your first few entries. Giving each entry you produce some time to mature or rot is what many writers learn to do when they’re developing their stories or plays. Later in this book, I’ll share a great technique which will help you to produce plenty of valuable ideas, almost at will. Of course, that will require a time investment on your part – about 20 minutes should do it! Discussing your ideas with anyone else is probably not going to help you. If the other submits an entry which is influenced by your discussion, both your entries may be treated with suspicion as being too similar. Friends can fall out over less than this. Apart from that, you can expect some people to actively discourage you. Their comments may be well-meant but could inhibit your enthusiasm and creative drive when you’re just beginning. Tip: Avoid negative people. They won’t help you win anything. If your spouse is negative about your competitions hobby, keep it fairly quiet. Don’t shout about what you’re doing. The good news is, they will soon change their tune when you win your first car or cruise or house. You’ve got time on your side. Shaw Finn says “When I tried to write a different book a couple of years ago, I mentioned it to a couple of friends. I talked 34 page 34 www.ebookofknowledge.com 35 about it very enthusiastically - in fact, at every opportunity. The combination of the cool reception which my family and close friends gave to my ideas, their obvious disbelief that I could write a book at all and the energy I expended in just talking about my book brought me to the point where I abandoned the project. “I’d put all my energy into talking about it and no energy was left for the actual writing part. Don’t let that happen to any of your competition campaigns!” 35 page 35 www.ebookofknowledge.com 36 Pack Your Entry Carefully When you submit your entries, you may have to include a token such as a bottle cap, flattened packet or wrapper. You have to pack them well enough so they will pass safely through the postal system and yet not with such protection around them that they take two people ten minutes to unwrap them. If your posted item is less than 1/2 inch / 13mm thick, it goes at regular letter rate. This is cheaper than parcel post. Use common sense with your packaging and consult your Post Office which probably has pamphlets, or even web pages, describing the recommended ways you should wrap such items safely to comply with the postal regulations in your country. Make sure you check your entries have sufficient postage, especially those which have tokens, packets etc enclosed. No promoter is going to accept any entry which requires them to pay missing postage and excess weight / thickness fines! Don’t put any decoration on your entries. I’ve heard about people who are skilled artists and they decorate their entries. I am no artist so it’s a no-brainer for me. But, I also believe regular entries which are neat and correct have as much chance to win as the decorated variety which take a lot more of your time to do. If you have time to put into decoration, spend it sending in twice as many entries instead! If they say ‘entries should not be fastened together’ then send all sheets without fastening them. Use a paper clip or the ribbon (hence the phrase ‘all tied up in red tape’) lawyers use. If I’m sending more than one page I enclose these in a clear plastic sleeve. If it says “Don’t use pings”, don’t use pins! If you use staples, make sure the points are pressed down so they won’t interfere with mechanical letter openers or injure the clerk who opens all the entries. 36 page 36 www.ebookofknowledge.com 37 The Coding Secret You should adopt a tactic used in Mail Order selling for your entries in those competitions where you are allowed to submit more than one entry. You’ll want to know the actual wording of the entry which won so you can look at it more closely when your excitement dies down and try to see if there are particular tactics you used in that winning entry which you can use for future competitions. This is called ‘learning from your own experience’. The coding secret is for you to use a different variation of your name and address for each different entry you submit to multientry competitions and record the changed address with the details of that particular entry in your files. If your address is: Mr. Shaw Finn, 19 Freedom Road, Nanley, Utopia 1234 You might use some variations like these: Mr. Shaw Finn, 19 Freedom Road, Nanley, Utopia 1234 Mr. S Finn, 19 Freedom Road, Nanley, Utopia 1234 Mr. S. T. Finn, 19 Freedom Road, Nanley, Utopia 1234 Shaw Finn, 19 Freedom Road, Nanley, Utopia 1234 Shaw Thomas Finn, 19 Freedom Road, Nanley, Utopia 1234 Mr. Shaw T. Finn, 19 Freedom Road, Nanley, Utopia 1234 … etc, etc. Key Mr. Shaw Finn Mr. S Finn Mr. S. T. Finn Shaw Finn Shaw Thomas Finn Mr. Shaw T.Finn Text Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Prize Faces Phases Phrases Riches Britches Potatoes 2nd Now, when you get confirmation that you have won second prize in that competition, the way your prize announcement letter is addressed will help you check which of your carefully crafted contributions paid off this time. Learn from your own experience. 37 page 37 www.ebookofknowledge.com 38 Second Chance – Best Chance A lot of competitions which require the purchase of a bottle of soft drink or packet of soup etc, offer a second chance draw with smaller prizes. Or they’ll have a second draw to find winners for the prizes which are not claimed after the main prize allocation has been announced. Yes, it happens – sometimes even some of the most valuable prizes wind up in the second chance draw! The promoters, under the law, are required to distribute all the prizes. So, don’t mislay the token for the second chance draw. Make sure you get your entry in for the consolation draw within the specified time. The extra time and cost is negligible and a second chance win will certainly soothe your hurt feelings about missing out on the big prizes in the main draw. 38 page 38 www.ebookofknowledge.com 39 The Competitions The easiest competitions to enter are those which need the least effort and skill. For example: Drop Your Entry In The Box Many stores have competitions where you pick up an entry form, put your name and address details on it and drop it in a prominently displayed box right in the store. No skill is required beyond correctly printing your name and contact details. The prizes will probably not be major ones and the number of entries is likely to be high because it’s so easy. But, why not use it as a test of your new, positive mind-set and enter? Every time. 39 page 39 www.ebookofknowledge.com 40 Email Contests – No Thanks. Avoid Them! Forget those competitions which arrive in your email with all the other spam. You probably won’t win a prize. There may not even be a prize as the whole thing may be set up just to get your email address and confirm that your email is active so they can sell your address to other spammers. Or, they use the lure of the contest to get your personal information. (Two words: identity theft!) Some of these offerings even plant spy-ware in your computer! 40 page 40 www.ebookofknowledge.com 41 Phone-in Competitions There are also competitions, usually promoted through media advertisements and television shows, where ‘all you have to do’ is phone a special number and leave your name and home telephone number. The calls to enter these competitions can cost more, sometimes much more, than your regular local calls. Beware numbers which begin 0900- they cost you money to make the call. One scam technique is to invite you to answer just five questions to win a prize. The first question/s are really simple, like “Who did Adam live with in the Garden of Eden?” Soon they will hold you on the call while they check to see whether your answer is correct. All the while your call is racking up charges at $9.99 a minute! Rip-off! It’s important to make sure your children don’t enter these competitions either. Sometimes the children have the generous motive of trying to win a prize which they can give you or your spouse for your birthday or Christmas. If they really get hooked, you could end up paying more than the prize is worth. Or you fail at the last question and win nothing at all! The newspaper or television programmes which promote these competitions often get a share of the telephone call costs. So do the promoters. You can now see why there are so many of these scam competitions. 41 page 41 www.ebookofknowledge.com 42 ‘Mark The Spot’ Competitions While competitions like ‘Spot The Ball’ where you have to mark the actual centre of a pictured object - such as a football - is a skill-based competition, there’s really more luck than skill in winning these. Differences in the thickness of pen the entrants used can make the competition no more skilful than the ‘Pin the tail on the donkey’ game at your children’s Sunday School picnic. 42 page 42 www.ebookofknowledge.com 43 Find The Difference? With these, you have to identify and mark a specific number of differences between two almost identical drawings. These used to always be line drawings, mostly fun cartoons. Now, some contests offer two very similar photos with the differences introduced by digitally altering one of the pictures. They use Photoshop software. High quality printing makes for a better competition. Earlier contests were spoiled when some entry forms had additional differences which were not intended differences between the two versions of the same drawing. Extra marks were caused during the rudimentary printing process! Here’s a tip to help with these ‘spot The Difference’ contests. Make a square of cardboard with a square hole cut in it. The hole is about a ninth of the size of the whole cardboard. This simple device helps you focus more carefully on a particular small area of the picture you’re examining. You’ll be concentrating on one small portion of the whole picture. Use an old cereal box to cut the cardboard square from. Looking at the pictures through a magnifying glass doesn’t help because the dots which comprise the picture distract you from seeing the picture’s details. 