Outlier On Air | Founders, Disruptors, & Mavens

"It's better to have a surplus of ideas and be forced to go with the really great ones...than to have a limited number of them and pick the one you think is best." - Daniel Faggella

About: Daniel Faggella- Entrepreneur, Writer, Speaker, Jiu Jitsu Champion, and Founder of CLV Boost

Overview: During this exciting interview, we learn valuable lessons from Daniel on how to create effective email marketing campaigns. Dan has a Masters of Applied Positive Psychology degree from UPenn, owns 2 companies-TechEmergence LLC, and startup marketing with CLVboost, is the author of “Explorations into the Philosophy of Transhumanism: A Lens to the Future Through the Thinkers of the Past”, is a frequent public speaker, and holds a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Background: Dan has a passion for martial arts and was heavily involved in Jiu Jitsu. When his local martial arts gym closed down, he opened his own martial arts gym, something he had never planned on doing. He always thought he would only compete but not be involved in the entrepreneurial world. With this endeavor, Dan learned a lot about sales and marketing and launched himself into his entrepreneurial journey. With a small market, Dan needed automated sequences to categorize potential clients and to maximize their sales. From there, he started CLV Boost- working with software and start up companies to implement email marketing strategies and campaigns.

Growing Your Email List: If you want to get more people onto your list, Dan says to start learning more about pay per click. Dan helps clients focus on conversion rates on their page (figuring out the percentage of people that convert to your site and the percentage of people who become leads). The next thing he'll do is build a regimen that's reasonable for your company and work on partnering with people that can help drive business to your site.

Email Campaigns: Dan wants entrepreneurs to know that social media is not nearly as effective as email marketing. If you want to make money for your business, it is crucial that you have an email marketing campaign. Dan's personal list for martial arts is about 27,000 people. With the help of his email campaigns, he made approximately $66k last month.

Continual Education: Dan knows the value of education and even though he has successful businesses, understands the need for continual help and coaching. In the last 30 months, Dan has spent a little over $100,000 on education: coaching, school, books, etc.

Advice for Entrepreneurs: Make sure you know what you want the individuals on your email list to do with that first step in the buyer's journey (call, get a quote, set up an apt, etc). Once you have an answer to that, you will know what your emails need to do next. Then determine what the major benefit is for your customers. Know how you can solve whatever their problems may be. Frame your subject lines and your content around that benefit. You have to make sure that you are closing your audience within 3-7 days, because after that, you lose half of your market. When you are sending potential customers educational material, make sure there is a link, case study, free e-book, something that will lead them to other options. Let them find a way to pay you if they're hungry.

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Website | CLVBoost | @DanFaggella | LinkedIn

"The more you practice strategic thinking in business, the more refined your approaches to both challenges and opportunities." - Suzanne Huber

Suzanne Huber - Serial Entrepreneurs & Consultant

Suzanne started her career by launching a software company that offered real-time flight information and digital advertising to hotels. In just over a year the company grew throughout Canada and into the US. Since then Suzanne has advanced marketing and technical expertise and has been a consultant for more than 100 companies. Throughout her career to date Suzanne has launched five companies as an entrepreneur, consultant and employee. Her passion for driving growth for her clients while building strong enduring relationships has made her sought after by executives and entrepreneurs growing their firms.

Connect with Suzanne:

Website | Facebook | @SuzyHuber | LinkedIn

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"The most rewarding experience that I've had is the chance to know some of the young people when they started in their first year working for us [DDD], and to see them through the 4 years of work, and to have them go on to better things." - Michael Chertok

About: Michael Chertok- Co-Founder and Chief Business Development Officer of Digital Divide Data

Overview: Michael shares his experiences with DDD, which is a technology company that focuses on providing high quality services to companies large and small. He discusses with us the benefits of having employees in developing countries and how DDD is helping these young people become better educated and self reliant.

Background: Michael's drive started when he was in college. He was struggling to figure out how to pay for college, and over the summer, he got a job doing back office work for a medical supply company. It was tedious work, but it was his first job in an office that taught him great communication skills with his co-workers, and managers. When the opportunity came to do work in Cambodia, he saw the need to help and eventually DDD evolved.

What is DDD: Digital Divide Data provides a set of outsource business services to all sorts of businesses from small startups to Fortune 500 companies. They mainly focus on content conversion, digitization, and research services. For example, if your company has a data base of client prospects with multiple errors, DDD can go in and clean things up. DDD strives to provide a very high quality service to their customers. In 2001, DDD started with 40 young employees in Cambodia, and now has 1,200 people working for them around the world. DDD's current earned revenue is $5.5 Million.

Labor Force: Currently, DDD has a workforce in Kenya that will provide services all over the world. They are able to help these young people attend college, and typically these employees can work for DDD for about 4 years. They require their employees to be high school graduates. DDD's goal is to provide a stepping stone for these young employees to attain a higher level income and eventually be able to support a family. Many times, these employees go on to be involved in other tech companies, in non-profits, become teachers, and even work in government.

DDD's Mission Statement: Provide an opportunity for young people, particularly from very low-income families in developing countries.

Type of Business: Hybrid organization- U.S. Non-profit that owns a set of for-profit organizations.

Michael's Role: He is there to support DDD with marketing and financing. Most of the partners are based in San Francisco, which is why Michael is there, but the majority of the work for DDD happens overseas.

Technology Providers: DDD has partnered with Cisco systems and Microsoft to provide reliable technology for their employees overseas.

Most Rewarding Experience Working at DDD: Seeing these young, employees growing exponentially from start to finish. And to see these people become leaders in their own countries.

Challenges: Michael states that one of their greatest struggles at DDD is the need to balance their goal of serving their clients and providing opportunities for their young employees. DDD focuses a lot on providing a high quality product and educating those that work for them.

