Category: Brent Sampson

Brent Sampson

Changing email addresses to combat spam

I’ve had the same personal email address at Outskirts Press since I started this company in 2002.  Like most entrepreneurs/founders, I was wearing “multiple hats” and doing multiple tasks in the early days, so while I had different email addresses for different departments (information, production, marketing, etc.), my own personal “Brent Sampson” email address at Outskirts Press has been the same for over 10 years.  As Outskirts Press grew exponentially, and as Outskirts Press added more people to assist with the hundreds, and then thousands, of authors “coming through our doors,” my email box exploded — sometimes literally, with the Outlook .pst file often becoming so big it crashed seemingly all the time, even with frequent archiving.   More people and more Outskirts Press email addresses were added to spread out the volume, but the fact remained that once people had my email address, they rarely used anyone else’s.

Spam is a lot like that. Once your email address is on some spam lists, it becomes nearly impossible to fight the deluge.  Spam/bulk filters and “rules” can only do so much.  In the early years of Outskirts Press, I was extremely prudent about keeping my email address off of spam lists, since I knew my normal, REAL email volume was bad enough.  To keep my email address from spam lists, I never used it when signing up for services/information over the Internet — I had a different email address specifically for that purpose.

However, over the past year, I became less concerned with protecting my personal Outskirts Press email address from spam, probably because my REAL work related email was finally becoming manageable due to aggressive delegation of responsibilities that I had held on to for so long.  In retrospect, I’m not sure why one was related to the other (perhaps subconsciously, I MISSED crashing my Outlook .pst file due to volume).  But, sadly, it only takes one or two “submit your email address here” missteps to lose control when those sites seemingly add your email address to other lists and then others still until you suddenly find yourself receiving hundreds and thousands of emails with subject matters as ridiculous and diverse as…

  • 2 easy steps to get 1500 in less than an hour
  • Just like your neighbors (receive cash back on your home Monday)
  • Urgent personal matter regarding your credit rating
  • Serious complications associated with mesh implant
  • Cheap Auto Coverage
  • Summer is here get fit with Dr oz
  • How to save your health, Brent Sampson
  • We have just what Dad wants and for only $19.99
  • Order modern medicaments for better sex. Cheaper than offline!
  • You shouldn’t go another day withoutb
  • MUST SEE- Dr Oz Exposes the new diet breakthrough
  • Unsecured Business Loans for Every Business Owner with Any Credit Score
  • Explore the Possibilities With Beautiful Chinese Women
  • Your Service Order Request: Home Warranty Confirmation
  • You Are Risking A Lot Here by not activating your policy- extended one more day
  • Home Security Camera Kits
  • Grab trusty medicaments against premature ejaculation. Works really fast!
  • Last Chance: Get 20% off your order + Free Shipping
  • Receive FREE Bible verses daily.
  • 2013 Medicare Plans
  • Take the guesswork out of Father’s Day
  • Secure your loan application in 7 minutes
  • Your pain can be quickly and effectively reduced today by Anatabloc
  • Log in details enclosed…Hot brides from Russia
  • Get the money you need
  • Discover this joint pain secret
  • Home Depot and Sears new window quotes.
  • Try the electronic cigarette on us!

… and that’s just from THIS MORNING!

Spam, your days of bombarding my personal Outskirts Press email box are coming to an end!  Over the next week I will be phasing out my Brent Sampson email address that I’ve had since 2002 and I will create a new one.   Doing so comes with some necessary logistic steps and some potential downsides, which I’ve listed below, but in this “war on spam” I have to consider that acceptable collateral damage. Here are the steps and downsides I anticipate:

1. Notify the Outskirts Press board, our executive Vice President, and the department heads at Outskirts Press that I’m changing my email address to something else. They, in turn, will disseminate that contact information to others in their respective departments.

2. Notify personal contacts like family and close friends of my change of email address.

3. Change the Outskirts Press system notices to my new email address (our system notifies me automatically of some statistics and milestones related to our company, so I’d still like to receive those emails).

4. Put an auto-responder on the “old” Brent Sampson email address that is “spam/robot” proof — this means, unfortunately, that it cannot mention my new email address within the body of the auto-response.