43 page 43 www.ebookofknowledge.com 44 Putting Items In Order Of Importance In these competitions, a little skill and care will greatly increase your success rate, though you can’t deny there is also some chance or luck involved. Maybe you’re not the ‘ideal user’ whom the company’s carefully researched list of desirable characteristics is looking for. Never mind, you might be able to construct a profile of the sort of consumer the company is focused on. You can do this by using information from their promotional material, the wording of their competition form, the media in which it appears and the packaging of their products. Sometimes you have to carefully review each of the product’s listed benefits. You should submit more than one entry if that’s allowed in their rules. That may require more time and possibly the cost of extra products to obtain the required forms or proof of purchase tokens. You should reflect points which are highlighted in the sponsor’s advertising. That often means they have found them to be the most compelling features in their research. There may be some points which have great appeal but just to a relatively small number of potential customers. Those points usually rank lower, depending on the specific wording of the information supplied on the entry form. At the other end, there may be points which have wide appeal – eg: saving money, saving time, reducing stress or making the customer more popular. They would be points which most customers will rate highly, whatever their situation. Another tip is to look at the list from a different point of view. This may give you an advantage over many competitors who will stick with the task exactly as stated on the form. Instead of just asking yourself, or the ideal customer whose profile you’ve worked up, ‘What are the most appealing features?’ look for those which have less appeal. Then you eliminate them or put them at the bottom of your ranking list. This fresh way of thinking can shake your mind out of its rut and cause you to explore the contest opportunity more extensively. 44 page 44 www.ebookofknowledge.com 45 Don’t be surprised if you see a couple of the listed features almost jump out at you as having more or less appeal than most of the others listed. You have to be as sure as you can be that your list gives the features in the order which you believe the judges are most likely to want. This reverse-focus exercise can bump you a little closer to producing another winning entry. 45 page 45 www.ebookofknowledge.com 46 Calculate The Numbers You may think it’s quite easy to rank, say, ‘Six features in order of their appeal’. After all, that’s only (1x2x3x4x5x6=) 720 possible combinations. Of course, if you have to rate ten features, there are (1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8x9x10=) 3,628,800 possible combinations! You could rule out the absolute-no-hoper being in position one, which shortens the odds a bit. But just a bit. Whatever the number, there will possibly be more than one correct entry! The promoters will have a tie eliminator for those people with the same right answers. It will usually be a test involving some skill, such as writing a short slogan. Be assured that, if a draw is used to select the eventual winner, it will be done properly and supervised to ensure that it complies with all legal regulations and expectations. The test may, for instance, ask you to write a short promotional slogan about the most important feature of the product. Or write a caption for a supplied photograph. The eliminator will probably be harder than you found the original problem to be when you had to rank the features in order of merit. You will normally be asked to enclose your tie-breaker slogan together with your original ‘ranking the features’ entry. 46 page 46 www.ebookofknowledge.com 47 Complete This Sentence Writing a short, original and relevant paragraph about a product may seem hard to do. However, this type of competition where contestants have to finish a given, incomplete sentence presents fresh difficulties: • Most of the sentence is already written and that part cannot be altered. • Your contribution has to be just a few words and they have to be relevant, positive and, if possible, include a little humour. Don’t push too hard to find a humorous angle because something you may put together with a lot of sweat might not strike the judge as very funny or even turn them off your entry altogether. • Look for some clues from the promotional material and the product packaging. • Concentrate on submitting something which stands out from the great majority of entries and is tightly focused on the product’s main appeal to customers. • If you’re praising a packet of soup, decide which is the most obvious feature which the majority of entrants can be expected to focus on and then find something else, equally enticing to customers, but which is not so obvious. • For instance, there will be plenty of entries mentioning the taste and warmth of a homely cup of hot soup in cold weather. • • • • • • 47 Perhaps the sponsor’s soup has: more of the main ingredients than their competitors more eye-appeal on the plate or in the cup or glass a greater variety of ingredients ingredients which are locally grown or made the soup is more economical. page 47 www.ebookofknowledge.com 48 Write Creative Captions Although there are about the same number of words in the sentences usually provided for the ‘Complete The Sentence’ contest and a ‘Write The Caption’ contest, the caption gives you more wriggle room. That’s because you don’t have to use just those words specified by the promoter and you can arrange them however you want to get the best possible effect. But, of course, it still isn’t easy to come up with three or four potential winners about say, a packet of potato chips/crisps. They’re probably very nice chips but finding something new and enticing (and short) to say about a product which has been around in various forms for years requires thinking time. Remember that the rewards can certainly make all your effort worthwhile. Professional copywriters struggle to find something new to say about an old product. Whereas you, the novice copywriter, can get lucky and hit a hole in one. It happens. Mainly because your mind is totally fresh to the task. 48 page 48 www.ebookofknowledge.com 49 Produce Better Answers Faster! You can get the very best results out of your mind with this simple technique. No, you don’t have to send in $25 dollars and you don’t get any steak knives with it. This tip is included here because it can really help you in those competitions where skill and creativity are important. Shaw Finn says “I’ve read about authors, quite good ones, who can write their books while they’re listening to the radio or watching sports on TV. Teenagers still try this technique at homework time. Trust me. It isn’t the best technique. Total focus works best. “Most of us lack the necessary powers of concentration. “To improve the results you’re currently getting, all you have to invest is 20 minutes every time you write your entries for a new competition. Here’s the key: lock yourself in a quiet room for that period. Twenty minutes. Without any distractions. “If you can’t lock Switch off or unplug cellphone, TV, radio 20 minutes. Just you yourself in, then lock everyone else out. anything which might distract you: telephone, etc. Then, focus on the entry for the whole and the reference material you have on hand. “Don’t surf to Google or any other site because they will distract your focus. “It sounds easy, but you’ll probably find it hard to complete your first 20 minute session without your mind drifting on to something else. “Pretend your life depends on it. “It’s almost that important. “The benefits will surprise you. You’ll get more and better captions, more creative limericks or whatever and then you’ll get a valuable bonus - even more powerful, potentially-winning ideas that pop up over the next few days as well. “That’s because your subconscious mind absorbs what you focus your conscious mind around (the important word is focus). Go and have a shower, drink glass of water or play with your kids after each session as your reward for focusing. 49 page 49 www.ebookofknowledge.com 50 “Meanwhile, the power in the 90% of our brain that most of us rarely access will be quietly turning over the thoughts and information you focused on even while you sleep. “Now 90% of your mental power will be working on what you had barely 10% working on before.” 50 page 50 www.ebookofknowledge.com 51 Keep a Notebook Handy Always have easy access to a notepad (3B1 has 32 pages). And a pen. Put notebook ONE and a pen on your bedside table. Put notebook + pen TWO in the glovebox of your car. Put notebook + pen THREE where you sit to watch TV / radio. Put notebook + pen FOUR by the telephone. Put notebook + pen FIVE in your handbag or pocket. Put notebook + pen SIX on your desk or workbench. The point is this: you never know where you’ll be when an idea comes to you. WRITE IT DOWN there and then. A short pencil is better than a long memory. Shaw Finn says “I don’t do it myself, but some competition commandos use a pocket tape recorder for recording their ideas. Check the batteries regularly and have plenty of fresh tapes. But that’s old technology. Modern James Bond style digital voice recorders -which look like a pen- can carry 20 hours of recording time. They sell for about US$30 at www.amazon.com Look under ‘Electronics – Pen Recorder’.” Notebooks and pens are the cheapest and simplest way we know to capture your good ideas as they happen. Yes, being well equipped is worth the trouble. This simple but powerful mental discipline of writing down your ideas as they pop into your head will improve the quality and quantity of the ideas you get. You’ve probably already realised that this technique will also give you improved results if you apply it to other problems in LIFE you have to contend with. 51 page 51 www.ebookofknowledge.com 52 How To Be Creative And Original Take notice when they say, “In 20 words or less …” This is a stated rule, so observe it. They don’t mean 21 words! Don’t think an extra word won’t matter. It will and it does. This type of competition is very popular and is often used as a tie-breaker between competitors who have all entered correct entries in, say, a competition where they had to rank in order several benefits of the sponsor’s product. The first thing to remember is that the cleverest entry in the ’20 words or less’ section will probably win if it complies with the rules. Tip 1: Brevity counts. If they say 20 words, try for 18 or 17. Count hyphenated words (eg counter-productive) as two words. Tip 2: Give your writing efforts a 24 hour rest period, then go back and re-evaluate them. Especially when you feel you’re producing your very best creative stuff. Be sure to get some real rest. You will do your chances no good and possibly cause some harm to yourself if you keep driving yourself to find the perfect word or phrase, all in one session. Tip: Drink plenty of ordinary water. It lubricates the brain. Study the most important qualities of entries in these sorts of contests: • Brevity The rules said, “In no more than 20 words”. Don’t exceed the stated limit. But this is one time when