Audio

The Transcript

Laura Roeder on Building a Business that Supports the Lifestyle You Love

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 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. This is episode number 38. 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 am joined by someone who was raised in an entrepreneurial family. She got her start at a young age and she got it actually when she started selling painted rocks. Although, her family members were her only customers at the time, and she is a self-learner when it comes to the web and online communications. After moving to Chicago to start her professional career, she quit her job at 22 years old.

Since then, she’s relocated several times, currently in Austin, Texas. She’s gone from a one-woman design business to a scalable social media consulting business. Now, obviously running a SaaS platform called Meet Edgar. She aspires to help people’s small businesses succeed beyond their wildest dreams by making social media marketing plain and simple to understand and implement, and giving them the tools to do it. She is Laura Roeder and she is a digital entrepreneur. Laura, welcome to The Digital Entrepreneur. It’s great to have you here.

Laura Roeder: Thank you Jerod, I’m very excited to be here.

Jerod Morris: It was nice to finally meet you in person at Digital Commerce Summit a couple of months back. That was nice.

Laura Roeder: Yes, yes. We had been emailing for many years and now I can picture you when I talk to you.

Jerod Morris: Yes, and you did a great job, by the way. Your presentation was fantastic. It was great having you there. It was a fun event.

Laura Roeder: Thank you, yeah it was.

How Being a Mom has Influenced Her Ability to Reap the Benefits of Digital Entrepreneurship

Jerod Morris: Let’s dive in here, and I’m going to start out with you the way I start out with everybody on this show, which is asking you this question about digital entrepreneurship and the value that you derive most from it. Because, I think, for most digital entrepreneurs the number one benefit that we get from it is freedom. The freedom to choose our projects, to chart our course to change our lives and our family’s lives for the better. What’s the biggest benefit that you have derived from being a digital entrepreneur?

Laura Roeder: Definitely the freedom and more specifically now that I am a mom, I feel like I’m really reaping the benefits of building this career for the past ten years. My son is almost two and I was able to take three months off maternity leave when he was born. I actually just worked part time for the first year of his life. Now I’m back to full time but I have a very flexible schedule and I go home for lunch for two hours every day. I pick him up from preschool in the afternoon and I can take time off whenever I want. Seeing some of my friends who have young children and both parents are working full time and it’s like, finding the time to go to Target is all they have time for on the weekend. I’m just very thankful that I’ve made these choices and built this life because it allows me to have a lot of freedom and I just think a lot less stress in my life.

Jerod Morris: I was looking at your website in preparation for this and one of the lines that really stuck out is where you say that you’re big on building a business that supports the lifestyle that you love. It sounds like you’ve really been able to do that.

Laura Roeder: Yeah, I mean that’s been very deliberate for me. I mean, even the switch from training to software was very deliberate in creating a business that I could really take a lot of time away from, and could continue to grow without me.

Jerod Morris: I guess to start here would be good to frame this by just giving people the overview of what you do, because you’re running Edgar now. Explain what Edgar does for folks who may not know it.

Laura Roeder: Yeah, Edgar is a tool to repurpose your content on social media. You create a library of all of your old blog posts and whatever else you send out on social, like funny images, inspirational quotes and whatever. Edgar pulls your content for you and also repurposes it over and over again, so that instead of having to manually schedule every update, Edgar looks at your library, makes sure that all of the content that you wrote a year ago that’s still valuable, it’s still getting shown on social, it’s still getting that audience.

Jerod Morris: Before you got into software, you alluded to this, you were doing scalable consulting for social media.

Laura Roeder: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Shifting Gears into Digital Entrepreneurship

Jerod Morris: Let’s go back to even before that. Take us back to before you became a digital entrepreneur. What were you doing and what was missing that led you to want to make a change?

Laura Roeder: Well, I became a digital entrepreneur really young. I’ve only had one real job. My first job out of college was a designer at an ad agency. I was there for about a year and half and the freedom was definitely part of it. I remember having a friend visit me. I was living in Chicago at the time. She visited me and I worked til 6:30 or whatever, and we’d have time to have dinner and then that was it. That was all I got to see her while she was visiting. I remember when I visited her, she had a more flexible schedule and she could take the whole day to spend time with me. I thought, Ah, that’s what I want to be able to do.

And I was kind of bored of my work and I wanted more control over what my work was and how I spent my day. So I quit that job when I was 22 to start working for myself as a freelance designer. I’ve worked for myself ever since, for the past ten years.

Jerod Morris: You were a freelance designer and then you basically took some of what you’d been doing as a freelance designer, some of what you had learned and then parlayed that into teaching other people? How did you then get into social media and doing that part of it?

Laura Roeder: As a designer I was making websites for my clients, and just because I was young and naive, I thought that when you made a website you were also telling your clients what content to put on it and the strategy for traffic and SEO. I just thought I’m making the website. They need to know how to get traffic and how to drive business, and how to turn their leads into customers. I would just help them with all that stuff, that was what was free and they’d pay me for designing and building the site.

Around 2007 – 2008 social media started to become a thing. My clients would just ask me, What is it? Should I be using it? How do I do it? Eventually, enough people told me you know, you could get paid just for talking to people about social media, just for teaching them, at the time it was Twitter, teaching them how to use Twitter. I thought, That sounds like a sweet gig, talking to people about Twitter. Sign me up. That’s how I became a social media consultant, which very quickly turned into productized training.

How All the Small Choices She s Made Over the Years Have Added Up to Something Incredible

Jerod Morris: Tell me about the moment in your career as a digital entrepreneur thus far that you’re the most proud of.

