Category: ceo

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
ceo, self publishing

Guy Kawasaki Step 4 to Enchantment

Okay, back to the Guy Kawasaki speech at  the recent Inc. 500/5000 conference, where Guy offered an informative session about cultivating and maintaining “enchantment” in your customers or clients. I am 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 4 is to tell a compelling story.  This involves using salient talking points and “planting many seeds.” By this, I presume Guy is referring to nurturing potential clients with access points to the story, and this is somewhat related to Step #2, which was to achieve trustworthiness by establishing a rapport with the customer or client. If the compelling story you share holds relevance for the customer or client, they are that much more liable to like you and trust you because they recognize similarities between your story and their own situation. Ergo, you must be the solution to their immediate problem, because at one point in time, you were in the same position they are in now.

Compelling stories personalize businesses and companies.  It’s been said before that people like doing business with other people, they are forced to do business with companies.  Companies can be cold and driven by heartless concepts like profitability and analysis whereas people at companies can be sympathetic, empathetic, supportive, and nurturing.   Of course businesses need to stay profitable in order to remain in business, but customers don’t want to think about that. They want to know how the people at that company are going to help them.  Knowing the stories of the people in that company, or the story behind how the company was started, can help enchant those potential customers or clients to that company by better knowing its people.

I feel that many of our authors at Outskirts Press find our story compelling, because it’s easy to recognize similarities.  Unlike all our major competitors, Outskirts Press was not started by identifying a changing landscape in the publishing industry and putting techno-geeks on the case to create a website capable of publishing thousands of books a day for pennies and therefore making money on volume.  It’s hard for anybody to identify with that!  How can a CEO who initially started open source programming software be asked to empathize with writers? How can a CEO who was previously the president of a security and antivirus company understand what a writer is going through? How can a computer science and electrical engineer possibly understand the nuances of publishing a beautiful, award-winning book? Sure, they can all program an automated piece of software where you submit a Word document, and ten seconds later your book is vomited onto your computer screen… but is that what a real author wants?

The compelling story of Outskirts Press is one of our biggest competitive advantage in the face of fairly daunting competitors, each of them run by CEOs who don’t have an ounce of writing passion in them. I am a writer. I know what it means to be frustrated by the publishing gatekeepers, to be up all night in the wake of a creative burst of energy, and to wrack my head against writer’s block.  That artistic passion and fervor for the art of writing is apparent in everything we do at Outskirts Press. Authors who take their books seriously recognize that. It’s very compelling to them.  It helps them become enchanted with us.

What is your compelling story?  By identifying it, you just may discover what your biggest competitive advantage is.

best self publishing, ceo, self publishing

Self Publishing Videos for Outskirts Press

Before I get back to our Guy Kawasaki series about the 10 steps of enchantment, I will continue this small break to mention the Thanksgiving Video contest we recently held at Outskirts Press. We invited all our published authors to record a video that thanked whomever they wanted to thank for being published — their spouse, teacher, colleague, etc.

Among all the videos we received, we selected three finalists based largely upon the number of “likes” each video received on our Facebook Page.  Those three finalists took part in a public poll on the Self Publishing News blog where anyone could vote on their favorite. The winner would receive a free iPad Mini. You can view all three finalists on this blog posting here.

When all was said and done, Bob Ralston, author of God, Physics and Me was named our big winner for his technically impressive and charming video submission, which you can view below:

Thank you to Bob, and to all our Outskirts Press authors.

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Guy Kawasaki Step 2 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).  So 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 2 is to achieve trustworthiness.

People, by their general nature, tend to be initially leery of businesses and especially of “sales people.”  People are so leery of “sales people,” in fact, that often those positions are the most difficult to fill from a recruiting stand-point. That’s right, you can’t even pay people to be sales people in some cases! Businesses have counteracted this fact by arriving upon a whole host of other words for sales people: consultant, adviser, waiter, advocate, specialist, etc.  Guy’s point during the conference was that if salespeople made initial steps to achieve trustworthiness, their goals of “selling something” would be easier.  His position is that one accomplishes this by finding common ground, finding something upon which both the sales person and the customer can agree.  It does not even have to be related to the product or service. It can initially be about anything.