you can give them less and get more in return. Writing 15 exquisite words, even 12 which are exactly right, will impress the judges mightily. Tip: If you use Microsoft WORD for writing your slogans, use the word counter. Highlight the set of words, go to TOOLS and drop down to WORD COUNT. It’s especially useful when you have to keep under 100 words or 500 words etc. Remember, Abraham Lincoln said he could write a long speech in a day but a short speech would take him a week. 52 page 52 www.ebookofknowledge.com 53 • Simplicity Don’t obfusticate with a cacophony of verbiage. That’s the show-off’s way of saying (with big words) “Be clear and easy to understand.” Be like the boxer whose short punch is his most powerful punch. • Novelty Many judges have already judged similar competitions. They’re familiar with all the quotation books, joke books and they remember probably more of the entries they’ve already seen than they really want to. They can easily tell when someone is trying to ‘recycle’ other people’s material. If you can find it in a book of quotations, it’s already a cliché. If you’ve crafted something you reckon is original, check here www.westegg.com/cliche/ to see whether it’s already a cliché or not. If you can provide a spark of true originality while remaining focused on the target of promoting, say, the sponsor’s baked beans, then your entry will stand out! That’s something you should always strive for with every entry and every competition. Originality and novelty. They win gold. Remember, your strike rate will improve as you enter more competitions and improve your strength of focus. Shaw Finn summed it up: “Keep entries short, simple and fresh!” 53 page 53 www.ebookofknowledge.com 54 Winning Words You need the most relevant words that tie in with 1) the sponsor’s product, 2) the features they promote most heavily, 3) the benefits they promise customers will get by using the product. Start collecting your toolbox. The standard Macmillan Thesaurus www.macmillandictionary.com (and its online equivalents) is useful. However, you may feel you are almost drowning in possibilities and alternative words. Stay with it. Having options is the key to making better word choices. A Thesaurus is another standard reference book. www.rhymer.com Ten dollars buys the real thing, Roget’s Thesaurus in book format, to live permanently by your elbow. www.amazon.com Technique: Prepare lists of key words under such headings as Product Benefit Feature. Then link them together in an engaging way – using puns and similar sounding words to replace the word a judge might have expected to see you use. Surprising the judge can raise your point score very quickly. 54 page 54 www.ebookofknowledge.com 55 Practise Playing With Words Make a long list of better words than GOOD. Words which mean much the same as good, but which sparkle. For instance, High quality, best quality, first class, first rate, superior, fine, excellent, outstanding, brilliant, exceptional, first rate, admirable, superb, tremendous, unequalled, unparalleled, unsurpassed, luxury, premium, super, best choice, terrific, wonderful stupendous, exceptional, dazzling, awe-inspiring, marvellous, radiant, dazzling, sparkling, gleaming, shining, bright, exemplary, extraordinary, incomparable, sophisticated, advanced, complex, remarkable, noteworthy, significant, incredible, astonishing, amazing, unusual, unexpected, outstanding, fabulous, stunning, marvellous, important, striking. There are more than 50 words here which are far more exciting than GOOD will ever be. Use some of them in your tie-breaker sentences and your competition entry will come alive with sparkling originality. This is probably the most significant recommendation in this whole book. Another useful book or tool is a rhyming dictionary. www.rhymer.com I looked up words which would rhyme with silver and it delivered 2200 words. Each one could be used in a rhyme. A rhyming dictionary is almost essential when you are composing an original limerick or completing a rhyming couplet with a few words of your own. Imagine the impact if you can pack a relevant rhyme into your 18 words. Hey, this is where jingles get born. Sponsors pay huge sums to professional jingle writers. Knowing what you now know, you’ll be better than at least half of them! 55 page 55 www.ebookofknowledge.com 56 Read The Rules - Again Re-read the rules and any other guidelines. Again. If you live outside the allowable district, or you’re not in the allowable age range, skip over this competition. Put your energy into one where you qualify under the rules. Take special note of any emphasis the judges give to particular features of the product. Then, if you’re writing a brief slogan, see if you can cut even one word out without harming the sense or impact of your entry. Remember, you’re striving for brevity as well as originality. If you can cut one word out, maybe you can cut another one! Aim to be succinct. Think of the poets. They consider and replace every word in their poem many times. Remember when you sent a telegram and every word cost sixpence. Can you apply a quote about something similar to or different to the product? Can you graft the name of the product into a well-known saying? Eg: “You made the right choice when they’re ready, willing and ABLE.” That’s for the Able Furniture Removals competition. 56 page 56 www.ebookofknowledge.com 57 Check The Innuendo Potential Make sure there is no way any of your entries could be viewed as negative or have religious, political, ethnic or sexual overtones or innuendoes. So no blasphemy or racist, sexist jokes. You must not offend even 1% of society. The judge’s spouse might be in that 1% you just offended. To be sure, show your entry slogans to a trusted friend. A fresh mind can see what your tunnel-vision cannot see. Remember, words change their meaning over time. Gay used to mean fun-loving. Different regions can give strange meanings to ordinary words. Check here for weird words with unusual meanings. http://phrontistery.info/ihlstart.html Or words which sound similar but have different meanings. For instance, know your aureole from your areola. 57 page 57 www.ebookofknowledge.com 58 Rules Give You Official Protection Every company which offers a competition has to comply with national and/or state legislation. Competitions in the United States must comply with laws and regulations supervised by the Federal Trade Commission www.ftc.gov and each states’ Attorney General’s Rules For Competitions. They’re the authorities you should contact if you are an American and have concerns about a competition and its rules or organisers. Readers in other countries should contact their own national authorities. Look under ‘Internal Affairs Dept’ in your telephone book. If you are unsure who to ask about official rules, contact the Consumer Protection Authority in your area. The Canadian Government has a website with lots of useful information. http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/oca-bc.nsf/eng/h_ca02349.html Better Business Bureau has hundreds of regional offices in many countries. Start here and use the SEARCH tool. www.bbb.org Citizens Advice Bureau are in many countries. Check here: www.cab.org.nz Usually, the advice and/or service provided by these organisations is free, impartial and helpful. (They’re funded by a government grant.) 58 page 58 www.ebookofknowledge.com 59 International Competitions If the promoter does not restrict access to the competition to residents of just one country, ie it’s an international competition, then the operation and details of the competition must comply with each country’s laws. Administering this can become a legal nightmare. Hence, these are usually a series of separate parallel competitions running in each country, all on the same theme, all running simultaneously, but reflecting their own country’s rules. This would be the case where the sponsor is an airline or a worldwide brand name, like McDonalds or Rolex. Most competitions have a restriction about who can enter based on national boundaries. This keeps the list of official rules simple and short. When the competition rules look too cumbersome and officious, ordinary people are put off entering. (This can improve the odds for you.) Competition laws are among the most frequently amended laws in a country because of changing technology and social customs. Until a few years ago promoters could advertise large numbers of prizes, then draw one winner for each prize; but they only had to distribute prizes to those people who claimed their winnings within a set time listed in the promoter’s rules. Commonly, it was three months. Now, in most places, ALL advertised prizes must be awarded and this is often done by means of a second chance draw where all the entries have an opportunity to win any unclaimed prizes. Sometimes, the second chance draw requires that entrants must have already submitted a special token with their entry, for example a ‘proof of purchase’ token. Major competition rules are always carefully prepared in conjunction with lawyers who have experience in these areas. Fortunately for contestants the laws usually specify that all rules must be easily understandable by prospective entrants. This minimises a lot of legal jargon in the rules. All competitors are bound to accept the rules as published by the promoter. Remember the famous phrase: ‘… and no correspondence will be entered into’). That’s usually the last of the published rules, for obvious reasons. 59 page 59 www.ebookofknowledge.com 60 You Can Expect The Rules Will Cover: • State and Federal permits issued for the competition, if required. • The contact details of the sponsor and/or the company promoting the competition. Many big competitions are run by professional competition organizers. • The dates between which the competition is valid, especially the closing date of the competition. Usually this is deemed to be midnight, but it could also be 5pm or some other time. • Where the results will be published, ie which newspapers will carry the announcement, usually in Public Notices or Competition Results. • The date when results will be published in specified major newspapers and/or on the sponsor’s website. • How entrants can obtain a copy of the list of winners. • How people may obtain a free entry form without purchasing the sponsor’s product. Sometimes this is a requirement under local laws. Yes, it can defeat the sponsor’s purpose. But who will spend a dollar on postage to get a free entry form when it’s around the neck of a $2 product. • Whether there is a limit on the number of entries which a person or household may submit. If there’s no limit, go for it! • Restrictions on the prizes given, such as ‘no prize exchange for other goods or cash equivalent’. • Whether prize winners will get notified by mail or email or telephone ore a courier van with a prize to be delivered. • Whether all entries become the property of the sponsor. This includes the copyright to any words or pictures you supplied! Remember, they could end up as a jingle or company slogan. Don’t expect any extra payment if that happens. • Winners agree to supplying limited personal details and (perhaps) a picture to be used for post-competition promotion. Whatever is required by the sponsor or their advertising agency. 