Laura Roeder: Oh man, at this point there’s a larger team. At Meet Edgar we have 24 employees. We’re all remote so we don’t have any kind of office. We meet up twice a year. For me, what’s very fulfilling is providing great jobs. For whatever reason, that’s even more inspiring to me than the work we do for our customers is getting to provide a workplace that people can really do their best work and they love showing up to every day. My greatest moment as a digital entrepreneur has happened, honestly, every time we’ve met in person because every time it’s more people.

The last one was actually in Denver and we filled a conference room, I mean a small conference room, but we filled a conference room nonetheless. We had to bring in extra chairs and it was just so moving and so amazing to me looking around the room and thinking, I’m supporting these people s families from this company that I built on the Internet. So often it just feels like this imaginary thing, like we never see any of the money, it’s all people paying us on credit cards, going through straight to our bank account. It’s really nice to have this physical representation, seeing my team in a room, saying, Wow, this is a real thing that I built.

Jerod Morris: You know, that’s so interesting, because when we get together at Rainmaker Digital, since I’ve been with the company we’ve had four or five of those meetups. It is always so powerful to get everybody in the same room. I have, of course, done it from the perspective of one of the people working for Rainmaker Digital. I can’t imagine how that must feel in your shoes or in Brian Clark’s shoes when you’re sitting there and looking at it. What you started is what led to all of this. That has to be just such a powerful moment and such a powerful realization.

Laura Roeder: It really is. It’s just amazing seeing that an idea and just that little bit of work everyday, because when you’re in it, it’s just like you’re plodding along every day a little bit more. All these small choices that you make over the years really do add up to something incredible.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, and it reminds you of your why. Why you’re doing it in the first place.

Laura Roeder: Yes.

Jerod Morris: Okay, so let’s take a quick break and when we come back I’m going to ask Laura about her most humbling moment as a digital entrepreneur. Stay with us.

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Now back to my interview with Laura Roeder.

Finding Humility in the Various Life Experiences of Your Customers

Jerod Morris: All right Laura, you just told us about your most proud moment as a digital entrepreneur. Tell us now about the most humbling moment in your career as a digital entrepreneur, and most importantly what you learned from it.

Laura Roeder: Something that’s always really inspired me when I was doing training, is the people who really didn’t consider themselves very computer savvy and knew that this is what they needed to do in order to grow their business, in order to keep up. Because I think so many people limit themselves and think, Oh, I’m too old, or, I’m not very good with computers, I can’t really learn that.

I remember I had … when I was doing training programs and sometimes you could buy the premium package and get phone calls with me. I remember having a call with this company that was very old school, brick and mortar, and the owner had sent me some emails that were just so sweet that were like, We just so appreciate what you do and we’ve learned so much from you. We got on a call and when I started talking to the guy he started laughing, hearing my voice, and he was, “We call you the girl that talks to us from the computer. Now here you are really talking to us.” He just thought it was so funny, like it was just this novelty for him that he’d heard my voice on the computer and now I was a real person.

It was very humbling, someone who had just such a big learning curve about online marketing and social media. Seeing that he was, I’m going to spend my time. I’m going to spend my money. I’m going to do the premium package so that I can get more one-on-one help and I’m going to learn this. I’m going to have a great business because of it. I really admire that kind of determination and that really is something that I found very inspiring in the training business. Because, it can just be easy to create this content and just forget about who’s consuming it and the impact that it’s having.

For some people this was a game changer, right? Because for a lot of people it’s like, Okay, I already know what content marketing is. I’m improving my skills 5%. But, some people, this was like, Wow, I just took my business from a brick and mortar to literally a global business because of what I learned in this class. That is very humbling.

Striving to Maintain Stability in a Volatile World

Jerod Morris: Yeah, no absolutely. 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.

Laura Roeder: The word that’s been guiding me lately is stable. Something that has been a challenge for us in the past two years … Meet Edgar is only two and a half years old but we’ve grown really fast. We’re at a four million annual reoccurring revenue, starting from zero two and half years ago.

Jerod Morris: Wow.

Laura Roeder: We’ve had some pretty fast growth. Hiring to keep up with that growth has been really challenging. Our goal for the end of the year has been to really build out our teams for 2017. Instead of hiring every month, we’re like, Who do we want for the whole year and we’re going to hire them by the end of this year or early next year? We’re not 100% there yet, but my dream is to, instead of feeling like there’s this frantic growth, obviously keep growing the customer base, keep growing the revenue, but the team to feel really stable and this really tight knit community of people who have gotten really comfortable working together, and have really gotten their rhythms down. You know how it is when you work with someone for a few years and you can read their mind and you know what they’re going to do. I love to have that kind of rhythm within our own company, so stable is what we’re looking for right now.

Why Constantly Innovating Helps Her Deal With the Challenge of Bringing in New Customers

Jerod Morris: Okay, very good. What is your biggest recurring pain point as a digital entrepreneur?

Laura Roeder: I would actually say that it just continues to be customer acquisition, because you have to keep innovating. I’m definitely a big believer in the bread and butter and just doing basics of online marketing. That’s absolutely how we get the majority of our customers. But, as we continue to grow, we have to keep expanding our thinking both about how to up our game and improve our content marketing and social media marketing game, and totally new channels that we might want to explore. Customer acquisition, it s fun, but it is an ongoing pain point because it’s a problem that’s never solved.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, that’s true for everybody. You mentioned earlier how much satisfaction you got from that moment when everybody was together and you had that realization about how this all happened because of what you started. I know that gives you a lot of satisfaction on a macro level, but on micro level, what element of your work gives you the most satisfaction on a daily basis?

