admin

The Transcript

Why Trusting Your Instincts Can Lead You to Your Passion

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. You’re listening to The Digital Entrepreneur, the show for folks who want to discover smarter ways to create and sell profitable digital goods and services. This podcast is a production of Digital Commerce Institute, the place to be for digital entrepreneurs. DCI features an in-depth, ongoing instructional academy, plus a live education and networking summit where entrepreneurs from across the globe meet in person. For more information, go to Rainmaker.FM/DigitalCommerce.

Jerod Morris: Welcome back to The Digital Entrepreneur, the show where digital entrepreneurs share their stories and the lessons they’ve learned so that we can all be better in our online pursuits. I am your host, Jerod Morris, the VP of marketing for Rainmaker Digital, and this is episode No. 34.

This episode of The Digital Entrepreneur is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform. I will tell you more about this complete solution for digital marketing and sales later, but you can check it out and take a free spin for yourself at Rainmaker.FM/Platform.

On this week’s episode, I am joined by someone who is a little obsessed with building things and creating freedom in not only her life, but in the lives of others as well. After being unable to find a writing gig anywhere and having no outlet to serve her aching passion to build, she decided to do something about it. She set up her first website and attempted to build her first blog, Dive In. That experience taught her a ton.

Since then, she’s launched a business that helps others build and grow their online platforms, Simply Stated Media. She now works for herself, helps others do the same, and loves every minute of it. She is Raubi Perilli, and she is a digital entrepreneur.

All right, Raubi, welcome to The Digital Entrepreneur. It’s great to have you here.

Raubi Perilli: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Jerod Morris: It was great to see you at Digital Commerce Summit. I don’t know if you listen, but last week I had Ed Fang on.

Raubi Perilli: Oh yeah?

Jerod Morris: Yeah. He and I were talking about how cool it is that you guys have that group where you’ll go to that event together, talk with each other, hold each other accountable, and be each other’s support group and everything. It’s really cool.

The Power of Mastermind Groups

Raubi Perilli: I love it. I look forward to that conference every year. I wrote about it for Copyblogger about how I felt it was integral for me to start my business. The people that I met there are even helping me now that I got the wheels turning, and they’re there to make sure I keep it rolling.

Jerod Morris: How important is that? A lot of people who listen to the show, a lot of people who are digital entrepreneurs end up working alone sometimes — work from home, work alone. How important is that to be able, even if it’s you don’t get to see them in person a lot, to have a group like that?

Raubi Perilli: I think it’s incredibly important, and I think people don’t put enough value on that. You get stuck behind your computer, and you kind of get caught up in your ways of just doing your work behind the screen. Even if the people you’re connecting with is through your screen or how we’re talking now, I think it’s so important.

When I first started, I made a big point to get out, go to a networking event, or go meet people once a month. I kind of fell off with it at one point, and I noticed it changing my attitude and my work ethic. I was so excited when the Digital Commerce Summit came back up because Ed and I talked to someone else who went, and we were like, “We need to go and get re-energized.”

Now, since the conference, we even setup a biweekly meeting so that we can hold each other accountable and keep that momentum going so that you don’t lose it when you get back behind the computer all alone.

Jerod Morris: That’s great. To begin, to kind of just set the stage, tell me, tell the listeners about Simply Stated Media and what you’re doing over there.

How Raubi Was Able to Find a Balance Between Client Work and Creating Digital Products

Raubi Perilli: I help people when they’re in their beginning stages of wanting to launch their side project or help promote themselves. I’m there to give them a step by step to launch their first professional online presence. That means I help them with setting up a WordPress site, just getting the basic stuff that they need on their website to look professional. It’s really easy to set up a site that you’re excited that you have a .com or something, but it just doesn’t look professional enough to be taken seriously.

So I help people so that they can build their online presence with authority so that they look like they’re a professional — they can really highlight their expertise — so that they can grow their career or their business. Sometimes it’s not even people that are looking to build a business. They just want to promote themselves so they can find better job opportunities.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, absolutely. We’re going to talk here in just a minute, we’re going to go backwards and talk about what you were doing before you got into what you’re doing now and then look forward. But I want to ask you the first question that I typically start off these conversations with, and that is about digital entrepreneurship, kind of the big picture.

I’ve always believed that the number one benefit of digital entrepreneurship is freedom — the freedom to choose your projects, to chart your course, and ultimately, the freedom to change your life and even your family’s life for the better. For you, what is the biggest benefit that you have derived from being a digital entrepreneur?

What Raubi Sees As the Biggest Benefit of Digital Entrepreneurship

Raubi Perilli: I would say you’re speaking my language right there with the freedom aspect of it. That’s huge for me, but another big part of it is just to help people do work that they actually care about. I feel like so many people do jobs that they hate or make them unhappy, and that funnels into their day-to-day life. It affects them in all parts of their life. Really being a digital entrepreneur, being able to promote myself, and find jobs and opportunities that align with what I like to do is so important to me.

When I started doing this, I noticed that just changed even my attitude and how I was interacting with people. I just think it’s so important for people to do work that they care about, and digital entrepreneurship gives that opportunity.

Jerod Morris: That’s interesting. You talked about how when you got into it, it started to change your attitude. Take me back to the time before you became a digital entrepreneur and were on your own. What were you doing, and what was missing that led you to want to make a change?

How Raubi Was Able to Find a Balance Between Client Work and Creating Digital Products

Raubi Perilli: The job that I had before I left to start Simply Stated Media, I was working at a content development company, and it was a startup. When I started there, I loved it. We were creating new things, and there was so much opportunity to innovate and come up with new processes, systems, and content that wasn’t there. When I had that job, I loved it. It felt like I was working for myself even though I was working for a company. But after a few years, we had laid out all that stuff that we needed for the foundation, and we stopped growing in that way.

Well, at least my position did. I kind of became stagnant, and then I wasn’t creating new things. I was just maintaining what was there. That really started to drain on me. I’m not the type of person that I like to go to work and do the same kind of repetitive motions every day. I know some businesses, that’s their goal to make it as simple as possible, so they can plug people in. I just needed to be in a position where I could be creative and create things from scratch. That’s what led me to, “Well, why don’t I go try to do this for myself?”

Jerod Morris: Have you tried to structure your business, then, in that way — knowing that about yourself, that maybe you like the creating part more than the maintaining part? Do you try and structure your business so that you get to do more creating than maintaining?

Raubi Perilli: Yeah, absolutely. Another part of it is, with the creating, is just the changing part of it, too. Whereas I know with my business, I started out, I really just wanted to do all freelance writing. And it quickly, it wasn’t even probably months into it that I realized, “I don’t want to just do writing. I want to do marketing strategy. I want to do websites.” So it’s not like a job where I got hired to just be a writer, and I was boxed into that position.