60 page 60 www.ebookofknowledge.com 61 • In the United States of America, there will be a ‘Kraft Clause’, restricting the promoter’s liability if there are printing or other errors in the entry forms, tickets and/or related material. This clause helps limit any extra costs to the sponsor incurred from such errors. For instance, if there were 50 times as many winning coupons or tickets printed as was intended. Invoking this Kraft Clause will create an extra headache for the sponsor and/or promoter. They will need to know how to address the public relations problems involved in admitting such errors. That can be a long, expensive process in itself and reputations get frayed. Usually, finding some extra prizes is the cheapest outcome. As an interesting aside, Google <“Hoover's ill-fated flight”> It explains the Kraft clause, vacuum cleaner competition fiasco and the free British Airlines tickets competition which backfired badly. In the US, Kraft produced too many winning number tokens, to their considerable embarrassment. The New York Daily News Scratch’n’Match game also produced too many winning tickets. Having the Kraft Clause in got them off the hook – legally. • The judges decision is final. No correspondence will be entered into. The sponsors hate any inquiry into a competition and how it was conducted. Respect that. Move on. 61 page 61 www.ebookofknowledge.com 62 Points About Some Common Rules • Don’t write your entry in pencil. Especially not colored pencil. If they specify ink that means regular ink, ballpoint or rollerball ink is acceptable. Use normal blue/black. Not red. • If they say BLOCK CAPITALS, then use BLOCK CAPITALS. • Don’t send plain paper or photocopied entries if the rules say ‘Original entries only’. That means you must buy the magazine and clip a coupon. Yes, they want you to buy their publication. • If they require your signature, don’t print it in BLOCK CAPITALS. Sign it. • If it says “No correspondence will be entered into” don’t include any. Don’t send any type of letter or note. If you are sure there is something terribly wrong with something on the entry form, politely contact the promoter directly either by phone or by separate letter, sent to their regular business address – not the contest address. • Sometimes they require a stamped verification entry form with the name of the business where you bought the product. Supply exactly what they want. That may mean the supplier is also eligible for a prize if your entry wins. Fair enough. Help them. • ‘Winning entries become the property of the sponsor’ means your creative and successful entry/ slogan/ photo/ poem/ whatever cannot be used for any other competition with that promoter or any other competition. This rule also permits them to use all or part of your winning entry/ies as they see fit. • ‘All entries become the property of the sponsor’ is less common however it means your creative but unsuccessful entry/ slogan/ photo/ poem/ whatever cannot be used for any other competition with that promoter or any other competition. This also permits them to use all or part of any entries as they see fit. I’ve never heard of any sponsor using entries which were not awarded prizes. After all, they weren’t good enough to win! They are mostly just covering themselves against claims by disappointed, losing contestants. 62 page 62 www.ebookofknowledge.com 63 And remember, any such complaints are useless (‘Judges decision is final’) means exactly what it says. You only reduce the energy and time you have to prepare entries for the other contests you want to win. 63 page 63 www.ebookofknowledge.com 64 Always Read The Fine Print And Conditions Always read the fine print at least twice. You’ll get quick at this after awhile. • A first reading is to ensure your entries comply with every part of the rules. • The second reading is to check the obligations which those rules place on you as an entrant, especially if you go on to win a major prize. Most promoters require that winners permit their picture and limited personal information to be used when the results are announced. You may also have to appear at a live presentation. Usually, this will be in your area. It might be at the store where you bought the sponsor’s product. Prizes, especially for things like trips, cruises, or flights may have to be taken at certain specified times. Probably the dates will exclude the most popular peak travel periods such as school holidays, Christmas, Easter, when cultural or sports festivals like the Olympics etc are on. You may have to pay for your own holiday clothing, meals, travel insurance, taxis, visas, departure tax, vaccinations and all the other incidentals which make a simple flight a holiday. But these costs which enable you to take a ‘free trip’ can mount up. Such prizes may be for two adults, so you may have to pay full cost for your children to accompany you. Or the responsibility is yours to arrange, at your own expense, for other people to look after your children while you’re away. (Don’t forget the presents you’d be wise to bring them when you return.) There’s also the necessity for you to check with your employer that you can get time away from work during the specified period. Whether or not there’s a problem there or not, it feels weird to be asking, “Boss, can I have four weeks off next year if I win this trip?” Tip: Be confident, but win the trip first. No reasonable boss will block you when you announce a BIG TRIP WIN. 64 page 64 www.ebookofknowledge.com 65 Prizes may have other limitations. The prize may only be for the travel component and some accommodation for your trip. You could have to pay for connecting flights and overnight accommodation just to get to the point of departure where the prize trip (such as a cruise) you won begins and ends. 65 page 65 www.ebookofknowledge.com 66 Check Your Tax Liability You must consider all potential tax liabilities with prizes you win. The tax liability varies widely from country to country. You should check with your Tax Accountant and/or Income Tax Office. If you have to declare your winnings, don’t “accidentally forget” to do so. No one will believe you overlooked a new Mercedes car prize, or a free trip to Las Vegas. Where it’s allowed, the sponsors and promoters may pay the relevant taxes. But, this is something you must check for yourself. After you’ve won, ask for this matter to be clarified. Record all your competition entries in your special book or computer database spreadsheet. This is for future reference. If you’re required to pay tax on your winnings, then you’re probably entitled to claim expenses incurred in entering the competition which produced the prize. Ask your tax adviser about this aspect. If need be, get a written decision from the Tax Department. It’s best to do this before you win the big one. Claim whatever expenses you can. This could include the magazines you need to buy; computer equipment; product samples so you can extract the wrappers; telephone calls; special software; postage; and transport to collect your prize. 66 page 66 www.ebookofknowledge.com 67 Wow, You WON! It’s going to happen to you sooner or later, and probably more often than you think right now. The more entries you send in before the competition closing date and the more care you take in crafting your entries, the greater your chance you’ll start winning major prizes. Some people win a few small prizes first, mainly because those are the size of competitions they enter. Others go for the jugular, so when they win their first competition it’s a whopper! The excitement of winning is something you have to experience – maybe that’s why reporters keep asking big Lotto winners, “How did you feel when you heard you’d won ten million dollars?” Even though the question has been asked and answered many times they’re always ecstatic, thrilled and overjoyed! What else could they be? And yes, there is a huge difference between being lucky and knowing you have the knowledge and smarts to REPEAT your win. If you’re asked to be part of a public relations prize presentation, that is your chance to be generous to the promoter and sponsors. Make them glad YOU are the one they delivered the yacht/ RV/ Mercedes to. But, please remember this: although you’re an essential part of the event, the sponsor’s product is the real star. Refer to the product often in your speech. Mention the company’s name often in your speech. They’ll love you for it. Remember how radio and TV works: they’re a series of 20 second sound bites. You need to include your thanks and the sponsor’s name or product in the same breath. Don’t be surprised if a job offer comes from the competition promotions company, the ad agency or the sponsor company. They always want people who can get excited about their products. Ad agencies are always looking for new jingle writers. At the prize presentation wear neat, conservative clothing. That means no T shirts. Especially, no slogans or brand names for other products showing on your clothes. That includes your cap. Look like a deserving winner. 67 page 67 www.ebookofknowledge.com 68 At the prize-giving, talk nicely to everyone. There will, almost certainly, be reporters among the crowd at the presentation and probably also at any non-public gatherings. Be careful what you do or say because anything you do or say may appear in a press, radio or television report later on. Remember this: NOTHING you say is ‘off-the-record’. You can be photographed at any moment, so don’t even scratch your nose. Caution: Something you thought would be ‘funny’ to say during the event may appear gauche, disrespectful, or negative when people see it in the newspaper or on TV a few days later. Don’t make the sponsors cringe with embarrassment. Keep your acceptance speech short and to the point. “Thank you” always goes down well. Anything else is usually superfluous. Just keep repeating “Thank you”. That’s not hard to remember. You don’t need to mention that you put 999 entries into the contest. Some people might think (correctly) that you’re a professional contest winning machine. And jealous people can do unpredictable things. 