Laura Roeder: My job is now is mostly coaching the leaders of our teams. What gives me the most satisfaction is seeing people make hard decisions. When something s not going right and a tough call needs to be made, maybe a project needs to be scrapped that we’ve already put a lot of effort into. Maybe we need to start over with a new direction. Maybe a team member isn’t working out or a freelancer isn’t working out and needs to be let go. Watching the leaders on my team make those tough calls and put into action those tough calls, I love it.

Using Your Own Tools to Make Life Easier

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

Laura Roeder: Okay, well I have to cheat and say Meet Edgar.

Jerod Morris: You can do that.

Laura Roeder: You know it’s funny, so obviously we use Edgar. The person who does our social media at our company, basically his attention went elsewhere. There was more important stuff that he had to do, so he took a lot of attention off social. We’re trying to figure out, Who do we need to hire? Do we need a freelancer or do we need a full time? We just stopped messing with it for a while and we realized Edgar handles our social, because now we have our customer support team going in and responding to people and monitoring the daily activity.

As far as keeping up with the content, Edgar really does that for us and Edgar really sends everything out. You really can just check in once a quarter and refresh things. That was a pretty cool moment to see, Oh, this thing that we would have previously had to hire maybe a full time role for, Edgar is just doing for us. That’s pretty cool.

Jerod Morris: Yeah and by eating your own dog food you found that out. That’s nice, and that’s what you designed it for so hey, that’s good. What is the non-technology tool that contributes the most?

Laura Roeder: Keeping focused on goals. At the start of every week I write my one or two big picture goals for the company. I’m always asking myself, Okay, is my time really helping to move the needle on that goal? That’s my biggest non-tech tool.

The One Word She d Use to Describe Where She Wants to Take Her Business in the Future and Why You Should Strive For it Too

Jerod Morris: Very nice. Earlier I asked you for the one word that you’d use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today, and you said stable. When we talk again in a year, what would you want that one word to be?

Laura Roeder: What immediately comes to mind is joyful.

Jerod Morris: Oh, that’s s new one, I like that.

Laura Roeder: Yeah, I guess it’s unusual, but I would love to have that feeling for our team and for our customers. That using Edgar actually gives them joy, whether it’s seeing the results, seeing the time that’s freed up. Same with the people at the company. Obviously, there’s going to be some challenging problems that they’re solving, but if you’re doing work that you really love, it’s really fun to do that. To me, that word means we’ve gotten past some of our growing pains on the team level and on the product level. Everything just feels smooth and it’s like, This is fun. It’s fun to show up and do this work every day.

Jerod Morris: I like that, joyful. Okay, that’s a good one. I’ve got some rapid-fire questions to end here. Are you ready for the challenge?

Laura Roeder: I’m ready.

Rapid-Fire Question Time

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

Laura Roeder: Scaling Up by Verne Harnish. We use a ton of the systems. It’s our business Bible.

Jerod Morris: Scaling Up by Verne Harnish?

Laura Roeder: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Jerod Morris: I haven’t read that one yet.

Laura Roeder: It used to be called Rockefeller Habits.

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

Laura Roeder: Wait, I thought I had my answer, sorry. You re gonna have to edit so it sounds faster.

Jerod Morris: Oh no, oh no, we’ll leave it in here. It’s okay, this makes for good audio.

Laura Roeder: Wait, who do I want to choose?

Jerod Morris: Who are you deciding between?

Laura Roeder: I don’t know their names. I would choose someone at Uber, but I don’t know who, because it’s probably not Travis who is the big name person that you see. They’re a fascinating company to me for how much action they take so quickly. It just seems like someone has an idea and then the next day it’s implemented in 40 countries. You see differences when you Uber in different cities. They have it localized and improved for that location. It’s just incredible to me. I don’t know who I want to talk to at Uber, but I just want to know how they do that.

Jerod Morris: Somebody, yeah. What’s the first question that you would ask?

Laura Roeder: I would ask, How do you execute so quickly? How do you take things at such a huge scale and execute so many ideas without breaking everything?

Jerod Morris: Yeah, that’d be great to know the answer to that question. What is the one email newsletter that you can’t do without?

Laura Roeder: Hiten Shah’s SaaS Weekly is a pretty good one.

Jerod Morris: Love that one, I subscribe to that one and I believe we’ve had that mentioned on here a couple of times. It’s a really good one. What non-book piece of art had the biggest influence on you as a digital entrepreneur?

Laura Roeder: I have no valid answer to this one.

Jerod Morris: Nothing?

Laura Roeder: I don t think … I haven’t been influenced by art that is not books.

Jerod Morris: No song, no movie, no anything? How about a moment?

Laura Roeder: What moment had the biggest influence?

Jerod Morris: Maybe a scene or a location, like a trip that you took or a place that you were.

Laura Roeder: Okay, I’m going to think of an answer.

Jerod Morris: Anything.

Laura Roeder: Anything! Like, Give me something!

Jerod Morris: Something that’s not a book.

Laura Roeder: Okay, I guess, to choose a place that had an influence on me. I mentioned visiting a friend and she had a lot of free time. When I first started working for myself I was living in Chicago. Much love to Chicago, but I did not grow up in a cold place and I could not handle the winter. My best friend from college had moved to LA. I just remember that first time I visited her and the weather was just beautiful and it was such a fun city. I thought, Why do I live in Chicago? I want to move to LA. And I did. I did move to LA, and I was able to do that with the work that I had set up. I know so many people that would just sort of remain a lifelong dream because they’d be like, How am I going to get a job? I don’t know anyone there and I d have to start over. That visit really influenced me to choose what I wanted in life.