Advice for a Company Wanting to Give Back: One of the things DDD offers is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to be able to leverage their resources to help them grow their businesses. Right now, they offer a back office to help these entrepreneurs have quality infrastructure. Michael suggests that by giving a part of your resources to help others is a great way to give back.

Take Away: Although there is a lot of back and forth about work done overseas, we learn that when it is done right, it can be a great opportunity for families in developing countries, and a helpful resource for clients here in America.

Website | Facebook | Google+ | Youtube | @DigDivData

"People will tell you you can't do it, but if you want it enough and work hard enough, you can be successful and have what you want." - Amber Reyngoudt

About: Amber Reyngoudt- Co-Founder of Skull Ninja, and former iOS Engineer at Milk

Overview: Amber is a Software Engineer with years of experience in the coding field. Over the past four years, she has taken on her own venture of building iPhone apps with her co-founder at Skull Ninja, and shares with us what it's been like traveling the entrepreneurial road.

Background: Amber attended school at University of Florida, and majored in Computer Science. Although she hadn't planned on becoming a software engineer, Amber's grandmother really encouraged her to go into Computer Science, and as a Junior in college was interning as a coder. When she graduated school, she worked as an application developer for Intel for about four years. She then moved to LA and eventually began working for a consulting firm. Once she left consulting, Amber attempted to start her own company but soon ran out of money and decided to go back to the mainstream work space. In 2005, MySpace was the hot new social media company so Amber decided to apply and started working as a developer there. She ended up becoming a manger and worked there until 2010. At that point, things started dying down with MySpace and Amber was no longer feeling challenged or fulfilled in her position so she slowly left MySpace to develop apps for iPhones on her own. From there, Skull Ninja was born.

Working at Milk: After leaving MySpace, Amber and her co-founder moved to San Francisco and began working on apps. Amber was fortunate to meet Kevin Rose 4 months after moving there and he asked Amber and her co-founder to come work at his new-found company, Milk. For the next year, Amber and her co-founder worked as the iOS Engineers for Milk, which helped build credibility for the two of them. Milk was eventually bought out by Google in 2011, so Amber and her co-founder were back to focusing on their company, Skull Ninja.

Skull Ninja: Amber and her co-founder are doing a mix of consulting and building apps. Recently, they did some webwork for AirB&B, intro for About.me, created another app for North Technologies, they also created an iPhone, and iPad app for a home hair-color company, etc. In 2012, they created their own platform for shopping in a variety of ways, and soft launched an iPhone app called Hit or Miss that focuses on women's fashion, and discovering fashion. Essentially, they publish a daily trend and the consumers select that trend as a hit or miss, and then they tailor what they want to see according to the feedback. So far the app has been well received.

Challenges: For Skull Ninja, bootstrapping was difficult along with balancing their schedules and time. It's been easy to take on too much, and not even work on their own projects to help the company. For the past few years, it's only been Amber and Dave and they were not able to really scale the company until they bring on employees.

Woman in Tech: One thing Amber points out is that she's had to spend some time proving herself, but is becoming less of a problem since she has built credibility. She does feel that because she is a female founder, it can work to her advantage and make her stand out from the crowd. Amber shares that she's happy there are more women in tech, and in different areas, they bring a lot to the tech world. Overall, Amber has had a good experience and feels very fortunate.

Advice for Entrepreneurs: It may seem scary and unattainable, but if you're driven, passionate, and willing to work really hard- almost to the point of crazy- you can be successful and have what you want.

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Website | @AmberRayn | Soundcloud

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"Look around your community, and rather than going out there and saying, 'who are the people who can do something for me?' Say, 'what can I do for everyone else?' And if you come at it with that attitude, good things will come back to you." - Elisa Miller-Out

About: Elisa Miller-Out- CEO of Singlebrook Technology Inc. and Co-Founder of Ithaca Venture Community

Overview: Elisa Miller-Out is a busy mother, wife, and co-founder of two companies who shares the experiences and challenges of being a female entrepreneur with Ever Gonzalez of Outlier Magazine. Find out what it is about Elisa that makes her stand out from the entrepreneurial crowd.

Singlebrook Technology: Is a custom web and mobile development company based in Ithaca, NY that specializes in web application development, mobile apps, integration, databases, content management systems and technology strategy consulting. Singlebrook was started ten years ago and some of their clients include: universities, non-profits, and startups. They think of themselves as the care takers of software for their clients.

Challenges for Elisa: Elisa has felt the pressure of being a female entrepreneur in a male dominated industry and strives to set an example and to act as a mentor for young women in the business. Overall, Elisa doesn't feel that she's had huge obstacles to overcome as a female business owner.

Females in the Software World: Elisa has noticed that the number of women applying for tech-like companies compared to men is still quite low. She feels that there is a stigma associated with females in the programming world and feels like that needs to change.

Ithaca Venture Community: The mission of this group is to promote and host different entrepreneurial activities that build bridges, strengthen networks, and support the startup community.

Biggest Challenge as an Entrepreneur: For Elisa, she has a lot going on in her life, and the biggest thing she is constantly working on is how to be efficient and organized.

Working with Her Co-Founder: Elisa co-founded Singlebrook Technology with her husband, and although she would love to talk about the company when they are home, they try not to talk about it too much at home. If it's necessary to talk about the company, they set up an actual time to discuss the issue/s at hand. As co-founders, they make sure they have a very open communication line, and respect one another completely.

Advice for Entrepreneurs: Elisa loves the philosophy of "giving first." Get out there and volunteer your time and talents. Also, slow to hire, quick to fire. It's very essential.

Website | @ElisaMillerOut

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