Should you expect to win every time?

“You can’t expect to win every time” is what Cyn said to me today.   Why should she be saying that to me?   Well in December I entered the Local Business Accelerator Competition which was backed by 500 newspapers up and down the country, as well as Prime Minister David Cameron.

The prize was a bespoke advertising campaign and free help from some mentors.   The local finalists had to attend a Dragons Den-style meeting where they got to pitch their company.

Numenko was one of these local finalists.   We attended the meeting and felt we had held our own against the Dragons who consisted of Richard Cooper Director of ASA Business Development & Quality Management Systems, Annette White Sales and Marketing Director of PC Help Centre and David Tooley, Business Editor.

Unfortunately we were informed today that we were not selected.   Ahh! Shame!  I hear you cry.   Thank you for your sympathy.   We do get some free mentoring advice from Richard and Annette so there is a silver lining to every cloud.

The two winners were Clearhead Media and Printonthat.   Well done to them.

Now around the same time I entered for this competition I wrote to the Biz Bureau page of the Daily Mirror, a column where you can write in for expert help with your business.   Sometimes they pick one of the businesses that write in and do a small story on it.

Well quess who got picked?   You got it in one.   In today’s issue of the Daily Mirror there is a picture of some grinning loony (me) sitting with a Numenko game.

So, back to the heading of this blog.   Should you expect to win every time?   My answer is YES.   My argument is simple, why enter a competition if you don’t expect to win?

I invented a numbers game and so I know the law of averages says that you can’t win every time, and I know that Cyn was just trying to cheer me up, and says that when you enter a competition you “hope” to win and not necessarily “expect” to win.

Do you have any opinions on this point?

As a postscript I will mention that I did send David Cameron a Numenko game sometime last year, and got a nice reply from his office.   You would have thought that he might have put a good word in for us!

As a post postscript I also sent games to HM The Queen, Loose Women cast, Chris Evans and Rachel Riley.   I got replies and thank you notes from HM The Queen and the Prime Minister but nothing from the others.   Not sure what to think of that.