With having my own business, I can see where things are making me excited and what I’m good at. I can follow that path rather than be pigeon-holed into what I originally signed up for.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Tell me about the milestone or moment in your career as a digital entrepreneur thus far that you are the most proud of.

Staying Busy and Getting Paid (and Scaling Beyond One-to-One Client Work)

Raubi Perilli: I have to say, and this may not be a huge milestone, but I know that it was for me, was just hitting that first year mark, knowing that I made it through that first year and that I had enough clients to keep me busy and keep me paid. When you start out, you have that huge fear of, “This isn’t going to work. I’m not going to have enough business.” Just having that relief of, “Okay, I’m actually doing this, and it’s working,” was pretty huge for me.

Jerod Morris: The way your business is structured, is it mostly you working one-on-one with clients? Do you have any digital products, like a course, anything like that, that kind of scales bigger than just one-to-one client work?

Raubi Perilli: Most of the stuff that I do is one-to-one client work. Where I’m at with that is I definitely want to grow into doing more actually workshop-style products where people sign up, and then I work one-on-one with them, but on a limited basis that we actually start with a goal and accomplish that through the workshop. I’m working on building that now, and it’s been helpful to be doing the one-on-one client work.

I’m getting to see where my target audience, what they need, how they learn, and how much they want to learn. That’s a big part of it, too. I tend to assume everybody wants to know how to do everything themselves, and I’ve learned that a lot of clients want most of it done for them. To try to find that balance of giving them what they want and need, but still being able to give them the tools to do it themselves a little bit.

Jerod Morris: I find that a lot of successful digital businesses start out the way that you’re starting out, where you are getting a lot of work with clients. Really, there’s no way to replace the experience and insight that you get working one on one. A lot of times, then, you can leverage that into more scalable digital products — like a course or like a membership — once you have that insight.

Is that something down the road that you’re looking at, or do you always want your business to be focused on, yes, the workshops, but really working in that one-to-one setting where you’re really working directly with people?

Raubi Perilli: I fluctuated where there was times that I wanted to go all in with digital products and not have clients, but I definitely think I see myself getting somewhere where I’m like 50/50. I do find that I really enjoy working with the clients. We’re talking about that you learn a lot from them, and you see what opportunities there are there. I kind of see myself going to where I’d like to be more 50/50.

You talking about the freedom aspect of it, I like that flexibility to be able to help people without needing to be right there for them all the time. Yeah, aspiring to be a little bit more split on the client work and the actual products, courses, and content that they can use themselves to get themselves through it.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Let’s take a quick break, and when we come back, I’m going to ask Raubi about her most humbling moment as a digital entrepreneur. Be right back.

As you probably know, stitching together a website that truly gives you everything you need to demonstrate your authority, connect with your audience, and earn recurring profit is not easy.

You have to find good hosting, plus security and support you can trust, which is a headache. You need a patchwork of plugins, which can prove to be a nightmare at the worst possible time. You need the ability to create content types — ranging from blog posts, to podcasts, to online courses. And what about integrated landing pages, email marketing, and marketing automation to deliver a truly adaptive content experience?

These aren’t nice-to-have features anymore for the smart, profitable digital entrepreneur. They are necessities. Well, you have two choices. You can piecemeal it together, pay more in total, and then cross your fingers and hope everything plays nicely together, or you can use the Rainmaker Platform.

Rainmaker is a fully hosted, all-in-one online marketing and sales machine that gives you everything out of the box in one dashboard. You can run a successful podcast, host authority-building membership areas, and sell in-depth, module-based, revenue-generating online courses. You can even use RainMail to host all of your email lists and send broadcast emails and autoresponder sequences from right there in your Rainmaker Dashboard. Oh, and rather than having to choose from one of a hundred different places for support when you have a question, with Rainmaker, it’s just one support team ready and excited to help you out.

All of these reasons and more are why Rainmaker.FM runs on Rainmaker and why all of my personal sites do as well. But don’t just take my word for it, check out the Rainmaker Platform for yourself. Go to Rainmaker.FM/Platform, and start your free 14-day trial today.

Now, back to my interview with Raubi Perilli.

Raubi, I asked you about your most proud moment, and you told us, so now let’s flip that. Tell me about the most humbling moment in your career as a digital entrepreneur and, most importantly, what you learned from it.

Why Raubi Learned to Trust Her Instincts After a Particularly Challenging Experience with a Client

Raubi Perilli: Yeah, actually, I would say this was probably something that happened fairly recently to me. I had my first experience where I took on a client that just didn’t feel right at the beginning. I could tell in my gut it just wasn’t something that I felt like they were a match for what they were looking for and what I could provide, but I took them on anyway.

After putting in hours of work and talking to them again, I realized that I should have went with that original feeling of, “This isn’t a good fit,” and had to scrap everything that I had done and walk away from it — which was pretty humbling in that I put the time and the energy into working on the project and, with that, not working on other projects that need my time and energy.

I learned that you really have to listen to those gut feelings because it’s okay. Every client that comes to you, potential client, won’t be a fit, and it’s okay to accept that and admit it. I think that it’s hard when you want to take everything that comes your way, but you have to realize that, especially in a field like this that has a lot of creativity put into it, everybody’s not going to be a fit. It’s okay to accept that and pick who you should work with based off of that feeling.

Jerod Morris: That has to be a relatively common experience for folks in the early stages, as you were. I agree with you. I think you do have to trust your gut instinct, and you also have to develop that gut instinct, too.

Raubi Perilli: Yeah. It’s hard to say, “Well I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being wimpy that I don’t want to take it on.” You want to encourage yourself to push forward through hesitation, but you have to find that balance of when is it pushing yourself for the good or pushing yourself for the bad.

Jerod Morris: Just in the daily calculus that you do with your business, how often are you thinking about just the opportunity cost of your time. That’s the thing, when you choose a client like that, that’s something else that you’re saying no to. If it doesn’t work out, it’s a double bummer because it didn’t work out with them, and maybe you said no to something else that could have been a better fit.

Raubi Perilli: Right, yeah. I’m definitely thinking about that more. That experience has put that in perspective for me to pay more attention to that, especially as I’m developing these courses and more of the digital products because I’m not putting time into that. That could be way more powerful for me down the line than working with a client that’s going to be a struggle.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. All right, let’s fast forward to now. What is the one word that you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today? One word.

Why ‘Changing’ Is the Perfect Place to Be

Raubi Perilli: ‘Changing.’

Jerod Morris: Changing?