Gaining Productivity by Cutting Out the Phone Temptation

Jerod Morris: Very nice, and that all goes back to being able to design the life that you want to lead, and building a business around that, which is so important. What productivity hack has had the biggest impact on your ability to get more meaningful work done?

Laura Roeder: Getting off my phone. I do no tech after 9:00 pm. I do not keep my phone in my room, so I’m not seeing it before I go to bed, or when I wake up in the morning. I take social apps off my phone. I take email off my phone. I found that it makes a huge difference to be able to really start my workday when I sit down and start my workday; as opposed to I half look through my emails that morning. I try to respond to one, but then it got too complicated and abandoned it. You get this feeling that you’ve done work, but you haven’t actually done anything. Not checking Slack, not checking email, til I m actually sitting down at my desk ready to work is huge for me.

Jerod Morris: Interesting, so no email either. Even if you leave the office and go pick up your kid or whatever, you don’t want to be able to check your email when you’re in the line? You want it totally off there.

Laura Roeder: Exactly, because the thing is, I can’t do anything about it. If someone needs me, which they never do, they could text me. The problem with reading email when I’m waiting for my kid at pick up, anything that’s worth responding to, I’m not able to … Maybe I need to reference a document, maybe I want to write something more in-depth. I’m not able to do that, so to me, it often gives you this false feeling like you’ve handled something, but you haven’t actually been able to close the loop. Now you’re just thinking about it on the drive home. You can’t do anything about it. I find it much better to just have focused work time where I can actually close those loops.

Jerod Morris: I really like that idea. I can’t promise that I won’t just go start deleting stuff off my phone right after we get done with this, because that’s pretty inspiring, actually.

Laura Roeder: Give it a try.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I may try that, I may try that. What is the single best way for someone inspired by today’s discussion to get in touch with you?

Laura Roeder: I still love Twitter.

Jerod Morris: Only when you’re at your desk?

Laura Roeder: I don’t have Twitter on my phone, actually.

Jerod Morris: No, that’s what I mean. Only when you’re at your desk.

Laura Roeder: Yeah, I’m LKR on Twitter, so that’s a great way to get in touch with me.

Jerod Morris: LKR, fantastic. Well, Laura this was a great conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

Laura Roeder: Thank you.

Jerod Morris: That will do it for this week’s episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. My thanks as always to our great production team led by Kelton Reid and Toby Lyles as well as Caroline Early and Will DeWitt for helping me put this episode together. My thanks of course to Laura Roeder for taking the time to speak with us, and my thanks to you for being here and listening to The Digital Entrepreneur. I always greatly appreciate your attention and the time that you invest in the show. Always feel free to send me any comments or thoughts. Tweet me @jerodmorris, J-E-R-O-D M-O-R-R-I-S.

A quick programming note, this will be our last episode of The Digital Entrepreneur for 2016. We’ll be taking a little break but we will be back at the beginning of the new year with new episodes, so watch out for that. In the meantime, enjoy the end of 2016. Enjoy the holiday season however it is that you celebrate it, and I look forward to talking with you in the new year. Take care.

The Transcript

Lessons on Business and Life from the Zen Master of Marketing

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 we can all be better in our online pursuits. I’m your host Jerod Morris, the VP of marketing for Rainmaker Digital and this is episode number 37. 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 have a guest that’s been honored at both the White House and the United Nations as one of the top one hundred young entrepreneurs in the country. She is a visionary strategist for the digital age, a web and TV personality, a best selling author, and the award winning CEO of the Marketing Zen Group, a global online marketing and digital PR company that helps turn successful companies into industry leaders. She helps brands reach the next level by leveraging digital opportunities to drive meaningful results. She is Shama Hyder, AKA the zen master of marketing and she is a digital entrepreneur. Shama, welcome to the Digital Entrepreneur. It is wonderful to have you on the show.

Shama Hyder: It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, you’re an award winning entrepreneur, you’ve shared the stage with presidents. We appreciate you taking the time to join us and lend some insight on your path as an entrepreneur.

Shama Hyder: This is my favorite topic so a pleasure.

Why She Strives to Have a Student Mindset (No Matter What)

Jerod Morris: Very good, very good. Let’s start out where we always start out with our guests. I’ve always believed that the number one benefit of digital entrepreneurship is freedom. The freedom to choose your projects and 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?

Shama Hyder: Yeah, I would say definitely the freedom has been a huge part but also just the ability to make a contribution without boundaries or without limits. Really, I think as an entrepreneur it’s the limits that you put on yourself. I think, for me, that’s a very gratifying part of it.

Jerod Morris: All right, so let’s go back. Take me back to before you became a digital entrepreneur. What were you doing and what was missing that led you to want to make a change?

Shama Hyder: Well, I was in school, so I think, unlike a lot of people who sort of go from the career world, I started the company right out of school. I think, just to rewind slightly back, I finished school and I thought that I would go get a job, which is what you’re told you’re supposed to do and whatnot except for me my industry didn’t exist and the idea of social media, social media marketing is just so new. The industry really, honestly, did not exist.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Now, had you always been an entrepreneur growing up, like is this something that was just in your blood that you had always done?

Shama Hyder: I think so. I’ve always been entrepreneurial, and so … Both my parents are entrepreneurs and, but I think that actually made me not want to do it as much. Because I saw them, and we have very different styles of entrepreneurship, I can put it that way. I guess I’d only seen one facet of that but yeah, I think I’ve always been very entrepreneurial and I’ve always enjoyed the idea of having my own rules and my own way to contribute to society in a way that’s not limited by anyone else.

The Lessons She Took From Her Parents (that You Can Implement Too)

Jerod Morris: You mentioned that you have different styles. How would you describe the differences in your styles?

