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Greg Cangialosi is the President & CEO of Blue Sky Factory, Inc, an email marketing and communications service provider (a growing company focused on the mediums of email & RSS).

Greg is a 10-year veteran of entrepreneurship, a true serial entrepreneur. His previous startup ventures have included a 3 year run in the music industry as a concert promoter, starting a touring food vending business, and running a small web design firm. He took a one year break to work for a fast growth startup in Baltimore’s Emerging Technology Center in 2000, and left in early 2001 to launch Blue Sky Factory. He amounts all of his past businesses as just practice and experience for Blue Sky Factory, learning something unique from all of them.

Greg received his B.A degree in English from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in 1996. Today, he is actively involved with the advancement of the university, sitting on the board of directors for the alumni association and various strategic committees.

Something most folks don’t know about Greg is that he is an avid blogger and a podcaster. He has been authoring www.thetrendjunkie.com, a popular weblog on media, technology, and marketing since 2003, and has been involved in many corporate podcasting projects for companies like GM, Disney & Verizon Wireless.

His current podcast is called ROI Radio, a show focused on the online marketing and media landscape. He talks with CEO’s and senior management of technology, media and marketing companies on a variety of topics around online marketing and emerging mediums.

The Interview

What do you think about Entrepreneurship and how did you get involved? Is it a way of living? Is it something more, like building wealth? Tell us your personal vision and meaning of Entrepreneurship. Tell us if you “heard the call” …or just liked the idea.

For me entrepreneurship is definitely a way of life. Looking back from where I am now, there is no doubt that I have always marched to the beat of my own drummer. A big part of entrepreneurship for me, over almost everything else, is the ability to have the freedom to, in at least some ways, control my own destiny, and be accountable for myself and the company I have built.

When I was a kid, for years my Father always had a subscription to Entrepreneur Magazine, and I remember reading every edition that came in the mail cover to cover. In many ways that had a lot to do with my thinking growing up. I would read each edition and think to myself “I really want to run my own company one day”

What have you learned from your past businesses? Mistakes (if any), decisions, fortunes…

Tons :-) I think it goes without saying that all entrepreneurs learn from the mistakes they make (At least I hope they do). When I graduated from UMBC, I went right into the concert promotion business on my own. It was an extension of the work that I did at the university. I really loved putting on events. I started a production company with no capital, rode it out for 3 years, and sweated it out in a VERY competitive and extremely tough industry. Made money, lost money, and rode that roller coaster for quite a while. It gave me thick skin for sure.

The most important thing I learned from that business was to just GO FOR IT, and not sit around and think about starting a business, but rather act on it. I also did it right out of school which I think was important for me. At the time, I really wanted to be in the music business, I loved live music and events (still do), and wanted to be involved with that industry, versus going out and getting a regular 9 - 5 job. Also, my experience as a concert promoter made me get used to taking risks as an individual, and that can be a good thing in terms of entrepreneurship. No risk, no reward holds true every time. When you basically have no money and your guaranteeing what you do have to an artist to come play for you in a secondary market, thats faith, and thats risk :-) it worked out sometimes and other times it didn’t. I learned that this wasn’t the business I wanted to be in after a few years. Plus technology and the web was really starting to get exciting, and it was something I had always been close to.

I then started a touring food vending business, which did the likes of the Tibetan Freedom concerts, and Woodstock 99, and then finally got into developing small business websites and getting into internet related activities. These were all small businesses where I was learning more of the ropes of running your own show, exposing myself to different experiences and business interactions. I made money with them but nothing earth shattering. I finally put them to bed for a one year run at a tech start up in 2000. There, although not the owner, I learned TONS of lessons about starting up, managing, and growing a business. For the most part, I learned what not to do by the then CEO. I am grateful for the experience.

Speaking of Entrepreneurship, do you think that the “social” part and the marketing part is as important as the “get the job done” part? I’ve read the Marketing 2.0 post on your blog and it was pretty inspiring… I mean: things are changing. Businesses are adapting to new ways to communicate, correct?

If you’re talking about marketing and exposure, I do think that the “social” part of entrepreneurship is very important. People want to truly know the companies they are working with, to whatever extent you can put a face or a voice to your business the better. That includes in person, online (ie. blog, video, audio, etc). This is all important stuff especially as it relates to your brand and your overall marketing. This is a big part in the shifting media landscape taking place around us today. This affects not only consumers communication and interact but also the way that businesses will communicate.

In regards to the world of business changing, sure its a continuous evolution. However, I would say above all else, the one thing that will continually separate successful entrepreneurs and businesses, from others, in regards to momentum and success is their ability to “Execute” The get the job done part is key. People talk a lot, and have a lot of ideas, but in order to succeed you need to always be executing.

Now let’s talk a little bit about your job: how did you get involved in email and RSS marketing?