Raubi Perilli: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: I like it, which is where you should be after about a year.

Raubi Perilli: Yeah, well, about two years in.

Jerod Morris: Oh two years, okay.

Raubi Perilli: Yeah, two years. It was about two years ago in October that I left and started this, so I definitely think that that’s where I’m at is we’re talking about those digital products. I’m finally at a point where I’m focusing more on those. I do think you need those first couple years to really get your feet wet, figure out what you’re doing, and where your strengths are. I’m definitely changing in that I want to do more for more people than just how I was working on my one-to-one client base.

Jerod Morris: Are you finding that you are able to hone in quicker on what the problem points, what the pain points are of your clients and potential clients as you go through? Your ability to do that is so important when you’re creating any kind of product, and I have to imagine you get better at it as you go.

Raubi Perilli: Yeah, one of the things that I think I took for granted, because I taught myself everything about WordPress and websites, so I guess at the beginning, I thought everybody knew what I knew. It was good to work with a lot of clients, whereas I took stuff for granted that I could create this presence for them and pass it over to them, thinking that they would know how to do all these things.

Then, as I worked with them, I saw that there were a lot of places that they needed a lot of help that I didn’t realize they needed at first. It opened up some doors to where I could help in other ways that I didn’t originally see.

Jerod Morris: What is your biggest recurring pain point as a digital entrepreneur?

The Simple, but Powerful, Productivity Hack That Has Helped Raubi Focus on Work That Matters (and That You Could Implement Today)

Raubi Perilli: Probably that I just need to stay focused.

Jerod Morris: You and me both.

Raubi Perilli: Yeah. I get the shiny object syndrome where I see a course that is teaching something that I don’t know, and I want to learn that. I realize that there’s an opportunity somewhere that I want to go down that path, I don’t finish the projects that I’m working on fully, and I split up that time. That’s another reason why I started that mastermind with the people from Digital Commerce Summit — because I need to come up with a plan and stick to it. I’m hoping that they crack the whip on me and keep me in line.

Jerod Morris: I like it. That’s one way that you’re overcoming this. Knowing this about yourself, do you have any other daily strategies that help you? I ask this totally selfishly because I need some.

Raubi Perilli: Yeah. I’m a huge fan of time trackers, and I’ve always used it for my client work. Regardless if it’s something I’m being paid hourly or by project, I like to see how much work I did for the day, how much time went into a specific project, so I can assess it at the end and make sure it’s making sense financially.

One of the things I’m going to start doing, I haven’t implemented this yet, is using the time tracker also for those other projects, so I can see what am I wasting my time on, where am I getting sidetracked in working on projects that I’m not finishing. So to use the same time tracker for my work to grow my digital products as I am for the client work.

Jerod Morris: Do you have one that you recommend?

Raubi Perilli: I use Toggl.

Jerod Morris: Toggl?

Raubi Perilli: Yeah. Toggl’s definitely it’s free. It’s on my computer all day, and I think it’s been huge for me for accountability this whole time. I can say, “I want to make sure that I have this much client work every week or month,” and be able to really easily look back and see that. I think that’s important. If I didn’t have that, I’d probably at the end of the day be like, “What did I do today?”

Jerod Morris: Do you try to define some sort of kind of percentage balance between client work and then maybe working on your own business?

Raubi Perilli: Yeah. I’ve only used it for client work. I would say, “Okay, let’s do 50 percent client work and 50 percent other stuff,” but I need to define what’s happening in that other 50 percent that I wasn’t tracking. I’m just boxing it off like, “Well, that’s side admin, or marketing, or other things,” but I need to look a little bit more closely at those numbers I think would be helpful for me.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, definitely. I’m taking good notes here as you’re talking. What element of your work gives you the most satisfaction on a daily basis?

Why Seeing Clients Excited to Receive the Work They ve Paid Raubi for Gives Her the Most Satisfaction in Her Business

Raubi Perilli: I just love when I talk to a client, I pass something over to them, and it is exciting for them to get it. I just had a client that she had a website built by somebody, and she was embarrassed by it. She didn’t like it. She didn’t want to promote her business. I met with her, and we talked about what she wanted to change. I sent it over, and I was a little nervous because I thought, “Well, maybe it’s hard for her to find what she’s looking for.”

Then when I got the feedback that she loved it, her partner and her business loved it, and they were excited to start promoting their business, that was awesome for me because it’s so sad they have this business that they’re trying to start, and they can’t even drive traffic to their website because they’re embarrassed by it. I just love being able to get that feedback from clients that I’m helping them get closer to the work that makes them happy.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. That’s great. Let’s open up your toolbox real quick, if we can. You just mentioned Toggl. Are there any other technology tools that really contribute to your success as a digital entrepreneur?

Why Raubi Is Crazy About Google Docs (and Other Non-Technology Tools)

Raubi Perilli: Yeah. I don’t know if this one is very specific in that it will be a shock to people, but I’m crazy about Google Docs. I use Google Docs and Google Drive for practically everything in my business is stored there. It’s easy to collaborate with clients. Especially, I do a lot of content writing for clients through Google Docs. The fact that they can edit in real time and we don’t have multiple versions of a document, I love that. Toggl is definitely the next one in my list. I would say those are the two that I use all day all the time.

Jerod Morris: I concur with Google Docs, and every now and then, I have that moment of fear when it’s like, “I have everything in Google Docs,” which is very convenient and also very scary.

Raubi Perilli: It’s so funny that you say that because it wasn’t working, I think it was just yesterday, and I had that same thought — like, “Why do I trust this so much?”

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I know, because it’s so easy, it’s free, and it’s there.

Raubi Perilli: Yes, and it’s amazing. I really have a pet peeve of needing to download documents out of emails, and it’s so much easier with a Google Doc. You just click the link, and it’s right there. You don’t have multiple versions, and it’s awesome.

Jerod Morris: That’s how they get us. The allure of free and convenient. That’s how they get us.

Raubi Perilli: Totally.

Jerod Morris: What is the non-technology tool that contributes the most?

Raubi Perilli: I’m definitely a pen and paper kind of person. I feel like if I don’t have my task list written down on a piece of paper next to me, it does not get accomplished in the way that it would if I have it on a project management app or if I have it in a list online.

Jerod Morris: Really?

Raubi Perilli: Yeah. I need that pen and paper. It’s almost like writing it down reinforces it for me that it’s something I need to do.

Jerod Morris: Hmm. Okay.

Raubi Perilli: I’ve never been good at using Trello or something like that to keep track of my tasks, but I don’t know. I was talking about how I have shiny object syndrome, so maybe I should try that a little bit.