5. Realize (and come to grips with the fact) that much of the contact I currently enjoy with our published author-base may cease or be delayed. This downside is what has prevented me from changing my email address for so long. I enjoy hearing from our authors. Many of the authors who write to me have been with Outskirts Press for a long time, and I consider many of them friends.  The vast majority of emails I receive from authors are positive, and when they’re talking about something I love (like my company), it fills me with joy and pride to read what they have to say. I’ll miss that.  Once in a while an email I receive from an author is negative, and when they’re talking about something I love (like my company), it breaks my heart; and I do everything I can to a) address their concern in a reasonable way, and b) prevent the issue from becoming a problem in the future whenever possible.   But, the fact of the matter is that someone else now handles all those glowing author testimonials (new ones are added daily) and someone else now handles client concerns.    And that means it’s time to make this change.

Dr. Oz, I’ve seen the last of you and your diet miracles. Good riddance.

Brent Sampson, ceo

Longevity in business (and self-publishing)

A few posts ago I discussed the second annual “Share the Love” video contest that Outskirts Press held for our published authors on Facebook. This month we have been collecting submissions from our Facebook fans for our 3rd annual Fandemonium Facebook Anthology.  In May, we will announce the winner of the 3rd annual Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award. This summer we will find out whether or not Outskirts Press is awarded its 5th placement in a row on the Inc. 500/5000 list of fastest-growing companies. And in October, we officially celebrate our 10-year anniversary.

All this goes to show that there are many ways other than “anniversaries” you as a business owner can use to celebrate longevity in your respective industries. And communicating longevity is important, because longevity speaks volumes to potential clients, customers, and consumers; deep down most people understand that a business which has succeeded for a long time in this dog-eat-dog world is a company they can have confidence working with.

Yes, there are always exceptions to prove the rule, such as the case of Vantage Press, a sort-of-competitor of ours that “ceased business operations” at the end of 2012 after a long and storied history. Sadly, when they closed, their authors were left in something of a lurch – with many authors not receiving royalties due to them and authors in the middle of the publishing pipeline being left out to dry without refund.   I’m an author myself, as well as a business owner, so I empathize with all sides involved. No company plans to fail, but it’s not the customer’s responsibility or obligation to bear the brunt of that failure if it happens. Being prepared for that possibility is the responsibility of the executives at every company.  That’s why, at Outskirts Press, we have a cash-flush savings account devoted solely for our authors exclusively for this purpose, so that all outstanding royalties would still be paid to them and any remaining authors in the pipeline would receive refunds.

Of course, all business owners work extremely hard to ensure it doesn’t come to that.  Every day we  share a new comment from one of our authors and many of our authors voice the same common sentiment — that they feel “lucky” to have discovered Outskirts Press. That is always gratifying to read, and what may feel like “luck” to them is the result of a lot of preparation and hard work from all of us at Outskirts Press.  Like most successful companies, we are prepared for the worst, but plan for (and anticipate) the best.

And speaking of best, over the course of the next few posts, I’ll write more about the 3rd annual Fandemonium Anthology, the 3rd annual Best Book of the Year awards, the 5th placement (hopefully) on the Inc. 500/5000 list, and our 10-year anniversary.

Brent Sampson, ceo

Brent Sampson unplugged

I’ve been on the Internet since the fall of 1991. This was before webpages, when chat rooms were calls “MUDs” and Yahoo Groups were called “Usenet.” I don’t think I’ve gone a week since without “logging-in” at least once.  That’s over two decades of constant online activity.  I could use a break. Some would even argue I NEEDED a break.  So this spring when our son had a two-week break (thank you, Douglas County School District), I decided to “unplug.”   Going cold turkey was difficult. But, going to a foreign country helped when the “shakes” got too bad.

Now, I’m back, but the break was great. It helped me see that the structure and people we’ve put into place at Outskirts Press operate just fine without me. That’s great to see.  Come to think of it, I just may unplug more frequently now…

Brent Sampson, ceo

Guy Kawasaki Step 5 to Enchantment

Okay, back to the Guy Kawasaki speech at  the not-so-recent Inc. 500/5000 conference I attended at the beginning of October. Guy offered an informative session about cultivating and maintaining “enchantment” in your customers or clients. I am (and have been for 2 months) in the middle of summarizing those points and discussing how they are applicable for us at Outskirts Press so perhaps they can also help you apply the information to your own entrepreneurial efforts (starting a business, running a company or yes, even marketing a published book).  And, in the meantime, you should get Guy’s book, “Enchantment” for the total skinny.

