entrepreneur of the year award – President of Outskirts Press

Entrepreneur of the Year Semi-Finalist Reception

On April 29th I attended the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year reception as a semi-finalist. I was in good company, with some impressive Rocky Mountain entrepreneurs including Mr. John Griffith from Alpine Waste & Recycling and Mr. Kevin Reddy from Noodles & Company — and those were just my fellow nominees! Judges included heavy hitters like Mr. Scott Scheirman, CFO of Western Union and Ms. Katie Scherping, CFO of Red Robin.

The reception took place at the Cherry Hills Country Club and involved two 9-minute interviews with two of the eight judges. Personally, I met with Katie Scherping and Mr. Ray BonAnno, CEO of Fleet Car Carriers. During the reception itself I also chatted with Vice President of Goldman, Sachs & Co Karen Han.

In the following week the judges deliberated on the 35 semi-finalists to determine the finalists, who will be attending the next round of festivities later this month. Sadly, I wasn’t among them. The lone finalist from the Rocky Mountain Region then attends the nationals in Palm Springs. And the lone finalist from the nationals attends the international round in Monaco next spring. If at first you don’t succeed, try try again…

blogging

The blog time vortex

One unfortunate aspect of writing so many blog entries at once and then scheduling them out into the future is that a lot of “new” stuff happens on a daily basis, and by the time there is a “break” in the blog schedule to discuss the new topic, a month has gone by, and what seemed “new” or “important” then just doesn’t hold the same weight later.

One example is the publication of the second edition of SELL YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON, which has been available for a couple weeks now, but we were in the middle of the Entrepreneur blogs, which occupied about three weeks of blog entries. So it doesn’t seem so important to “announce” its availability now. But I probably will make a specific blog posting about it, just to highlight some of the differences between the first edition and the second edition.

And this brings me to the duration between my blog postings. I’ve done this pretty deliberately. I started this blog on January 1, 2010 and blogged every day. Then I moved to every other day. Now I’m at every 3rd day, which is where I plan to stay. One reason for this, obviously, is controlling the amount of time I devote to blogging. But another is that by blogging every 3 days and showing the ten most recent blogs on the screen at a time, it is easy to get a one-month snapshot of what’s happening in the world of self-publishing, entrepreneurism, and Outskirts Press.

Of course, in the 3-week span of time that we have been covering the Entrepreneur of the Year blogs, other things have happened, and some deserve their own blogging, too.

So, with that said, in the coming blog posts I’ll cover:

– SELL YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON, second edition
– The semi-finalist reception for the Entrepreneur of the Year awards
– The publication of the Colorado Humanities Anthology
– The presentation of the Student Literary Awards
– A winner at the Student Literary Awards interviews me

Hmm, that’s good enough. That covers another half month, and by then, a whole new crop of things to blog about will come up.

ceo

Entrepreneur of the Year Criteria #6

According to Gregory K. Ericksen in his book Entrepreneur of the Year Award: Insights From the Winner’s Circle, the final criteria the judges use to help them determine a winner is the degree of difficulty in launching and/or growing the business.

This can include everything from the competitive landscape to more specific triumphs like overcoming personal adversity. Obviously, this is all a matter of perspective, since launching any business is somewhat difficult, and the odds become stacked against you when it comes to growing a thriving business with revenue growth percentages in the multiple-hundreds, as is the case with Outskirts Press.

Ultimately, all businesses have competitors, naysayers, and hecklers. True leaders persevere and succeed in spite of those obstacles, not in the absence of them. The same can be said for books. All books have competition, naysayers, and negative reviews. Professional authors persevere and succeed in spite of those obstacles, not in the absence of them.

ceo

Entrepreneur of the Year Criteria #5

According to Gregory K. Ericksen in his book Entrepreneur of the Year Award: Insights From the Winner’s Circle, the fifth criteria the judges use to help them determine a winner is “originality.”

A lot of factors can contribute to originality. Have you pioneered a new approach or created a new technology? Are your business practices or products/services original? Are you constantly working on improvement and innovation?

As far as Outskirts Press is concerned, examples of all of the above are encapsulated by our Version 4.0 website, which will be launching sometime this month (with any luck). I’ve discussed Version 4 in previous posts (and will again in future posts, too), so I won’t here.

ceo, self publishing

Entrepreneur of the Year Criteria #4

According to Gregory K. Ericksen in his book Entrepreneur of the Year Award: Insights From the Winner’s Circle, the fourth criteria the judges use to help them determine a winner involves the culture, values, and incentives surrounding the work force, the company, and the community.

An example of this involves our EVVY Book Awards. Every Diamond and Pearl book we publish is eligible to be nominated for an official Outskirts Press EVVY Award Nomination. Those nominees are subsequently submitted to the annual Colorado Independent Publishers Association EVVY Awards. Recently we won 16 different awards, the most among all participating publishers.

The Outskirts Press production team members for each first, second, and third place award also won compensatory bonuses for their valued contributions in producing EVVY-award-winning books for their authors. One of our internal goals at Outskirts Press is to help our authors publish award-winning books. So by creating a bonus structure for our production department that recognizes when that goal is met, our authors are happier and our cover designers, book formatters, and author representatives are happier, too. Win-win.

Another example is our $10,000 donation to the Colorado Humanities last December and our sponsorship of their Colorado Book Awards and Student Literary Awards.

Later this week, on May 6th, the winners of the Colorado Humanities Student Literary Awards will be announced in Denver. I will be attending the event and revealing the full-color anthology, published by Outskirts Press. The anthology is titled 2010 Student Literary Awards Anthology: Winning Art, Poems and Letters by Colorado Students.

Handing out awards to young and aspiring writers is very fulfilling. And seeing their faces light up when they discover they are published authors is extraordinary. I love it. Another win-win. And that is culture, values, and incentives in a nutshell.

ceo

Entrepreneur of the Year Criteria #3

According to Gregory K. Ericksen in his book Entrepreneur of the Year Award: Insights From the Winner’s Circle, the third criteria the judges use to help them determine a winner is the management team the leader has put together.

The management team of a company can include executives and board of directors members, but ultimately, I think this criteria probably examines all the people of an organization. Has the entrepreneur successfully pulled together talented people who are committed to the company’s long-term goals?

It helps if the executives and members of the board bring different talents and experiences to the table, so the overall advantages experienced by the company are wider and therefore the benefits offered to the customer are more valuable.

ceo

Entrepreneur of the Year Criteria #2

According to Gregory K. Ericksen in his book Entrepreneur of the Year Award: Insights From the Winner’s Circle, the second criteria the judges use to help them determine a winner is the financial performance of the company.

In this regard, there are two categories of entrepreneurs, and two ways entrepreneurs get money for companies. Some entrepreneurs start companies that are good at earning money from customers. These leaders spend the bulk of their time managing and growing a company that makes money.

Other entrepreneurs are good at soliciting money from investors. These leaders spend the bulk of their time convincing larger companies into giving them money.

The majority of the articles in magazines like Entrepreneur are aimed at CEOs who fall in the latter category. Often, the revenue figures that are publicized about companies do not reveal the amount of money those companies earned but rather, the amount of money those companies were given.

I’ve always felt that if you are a leader who falls into the first category, you don’t have to worry about being good at the second. Run a company that earns money and a funny thing starts happening — bigger companies with money start banging on your door asking if they can give you more.

ceo

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.