Jerod Morris: It’s good. I think what’s coming out in this interview is you seem to have a really high level of self-awareness, understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and setting up systems in your life to accommodate for those — and that’s smart. Rather than lamenting the fact that you are this or that, it’s accepting it, and then putting systems into your life to just make the best of it.

Raubi Perilli: Yeah, for sure.

Jerod Morris: All right, so earlier I asked you for the one word that you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today, and you stated simply, changing. When we talk again in a year, what would you want that one word to be?

How Raubi Plans to Keep Changing and Growing Moving Forward

Raubi Perilli: Hopefully it’s ‘growing.’

Jerod Morris: Growing?

Raubi Perilli: Yeah. The stuff that I’m changing now, I hope that in a year, I have all those ideas in place and that I can really be focused on growing them out, bringing in more clients, and selling more of those digital products at that time because I’ll have a better idea of where exactly I want to be.

Jerod Morris: Do you have some timelines laid out? Do you set out specific goals — like, “I want to have X clients, X revenue, or this or that,” when you say growing?

Raubi Perilli: Yeah. I definitely did. I’m working on, and this is something that, probably, since we’re staring my mastermind tomorrow will be a topic of conversation, is that I was trying to reverse engineer the amount of money I want to make with the services I want to offer, the products, and how many I have to sell for each. I’m going to try to set the goals based off of what output I want to see, and then how do I get there.

Jerod Morris: Very good.

Raubi Perilli: Definitely that plan is in progress. I haven’t completely laid it out, but I have the notes on it. And now I have the team to keep me in line, so that’s where hopefully that growth will be happening in that next year.

Jerod Morris: Very good. Well, good luck with that. It sounds like you’re on the right track to get there, so that’s great.

Raubi Perilli: I got all re-energized at the conference.

Jerod Morris: Good, good. That’s what the conference is for. That’s awesome. Are you ready for some rapid fire questions to close this out?

Raubi Perilli: Yeah, sure.

The One Book Raubi Would Insist You Read

Jerod Morris: Okay. If you could have every person who will ever work with you or for you read one book, what would it be?

Raubi Perilli: I just read Born For This. Chris Guillebeau, that’s who it is.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Raubi Perilli: Yeah, I loved that, and I’m kind of forcing it on even friends and family because it really talks about what I was mentioning about people finding work that makes them happy. So I would say that book.

Jerod Morris: Very good.

Raubi’s Ideal 30-Minute Skype Call to Discuss Her Business

Jerod Morris: If you could have a 30-minute Skype call to discuss your business with anyone tomorrow, who would it be?

Raubi Perilli: Probably Amy Porterfield. She’s one of my favorites. I love her, and she’s given me a lot of the strategies that I use now. She’s one of the good ones.

Jerod Morris: Okay.

The One Email Newsletter Raubi Can’t Do Without

Jerod Morris: What is the one email newsletter that you cannot do without?

Raubi Perilli: Shameless plug for people on your site, but I love the Unemployable newsletter that Brian Clark sends out.

Jerod Morris: Very nice. Hey, we’re all about shameless plugs on here.

Raubi Perilli: I was not paid to say that.

Jerod Morris: That’s right.

The Non-Book Piece of Art That’s Had the Biggest Influence on Raubi as a Digital Entrepreneur

Jerod Morris: What non-book piece of art has had the greatest influence on you as a digital entrepreneur?

Raubi Perilli: Hmm. That’s a tough one, Jerod.

Jerod Morris: That is a tough one. This is always the one that you get the longest pauses for.

Raubi Perilli: There’s the movie Adaptation that has Nicolas Cage in it.

Jerod Morris: Oh my goodness. One of my favorite movies of all time.

Raubi Perilli: Yeah, and I love, there’s a line in there like, “You are what you love, not what loves you,” and I’ve always resonated with that in that you should just chase the things that you really care about. That kind of aligns with my whole theory on doing work that you care about and keep following with things that you love.

Jerod Morris: Oh, that is great. That is a great movie. If anybody has not watched that movie, Adaptation, it is such a phenomenal movie.

Raubi Perilli: Yeah, it’s definitely one of my favorites. I love that movie.

Jerod Morris: Yes, and Nicholas Cage, he’s the butt of jokes from time to time, but he is brilliant in that movie, absolutely brilliant.

Raubi Perilli: He’s awesome in that movie.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Raubi Perilli: This is kind of off-topic, but there’s the book that they adapted to make that movie.

Jerod Morris: The Orchid Thief.

Raubi Perilli: Yeah, and it’s so interesting to see how that book turned into that movie. It’s really interesting.

Jerod Morris: Did you read the book? Did you read The Orchid Thief?

Raubi Perilli: I did, yeah. I mean, the movie is about them adapting the book into the movie, so it’s just a really interesting story. How they turned one media into another is pretty crazy.

Jerod Morris: It’s a very meta movie, too.

Raubi Perilli: Yeah, yeah.

Jerod Morris: It’s so interesting, so yes, check out Adaptation. Great movie.

Raubi’s Biggest Productivity Hack for Doing Meaningful Work

Jerod Morris: What productivity hack has had the biggest impact on your ability to get more meaningful work done? You may have already kind of told us this one, but if you have another one.

Raubi Perilli: I definitely would go back to that Toggl thing. If I didn’t have that, especially at the beginning, when I wasn’t sure what to charge for things. That’s a thing you definitely have to learn. To be able to look at the timer and see and track my work that way to know, “I need to finish this project in this amount of hours,” I think that keeps me motivated. I can look at it and say, “I can’t stop until I reach this amount of hours for the day,” so that has been huge for me.

Jerod Morris: Excellent.

How to Get in Touch with Raubi

Jerod Morris: Finally, what is the single best way for someone inspired by today’s discussion to get in touch with you?

Raubi Perilli: Yeah, definitely check out my website. It’s SimplyStatedMedia.com. On there, I have a five-day Go Pro Challenge that gives people the information to take that first step to start their online presence to grow their business or career. That’s definitely a good place to get to know me and what I do, or to find me on Twitter @RaubiMarie.

Jerod Morris: Excellent. So SimplyStatedMedia.com. On Twitter @RaubiMarie. Raubi, this was awesome. Thank you for joining us on The Digital Entrepreneur.

Raubi Perilli: Yeah. It was so fun to be here, and I’m so grateful that you asked me to be on.

Jerod Morris: Absolutely, and I hope to see you soon at the next event.

Raubi Perilli: I know. Already looking forward to it.

Jerod Morris: Absolutely. All right, thanks, Raubi.

Raubi Perilli: Thanks, Jerod.