Shama Hyder: I think my parents with their entrepreneurship, they were also very spontaneous in a lot of ways. I think some of the challenges I saw them deal with was more towards not being as organized. I’m more type A than they are.

Jerod Morris: How did you come by that? Have you just always been that way?

Shama Hyder: I think when you grow up with parents who are not type A it forces you to be type A and so yeah, I think in some ways, to make up for that, even as a kid … Yeah, so I think I got the best of both worlds in many ways.

Jerod Morris: Can you walk us through how your business is organized, because obviously you have Zen Marketing, so you have a marketing agency and you’re taking clients. Then you also are a business unto yourself with your speaking and with the books that you’ve written, how do you keep everything organized and manage your priorities?

Shama Hyder: Yeah, I think that’s exactly it, it’s priorities, it’s knowing what are the absolute things I have to accomplish today and then everything else revolves around that.

Jerod Morris: What kind of systems do you have for helping you do that and make those tough decisions?

Shama Hyder: I want to say pen and paper is sometimes the best. You think it’s tools but it’s not, right. You can have tools that help you focus or support your productivity but at the end of the day it’s really you rolling up your sleeves and saying, This is what I ve got to do. I think certain things that do help, like there is a tool I use that’s like a thirty minute timer on my phone and it’s great because I’ll do … I think it’s also known as the Pomodoro effect where you take, you focus on something for thirty minutes and you go do something else. That certainly helps and try to focus in on things that need me. But of course you only work in such, my schedule, there’s not always a set schedule because the media might call and they might be doing a story on something and they want me in or a client says Oh, we’ve got this great opportunity, can we brainstorm? In so many ways, yes I can have a framework for my schedule, but I have to stay flexible as well.

Jerod Morris: What kind of role have some of the digital products that you’ve created like the eBooks, what kind of role have those played in the growth of your business?

Shama Hyder: Yes, well I ve got two books out in bookstores. One is called The Zen of Social Media Marketing, which is now in its fourth edition and Momentum, my second book, which is about marketing in the digital age that just came out a couple of months ago. And both have been, say, pretty crucial in helping with business development and building a thought leadership platform, and both of them came about from market demand. I wrote The Zen when people really there were no books on social media, where people really needed some insight on what it meant to do, to use Facebook or to use these platforms and tools for business. Being able to create something based on market demand has always, I think, been a key to success.

How to Maintain a Trajectory of Success

Jerod Morris: One trend that we have seen is a lot of people who are in client work will end up starting another portion of their business around digital products, whether it’s courses or membership sites. Do you have any plans to do anything like that or are you going to stay on the same trajectory that you’ve been on?

Shama Hyder: I think there’s always possibility. For me, what’s more important is, How do you stay relevant, right, to your audience, and how do you constantly give them something they want? If that looks like digital products, then it will be digital products. But, I’ve never been one to say, Okay, this is the way we’re going to go and then everything else gets forced around it. It’s much more, Let’s keep listening to the audience. Let’s see where our clients want. Let’s see what the audience is asking for, and then create around that.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Shama, tell me about the milestone or moment in your career as an entrepreneur that you’re the most proud of.

Shama Hyder: One moment that I think that for me was really sort of a personal like, Oh, wow, moment was visiting a client’s Christmas party A client invited us to a Christmas party, we’d been working with them for two years at this point and we were handling all their digital marketing and attending their Christmas party from the year prior, it had seemed like the company had tripled. All these people and their families and the CEO, I remember was talking to him and he said yeah, We’ve grown so much with your help in the last two years. These are all the people that we’ve now been able to hire.

What was great about that was just to know, sometimes I think that you do, you see the impact on bottom lines, but you don’t see the full societal human impact, right? How we were helping with the marketing and helping this company grow, they in turn were able to hire these people and then, of course, there were these kids and families that were impacted by that. For me, that was a really touching moment in terms of what we do and the effect it really has.

Jerod Morris: Boy, that had to be just a great moment. To just see there and see, yeah, the impact that you had and the help on real people, like you said, because sometimes we can lose sight of that fact. That had to be great.

Shama Hyder: Totally, and it was. And we’ve had moments like that and I’ve had moments like that, being able to see how what we do impacts people.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. All right, let’s take a quick break. When we come back I will ask Shama about the most humbling moment that she has had as digital entrepreneur.

As you probably know, stitching together a website that truly gives you everything you need to demonstrate your authority, connect with 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. 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. But you have two choices: you can piecemeal it all together, pay more in total and then cross your fingers and hope everything play nicely together, or you can use the Rainmaker Platform.

Rainmaker is a fully hosted, all-in-one 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 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.

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How She Finds Humbling Moments Every Day and is Always Learning Something New

Jerod Morris: All right, so Shama, tell me about the most humbling moment in your career as a digital entrepreneur, and most importantly, what you learned from it?

Shama Hyder: I think I have humbling moments everyday, honestly. I don’t know, really it’s not like one like Oh my God, I was so humbled, but everyday I think I learn something new and for me it’s a mindset, right, to always stay in that kind of student mindset of there’s … I feel like things make you humble when you get to a certain point or like, does that make sense?

Jerod Morris: Totally.

Shama Hyder: Right, like there’s some place for you to fall from? Or there’s some place to be like Oh wow, I really thought I was going in one direction and this opened my eyes. I think I always come from that perspective where I’m a student. I learn so much from my employees all the time because, let’s face it, I’m younger than all of them, most of them. For me it’s always been a process of being a student and learning so I don’t know if there’s one experience that I would say, I was really humbled by it. I’ll say that everyday there’s at least ten moments in a day where I’m like, Oh, well I don’t know it all, good thing I didn’t think I knew it all.