68 page 68 www.ebookofknowledge.com 69 OK, So You Didn’t Win Of course, this happens to all of us but, remember, it is not your inevitable fate. Get whatever value you can from the experience and move on. Move on. Move on. Keep a forward focus. The only real losers are those who never try and those who give up! Promise me, you’ll never stop entering competitions. You can’t rules state But you can entries for use those exact losing entries again, especially if the that all entries become the property of the promoter. use them to kick-start your mind as you prepare your next competition. Look for the winning entries which may be published with the announcement of the competition you didn’t win. They may be used in future advertising by the sponsor. Learn from knowing what was good enough to win. Don’t waste time grumbling that your entries were much better. My friend, that competition is over. Move on to the next. Don’t look for excuses. However, try to find out what it was about the winning entries which caught the judges’ eye. You can be sure it was NOT coloured envelopes, fancy decoration around the border or any of the other gimmicks which some people still believe work. They don’t. Mostly those entries get disqualified, either formally or informally. Entries which are crumpled up, then straightened out so they are bulkier than normal flat entries don’t get any advantage. Entries which are chemically treated so they almost jump with static electricity into the hand of the person selecting the winners, inevitably jump into the disqualified pile too. Put yourself in the judge’s position. You see an entry which stands out, but only because it is a crinkled mess in an ocean of neat, carefully prepared entries. That’s not a good enough reason to give it a prize. Or it leaves a greasy stain on your hand because it was chemically treated. Would you really want to spend extra time flattening out a crumpled entry when there are another 5000 to read? No. 69 page 69 www.ebookofknowledge.com 70 Bad handwriting will also rule you out. Which judge will ponder an almost unreadable entry form? What if they decipher your great slogan wrongly because it was badly written? They won’t take the risk. You now have the knowledge to win competitions fairly and squarely. You don’t need cheap tricks. (They don’t work anyway). 70 page 70 www.ebookofknowledge.com 71 Better Luck This Time Entering and winning competitions will bring more rewards than just the cars which will line up in your driveway. More than even the new cash in your bank account. You’ll find that keeping your mind alert and active will increase the success you have in all other areas of your life. You will become a more interesting person. You’ll have learned all manner of general knowledge things. You’ll become the dinner party guest other people listen to. Remember the people at Coca Cola. They don’t tell their winning formula to all and sundry. Nor should you. The last and most important rule is this: PERSIST. PERSIST. PERSIST. Times will get difficult. You’ll enter a lot of competitions and not win a single prize. It happens. PERSIST. If you need motivation, remember the story of Abraham Lincoln, the most respected president of the USA. His history was a litany of failures and disappointments until he became Mr President. See his list of failures here > http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/education/failures.htm We all have many disappointments. Me too. But if we don’t give up we’re not losers. Sir Winston Churchill said it eloquently and simply: “Never give up. Never, never, never, never give up.” Tomorrow is a whole new day, completely untouched. Good luck. The End. By the way, when you win your first prize, please let me know. Send 50-100 words to [email protected] I’ll be delighted to know about your win and congratulate you. I invite you to check my other ebooks at this website: www.ebookofknowledge.com The end of Section ONE. Special Bonus Report TWO follows. 71 page 71 www.ebookofknowledge.com 72 Special Bonus Report. Section 2. How I Won The Australian Mastermind Quiz and Other General Knowledge Competitions By Bill ‘Mastermind’ Fitzgerald Welcome to the wonderful, exciting, and rewarding world of quiz competitions. It’s a world where the quick-witted and the knowledgeable usually win. But it’s still a world where every participant can enjoy themselves, broaden their range of interests, enhance their general knowledge and enrich their lives with more than just prize money. So where do we begin? You’ll pick up sooner or later that I’m an American living in Brisbane, Australia. I’ve been here 30 years or so and I don’t want to live anywhere else. Been there, done that. To keep this report reasonably brief I’ll assume you already know there are places where quizzes are conducted fairly regularly. Lots of places. These are usually pubs and sports clubs and private fund-raising events. There are other places and events that regularly feature quizzes as a way to draw crowds to an event. They give people a chance to win some product prizes, cash, or both. You’ve probably seen them at State Fairs, Agricultural Shows and School Galas. They’re a pretty standard event worldwide. Since every person alive knows something, and the quizzes aren’t usually extremely difficult, you won’t get questions like “What was the name of King Alfred the Great’s dog?” Lesson 1: The people who run these quiz shows genuinely want someone to win the prizes. So they don’t make the questions unreasonably hard. The sponsors want to look like ‘good guys’ who give away prizes and make people happy. Then we will all go visit their shop or buy their widgets or whatever. If you’re over the age of 12, chances are you’ll be able to answer some of their questions. But wouldn’t you like to do much better? Would you like to make a really good showing, and win major prizes consistently? Of course. Let me show you my method for winning quiz contests. It also works for remembering the stuff you need for passing exams. Do I know what I’m talking about? Is my method any good? Well, I’ve won a house-load of prizes over the years and my most notable win was being crowned Australian Mastermind on national TV in 1980. I unashamedly trade on my track record. So should you when you’ve got a few wins behind you. It opens doors. But you decide all this for yourself after you’ve learned and used my techniques. 72 page 72 www.ebookofknowledge.com 73 How to get the ‘mind-set’ of a quiz show winner Once you get the feel for it there’s no limit to how far you can go with competitions. But to win consistently you’ve got to acquire ‘the knowledge’! That’s what this book is all about! As an aside, London taxi-drivers are not granted their cabbie licence until they have ‘The Knowledge’. That’s the term they lovingly give to their intimate appreciation of every major and minor road in central London. To get it, they ride around on a bike for 2-3-4 years, traversing the roads, avenues and lanes of London, soaking up their knowledge of one-way streets, blind alleys and short-cuts. When they pass their test, they can be a taxi driver in London. For them, it’s a lifetime career, up there with heart surgeons and top restaurant chefs. The sooner you feel comfortable about what you know and can bring information to mind in an instant, the sooner you can enter and win quiz competitions. I’ll show you how to get that knowledge quickly, effectively and keep it for all time. In other words, once you get knowledge in your head you’ll never forget it. If that doesn’t excite the pants off you, skip the rest of this report. But I say it will. You’ll be able to use my memory retention technique for the rest of your life, entering quizzes and winning prizes for as long as your brain still works! The learning methods I’ll share with you will enable you to keep learning all kinds of stuff for as long as you live. If you’re about to start a university course, good. I’ve got to you just in the nick of time. You’re going to find this knowledge mind-blowing. Simple, but hugely valuable. Lesson 2: Don’t let anyone tell you can only hold a limited amount of information in your brain. As far as we know, there is no limit to how much information any individual can store in their brain. What’s more, you can retain it forever! And you’ll recall most of it at the click of your fingers. The bits you can’t recall are there, but the recall is too slow because it wasn’t lodged lovingly. There are far too many people recalling complex information at the press of a bell or buzzer (I’m one of them) to have any doubt about that. You will become an instant memory recall expert as well, if you aren’t one already. This is what I mean by the ‘mind-set’ of a quiz winner. Lesson 3: Anyone can learn, retain, and regurgitate information. All kinds of information. There is no special talent you needed to be born with. In fact, we all have that memory talent already. Including millions of people who don’t know they have it. Please be clear on this: memory and knowledge and recall are not all the same thing. Each is different. But I’ll explain these important differences shortly. I say it’s up to the individual to WANT to acquire information. To be successful at this you have to be excited by the amount of knowledge you can cram into your brain. Remember, you can’t overload the brain. It is infinitely expandable. Retaining information and producing it on demand is absolutely simple. So let’s get started. 