Jerod Morris: My thanks to Raubi Perilli for joining me on this episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. My thanks to Toby Lyles manning the controls in the editing booth, and Will DeWitt and Caroline Early on the production end for helping me get this episode ready to go.

Thank you, of course, for being here on this episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. Always appreciate you joining me. If you ever have comments, questions, anything, just a friendly note, whatever it may be, hit me up on Twitter @JerodMorris. It is always a pleasure to interact with listeners of The Digital Entrepreneur like you. Be sure to join us next week. We’ll be back with another brand-new episode. Talk to you then.

The Transcript

The Power of Not Being Stubborn

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. You’re listening to The Digital Entrepreneur, the show for folks who want to discover smarter ways to create and sell profitable digital goods and services. This podcast is a production of Digital Commerce Institute, the place to be for digital entrepreneurs. DCI features an in-depth, ongoing instructional academy, plus a live education and networking summit where entrepreneurs from across the globe meet in person. For more information, go to Rainmaker.FM/DigitalCommerce. That’s Rainmaker.FM/DigitalCommerce.

Jerod Morris: Welcome back to The Digital Entrepreneur, the show where digital entrepreneurs share their stories and the lessons they’ve learned so that we can all be better in our online pursuits. I’m your host, Jerod Morris, the VP of marketing for Rainmaker Digital. This is episode number 33. This episode of The Digital Entrepreneur is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform. I will tell you more about this complete solution for digital marketing and sales later, but you can check it out and take a free spin for yourself at Rainmaker.FM/Platform. That’s Rainmaker.FM/Platform.

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by someone who has built his professional life around making sports analytics more accessible. After reading an academic paper on Google’s technology, he got inspired to apply his Stanford PhD to ranking sports teams. His friends liked the resulting NFL rankings that he produced and encouraged him to do more.

In 2012, his story predicting Alabama’s win over Notre Dame in the college football title game actually appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated. A study by FiveThirtyEight found that his 2015 NCAA Tournament predictions were the most accurate of anyone. Frankly, if you crave the thrill of winning your March Madness pool or if you’re looking for an edge against the spread in football, there is no excuse to not be a member of his site, The Power Rank. He is Ed Feng and he is a digital entrepreneur.

Ed, welcome to The Digital Entrepreneur. How you doing, man?

Ed Feng: I’m great. Thank you so much for having me on.

Jerod Morris: Of course. It was great seeing you at Digital Commerce Summit a couple weeks ago.

Ed Feng: Yeah, absolutely. You too. It was a great event, as always. You always learn so much, not only from the talks, but just chatting with other people. Even though it is so hard to get time from you and Brian because everyone wants to talk to you guys.
Jerod Morris: What I thought was really interesting is you have a group of folks that you’ve kind of become a little team almost, where you come to all these events and get together, and that’s really neat to see.

Ed Feng: Yeah, it’s been really awesome. That’s all Sonia Thompson. She got together a Facebook group. It’s supposed to be like a mastermind group. It hasn’t quite worked out that way, but we keep in touch and we try to help each other out as much as we can. I’ve gotten some WordPress templates from other people in the group. It’s been great.

Jerod Morris: Speaking of which, you and I had a good talk about a potential mastermind that we should follow-up on here soon, because I think that would be a good idea. Did you have a big takeaway from Digital Commerce Summit? Anything that stood out?

Why He’s So Committed to ‘Doing Remarkable Things’

Ed Feng: A couple things, two things. I really liked the talk about long copy — Joanna Wiebe — and I’ve been thinking about that in a different context in terms of what it takes to stand out in a digital world right now. Everyone’s doing 1,000-word blog posts, and I think you got to do something remarkable. One of the ways to be remarkable is to do something longer and more in-depth. I try to do things on my own site like that. I’ve really been intrigued by a site called Wait But Why which is — the growth has just been phenomenal, and all he does is 2,000, 3,000-word posts. It helps if Elon Musk tweets you out.

Jerod Morris: That’ll help.

Ed Feng: Yeah. But there are a ton of examples in the sports world too, which is where my company is doing more remarkable things, and that’s the way to stand out and get shared. I thought that all related to what she was talking about with longer copy, even though it was not quite the same thing. If that makes sense.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I love that idea. I love that. We’ll dive into that a little bit more because I want to get into what you’re doing now and what your business is. But I want to start with where I start with everybody who comes on The Digital Entrepreneur, and that is with this question. I’ve always believed that the number one benefit of digital entrepreneurship is freedom. That was actually a theme that people talked about a lot at Digital Commerce Summit, the freedom to choose your projects, the freedom to chart your course and, ultimately, the freedom to change your life and your family’s life for the better. What is the biggest benefit that you have derived from being a digital entrepreneur?

Ed Feng: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with that. I really enjoy the freedom. I can’t imagine not having my own site, doing my own thing. As much of a pain that is sometimes — to do all your own marketing and do all your own books. There’s a lot of work in running a business. But I can’t imagine just writing for big sports site anymore. You lose that freedom.

I think the freedom is absolutely crucial, and I’ve been really lucky that I’m at the point in my business where I can take advantage of that freedom a little bit more. Things are going pretty well and I’ve started to get a little bit more involved with my kid’s school. I teach math there, and that’s something I’m starting to get more passionate about. The freedom and the time to do that — even during a really busy football season — has been fantastic.

Jerod Morris: You have a couple of kids, right?

Ed Feng: I’ve got two. They’re five and seven.

Jerod Morris: Very nice. Let’s go back. Before we talk about what you do now, let’s go back. Take me back before you became a digital entrepreneur. What were you doing and what was missing that led you to want to make a change?

Ed Feng: Yeah, so I got my PhD from Stanford and I always thought I was going to be professor. I was doing jury and simulations. I was trying to understand how polymers moved and polymeric materials. Then I just got a little burned out in that course. Made a lot of mistakes myself, but also wasn’t interested in writing papers that not a lot of people were going to read. I was looking to do something else. It turns out my background in applied math was a perfect way to get into sports. I wrote a paper about Google’s PageRank — for those of you that don’t remember, that was Google’s first breakthrough. They looked at the web and said, “Well, let’s look at the link structure, links that point from one website to another, and let’s rank sites based on that.”

There’s this beautiful, elegant mathematics that is actually very similar to what I did in my PhD research. I’ve always been a sports fan. I came and I looked at that and I was like, “I want to apply this to sports.” You have to do some work because the straight application of PageRank doesn’t work at all for sports, but if your start accounting for margin of victory, you can start ranking teams really well. And if you’re interested in college football, if you’re interested in your March Madness pool, these are calculations that you’re interested in.