Jerod Morris: I think that’s probably an indication of why you’ve been successful because obviously those moments of humility are also paths for learning and opportunities to learn. I think the fact that you view it that way is a great sign for your continued growth, because that’s what will keep you learning and growing, so that’s great.

Shama Hyder: Thank you, I certainly think having a student mindset no matter what you’re doing is the way to go. You know, and when the clients you can always tell the difference from the clients who are, I love that our clients are like this, they want to learn. They want to grow. They’re curious, and I have a lot respect for curiosity. I think it keeps you from ever thinking that you know it all, because the moment you do I think is when you have that really humbling moment.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Shama Hyder: I just prefer to always keep myself in that mode.

One Word that Sums Up Her Status of Business Today

Jerod Morris: Yeah, absolutely. 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?

Shama Hyder: Growing. I mean, really, it’s growing. And maybe, you know what would be fair, I would say, if I was going to be really specific, I’d say momentum, which is the name of my second book. I think part of me writing that and choosing that name was because I feel like, as a company, we have a lot of momentum right now. We’re one of the top social media digital PR agencies in the country, if not in the world, in terms of just being how early we started on to this path. I’m really excited with how much momentum we have and where things are going.

Shama s Biggest Recurring Pain Point Right Now

Jerod Morris: Very cool. What is your biggest recurring pain point as an entrepreneur right now?

Shama Hyder: I would say a reoccurring pain point, and this is just something is constantly, especially in our industry, keeping up. To be totally honest that’s a challenge for anybody in this industry, but it really is when you’re looking at things and you’re saying, What changed while we were sleeping? That’s the joke at the office, right?

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Shama Hyder: I think and it’s a challenge I love, but it is definitely a challenge to be able to keep you and to know what’s changing, how do we … We have to stay a step ahead for our clients. To stay relevant is the only way that we’re going to be useful to them.

Jerod Morris: How do you do that with so much information out there? How do you make sure that you’re getting the right information and finding out what you need to stay relevant?

Shama Hyder: I think, at this point, I’m very lucky that because I’m an investor in things and I’m, I write for multiple columns and I do a lot of media, that things find me, which is a great place to be.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Shama Hyder: I think that’s a nice thing is that I’m able to get sort of what I would say is the early scoop or the insider, the early invites and things to know what’s new.

Jerod Morris: That’s good.

Shama Hyder: Or what’s around the bend, yeah.

The Most Satisfying Part of Her Job

Jerod Morris: You mentioned earlier how rewarding it was to be at that Christmas party and see the impact that your work was able to have on real people, on families, I’m curious what element of your work on a daily basis gives you the most satisfaction? Like the actual just getting down, doing the work, what part of it do you enjoy the most?

Shama Hyder: For me, it’s honestly one of my favorite parts, is the strategic part, working with our clients, coming up with campaign ideas, talking with the team, figuring out how we’re going to help our clients move the needle, whether it’s with their social media campaigns or influence their marketing or digital PR campaign we’re launching. Like, these are all the things that really get me excited at the end of the day.

One Recommended Tool

Jerod Morris: Excellent. Let’s open up your toolbox if we can, and I’m curious what is one technology tool that contributes the most to your success as an entrepreneur? I know you mentioned earlier the app that you have that helps you keep track of your time and keeps track of your priorities. Are there any other technology tools that really stand out as helping contribute?

Shama Hyder: I’m a big fan of Slack. We use that. It’s a communication tool, which I’m a huge fan of that. Just allows me to keep in touch with our team. Our team is all over the US. Our clients are global. We have clients from Lithuania to Hong Kong, so definitely a huge plus in that way.

Non-Tech Ways to Keep Yourself Grounded

Jerod Morris: In addition to pen and paper, which you mentioned earlier, are there any non-technology tools that contribute the most, that help you out?

Shama Hyder: Non-technology tools aside from pen and paper, I would say that I have some favorite apps, things like that but you know my dogs, they’re pretty non-tech. They’re great because they remind you what life is really about.

Jerod Morris: Exactly, exactly. That s why I like asking that question.

Shama Hyder: It’s not Instagram Stories.

Jerod Morris: Right, right. No, that’s wonderful. Okay, so earlier I asked you what’s the one word that you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today. You said growing and momentum, we accept both of those.

Shama Hyder: Okay.

Jerod Morris: When we talk again in a year, what would you want that one word to be?

Shama Hyder: Wow, I think that would be a good word. Why not aim high, right?

Jerod Morris: Yeah. What will it take to get there for you?

Shama Hyder: I think just doing what we’re doing. I think that’s the path we’re on. I’m really excited about how we’ve grown and we don’t do any outbound marketing. Everyone who works with us comes through client referrals or they come through our own inbound efforts and that’s really, to me, that’s really powerful.

Jerod Morris: That’s a good spot to be in.

Shama Hyder: Yeah, I’m grateful for it, yes.

Rapid-Fire Question Time

Jerod Morris: Yes. So I have a few rapid-fire questions to close out. Are you ready?

Shama Hyder: Yes.

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

Shama Hyder: Shoot, I know this is going to sound like an unfair question or an unfair answer perhaps but honestly it would be The Zen of Social Media Marketing and we do. We ask people to read it because so much of that is my philosophy. It’s the company philosophy, so in some ways it is like understanding what we’re about and how, what our perspective and approach is on digital marketing.

Jerod Morris: That’s a good way to make sure everybody understands that, and understands the mindset and culture that you’re trying to create, so I think that’s a very fair answer.