73 page 73 www.ebookofknowledge.com 74 How to soak up the information you need in a day The first thing that frightens most people about quizzes is the amount of reading and memorising they think seems to be required. This is a reasonable fear. No one wants to make a fool of themselves whether it’s on national television or in a local pub competition. But any fear you have can be overcome fairly easily and quickly. “Always remember” (I use this phrase frequently because it fits in with what I’m teaching you. It’s a wonderfully powerful mantra to recite to yourself to keep your brain calm and focused. I never use the dreadful phrase “Don’t forget” which is a double dose of the negatives. Yuk!) “Always remember when you’re studying for quizzes, or simply gathering facts in preparation for an exam, if you tell yourself to “Always Remember”, your mind, the slave to your commands that it is, will remember and have the facts ready for you the instant you need them! Lesson 4: You really don’t have to test yourself on what you know. If you’ve read it, heard it, seen it, touched it, smelt it, tasted it, drawn it, painted it or produced it, the information will be inside your brain and available to you instantly. All you need to do is tell yourself to “Always Remember” before you start acquiring the new knowledge. Where do you get FACTS from? So where do you get the facts you need to know? Do you become a monk living in a cold library surrounded by stacks of dusty books? That’s old thinking. You’ve got the 21st century Internet at your disposal. Plus all kinds of general knowledge information in books, magazines, pamphlets, lists, card files, CDs, DVDs and the list goes on and on. Sometimes it seems as though there is almost too much information available! How can you know it all? Even if you wanted to. Where should you begin? Lesson 5: Do you need to know it all? No. How much do you need? Just enough to pass your exams or win big quiz prizes consistently. After that, you acquire fresh knowledge for the fun of it. Yes, for the fun of knowing more today than you knew yesterday. Question: How do you decide which information to put into your wonderful brain’s memory? I was confronted with the same problem when I entered (and won) my biggest quiz contest, ‘Australian Mastermind’, in 1980. In that competition there were two rounds of questions for each contestant. A ‘special subject’ nominated by the contestant, (I chose American Presidents from 18?? to 19??) and ‘General Knowledge’ chosen by the producer. Each round had three minutes of rapid fire questions. Remember what I said earlier? “Do you need it all? No.” This is where the quiz winner’s mental strategy kicks in. You can give an answer to each question and get it right or wrong, or you say “Pass”. At the end of the questioning period, if there was a tie between contestants giving the same number of correct answers, the winner was declared as the person with fewer passes. 74 page 74 www.ebookofknowledge.com 75 Lesson 6: So my technique for winning was to answer questions rapidly, as soon as the answer entered my mind. If I had to think for a moment about the answer, even if I was certain I knew it, saying “Pass” was the best strategy. It was wiser to move on quickly so I’d have more time to get more questions I could answer instantly. This was a dramatically better tactic than to wait the few seconds it took to dredge up an answer from deep inside my brain. I might eventually recall the correct answer, but I risked losing the game because of the time it took me to remember. In subsequent television quiz programmes (in which I also did very well) my strategy was simply to hit the buzzer in front of me faster than my opponents. So I held both hands over it. Whichever side of my brain thought it had the answer would activate one or other of my hand muscles. Once again, I had to rely on the knowledge being in my brain. I’d hit the buzzer the instant even the briefest murmurings of an answer came to me. I did this without thinking about whether my answer was right or wrong. I trusted my brain. In 95% of cases the information in my brain would be correct because I’d trained my brain to deliver the correct answer to the question. Pardon me for responding in the first person and being a bit of a bragger. However, that’s what I did and it worked. Actually, I’m proud of my achievements. So should you be when your turn comes. I worked hard at being successful. I’d say luck was less than one percent. It takes time and effort to reach a level of general knowledge where you feel confident about having enough of it to enter and win competitions. Always remember, you also have to be quick. It’s not enough to know a great deal. You have to bring it down from your brain to your vocal chords or buzzer hand instantly. We’re individuals, but good technique is universal I have an enormous amount of historical knowledge accumulated in my brain from my passion for history, from my university studies and from when I lectured on history. Lesson 7: A study of history brings with it a huge amount of general knowledge tangled up in the wrapping. Historians know not only who begat whom, who killed whom, but also what people wore, ate, what games they played and peripheral stuff like that. So I started my quiz winning career with a solid base. There was always so much more to know about my selected subject, so reading was my constant activity. But I’ve been an avid reader all my life. I knew my competitors would be very good. They’d have to be to get on the Mastermind show. I could have tried reading a lot of extra material, but there really isn’t enough time to do that. There never is. We all have day-jobs to attend to. So my strategy question was: “Where can I access a wide range of general knowledge in a nonboring, non-technical way?” I can memorise lists of kings, wars, major events and social happenings until my mind rebels. I still won’t know whether I’m wasting my time because my 75 page 75 www.ebookofknowledge.com 76 topics may be off-beam. It’s a gamble trying to choose which ones to memorise, even if memorising comes easily. I was looking for something which would offer me a random selection of easily digested facts that were not necessarily related to each other. I needed something I could read easily without becoming jaded or bored. Thinking along those lines I went to my lifetime collection of National Geographic magazines! “Of course,” I thought. This publication is always well written, enjoyable to read, illustrated, and whatever the article covers it’s invariably extremely informative. In addition, the articles seem to cover enormous areas of knowledge, especially geography and history, as well as biographies, humanities and most of the sciences. The real beauty of this magazine for quiz contestants, however, is the photographs and the commentary caption that accompanies each one. Essentially, the photos with commentary are brief, but they provide a concise summary of what is in the articles they illustrate. So, to learn and remember the information you need only read the captions under the photos. Lesson 8: YOU DON’T NEED TO READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE! This saves you enormous amounts of time. And a photo is an excellent way to remember the information it displays. Words plus pictures hits your brain twice. It’s perfect for general knowledge learners! You can zip through a whole year of National Geographies in a few days and learn heaps of stuff. Now, I do not have insider information, but why is it that so much of what I read in my National Geographic magazines seemed to form many of the quiz questions I got? Believe me, I can vouch for it. Coincidence? Maybe. Or do question setters also read National Geographic? I say “If there are short cuts, or stepping stones across the water, use them.” This method of quick learning from National Geographic was instrumental in helping me become ‘Australian Mastermind 1980’. I was also champion on several other national TV quiz shows. Over the years I’ve won dozens of pub quizzes and other types of general knowledge contests. It was great fun! My health now dictates that I’m retired from quiz shows. So I won’t be competing against my protégés. That’s you. You may not be a ‘learn the list’ type of person, but this can be overcome by another method of committing lists of stuff to memory. Lesson 9: Don’t just make a list and try to memorise it. Not the best way. My advice is: write a sentence incorporating each item on the list. Write the sentence in longhand. Don’t type it. That’s just hitting keys. Longhand writing means your brain forms the letters, words, sentences. It uses your eyes, hand muscles and memory in coordination. For example, on a list of capital cities you could write ‘Rabat’. But that’s too easy to forget. Whereas you should hand write ‘Rabat is the capital of the Kingdom of Morocco. Humphrey Bogart knows the biggest city is Casablanca.’ Now you’ve committed the information into your mind and your two sentences associate Rabat with Morocco. It’s a kingdom, its biggest city is 76 page 76 www.ebookofknowledge.com 77 linked with an easily remembered movie star and his classic film. You’ve secured Rabat with four memory hooks. Plus, you used hand, eye and memory to lock the knowledge into your memory. By being creative in your memorising you’re adding value to the list and cementing the information about the city into your memory. You’ll remember those four facts about Rabat, now and forever. The sentences you wrote will come back to you in an instant. Make lists of things you already know will be helpful to you in pub quizzes! For instance, what are the most popular sports in your country? What are the most popular sports in other countries, winter and summer? Who are the most popular sports heroes in various countries around the world? Tip: Because of the pub or club clientele and their usual age range, the subject of sports and the key players are a common topic in pub quizzes. To memorise all the sports simply think of the most prominent players of the present and recent past. Now write a sentence next to each name telling why they are so well known. For example, David Beckham, played 109 times* for England. There was a popular film ‘Bend It Like Beckham’. David married Posh Spice and he has two boys. *Subject to checking. Pelé was the best soccer player of all time. FIFA named the Brazilian Player Of The Century. He entered politics in an attempt to fix the corruption problem in soccer. Lesson 10: Capital cities of the world are frequent quiz questions. Make your own lists from an atlas. Discover facts about them from websites. Then memorise the names by writing a sentence or two which associates each capital city with prominent features such as rivers, iconic structures or significant events. For example, Paris, capital of France, is on the river Seine and Paris is dominated by the Eiffel Tower. London, capital of England and the UK is on the river Thames. London hosts Wimbledon tennis, famous for its strawberries and cream. Washington DC, (District of Colombia) is on the Potomac river and the US President lives in the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If there are 195 separate counties in the world, your created list will be long. You’ll enjoy finding one or two interesting facts about each one. Hey, the key to memorising is to make it fun. Lesson 11: Another popular quiz question concerns specially created capital cities around the world. Include these on your list: Canberra, Australia, purpose built on Lake Burley Griffin, declared the capital in 1927. Brasilia is the capital of Brazil. It was built especially and declared capital in 1960 because Rio de Janeiro was already too crowded to be politically functional. 