How Not Being Stubborn Was the Key to Turning a Hobby Into a Thriving Business

Jerod Morris: Talk to me a little bit about how you structure your business, because obviously you and I, we’re both sports fans, so we can throw out some of these terms and we get them. Obviously there’s a big part of The Digital Entrepreneur audience that’s maybe not as big into sports, but there’s still a ton that folks can learn from what you’re doing because the fundamentals of digital entrepreneurship are the same for you just as they’re the same for other people. You’re building this business around — as I mentioned in the intro — around analytics and making analytics accessible and helping people make predictions. How have you built a business around that?

Ed Feng: Yeah, I think this is an interesting story about not being stubborn, because when I first started out, I saw that gamblers were interested in what I was doing and that didn’t seem like what I wanted to do. I thought about taking more of media outlet-type of approach. I changed my mind pretty early and now the people I serve are people who need quantitative predictions, and those are gamblers. Those are anyone in an NFL pick against the spread pool. Anyone — if you’ve ever filled out a March Madness bracket, you’re potentially someone that might be interested in what I do on my site.

So those are the people I serve. I’m proud to serve them, and I am a full believer in the Copyblogger way. Build an email list. I believe in the power of direct response copywriting. I fully believe that we should be teaching every high school student in America that skill, because our world would be a much better place if that were the case.

I focus on building my email list. I monetize based on memberships. If you’re really in that pool and you’re getting crushed in your NFL pool, you can come to my site and get my predictions for every NFL game, every college game. The NFL, in particular, has been particularly good so far. I think through week 8 we’re about 58 percent against the spread, which, unfortunately, is an unsustainably good rate, but something that could help you out in a pool.

Jerod Morris: Just shows you how difficult it is to succeed when you say 58 percent is unsustainable. That shows you the difficulty of it. In terms of the revenue model then, people pay to have a membership, they get access to your premium picks, and you also have a free email list, so you have your free content there. Is it a membership in a community in a forum? Is it just access to the picks? What do people get with memberships?

Ed Feng: With membership you get access to my best predictions. These are the picks I was telling you about. I don’t really want to call them picks, because that’s a term that’s used for — some shady people on the internet that will give you games to bet on against the market. I’m trying to take a little bit more of a … I give you the results of my best computer model. If you go to my site. For free, I’ll give you access to parts of it which aren’t as accurate as looking at all the different methods that I have for predicting games. If you’re serious about your pool, if you’re serious about March Madness, you pay for membership to my site and you get my best stuff.

I’m also really interested in data visualization, so I’ve, over the course of the years, developed these data visuals that allow me to look at match-ups in games. Jerod, you as a basketball fan will appreciate this. For basketball you can look at, “How does a team’s offensive rebounding match-up against how the opponent defensive rebounds or boxes people out?” You can get a quick look at match-ups, see if that’s something that’s going to affect your outlook on the game and who’s going to win.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Let’s talk about your experience now in your business with The Power Rank. Tell me about the milestone or the moment in your career so far as a digital entrepreneur that you’re the most proud of.

Ed Feng: I honestly don’t know if it’s one moment. Getting my first content in Sports Illustrated was a very important first step, and that was three or four years ago right now. I really think it’s about the journey. That’s kind of cliché. Just getting better every year. I’ve seen consistent growth in my business. The trajectory is in the right direction, which is how I know I’m doing the right thing. I remember three or four years ago I was hoping for a tipping point. For me, there really wasn’t a tipping point. I think every year, more people find out about my site, more people like what I’m doing and sign up for the lists. I think that’s the experience for a lot of people.

Jerod Morris: It wasn’t just some hockey stick of growth? You’ve just steadily grown year over year, one brick after another?

Ed Feng: Yeah. I think of it as a marathon and I try to put in my work every day and every mile, and that’s worked for me.

Jerod Morris: All right, well let’s take a quick break and when we come back, I’m going to ask Ed about his most humbling moment as a digital entrepreneur.

As you probably know, stitching together a website that truly gives you everything you need to demonstrate your authority, connect with your audience, and earn recurring profit isn’t easy. You have to find good hosting, plus security and support you can trust, which is a headache. You need a patchwork of plugins that can prove to be a nightmare at the worst possible time, and you need the ability to create content types ranging from blog posts to podcasts to online courses. Plus, what about integrated landing pages, email marketing, and marketing automation to deliver a truly adaptive content experience? These aren’t nice-to-have features anymore for the smart, profitable digital entrepreneur, they are necessities.

Well, you have two choices. You can piecemeal it all together, pay more in total, and then cross your fingers and hope everything plays nicely together, or you can use the Rainmaker Platform. Rainmaker is a fully hosted, all-in-one, online marketing and sales machine that gives you everything out of the box in one dashboard. You can run a successful podcast, host authority building membership areas, and sell in-depth, module-based, revenue-generating, online courses. You can even use RainMail to host all of your email lists and send broadcast emails and autoresponder sequences right there in your Rainmaker dashboard. Plus, the full email integration with your website platform gives you insight about your audience and content flexibility that you simply cannot get with separate solutions stitched together. Oh, and rather than having to choose from 1 of 100 different places for support when you have a question, with Rainmaker, it’s just one support team ready and excited to help you out.

All of these reasons and more are why Rainmaker.FM runs on Rainmaker and why all of my personal sites do too. But don’t just take my word for it. Check out the Rainmaker Platform for yourself. Got to Rainmaker.FM/Platform and start your free, 14-day trial today. That’s Rainmaker.FM/Platform.

Now back to my interview with Ed Feng. All right. Ed, tell me about the most humbling moment that you’ve had in your career so far as a digital entrepreneur, and most importantly, what did you learn from it?

The Important Advice from Sonia Simone … That Ed Ignored (and Later Regretted)

Ed Feng: Yeah, absolutely. I actually have two examples here. First was when I was just starting out the business and I found this site called Copyblogger. I was a member of something called Third Tribe. Third Tribe, was that what it was called?

Jerod Morris: Yeah, Third Tribe.

Ed Feng: Yeah. This brilliant woman named Sonia Simone said, “The best day to start your email list is yesterday.” I ignored her and I didn’t start a list, and then I got featured during March Madness of that year. SB Nation came and did a video of my predictions and this cool little bracket that I had. To have had an email list then would have been spectacular. It would have been a really good start to what I was doing. Of course, I didn’t listen to Sonia and that was not a good idea. I think things would’ve gotten off to a better start with that.