When I started Blue Sky Factory, Inc we started as a “web development” company and quickly realized that was WAY too vague, and the fact that we started in 2001 at the peak of the bust didn’t help us either. Email marketing was something I had experience with and was still an emerging channel for marketers. We got in on the ground floor of this industry, and still to this day, we are pushing the envelop for our clients through email strategy and our leading email marketing platform, Publicaster. In fact, email is getting more and more interesting every year. 6 years later email marketing generates one of the highest ROI’s of any online marketing medium. When you can offer that to clients, and show them the success, its very rewarding.

RSS as you know is a recent addition to our arsenal of services, and we are still building out our RSS product solutions. RSS is very complimentary to email in the sense of content delivery to end users. RSS gives users more control over how and when they receive their subscribed content. We want to embrace these new mediums and bring them to the table to our clients. RSS will not kill email even though many people preach that it will. That is simply not the case. RSS and Email are, as mentioned, very complimentary to one another, and its one of the big reasons we bought RssFwd.com last month - many people want content that is offered up via RSS but they want it delivered to their email inbox.

Overall, its an exciting space to be in, and in the direction we are heading there is an amazing opportunity for growth.

Where are you going? I mean: where is the whole online marketing business going and how do you think you’re going to keep up with its evolutions? Any new tool? Any new approach?

I am not sure where the whole online marketing business is going, its a moving landscape in and of itself. Where I see Blue Sky Factory in the equation is positioning itself more as a communications service provider vs only being seen as a email service provider. So, our viewpoint is to look at the various ways that a company or an organization can communicate online, and provide a centralized technology platform that allows companies the ability to share their content via multiple end points. That can be email, RSS, audio / video, mobile, etc.. We want to provide the dashboard for companies to publish and track their content in various ways, and be in a position to clearly see whats working and whats not. Our next version of Publicaster (our proprietary app), will be very much headed in this direction.

How did you get involved in podcasting and how the whole creation/publishing process evolved?

I consider myself to be an early adopter, so when podcasting first emerged on the scene I was tuned right into it. To me, over anything else, I was just blown away by the possibilities of what RSS, and subscription based content (audio/video) would do for individuals, and corporations in regards to entertainment, education, marketing, advertising, PR, etc.. its certainly making a huge impact on the changing corporate landscape. I cover this in depth in my upcoming book, Podcast Academy: The Business Podcast Book - Launching, Marketing & Measuring Your Podcast. You can see the Amazon link here

Tell us something about the General Motors and the Disney experiences then.

I was part of some of the very first corporate podcasts being produced for large corporations. It was an incredible opportunity to learn and get involved. Up until that point, I really had no experience whatsoever with anything of the kind :-) Through those experiences I have met some really great people and have had the opportunity to get involved with many other podcasting projects. Those exact opportunities to me are once in a lifetime experiences.

We recently heard your interview with Rick Klau (Feedburner) on ROI Radio, your tech and marketing podcast. What do you think about the recent acquisition from Google? What’s the difference between Google buying all of these services and the good old Microsoft? Do you remember when people used to say “Microsoft is trying to eliminate competitors”? What about Google? Do you want to be bought by Google? Do you want to buy Google?

I think the acquisition is a good thing, it was inevitable if you tracked it since the beginning. Google was the natural acquirer for Feedburner. The difference between Google and MS in terms of their recent acquisition strategy is that Google has a lot more momentum, and is getting the deals done. MS is behind, and they have yet to make any significant acquisitions in the social software space, which is really hurting them. MS is still rounding out its overall online advertising strategy where Google’s is, as you know, very well established and highly, highly profitable.

We are not aiming to be bought by Google, but I would never rule anything out. If Google came to me with that checkbook of their’s and gave me the multiples that they are paying out recently, I would of course consider it :-)

Blue Sky Factory is in growth mode, we are just trying to build the company ourselves and not focus on being acquired.

In that interview Rick Klau told that email is more “action oriented” while feeds are just passive readings. Is that your vision too?

If you live in your inbox, then email is definitely more “action oriented” - it invokes a need or desire to respond. I agree with Rick. Feeds on the other hand are “I will get to it when its convenient to me” - which is the beauty of RSS. Its on demand tailored content based on ones own unique subscription preferences.

Rick also said that content filtering is another practice that is growing now. As we are overwhelmed by information, we tend to select and redistribute, and others then have less content to select, based on our choices… so they actually have a filter (and we have too). Good thing? Bad thing? What do you think about it? Do you rely on feeds selected by people you trust?

I think content filtering or shared feeds is a good thing. Rick hits the point, if you become a trusted source of content or links to solid content that others are also interested in, you become a “node” of good content. The good news is, you can always unsubscribe if your sources lose their flare :-)

A quick hint, warning or suggestion for wannabe entrepreneurs.

Never let anyone tell you you cant do it. The only obstacles are the ones in your mind.

This concludes our little interview. Hope you got a better understanding of who TheTrendJunkie is. Thanks for your time and patience Greg, see you soon.