Shama Hyder: Exactly. And it helps when someone comes in when we’re hiring and they’ve read the book. To me it’s like, Okay they’re a step ahead. They are already familiar with this. Like, they know what we’re about to some degree.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, so memo to anybody looking to get a job: read the book. If you could have a 30 minute Skype call to discuss your business with anyone tomorrow, who would it be?

Shama Hyder: I don’t think that’s funny because it’s not … I feel like the people who work with us find us so I don’t know who I’d want to be able to talk to. Like totally, honestly, I think it would be the person that is really interested in working with us. Like that would be where my interest is.

Jerod Morris: Okay.

Shama Hyder: That’s the person I’d want to talk to.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. What is the one email newsletter that you can’t do without?

Shama Hyder: Boy, there’s so many, I like my Quora Digest. The digest I get from Quora.com, that’s like the questions people are asking and I find myself looking on it often, so, yeah.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, Quora has some great stuff.

Shama Hyder: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: What non-book piece of art had the biggest influence on you as an entrepreneur?

Shama Hyder: You know, there’s a really cool sculpture at Burning Man. I don’t know if people have seen it but it’s two … it’s kind of a wire frame of two people who are arguing and they’ve got their backs to each other but within that wire frame you can see the children within each other and they’re facing each other trying to find a solution. I always think that’s touching, like regardless of where we are as adults or we’re in our kind of cages you know, inside it makes like the soul within salutes the other souls that it recognizes. I think that’s a really moving piece of art.

Jerod Morris: That’s great. That’s a great answer. What productivity hack has had the biggest impact on your ability to get more meaningful work done?

Shama Hyder: Close out browser windows. I mean honestly it’s amazing how much we’ll get done when you focus on one thing at a time and you don’t have multiple, I mean just me closing out browser windows has been huge.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, it’s amazing how those can just accumulate. You don’t even realize it.

Shama Hyder: Well, such small things, and the other day I learned an interesting hack which I think is great. For people who play on their phones a lot or find that to be kind of, where they keep going back. Turning your screen to be a grayscale. You can do that on the iPhone, so everything’s grayed out, the colors go away and stuff and you find that you’re just, you want to play with it less, which I think in some ways can be a good thing.

Jerod Morris: That’s interesting.

Shama Hyder: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: I might have to try that. Shama, what’s the best way for someone who is inspired by today’s discussion to get in touch with you or to get more from you?

Shama Hyder: Certainly we’ve got two sites, MarketingZen.com and then ShamaHyder.com, both the sites have tons of content so if this is the type of content that you’re interested in and especially marketing, those are the places to go.

Jerod Morris: Excellent. Well Shama, thank you so much for joining us. Good luck getting to wow over the next year, hope you get there and yeah, really appreciate your time and insight.

Shama Hyder: Thanks so much. Pleasure to be here.

Jerod Morris: And that concludes this week’s episode of the Digital Entrepreneur. My thanks as always to Toby Lyles and our production team along with Caroline Early and Will Dewitt for helping to make this episode possible. My thanks to Shama Hyder for taking the time to join me for this discussion. I really appreciated her insight. It was great to get to talk with her and I’m sure you feel the same, and of course my thanks to you for being here and for listening. I always appreciate your attention and your support on the Digital Entrepreneur. If you ever have any questions, comments, thoughts, or anything, or just want to connect send me a tweet @jerodmorris. I always love hearing from you, and we’ll be back next week for another brand new episode of the Digital Entrepreneur. Take care.

The Transcript

Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should (Plus Other Life Lessons from Seth Spears)

Voiceover: Rainmaker.FM. You are 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. 36.

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 have a guest who’s been obsessed with quality from a young age. Seriously, he is crazy about quality. If it’s not the best, he won’t have it. He got his start in digital entrepreneurship in 2009 when he founded his own one-man digital marketing shop that has now grown into a small boutique agency of employees and contractors serving dozens of clients around the world.

He specializes in helping small business owners and bloggers who are crazy-passionate about their area of expertise take their business to the next level by creating a strategy for long-term success. He is Seth Spears, and he is a digital entrepreneur.

Seth, welcome to The Digital Entrepreneur. It’s great to have you on the show.

Seth Spears: Hey, Jerod, thanks for having me.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, for sure. This will be really good. It was great seeing you at Digital Commerce Summit. Glad you were able to make it out there.

Seth Spears: Yes, I had a great time.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, it was good. Let’s hope in here, Seth. I’ve always believed that the number one benefit of digital entrepreneurship is freedom. I think that’s what a lot of people feel that it is — the freedom to choose your projects, 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?

Why Seth Loves the Balance Freedom Brings to Keep Him Centered and Focused

Seth Spears: I would completely agree with that statement as far as freedom. Especially the time freedom. Some people, they have monetary freedom where they make a lot of money, but they don’t have any time to enjoy it. They’re a slave to their desk, their office, or wherever. They’ve got to be there 24/7. When I think of that, I think of attorneys or doctors.

They’re high paid professionals, but they’re completely reliant upon being there and doing the work, so they don’t have the time to spend with family and friends, travel, and do the things that they enjoy. So I completely agree that having that time freedom and being able to work either in an office or coffee shop or at home or traveling is definitely the biggest benefit to being a digital entrepreneur.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, there’s certainly something admirable about putting in tons of hours and doing the work, but it does kind of lead to the question “what’s it all for?” if you don’t have the time to spend it with the people that you care about most and doing the things that you love doing the most.

Seth Spears: Yeah, exactly. That’s something that I’ve thought about a lot, especially over the past six months or so because I’ve certainly put in a lot of hours over the past few years as far as just work on either my own business or the clients’, et cetera. No stranger to the hard work and putting in lots of hours. But then at the end of the day, it’s, “How much work do you actually want to do?”