Then, this is just another story I’d like to tell about different ways of monetizing. I’ve written a book about How to Win Your March Madness Pool. Super fired up about doing it. I’ve written it. It’s something you get on my site. But it was also, in a sense, a little humbling to note that the average person is only interested in that book for four days out of the year. When you work in sports — the sports world revolves around football in the United States. It’s football, college football, NFL. And college basketball takes a little bit of a backseat. Obviously people in Indiana disagree.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Ed Feng: If you sample the public in the United States, they get interested in college basketball after the Super Bowl, and they really get interested for four days while they’re filling out their bracket. To realize that later … It’s not like I regret writing the book, I still think it’s my best piece of content I’ve ever had. But it was kind of humbling to a) realize that later, and b) also to just know it’s pretty hard to sell books.

Jerod Morris: Yes it is.

Ed Feng: That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a thing that I’m proud of and that I wouldn’t go back and do it again, but that was definitely humbling.

Jerod Morris: How are you using that asset now? Are you still selling it or are you using that now as free attraction content? Have you changed what your strategy is with it?

Ed Feng: Yeah, a little bit. I wrote it two years ago and I feel like there’s been two March Madnesses in which I’ve sold the book and it’s been fine. I definitely use it as a way to get out there, a way to do something different during that time. I finally finished the book after this March Madness. I finished it for me. There’s a little bit of a next chapter that I had to finish up.

I’m hoping to get it out there during the Christmas time, which I haven’t gotten. So I’m hoping to do that. We’ll try to sell it again going into March. It is certainly not out of the question that I could give it as a freebie for joining my email list in a few years. Yeah, I think it’s really important to keep an open mind and see whatever the best is for your business. That’s probably the way you should go about using an asset like that book.

Jerod Morris: Let’s talk about this after we get off the interview too, because we’re actually — Andy Bottoms is starting a new show, Bracketology.FM, this year. And there may be some good synergy there with your book, because obviously that’s the same audience. Okay, so let’s fast-forward to now. What is the one word that you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today?

Ed Feng: I would say my business is steady and growing. That’s two words.

Jerod Morris: I thought you might just throw out Harbaugh or something like that.

Ed Feng: Harbaugh, yeah. No,

Jerod Morris: Steady and growing works. We’ll give you two.

Ed Feng: Okay, thanks. Appreciate that. Like I said before, I just believe in getting up every day and working on your business. In the long run that’s going to pay off.

Jerod Morris: What is your biggest recurring pain point as a digital entrepreneur?

Why He’s Struggling to Move Forward with a Podcast

Ed Feng: Ooh, that’s a great question. Actually, right now I would have to say almost the mental hurdle of starting a podcast. I’ve been talking about this for two months now. Every week I’m like, “This needs to happen,” and I’m still trying to get it done, because it has to happen during the football season. As humans, we like what we know and it’s always hard — even for those of us that have jumped off and tried to do our own thing — it’s hard to do something new. That’s probably my biggest pain point. I think a podcast makes a lot of sense for my business, just as it has for Copyblogger, just as it has for Assembly Call, and I need to make that happen.

Jerod Morris: What’s causing the inertia? Is there some kind of technical challenge or is it just your own mental hurdle of having not done it before?

Ed Feng: I think the mental hurdle of not having done it before. It also hurts that I’m pretty busy during football season and there’s a lot of things during the course of the week that have to get done. To get the mental energy to say, “Okay, I’m going to solve this new problem,” even though I know someone in town to call about it to help me out with some of the technical details. Then, later, to interview people and to get people on that as well. There’s some issues that I’m just trying to get my head around.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. What element of your work gives you the most satisfaction on a daily basis?

Ed Feng: I really think the teaching, in the sense that I think a lot of analytics — while it’s very useful for predictions — is also about stories. It’s about unexpected truths that you dig out of the data. And I really enjoy the teaching aspect of that. So whether that’s in terms of writing content, producing content, or just telling people about it, it goes back to my interest in — I volunteer and teach math at my son’s school. It’s a really rewarding aspect of my work. I feel like I don’t want to die just having sold data to gamblers. That would be a little disappointing for me. It’s really rewarding to teach and I think that’s something I probably picked up from Copyblogger and reading it over the years, to give back. And to give back in a way that is really meaningful and to help people.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, that’s great. Let’s open up your toolbox, if you don’t mind. What is one technology tool that contributes the most to your success as a digital entrepreneur?

Ed Feng: My business is all about analytics. All my code is in Python. Python is a beautiful language that allows you to get things done. More importantly, it allows you to go back and look at your code later and not be completely confused about what you did. That is the basis of all the calculations I do on my site, so I would have to say Python.

Jerod Morris: I would say that’s pretty important. What is the non-technology tool that contributes the most?

Ed Feng: Yeah. Unequivocally, direct-response copywriting. All the principles that I first started learning through Copyblogger, through various books I’ve read — this is something I try to get better at every year. In my off season, I try to go read a book. I try to get some more coaching. Just working on persuasive writing I think is the most … It’s a pillar of my business, for sure.

The Classic Book That Has Made a Huge Impact on Ed’s Ability to Build His Audience and Convert Customers

Jerod Morris: Obviously reading Copyblogger would be one, and we hope that everybody who’s listening to this show is a fan of Copyblogger and reads our work at Copyblogger. If you had to give a piece of advice to someone who, like you, is looking to get better as a direct response copywriter, what would that piece of advice be?

Ed Feng: This is stolen directly from Brian Clarke, but Advertising Secrets of the Written Word. It’s a book by Joe Sugarman. As Brian has always said, it is the best introduction to persuasive writing that there is. I don’t even know if you can get it on Amazon. I have some bootleg PDF copy on my computer. I think I’ve read it twice. It’s a fantastic tool.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Okay, perfect. Earlier I asked you for the one word you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today. You gave us two: steady and growing. When we talk again in a year, what do you want that one word to be?

Ed Feng: I want to serve my customers even better than I do now through the accuracy of my predictions. It’s clear that’s what people want. It’s something that I’ve been a little slow to perfect, and it’s something I want to … That’s the kind of stage I want to be at next year.

Jerod Morris: Even more accurate.

Ed Feng: Yeah, even more accurate. There’s a sense of cleaning some stuff up and fine-tuning some stuff. Things that you would never do unless you know this is exactly what your audience wants.

Jerod Morris: How much are you benchmarking? Each year, are you keeping pretty good track of how successful you are and then measuring that — this year’s against last year’s and the previous years to keep score?

Ed Feng: Yeah, absolutely. You can check that out on my site. I need to put out this year’s numbers on the site. But yeah, that is the benchmark. How well can a computer model do at predicting the outcome of these games. I do believe there is an upper limit to how good that it can be. We just want to get as close to that limit possible.

Jerod Morris: Are you pretty transparent about that with your audience? Obviously that’s what they’re coming to you for, is accuracy. So when something goes wrong or you have some picks that don’t go right, are you pretty … Do you try and bury those or un-publish the blog post or do you try to be pretty transparent about it?

