Back in the early part of 2018, a Merch by Amazon (MBA) business group I am a member of ran a competition. The award for the contest was a seat at Grant Cardone’s 10X Growth Conference 2 in Las Vegas.
Anthony Busciglio of JerseyMerch.com was giving away an expensive ticket to this conference because his business partner Kevin was going to be out of the country and unable to attend.
Anthony decided to give the uncommitted ticket to the person that came up with the best “10X” inspired t-shirt design. For the uninitiated, “10X” refers to Grant Cardone’s bestselling book “The 10X Rule.” I won that conference ticket and I am going to share how you can win similar competitions.
Getting In To The Community
I joined the Jersey Merch community in the Fall of 2017. I had originally heard about Merch by Amazon during the summer of that year and it sounded like an amazing opportunity. After searching for podcasts, I stumbled across the Jersey Merch podcast. They had gotten involved in Merch much earlier that year and I spent hours listening to all their previous iTunes episodes. I joined their Facebook group because I wanted to learn more about the platform and I really liked the content they were putting out.
When Anthony announced there was a contest that would be a occurring, I saw a golden opportunity. First and foremost, it was an opportunity to meet a leader in this space. While Anthony and his crew were new to MBA compared to some others, they still were early enough to market with content that made their brand well known in the circles that follow print-on-demand entrepreneurship.
My second reason for entering this contest was that going to a conference like 10X was an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and be exposed to motivation like I have never experienced. I will cover in greater depth in part 2 of this series what the conference itself was like. Bottom line, this was an amazing to networking opportunity if I could win the competition, so I was determined to do so.
Methodology to Winning
When I heard about the contest, my wheels immediately started spinning. The basics were that we had to come up with a t-shirt themed around 10X and that Anthony would try to get that shirt into the hands of Mr. Grant Cardone.
What I thought about, and what you should think about as well if you’re trying to win a competition, is what type of messaging would appeal to the sponsors? Anthony and Kevin did great videos. While they started heavy with audio podcasts, it was clear that they were shifting more towards video content. The other thing about their brand which stood out was that they loved to joke around and humor was a natural part of their content. I felt if I was going to stand out from the rest, I needed to make sure I incorporated those two elements.
The day the contest was announced, I was mulling over my ideas when my girlfriend Lauren got home. I told her about the contest and then said to her, point blank, “I’m going to win this thing”. She was encouraging, but probably thought I was full of it.
After dinner, I set out to start making a video. By this point in time, I already came up with a design. It was a simple design; a nice design, but not anything earth shattering. I knew that my presentation of the product was going to be more important than the aesthetics. In fact, when I won the contest, Anthony even said that there were many great designs, but the video is what set me above and beyond others.
In creating the video, I went back to the Jersey Merch videos to snag some clips of Anthony and Kevin talking about Grant Cardone. I thought making the sponsors of this contest the stars of the video certainly wouldn’t hurt my chances of being selected. I should mention at this point that I am not some Audio Visual genius. I have no formal training in video production. I just stumbled through this process with the program Camtasia and looked up how-to videos on YouTube as needed. After I had some clips of Anthony and Kevin, I decided to mix in some Grant Cardone stuff to juxtapose with what Anthony had said on his webcast.
Mixed in to this video collage was my 10X design shirt, which I also edited with the Jersey Merch digital editing product, Merchinator. I made sure that I prominently displayed that point in the video. It’s a fantastic tool, so it was easy to highlight.
The video that won my ticket
“And the Winner is…”
Again, if you want to win a competition, you need to consider what might win the sponsors over. I don’t think plugging their product by itself would have made the difference, but instead showing how you use their product to add value makes a world of difference. It’s the difference between being a suck up and being a creative product evangelist. The tactic worked.
Announcing I Had Won the Contest
I was stoked when Anthony told me I had won the competition. I knew right from the beginning that I was going to do this and that I was going to win it. Maybe that was the biggest part of the secret sauce. In a part 2 of this article, I’ll talk about Vegas, the conference, and the networking I did there.
How to Win Business Contests
What I will leave you with is a few tips on how to win a business competition.
- Understand the expectations, rules, and parameters. If you overlook this part, you’re done before you even get started.
- Research the brand and sponsors that are judging the contest. You need to have an idea of what they will want and like.
- Who is your competition and how will you stand out? For me, I knew that I was not the best graphic designer by a long shot. I knew that making a humorous video would set me apart from the pack and it was unlikely anyone else would think to take that extra step.
- Believe in yourself. You have to see yourself winning in order to execute a winning plan.
To read part of two of this story and my adventures in Vegas, please click here.
Tickets are now available for the 2021 10X Growth Conference… click here to get yours
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