Step 5 is to overcome resistance.

The easiest way to overcome a potential customer’s resistance to use your service or product is to provide social evidence that other people are using it and enjoying it– that it is helping other people and/or solving their problems. Facebook is a great way to provide social proof or “likeability.” In fact, Facebook has a “like” button for exactly this purpose.  At the time of my writing this (January 8, 2013), Outskirts Press has nearly 8,000 “likes” on our Facebook page (7,943, to be precise, but who’s counting?).   When authors visit our Facebook page, they are greeted by a friendly, helpful, upbeat community comprised of their peers, many of whom have successfully published with Outskirts Press and are excited with their high-quality book!  That is social evidence in a nutshell.

But don’t just rely upon Facebook. Customer testimonials are tried and true, and offer compelling social evidence that other, real people, are using your product and service with great results.  Weight loss products and services have been using this tactic for years, although they lose a lot of their credibility when they have that little disclaimer at the bottom stating “Results are not typical.”   Why not share lots and lots of typical comments instead?

That’s what we do with our author testimonials. We have been publicly sharing two new author testimonials each week for as long as I can remember on the testimonials page of our website, and to be frank, our testimonials are “backing up,” which means two per week isn’t frequent enough.  So starting in January, we are increasing that output to four new author testimonials every week.  Sharing the successes of others with your new potential clients or customers is a great way to overcome their resistance, and a great way to enchant them.

 

Brent Sampson, ceo, self publishing

A Self-Publishing Holiday Retrospective 2006-2012

In the days since Christmas I have been showing Outskirts Press holiday party pictures from the past. I began with our most recent 2012 holiday picture on Christmas and yesterday showed the picture from the 2007 holiday lunch. That brings us to today, New Year’s Eve, and to our very first holiday picture, taken way back in 2006. Yes, as I mentioned yesterday, there are some familiar faces: Tony, Shirley, Jeanine, Brent, Ellen, Lora, and Lynn.

Of course, attending a holiday party has very little to do with the talents and efforts all of us at Outskirts Press bring to our authors every day. We have so many additional people who help our authors (over 100), many of whom are not in any of these pictures and all of whom contribute just as much as those who have been shown and mentioned over the past few days.  The list is too long to include everyone, so just know that from Wendy to Cheri to Heidi to Jodee to Tina, Elise and Patrick; from Lisa to Jennifer, Jackie, Elizabeth, Heather, and everyone else, Outskirts Press authors are in very good hands.

So to all of you who have contributed your skills to seeing our Outskirts Press authors succeed and to seeing our self-publishing company excel, I thank you, and wish you and your family a happy holiday and a Happy New Year.  And to our authors, past, present, and future, I also wish you a Happy New Year. Let’s all continue to accomplish great things in 2013!

best self publishing, Brent Sampson, ceo

A Self-Publishing Holiday Retrospective 2010-2012

On Christmas I posted our annual holiday luncheon picture, and thus began this week-long retrospective comparing the holiday party pictures of previous years to highlight certain accomplishments and people of Outskirts Press. We compared the 2011 picture yesterday, and today we’ll look at the 2010 picture:

You’ll immediately recognize some familiar faces in this photograph, the people who were in both the 2012 and 2011 pictures: Back Row: Cindy, Lora, Donna, Patrick, Ellen, Shirley, Brent. Front Row: Jeanine, Lynn, Tony.

You will also recognize two faces represented in one, but not both, of the previous pictures, Jodee and Caroline (sans Luke).

best self publishing, Brent Sampson, ceo

A Self Publishing Holiday Retrospective 2011-2012

Yesterday I posted our annual Outskirts Press self-publishing holiday picture for 2012, which is an annual photograph we have taken since 2006.  Since the self-publishing industry changes so fast, sometimes it is nice to take a look back at previous years and see what accomplishments or milestones we reached during those years and what has changed.