77 page 77 www.ebookofknowledge.com 78 Washington DC is also in this category, home of the Smithsonian Institution Museum. Lesson 12: Prominent people of the present and past are always popular topics in quizzes. Lists can be created in categories such as politicians, leaders, kings, queens, emperors, empresses, tsars, tsarinas, presidents, prime ministers, premiers, shoguns, dictators, pharaohs and suchlike. Make up your lists with something in your written sentences that distinguishes and creates a mental picture of the individual. There are many encyclopaedias, both as books and on the Internet. Each gives its own angle on the facts they present. Start looking here: www.encyclopedia.com Start building your own lists (with one or two sentences YOU write.) For example: U.S President Abraham Lincoln presided during the American Civil War (1861-1865). After that war his Emancipation Proclamation set the slaves free. He was shot dead by John Wilkes Booth in the Ford Theatre while watching the play Our American Cousin. Hirohito was Emperor of Japan during World War II (1939-1945). Japan signed the war surrender documents on board USS Dunlap, 3 September 1945. William the Conqueror, became king of England with the Norman Conquest of 1066 when he won the Battle of Hastings, defeating English King Harold. If you want to know heaps more about the fascinating history of England, even back to Roman times, click here: http://battle1066.com/intro.shtml Warning: History can be addictive. When you click below for details of The Doomsday Book, you’ll spend hours. However, it’s all knowledge and one day knowing about it could win you a contest prize. http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/domesday-book.htm Other categories for you to create lists: Inventors and their inventions; Wealthy people and the source of their wealth; Smithsonian Institute Museum. in history including where they were fought, when, who were the main antagonists; Famous movie stars each in their era, from the silent film days of the 1920s, through each decade to today; Academy Award winners and the Best Picture of each year; Chemical symbols of well known or commonly used items; Major calamities such as eruptions, floods, bush fires and the 9/11 terrorist attack. By now you can see the number of lists you could compile is close to endless. Hence, it becomes a question of what topics do YOU find inherently interesting. I’m a history enthusiast, so those lists are fun to compile. Whereas remembering the list of chemical symbols is hard work. But I keep my vision of winning lots of contest prizes in my mind. 78 page 78 www.ebookofknowledge.com 79 Use your imagination to create lists of interesting people, noteworthy places or things that are important but soon forgotten. They are the kinds of questions often asked in pub quizzes precisely because most people don’t commit them to their memory. Why would ordinary people bother? But if you’ve read about them or heard them mentioned in a context, speak the item aloud which stores it in your memory without you realising it. For instance, “So Englishman Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile on 6th May 1954 at the Iffley Road track in Oxford, running on cinders. How interesting.” I told you the range of lists is practically endless. You can make lists of slang terms in American English, Australian English, British English, Cockney Rhyming English, and any other English where you might find an interesting slang term. For instance, a holiday cottage in the hills can be called a bach, crib or a cabin – depending on where it is. You should also make lists of commonly used foreign terms. For instance, start with French: coup d’etat, bon mot. Learn the difference between esprit de coeur and esprit de corps. Check this website for definitions: http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/French/Vocabulary/French-International.html There are many words and phrases in English which are derived from Germany, Italy, Spain etc. India is an interesting one because Indian words like bungalow, pyjamas, jute, calico and jodhpurs have been seamlessly absorbed into English. Having a list of the most common 100 foreign words and phrases will also broaden your personal vocabulary. Check The World Dictionary of Foreign Expressions. ISBN 9780865164222. Also check this useful website. http://www.sbkline.com/TIPS/foreignexpressions.htm Create your own categories and lists and write short facts about them, in full sentences. The full sentence technique is important. By writing lists with facts in complete sentences means you’ll remember them. Thinking up the sentence creates pathways along the synapses in your brain. Once created, those pathways last forever. Well, for as long as your brain is working. Once you add an association between the listed word and another fact about it, and you write the lists yourself, YOU WILL REMEMBER THEM! Whereas if you just copy a list of single words from a page without creating a sentence about them you will find it is difficult to remember them. Telling yourself to remember, as I mentioned earlier, is also a very effective way to remember things! Don’t neglect this. It may sound too simplistic to you. But it works! Many remembering techniques might sound too simplistic to be true. Many of them work nonetheless. Unless you’re interested in neuroscience, you don’t really have to know how or why. As a university lecturer in my earlier life, one of the courses I taught was: ‘The History of World Civilisations’. This is an enormously broad subject. It required a huge amount of reading and fact remembering, as well as lots of writing. I didn’t want to frighten my first year students about the 79 page 79 www.ebookofknowledge.com 80 difficulty of the course, but I did have to alert them to the amount of study involved. I developed a novel approach to teaching the subject which included informing the students how best to study history and how to do well in their exams. Lesson 13: The best way to learn new things is summed up in my teaching technique principle: ‘Excitement is the genesis of knowledge!’ This simply means we learn best, quickest and most reliably when we are excited about the topic. We can certainly learn stuff without being excited. Schools all over the world still get by with teachers who are boring, frightening bullies. These teachers are limited in their own depth of learning, disinterested in their jobs, and not very effective at educating their students. Do you remember your own experience at primary and secondary school? Rote learning. Boring facts. Lists of dates or symbols. So when I became a history lecturer at Kent State University, after having experienced what passed as normal teaching methods when I was a ‘supply teacher’ (ie a substitute when the regular teacher had a day off) I had definite ideas about how I would teach. There was no way in the world I was going to be boring! And I wasn’t! I showed the students how exciting my topic was and this made it easy for them to learn it. As we got into each new semester they wanted to learn more about it! They wanted to learn the sidebar supplementary stuff as well as the mainstream facts. The word spread and students were asking to join my class. That was unheard of in history teaching! Here’s the key point: When someone wants to learn about a topic, they will find new ways to do it. They’ll prepare their brains to create new pathways so they can accept new information about this topic. I made it easy for my students to remember vast chunks of new material as we motored through the ‘History of World Civilisations’ course. They were motivated to learn. They even manage to listen with interest to boring teachers who taught the complementary history topics. Unfortunately, boring teachers rarely manage to make their information stick. That’s why their students rarely learn very much and their exam marks reflect this. Lesson 14: When the time comes to select your courses from what’s on offer, spend most of your time evaluating the teachers. A good teacher can make any topic interesting. A boring teacher can stifle and strangle your interest in your favourite topic. A good teacher also has to make the students believe they can learn and pass exams! Some students will already be excited about the prospect of what they will be learning. It might be their favourite subject. Sadly, too many students don’t choose their subjects or teachers with enough care. They fall into a class by default. They become the good teacher’s greatest challenge. How can I motivate the unmotivated to become wildly excited about what has been happening on this earth before they got here? 80 page 80 www.ebookofknowledge.com 81 This is what I’m attempting to do for you in this special report. I want to get you wildly excited about winning competitions. Lots of them, with huge prizes. Don’t worry if those who live around you are not wildly excited. You are the only one who is important on this trip. When the others see your prizes, a smidgen of excitement might penetrate their sad souls. My First Lecture Had A Big Purpose When I gave my first lecture in the ‘History of World Civilisations’ course I addressed the matter of excitement directly. First I told the one hundred students sitting in the largest lecture theatre at Kent State University about the difficulties they were facing. I explained that they would have to learn about 2,500 years of history. They would be introduced to thousands of names, places, dates, events, concepts, relationships until they might go crazy trying to remember a tenth of them. As I spoke I could see their faces beginning to show fear, distress, disbelief and probably a determination to get the hell out of the course before they were locked in. I could see misery on their faces. I’d taken down to the lowest point. I gave them a theatrical pause. Then I told them they didn’t have to remember any of it. It would all come to them so easily they would hardly believe how easy it was. To demonstrate this I told them a fact. Just one fact. This was the origin of the colour purple. “Y’see, in ancient times it was very difficult to make purple coloured garments. In those days there were no artificial dyes. It was natural dyeing or nothing. So where did the colour purple come from? It came from a rare mollusc found in the Mediterranean Sea. Some were harvested at Essaouira on the coast of Morocco, near Casablanca. The mollusc was also located on the north coast of Lebanon, near Tyre. To get these molluscs the fishermen had to dive to prodigious depths, holding their breath. There was no scuba gear in those days. Many men died from exhaustion, from drowning or they were eaten by sharks. The divers collected the particular Murex and Purpura whelks that produce a liquid in their anal gland which converts into a powerful purple dye when it is exposed to sunlight! And that’s where the colour purple came from! It was extremely difficult to collect the