You also achieve trustworthiness by helping people without receiving anything in return. Social media is showing us that a common and effective method for achieving trustworthiness is to operate with transparency and give away valuable information for free. “Social media specialists” have even arrived upon formulas for success that suggest for every blog posting or status update in which you sell something, you should provide between 3 to 7  postings/updates containing free, valuable information or advice.   At Outskirts Press, we try to maintain this balance on our Facebook page,and our blog, and while there are months where the balance is more even than others, I feel that we accomplish this step relatively successfully.

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….

 

ceo

Four-time Repeat as an Inc. 5000 Company

I met a lot of great people at the Inc. 5000 conference that I attended a couple weeks ago in Arizona. The Inc 5000 is an annual list of the 5000 fastest growing private companies in America.  As a four-time repeat honoree, I figured it was probably about time I attended on behalf of Outskirts Press self-publishing in case we didn’t make it on the list next year (for mathematical reasons, it becomes increasingly harder to stay on the list, even if your company continues to grow, as Outskirts Press has). How surprised was I to discover that it’s not even necessary to be on the Inc. 5000 list to attend. Many of the people in attendance represented companies with aspirations to be on the list, and were seeking advice from the speakers and other attendees on how to accomplish the feat.

In fact, the more I talked with people, the more I discovered Outskirts Press was in rare company to have been on the list 4 times in a row.  In fact, we will become part of quite an exclusive list if we do make the list again next year. Cross fingers.

I also discovered that it is necessary to attend to receive your actual physical award for your accomplishments. I just figured they would mail it to us. Nope. You have to go in person, apparently, if you want your award. Now I wish I had gone the first time, too, when Outskirts Press was number 268 on the list, since the Inc 500 awards are different from the Inc 5000 awards (ironically, they’re physically smaller — probably because with one less 0, they don’t need to be as big). While standing in line for our photo ops, we had quite a laugh about that! (Yes, the champagne was flowing).

Next time, the #1 way to enchant your clients, customers, (or in our case, authors), according to Guy Kawasaki, who was my personal favorite speaker at the conference.

ceo

Inc 5000 Conference Overview

Before I continue with the last two categories of awards in our Self-Publishing Achievement Awards (marketing achievements and marketing milestones), I’d like to briefly cover the Inc. 500/5000 conference I recently attended in Phoenix. Among the speakers were Nick Woodman, the CEO of Go Pro; Captain Mark Kelly, Commander of the space shuttle Endeavour’s final mission; and my personal favorite among all the speakers, Guy Kawasaki, founding partner of Garage Technology Ventures, who covered 10 steps to enchant customers.

Over the next few days and weeks (and probably months), I’ll discuss each of the 10 steps Guy discussed, and examine how I feel our self publishing company Outskirts Press delivers within the parameters of those steps — what we do well and what we can focus on improving.

If you are an entrepreneur, manager, business owner, or author, examining how your service or product fulfills these 10 steps of “enchantment”  would be an equally excellent exercise.  Then, jump over to Amazon and buy Guy’s book. <– Shameless plug but based upon his speech, I’ll bet he’d do the same for me.

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Facebook Self Publishing Awards

In my previous post I described our new Facebook Achievements for our Outskirts Press authors. I described the five categories, achievements, and milestones. As I was doing this, the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” popped into my mind, so now I’m just going to present our planned achievement graphics:

The excitement level is high for the launch of these new achievement awards. It should be any day now…

Brent Sampson, ceo

Brent Sampson interview on LA Talk Radio

Before I get back to updating everyone on the recent happenings at Outskirts Press (Facebook Achievements, Book Your Trip to Hollywood options, the 2011 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year contenders and winner, our new full-color illustrations, etc.), I wanted to provide a link to my recent appearance on LA Talk Radio, where Max Tucci (of Max & Friends) interviews me about self-publishing.

I even got a chance to put out some props to our Best Book of the Year winners (Doris from 2010 and Susan from 2011), which I always enjoy doing when possible.

Anyway, give a listen at this streaming audio link:  http://www.latalkradio.com/Players/Max-062412.shtml