In doing so, an interesting and reassuring fact reveals itself, and it is something our stable of successful authors value and is part of what keeps them coming back to Outskirts Press book after book: The more things change, the more they stay the same.  We are still the highest-quality full-service self-publishing service provider, still privately owned, and still family owned.

Every year we have new folks joining us for our holiday party and as we go around the table and “introduce” ourselves, we also each stated how long we have been performing services for Outskirts Press and its authors. Seven, eight, and nine years were not uncommon lengths of time for some of the people in this photograph. That experience speaks for itself, and helps explain why Outskirts Press continues to be the only self-publishing company that appears on the Inc. 5000 list year after year (four years and counting).

With every year, we reach and exceed several milestones, accomplishments that are not clear simply by comparing the 2011 Holiday Photograph with the 2012 image I posted yesterday. Accomplishments like: Publishing our 10,000 book, launching our Facebook self-publishing achievements, donating a total in excess of $20,000 to the Colorado Humanities, revealing our 2nd annual Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year, and much more.

What is clear by comparing these pictures is that we have experience in our corner, as you will see many of the same people year after year, a testament to their experience and joy in helping self-publishing authors reach their goals: Between 2012 and 2011 the following people joined us for both parties: Back Row: Shirley, Ellen, Patrick, Donna, Cindy, Tony, and Brent. Front Row: Jeanine, Lora, and Lynn.  The four women present in this photograph but not in 2012 (Elise, Deni, Jenny, and Lonni) are still helping authors, too, but were simply not in attendance for our holiday luncheon in 2012 for various reasons.

So who were those new faces in the 2012 picture? Rob is a new Personal Marketing Assistant. Lisa is also a new Personal Marketing Assistant. Caroline (holding Luke) has been a book designer for a number of years but was not at the 2011 Holiday luncheon. Elena is a new Publishing Consultant. Christine joined us from the Colorado Humanities, where we have been sponsor/partners for the Colorado Book Awards for a number of years. And Jodee has been in the Author Services (publishing consultant) department for a number of years but was not at the 2011 lunch. Of course, you can see both Jodee and Caroline in the summer picnic pictures I’ve posted previously…

We’ll compare the 2010 holiday picture with this 2011 photograph tomorrow…

 

Brent Sampson, ceo

Merry Christmas from Outskirts Press

I realize the politically correct term is “Happy Holidays” and that’s the phrase we use in more general channels, like on our OP blog and Facebook page, since we work with authors from all different religious affiliations, but since this is my blog, and since my family celebrates Christmas, I get to also wish everyone a Merry Christmas.  Here’s a recent picture from our 2012 Holiday Party. Every year I also like to show the holiday pictures from the past years, and I will do that in the coming days leading into the new year along with summaries of the Outskirts Press accomplishments and/or milestones from each of those calendar years.

But in the meantime, Merry Christmas (and Happy Holidays):

Back row: Tony, Rob, Donna, Patrick, Lisa, Lora, Cindy, Caroline (and Luke),  Shirley, Elena, Christine (from the Colorado Humanities)
Front row: Brent, Jeanine, Ellen, Lynn, Jodee
Apple, Brent Sampson

Guy Kawasaki Step 3 to Enchantment

My favorite presenter at the recent Inc. 500/5000 conference was Guy Kawasaki, who offered an informative session about cultivating and maintaining “enchantment” in your customers or clients, so perhaps this series of posts in which I summarize those points and discuss how they are applicable for us at Outskirts Press will also help you apply the information to your own entrepreneurial efforts (starting a business, running a company or yes, even marketing a published book).  And, in the meantime, you should get Guy’s book, “Enchantment” for the total skinny.

Step 3 is to offer a compelling product or service.

According to Guy, the first quality of a great product or service is that it is deep. Great products or services are also intelligent, complete, empowering, and elegant.  Of course, being an “Apple Guy” (ah, that was humorous), Guy uses the iPhone as the perfect example. In fact, he uses just about any Apple product as an example, and he’s right. Apple is on its way to becoming the first company valued at over a trillion dollars because it delivers upon Step #3 so well.  Look at your product or service. Is it deep?  Is it intelligent, complete, empowering, and elegant?

