Brent Sampson: CEO of Book Publishing & Marketing Firm OutskirtsPress.com

Every year Inc. Magazine recognizes the 5000 fastest growing private companies in America.  Last month they published their findings. Outskirts Press was ranked #1266. Getting on the list once is hard enough – the majority of companies don’t appear on the list twice.  Well, actually, most companies don’t appear on the list even once, but that’s a different story.

Lists such as these average a company’s growth percentage across a number of years. What makes this interesting is that a company’s  annual revenue can actually increase year after year and at the same time, their overall average growth percentage will naturally decline.  This is what happened at my company, Outskirts Press.   2009 revenue was the highest it has ever been but the exponential leap in revenue over previous years was smaller. Not surprising really when an average company is considered successful if it increases revenue by 10% year over year and companies appearing on the Inc 500 in 2010 have average revenue increases between 20,000% (#1 Ambit Energy) and 600% (#500 AtTask). 

20,000% ?!? How is that even possible, you may ask.  Well, a growth percentage like this is usually the combination of 2 things:

1) A new company that barely qualifies for the Inc 5000′s minimum revenue threshold in the first year, and
2) Receives an infusion of cash from investor(s), bank(s), or venture capitalist(s) in the remaining years.

This is what happened for Ambit, which earned $1.6 million in 2006 (their first year in business) and then received substantial investments which brought their 2009 annual revenue to $325 million. In fact, their whole business model is based upon finding rich people to invest in their company.  Whether or not that is a sustainable business model is a topic for a later day.

But this is what makes repeating an appearance on the Inc 5000 list so difficult.  It’s difficult to continue inticing investors into giving you money. Eventually those investors are going to expect companies to earn it.   A company must continue growing at exponential rates either by receiving money or earning it.

In fact, if you look at this year’s Inc. 500 list in the September 2010 issue of Inc. Magazine, you have to scan all the way down to #18 to find a company that was on the list previously.  Of the 500 companies listed, only 101 appeared on the list previously — 20%.  These are probably the companies that are actually making money from customers, rather than having money handed to them by investors.   I wonder what the Inc. 500 would look like if these companies were ranked according to the actual amount of money they earned from their customers, and not from their investors…

But that’s a topic I’ve spoken about in the past, so I won’t dwell on it much here, although I might dwell on it more next time.

Recently I made a change to this blog’s main title. For those of you reading since the beginning, you may realize how much thought I put into the title of the blog to begin with, since the subject of “titling your blog” was one that stretched across a number of postings at the beginning of this year.  In short, blog titles (not to be confused with posting titles) are extremely important for search engine optimization purposes.

Up until very recently, the “title” of my blog for the past year or so has been:  Brent Sampson: CEO of Inc. 500 Self Publishing Company OutskirtsPress.com. This accomplished a couple of things: It introduced me and my role/position; it identified the name and URL of our company; and it provided some promotion of its own, using other recognized keywords (Inc. 500, for instance). 

Two things occurred that led to the change. For one, Outskirts Press broadened its scope and its customer base with the launch of the Version 4 website, which is a subject I’ve been blogging about quite a bit recently, so I won’t cover it much here. But the long and short of it is that we are now offering book marketing services to writers on an a la carte basis regardless of where they publish. As a result, the new name became “Brent Sampson: CEO of Self Publishing & Book Marketing Company OutskirtsPress.com” to define this wider vision and incorporate perhaps a more applicable keyword phrase into the title (book marketing).

Secondly, came the change to our Inc Magazine listing. August was an exciting month because Outskirts Press won two different honors for fastest-growing private company, one from the Denver Business Journal indentifying us as the #10 fastest growing private company in the small-to-medium category; and the other from Inc. Magazine, which identified us as a Fast 5000 company–not that the Inc. Fast 5000 is anything to sneeze at, as 4999 other honorees will attest. 

 The “fastest growing” lists are interesting because, due to the way they are calculated, your company can actually increase its revenue year after year and still decrease its growth percentage.  But that is a subject for a future post.

Speaking of awards,  Outskirts Press has completed its application for the 2010 Inc. Magazine Fast 500 Awards. Last year we placed #268 on the list with a three-year revenue growth of 850.5%.  The Inc. Fast 500 recognizes the 500 fastest-growing private companies in America.

As you consider whether or not your company should apply, there are some eligibility requirements:  In order for companies to be eligible, your 2006 revenue needed to be at least $100,000 and your 2009 revenue needed to be at least $2 million.  There is a $100 application fee, and the application (including revenue verification) takes a little bit of time.  You can apply at the Inc. website.

It’s unclear whether your customers will truly consider your Inc. 500 standing very important because, like most things, importance is connected with awareness, and the Inc. 500 list is marketed to — in other words, “in front of” — other business owners and entrepreneurs more so than it is “in front of” your customers — unless your customers ARE entrepreneurs, of course.

I mentioned in a previous post that writing and publishing a book is a great way for business owners or entrepreneurs to establish expertise and market a company, so in that respect, our specific Inc. 500 ranking among other fast-growing companies might be important to some potential new writers.   But like all awards you might win, what becomes more important is what you do with the recognition once you achieve it  — how you market that success to your potential customers. And I will discuss that more as we continue the examination of how marketing a book is similar in many ways to marketing a company…