ceo – Page 10 – President of Outskirts Press

Entrepreneur of the Year Criteria #1

According to Gregory K. Ericksen in his book Entrepreneur of the Year Award: Insights From the Winner’s Circle, the first criteria the judges use to help them determine a winner is “leadership” and he devotes a chapter discussing what defines a good leader. For example, does the leader have a vision and are they passionate about what they do? Do they take risks, even in the face of uncertainty?

Ultimately, does the entrepreneur turn business vision into business reality? As the CEO of Outskirts Press, this is perhaps where I spend the majority of my time — turning a vision into a reality. This can be something small, like the conception of a new option that has to turn into a finalized service or product that meets our authors needs. Or it can be something larger like the conception of a new book that has to be written, re-written, edited, produced, distributed, and marketed.

Self-publishing is in the middle of a revolution, and that means constant change. One vision is having a company that is nimble enough to adapt to market conditions, competition, and author needs faster than the other guys. Turning that vision into a reality is the challenge.

ceo

Six Keys to Entrepreneur of the Year Success

I mentioned previously that I am a semi-finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards. The next stage is a reception where I meet some of the judges. This is as close to an “interview” as a entrepreneur gets; so like anyone applying for a new position, a new job, or sending out a new book proposal, the first step is to conduct some research and prepare yourself.

Gregory K. Ericksen has written a book about the E&Y EOY awards titled Insights from the Winner’s Circle and he identifies six key criteria the judges use to gauge a leader’s performance. Even if you’re not up for an award, these are valuable focus points for any leader or entrepreneur and I will discuss them each in the following blog postings.

They are:

1. Leadership
2. Financial performance
3. Management team
4. Culture, value, and Incentives
5. Originality
6. Degree of Difficulty

branding, ceo

Entrepreneur of the Year Semi-Finalist

I found out last week that I am a regional semi-finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. I met with two folks from Ernst & Young along with one of the sponsors at the E&Y offices in downtown Denver last Monday for a one hour formal interview. I was asked to bring some marketing materials, some financial statements, and anything else I wanted to “show off” that best represented Outskirts Press. So, of course, I brought along some of our books.

After I summarized our history, our 5-year plan, and our most recent 3-year 850.5% revenue growth that was recognized by Inc. Magazine for their Fast 500 list, one of the Ernst & Young representatives told me that even before he knew I was a semi-finalist he had learned that a close friend of his was publishing her children’s book with Outskirts Press and enjoying the process immensely. What a nice surprise; and what a small world!

Ernst & Young are not judges of the EOY Award. That responsibility falls to another group of individuals who I will have the pleasure of meeting at a Thursday night reception at the Cherry Hills Country Club on the 29th.

branding, ceo, marketing

New graphic treatment for Outskirts Press

Speaking of Version 4 of our new website, tentatively launching this summer, Version 4 will also mark the “official” appearance of our new graphic treatment.

I say “official appearance” because the new “Outskirts Press” graphic already appears on our Twitter account, and by the time Version 4 launches, it will have also appeared in a number of advertisements, both offline and on. Recently we made the change to the masthead of our newsletter to feature it, as well.

And I call it a “graphic treatment” rather than a logo because we’re not ready to completely abandon our current logo:

This logo appears on the spines of too many books to erradicate it entirely.

But, we are interested in conforming to a more precise usage of our company name. Up until this “version 4 graphic treatment” our design style sheet as it relates to our company name has been… well… empty. In other words, we didn’t have a “style” for it, per se. Our name appears in one font on our publishing brochure, another in our guide, probably still another on our marketing brochure, and yet a different one on our website.

I may be exaggerating, but not by much. The point is, we were too busy growing by 850.5% to worry about things like “style sheets” for our name and logo. Is that the proper way to do things? Hard to say — one can’t argue with success. But it certainly isn’t the “common” way of doing things. When most businesses start, one of the first thing business owners or entrepreneurs do is invest time, resources, and money(none of which they have a surplus of) on “fun” things like logos, business cards, letterhead, shirts, hats, etc. And I don’t blame them. Doing all that stuff is a lot more fun than, you know… working.

Outskirts Press started in 2002 and only now, 8 years later, have we started to produce shirts, hats, pens and other promotional items featuring our company name. And yes, the creation of material products like that required the creation of a style sheet for our name, which I will get into more with a future post, but which I will also reveal here now…

ceo, marketing

How book promotion is like company marketing

Marketing is marketing. There are some basic steps one must take to promote either a product or a service. As both an author with a book to promote and a business owner with a company to market, it becomes easier to see the similarities in the necessary steps:

1. Establish your expertise
2. Optimize your (new) product/service for Internet searching
3. Make it easy for people to buy your product/service
4. Give incentive for people to buy your product/service
5. Seek awards or other forms of recognition
6. Distribute press releases that announce your (new) award/product, and that…
7. Establish your expertise
8. Repeat

In the coming days and weeks I will discuss each of these steps specifically as they apply both to book promotion and company promotion…

blogging, ceo, start-up

The trouble with blogging – part two

Another reason I’ve personally been reticent about blogging is due to the dilemma I have with preserving confidentiality, and this is probably something any CEO, or company employee can understand. In other words, what is okay to say, and what isn’t?

On one hand, the more personal, confidential, or private something is, the more “interesting” it is, so part of me wants to divulge stuff that will make this blog popular, or at the very least, interesting.

On the other hand, I have a responsibility to our authors, our people, and our board of directors to avoid saying anything that would jeopardize them (and by that, I mean, anything that could “cost them money”). In my position I learn things about the industry that isn’t common knowledge. I know about deals before they happen. I have an intimate knowledge of our own trade secrets and unique competitive advantages – the things that make Outskirts Press the fastest-growing self-publishing company and the only Inc. 500 company in our industry. Revealing ‘insider-y” information on those topics would make this blog fascinating to other entrepreneurs and CEOs, and certainly our competitors, and maybe even our authors, but revealing them could also jeopardize our value proposition.

If a CEO doesn’t reveal SOME of that stuff, what’s the point of reading the blog? I mean, the whole point of reading a blog by a CEO is that you expect SOME level of details not attainable elsewhere, right? But, on the other hand, how does a CEO blogger reveal interesting things that aren’t TOO confidential?

I’m not saying I have the answer. I’m just saying it’s something about blogging that troubles me…