Ed Feng: No, I try to be as transparent as possible. But I also am not telling people exactly what I do. I give people a general idea. There’s a lot of information on my site about what makes the original algorithm I developed good. That’s progressed to where, in 2016, what we’ve learned is to make good predictions you combine a bunch of good predictors, ensemble methods. So now, instead of just taking my algorithm based on points per game — which is what all college football team rankings do — now I apply that algorithm into other things such as data from the markets, such as efficiency metrics like yards per play. When you combine all those together, that’s how you get better, more accurate predictions. I certainly talk about that on the site a lot. To know exactly what my coefficients are for how to weight each one is probably stuff I stay away from.

Jerod Morris: How much, if at all, do you kind of care about the “fame” that can come from succeeding in sports analytics. Now, people who are listening to this who aren’t big sports fans may not know names like Football Outsiders and Jeff Sagarin and Ken Pomeroy, but you and I obviously know those names. How much does that matter to you to someday be mentioned with those guys? Does that matter?

Ed Feng: It does. I think there are two ways to go. I feel like there’s two ways to go. I either feel like you can focus on your business and not really get out there in the broader context, or you can focus on getting out there in the broader context, and this is what Nate Silver has done. He started out in baseball but he’s obviously very famous for his political predictions right now.

It’s hard to do both because they kind of contradict. Time that you would spend … For example, if you really want to get out there in sports analytics, you could just start writing for ESPN and use that platform as a way to get your name out there, and that’s certainly a good thing to do. Certainly other people have done that. But I feel like the things you would do to make that happen are different from what I do now to serve my audience.

I feel like there’s a trade-off. And it’s not entirely exclusive, by any means. I’m certainly writing things that I hope get shared that people want to read, and I hope that’s getting the word out there about my name. I think that in the regular digital commerce space it’s the difference between something that goes viral but doesn’t necessarily bring in core customers, and content that is maybe not read by everyone, but is read by the people who are going to pay you for your service. I think those are two different things. I’m certainly interested in both, but over the next year I think it’s my job to focus on my core audience and what they need.

Jerod Morris: You got to keep your eye on the ball.

Ed Feng: Sure, absolutely.

Jerod Morris: All right, well I have a few rapid-fire questions here to end with. Are you ready for these questions?

Ed Feng: Absolutely.

Jerod Morris: All right. If you could have every person who will ever work with you or for you read one book — and you already told us about one book, Advertising Secrets of the Written Word, so you can’t choose that one — what would the book be?

Ed Feng: I don’t really want to seem like a literary snob, but I really love the book Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It’s known as this dense book and it’s really hard to get through. You kind of got to devote part of your life to it, but it’s a really meaningful book about how to get the most out of your life.

Jerod Morris: If you could have a 30-minute Skype call to discuss your business with anyone tomorrow, who would it be?

Ed Feng: Tim Ferris. He is a whiz at networking and meeting people and marketing. I don’t feel like I’m bad at those things, but I look at him and just know that he’s that much better than me. He’s like the 206 marathoner out there. He just goes. I really respect what he does. Yeah, it was amazing. He sent out an email about his new book in December for pre-orders, and it was kind of tucked away a little bit in the email. Then I clicked on it and he was like the 12th overall Amazon book that day. Just unreal.

Jerod Morris: When you have that kind of list you can do that.

Ed Feng: Exactly.

Jerod Morris: Speaking of that, what is one email newsletter that you can’t do without?

Ed Feng: Henneke. Henneke is Copyblogger. I would butcher her last name. But I met her two years ago at Authority, at the conference. She’s fantastic. I read a lot of her content. It’s all about copywriting and persuasive business writing. There’s a lot of that out there — and obviously I’ve learned a ton from Copyblogger — but I love her stuff.

Jerod Morris: Excellent, yeah. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes. What non-book piece of art has had the biggest influence on you as a digital entrepreneur?

Ed Feng: Hans Rosling is a data scientist out of a Scandinavian country and he does these beautiful visual animated data visualizations. I’ll send you a link, but it was a beautiful thing about health and wealth over 200 years that he did with the BBC. I feel like data visualization is a very important way to get the word out about analytics, and that was a very motivational piece.

Jerod Morris: Very cool. What productivity hack has had the biggest impact on your ability to get more meaningful work done?

Ed Feng: The timer on my iPhone. Almost no matter what, I work in short bursts, about 30 to 40 minutes depending on how late I was up the night before. I set a timer and I focus. When the timer goes off I take a break.

Jerod Morris: Kind of like the Pomodoro Technique, but without the little tomato timer.

Ed Feng: I’m not the kind of person that can hack through something for five hours straight. It’s just not me.

Jerod Morris: How long of a break are you taking, usually?

Ed Feng: Like 10, 15 minutes. Go make my bed. Go put some dishes away.

Jerod Morris: Do something. Get back at it.

Ed Feng: Yeah, and go get back at it with a fresh mind.

Jerod Morris: Finally, what is the single best way for someone inspired by today’s discussion to get in touch with you?

Ed Feng: You can go to ThePowerRank.com and sign up for my email list. I’ll give you lots of cool content and predictions for football. That’s the main thing I do on my site. That’s also an easy way, because you’ll get a welcome email back and you can just hit reply and ask any question you want either about digital commerce or sports analytics.

Jerod Morris: You do all personal replies from your email list?

Ed Feng: I do.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I do the same thing.

Ed Feng: Absolutely.

Jerod Morris: Same thing. Awesome. Well, Ed, awesome to talk to you. Now we have some stuff to talk about offline, clearly. Great to talk to you, man. Really glad you came on The Digital Entrepreneur.

Ed Feng: Thank you so much for having me on.

Jerod Morris: Yep, for sure. All right, that concludes this episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. My thanks to Ed for joining me. Always great talking to him, and I’m sure that you were able to learn a lot from his story and from the lessons that he has learned and that he shared.

My thanks, as always, to our production team here at the Digital Entrepreneur. Toby Lyles and his team, putting the final product together. Will DeWitt and Caroline Early who helped me get everything organized and ready to go. And my thanks, of course, to you for being here, for being such a loyal audience member. Not just for listening to this episode all the way to the end, but for listening to so many episodes of The Digital Entrepreneur over the past several weeks and months.

As always, send me a tweet @JerodMorris. I love to know when people listen to these episodes, so it’s good to hear from you. @JerodMorris, that is my Twitter handle. I would love to hear from you there.

Alrighty, thanks again for being here. We’ll be back next week with another brand new episode of The Digital Entrepreneur.