little shellfish, dangerous to dive for and not that easy to make the dye as it is not water-soluble. This made the whole process of producing a permanent bright purple dye extremely expensive. That’s why only very wealthy citizens wore garments with a purple striped edge. They were showing off to everyone how wealthy they were. In time, totally purple clothing became associated with royalty, hence the colour’s name ‘royal purple’. During the Byzantine Empire purple garments were reserved for the Imperial Roman family! Anyone wearing a purple garment who wasn’t entitled to wear it was put to death for showing disrespect. When I finished this true story I told the students they would never, ever forget what I had just told them. They wouldn’t have to memorise anything. They now just knew it. Since that time over 30 years ago I have met many former students who did that history course with me. Invariably they mention how they still remember facts from ‘the colour purple’ story 81 page 81 www.ebookofknowledge.com 82 I told them that day. They also confirm how relatively easy it was for them to complete the course, pass the exams, and how much they learned. Why Did They Learn The Stuff I Taught So Easily? Answer: The students were at first devastated about what they’d got themselves into by signing on for my course. When I told them they didn’t have to remember arcane facts they began to feel easier about it. By assuring them they’d remember simply by attending my lectures and reading the course material, without consciously committing any of it to memory they felt more confident. By removing their fears, their negative anticipation, they were free to become excited about what they would learn. Those students became enthusiastically excited about the course! Just as I was excited about teaching it. My excitement rubbed off on them and their excitement rubbed off on me. How symbiotic. The fact that it was far easier to remember things than they had imagined, meant their excitement grew the more they were exposed to the knowledge. This in turn led to deeper understanding and incredibly long retention. Lifelong, in fact. Lesson 15: The more you connect facts with other associated facts or ideas, the more easily you will remember them, and for the rest of your life. Another very powerful way to remember things you read is to read them aloud! That is, don’t read them silently to yourself. Read them so you can hear yourself as you read. The reading doesn’t have to be noisy, just loud enough so you hear your voice as you read. This works because you are taking in information through your ears as well as your eyes. What’s more, the brain is giving your vocal chords and mouth subconscious instructions to speak the words. It’s like a three-shovel attack on loading up your memory. You don’t need to read everything aloud, just the material you want to remember for some important purpose, like winning a quiz contest, or passing an exam. “Do these techniques work?” do I hear you ask. Absolutely. I can confidently assure you because I use the same methods myself, and I have done for over 40 years. I came across these remembering techniques without knowing at the time how incredibly useful they were. Now I understand why they work. Now, so do you! As primary school students, most children are taught to recite things, and read aloud passages from books, usually in class with their fellow students as their audience. As children progress through school this ‘child-like learning tool’ is jettisoned, making students think because they’re older and wiser they don’t need such elementary learning techniques. Teachers even encourage this attitude. I think the kids lose something incredibly valuable: their three-pronged remembering technique. The teachers are correct, of course, in that children are able to read faster when they read silently. Children who still ‘mouth the words’ as they read usually become slow readers. This problem then has to be addressed as a handicap which is holding back their reading progress. 82 page 82 www.ebookofknowledge.com 83 Paradoxically, one of the best memory tools (reading aloud) is dropped so children can progress in other areas of their education. But, other methods of remembering stuff are nowhere near as effective as what you’ve learned from me so far. The Price We Pay For Speed Reading Is Too High! We can miss hearing the sounds of words. English is a beautifully colourful, sonorous language. Prove it to yourself by reading these lines aloud. Yes, aloud. So you HEAR the words. I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Daffodils, by William Wordsworth Glory be to God for dappled things For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow For rose-moles all in stipple upon the trout that swim; Pied Beauty, by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Because we don’t always hear words we don’t appreciate how melodious they might sound when spoken. We constantly deny ourselves that pleasure. This also severely limits your ‘working vocabulary’ of words. You also lose the benefit of memory training. Consequently, you can’t use words in speech which aren’t locked into your memory. When you read aloud you are much more likely to remember what you’ve read, you’ll remember all the details, not just the big lumps that jump out at you when you read silently. Advertisers know this when they get you to sing along with the words of the jingle. In my youth it was “You’ll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.” Do you remember: “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing, in Perfect Harmony.” This was a pop song which originated as an advertising jingle, produced by Billy Davis and sung by the Hillside Singers, for Coca-Cola. It featured as a TV commercial in 1971. The Hillside Singers’ version was released as a successful single the same year. It reached #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #5 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart. The New Seekers also had a hit with the song around the same time. Do you see how powerful speaking, reciting or singing aloud can be? 83 page 83 www.ebookofknowledge.com 84 Most people have a vocabulary that is far greater than the one they use every day. So they know many more words than they use when they speak and even when they write! They intentionally don’t use their extensive vocabulary in everyday discourse because they don’t want to be seen showing off their knowledge. That’s called dumbing down. Many more times, however, they don’t use a lot of the words they know because they simply don’t know how to pronounce them. When you read a word like façade, or brioche, or rabbinical, and you’re not sure how to pronounce it, click here: It speaks the correct pronunciation. www.thefreedictionary.com Until you hear these beautiful-sounding words coming from your own mouth you won’t appreciate how melodious they are. And if you can’t say them properly you’ll not speak them. Thus, your vocabulary diminishes. Why I Tell Stories To Lock Facts Into People’s Brains By now you must be wondering how I came across this method of reading aloud as a means to improving memory and speech! And telling stories to lock facts into our brains. Well, a lecturer at the university where I taught once asked me if I would mind him sitting in on one of my lectures. He explained how he’d heard from some students who’d taken my course that I was “an exciting lecturer” and they looked forward to attending my lectures. Some of them even invited their friends who weren’t even taking my course to attend with them. Anyway, I told this lecturer he was most welcome to attend. (He felt he needed to ask if I minded because most lecturers are almost paranoid about other staff attending their lectures. They think they’re being spied upon, scrutinised or about to be criticised for some reason. Or other people will steal their ideas. So they dislike peer-group observers intensely.) On the other hand, I enjoy speaking to any audience, no matter who they are. The bigger the better. I’d be honoured if the Vice Chancellor dropped in to observe me in action. Thus, I began to wonder what was different about my lectures. What made them so interesting and exciting and memorable? Certainly I was confident I knew the material I was teaching. Didn’t everyone? No. Most lecturers do know their subject, but only a few think seriously about how to deliver that knowledge. They sincerely believe it is their responsibility only to deliver it. How it’s delivered, and whether it’s received by the audience isn’t their worry. They say “It’s the students’ concern to remember, not the lecturer’s.” 84 page 84 www.ebookofknowledge.com 85 This attitude, of course, assumes that students will listen intently no matter how interesting or boring the subject matter may be. The students will get the knowledge no matter how badly the lecturer delivers it. These poor quality teachers don’t care how the students feel when they sit in the lecture theatre. They believe they’re being paid to drop a load. Like delivery truck drivers. I knew the day I decided to be a lecturer exactly how I wanted to teach history, or any other subject I felt confident to teach. I had studied history because I loved it, so I could sit through history lectures by boring lecturers without losing interest. Instead of being bored I either read my history text while the lecturer droned on boringly, or I analysed the lecturer’s style. I wanted to know what he or she was doing wrong. Why was the lecture boring, why weren’t students listening when the topic itself was fascinating? How could it be done better? After studying for many years, gaining my graduate qualifications and listening to countless lectures in the process, and not just history lectures, I had many ideas on how to improve the learning process. What you’ve just read has been well thought out, tested on thousands of students in hundreds of lecture theatres. I also take my own medicine. These techniques I’ve shared with you are the same ones I’ve used to win dozens of general knowledge quizzes, pub quiz shows, sponsors’ fine products, travel prizes, cruises, clothes, cars and freezer loads of food. I’ve lost track of the stuff I’ve won. However, the biggest test of all for my technique was winning the Australian Mastermind competition 1980 on nationwide TV. I knew I was up against the best brains in the country. And I won. Now, do you believe my technique works? Try it. Use it. Win with it. The End. Enjoy the other ebooks I’m associated with. Click my website: www.ebookofKnowledge.com There’s a book on how to get $5 bargain flights. What you need to know about franchising. There are new titles being added almost every week.  85 page 85