How to Contact Me

Something major has changed in my life: my email.

Since 1995 I have used one primary email address: karlp @ KPEnterprises.com.

If there's a fingerprint on the Internet, it's an OLD email address. I used that email back when there were less than 1,000 web sites. Really. It's all over newsgroups. Oooops. No one remembers news group. Real news groups.

My NIC Handle for that email address is KP28. If you're not old enough to remember NIC handles, I assure you that's impressive. It means I'm the 28th person with the initials KP to register a domain on the Internet.

I will personally buy a beer for every person with a two-letter NIC handle with a number less than 28. Send me an email. ;-)

Anyway, that email was founded 14 seconds after I decided on a domain name for my new business - KPEnterprises.com - in 1995. It's posted on web sites, Yahoo groups, meetups, Facebook, twitter, old newsletters archived by spiders on the Internet. It's everywhere.

And now it will begin to fade away.

The branding for our I.T. business is now America's Tech Support. The web site will be at AmericasTechSupport.com and my email will be karlp@ that address. If you send an email to the old address, I'll see it eventually, but any response you get will be from AmericasTechSupport.com.

The best way to get ahold of me is at SmallBizThoughts.com. That's where you'll find my blog, links to Great Little Book Publishing, etc. karlp at that domain will go straight to my inbox. Of course I might not see it until AFTER Lana, Monica, and John have picked through it looking for emails relevant to their piece of the business. But eventually I'll see it.


How to NOT Contact Me

Please don't send me a note on Facebook (or Twitter or LinkedIn) and expect a response in a timely fashion. Seriously. I can't figure out why people do that. My email is not a secret. A quick Google search of "Karl Palachuk" returns more than 35,000 pages. My email's all over them.

I recently responded to a note my girlfriend sent me on Facebook. She gave me a bad time because she sent that note five months ago. Ooops. Trust me: If I don't respond to her for five months, you have no chance for success. :-)

Anyway . . .

KPEnterprises.com is out.

AmericasTechSupport.com is in.

SmallBizThoughts.com is your best bet.


Telephone, Fax, Mail, etc.

There are plenty of other means of contacting me. U.S. postal (snail) mail is certainly going to get my attention. Not an ad or slick, because Mike and Monica will throw those away before I see them. But a sealed envelope with my name on it.

We own a fax machine. It is used primarily for communication with the 1990's. We keep it primarily because we use the phone line for the security system. At some point we'll move to a cell-based connection for that. We just haven't done it.

I don't ever instant message anyone ever. One time I started a program and it started instant messaging. Pretty soon Vlad popped up on my screen with a simply inquiry: "Are you lost?" (True story.) Yes. I was lost. I apologized and disconnected.

At KPEnterprises, I have no telephone. At Americas Tech Support, I have no telephone. I used to have one, but I never used it. I never checked the messages. My voice mail greeting actually said that you need to call Monica if you want to get a message to me. So one day I moved my desk and left the phones behind.

I haven't had a telephone on my desk for most of this year. As far as I know, this has had zero impact on my business.

For Small Biz Thoughts, I have VOIP phone at home that is connected up with the office. This is used primarily for conference calls. I'm not listed on the phone tree. If you accidentally dial my extension, rest assured that leaving a message will do you no good. In June I went through the 17 voicemails left since December. None of the issues were still relevant.

Of course I have a cell phone. As a general rule, I don't answer it. Sometimes I put it on silent mode and forget to change it back for days. I use it for keeping up on email, text messaging, business alerts, and sometimes for Facebook.

Bottom Line: Telephone is not the way to reach me.

- - - - -

I don't think I'm particularly difficult to get ahold of since lots of people manage to accomplish it every day. But I am a firm believer that I am in charge of which communication methods I want to use. Most of these technologies are based on interruption. I prefer not to work based on responding to whoever is most effective at interrupting what I'm doing.

How do you communicate?

:-)