Our self-publishing services at Outskirts Press deliver upon 80% of these five traits.  Our services are deep in the breadth of options we offer, from ghostwriting, to custom interior design, to full-color illustrations; and we offer more marketing services than anyone else, ranging from the practical (press release writing) to the silly (custom shoes featuring your book cover). Yes, “deep” is something we offer in spades.

This list of options also makes our services intelligent and complete, and there’s nothing quite as empowering as self-publishing a book and then watching it succeed.  Where we admittedly fall short is with our elegance.  There are services that offer DIY (do it yourself) self-publishing in a more elegant manner than we do, usually through the use of computers and algorithms that treat each of their books and authors like a series of zeros and ones (assembly language for an assembly line of books). In other words, their front-end systems and websites are elegantly designed, programmed with efficiency, and can produce thousands of books that look and feel exactly the same.  Yes, that can be misconceived as elegant, and when compared with DIY services such as those, our human touch can seem particularly inelegant because, well, human beings often lack elegance.  But what inelegant human beings bring to the publishing of your book is something that cannot be replaced by a computer, no matter how elegant it seems, no matter how short and concise the domain name is, and no matter how “fast” the computer can format a book and spit it out to the masses.

At Outskirts Press, we don’t “spit” out thousands of books a day like our competitors and their elegant websites.  Instead, we publish high-quality books for high-quality writers with hands-on human interaction from high-quality book professionals.  It’s not always elegant. In fact, sometimes it is downright frustrating for us and for our authors.  But anything worth doing is worth doing right, and I’d be willing to bet Michelangelo experienced moments of frustration as he painted the Sistine Chapel…

You know what? That is one elegant looking ceiling.

Apple, Brent Sampson, ceo

Guy Kawasaki Step 1 to Enchantment

When I attended the Inc. 500/5000 conference last month my favorite presenter was Guy Kawasaki, who (along with being incredibly witty) offered an informative session about cultivating and maintaining “enchantment” in your customers or clients (or in our case at Outskirts Press, authors).  A month later, I continue to find his presentation to be just as applicable for the entrepreneurs sitting in that huge conference hall as it is for us at Outskirts Press, and as it most likely is for published authors attempting to build their author platform and sell more books.

To that end, over the next few weeks I will summarize each of the steps Guy discussed, along with how it is applicable to our self-publishing company, Outskirts Press, and perhaps it will also help you apply the information to your own entrepreneurial efforts (starting a business, running a company or yes, even marketing a published book).  And, in the meantime, you should get Guy’s book, “Enchantment” for the total skinny.

Step 1 is to achieve likability.

According to Guy Kawasaki wisdom, one achieves likability by accepting others and, most importantly, “defaulting to yes” as Guy says.  This is one of the cornerstones of what I try to instill in our author support folks at Outskirts Press, but – to be honest – it is more difficult in practice than it sounds.   We have a pretty systematic approach to custom publishing (which I realize sounds like an oxymoron), so finding creative ways to say “Yes” when the obvious answer is “No” can be challenging. Nevertheless, Guy encourages everyone to enter into a conversation or meeting or interaction with this one single thought: “How can I help this person I’m speaking with?  How can I assist this company I am meeting with? How can I say ‘Yes’ to them?”  And in all instances, regardless of what the other person says or does, try to find a way to say, “Yes, I can help you do that.”

For us, at Outskirts Press, I have long been trying to communicate internally the concept of the words/concept, “You’re right.”  Beginning any conversation or email correspondence with those words is much the same as Guy’s “Yes” ideology.   It’s a difficult habit to master (and I’ll admit we have folks here who are better at it than others), but once it becomes ingrained in your customer service psyche, you will be surprised at how much easier every communication becomes.   I will often start an email with the words “You’re right” and then after composing the rest of the email, simply remove those two words if it doesn’t seem to be entirely applicable.  But,  more often than not, those two words are the perfect way to begin nearly any communication.  People like being right. They like hearing the word “Yes” and it immediately forces me to find a common ground with the other person (which, perhaps not coincidentally, is another step to enchantment we will cover later).  It is a relatively easy way to enchant them.  Do we have room to improve in this area at Outskirts Press? Of course. But I feel, in general, this is a step we perform well.  Practice it yourself. You’ll be happy you did (and so will your customers/clients).

Step 2 to Enchantment next time….