You get to a certain point where you’re like, “I can continue to grow this. I can continue to push and make more and make it bigger and better, but then why? Why am I doing this? Why am I pushing so much if I’m not using either the money or the time, et cetera, to spend time with my family, do things that I enjoy, or hang out with friends?”

I think it’s all part of finding a balance there. Both of them have their time and their place because, on the flip side of that, if you just spend all your time just doing what you enjoy, well, then you’re not going to be very motivated. You’re going to be kind of lazy. That’s great and all, but at the end of the day, I think you got to have some balance. That keeps us centered and focused.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I agree. Balance is definitely the key.

Let’s go back. Take me back before you became a digital entrepreneur. What were you doing, and what was missing that lead you to want to make a change?

How Seth Used Just-In-Time Learning and a Strong Work Ethic to Go From ‘Miserable’ to Pursuing His Life Dreams

Seth Spears: Great question. Back in 2009, I was working for a small college in Nashville, Tennessee. I was the Assistant Director of Admissions, so basically recruiting students, handling paperwork, traveling to college fairs, and all kinds of stuff like that. I was miserable. I hated it.

When I was in college I always had this expectation that I was going to major in business. I was going to graduate. I was going to meet the girl of my dreams, get married, have kids, start my own business, and sail off into the sunset and live happily ever after.

Jerod Morris: You had it all mapped out.

Seth Spears: Yeah, except that didn’t actually happen. It’s kind of happened now, but not exactly in the timing or the way that I was hoping for or expecting it to. I graduated college, bummed around for about a year, did some nonprofit mission work and stuff, waited tables and bartended, then went to work for this college. Got married, started having kids, but I was miserable in the job that I had.

I always had entrepreneurial leanings. I always had a really strong work ethic, worked a lot, and was always doing something on the side. I dabbled in some real estate investing. I tried some little side ventures here and there, but nothing ever seemed to work.

I basically came to a point … we had a new administration at the college, and it came to a head. I said, “You know, it’s either me or them. Since they’re not going anywhere, I’m going to have to go somewhere and make a decision to do something else.”

Now on the side, I had a little side hustle going. I was doing some independent collegiate consulting for homeschool students, helping them to prepare for college. I saw it as an under-served market, so I was doing a little bit of consulting on the side for them. I was homeschooled in high school, so I understood what it took to get in to college — and also, having the administrative side working for a university, I knew what it took to get it.

I began doing that. That was fall of 2009. During that time, as I was leaving, I realized that, “Well, I’ve got to market myself to get myself out there, to get more clients, and to create content and use social media.” Then realized I need a website. “Somebody’s got to be able to find my website, so I’m going to have to learn how to rank that in the search engines, use social media to promote it, and all of that.”

It was a really steep learning curve. I have a marketing degree, but what I came to realize was that that degree was worthless because everything has changed so much. All those theories as far as product price, place, promotion, and all that stuff, it wasn’t really relevant to what I was trying to do as far as market myself and the content that I was producing.

I basically went on a journey to learn as much as I could about digital marketing. I bought some courses, and I read as many blogs, articles, and things as I could, just to really teach myself. During that process, I discovered WordPress, StudioPress and the Genesis Framework, and started teaching myself website design.

As I begin doing that, I really enjoyed it. I like the creative side. There was a really steep learning curve for me, though, trying to figure out what FTP was. I was like, “I have no idea. I don’t understand.” It’s funny to think back now. That wasn’t that long ago. It was 2009 I guess. One thing basically led to another, and I began building out my own website.

Then some family and friends were starting businesses, and they asked for some help because they knew that I was into marketing and technology. I was building a couple here or there, one for myself and some other people, so I did. Then I began to get a couple clients, asking them to help, and I was like, “Huh, this is interesting. I actually really enjoy this. I don’t even like the collegiate consulting site, so why don’t we just kind of pivot and roll it into marketing? That’s what my degree is, and I can kind of do that.”

That’s where Spears Marketing was born. That was in 2010 basically. Then began doing a lot of website design and getting into social media marketing, search engine optimization, and that whole game.

Jerod Morris: It sounds like there was never really a grand plan for Spears Marketing and where you’re at now. It was almost just like one step led to the next, and it all sounds very logical as you explain it. Did it feel like a logical progression as you were going?

The Inherent Opportunities of ‘Flying by the Seat of Your Pants’

Seth Spears: I’ve never thought of it like that. I felt like I was flying by the seat of my pants for the most part.

Jerod Morris: It’s easy to put the pieces together in retrospect, and that’s kind of what I’m wondering. Did it feel like that as you were going through it?

Seth Spears: I don’t think so. It’s hard to take myself back there and feel the feelings as far as what I thought. I just saw an opportunity. I’ve always really enjoyed the study of economics and looking at the market and where opportunity lies. I was definitely in the right place at the right time as far as getting into WordPress and the whole digital marketing side because it was so new. It still probably is, but granted, there’s a lot more noise, traffic, and competition now.

Looking back, it does feel kind of like a natural progression, but at the time, I had to learn what I thought that I needed in order for my own business and then for clients. That’s how things really grew — working with a few clients here or there, just helping them with whatever they needed, teaching myself, and learning and growing from there.

Jerod Morris: Tell me about the milestone, or the moment, in your career as a digital entrepreneur that you’re the most proud of.

The Pride That Comes with Realizing the Difference You’re Making for Clients

Seth Spears: Over the years, I’ve had a lot of success working with several different clients and helping them to improve their traffic and search rankings and their growth, income, and revenue. A year or so ago, I looked back at statistics, the traffic statistics for pretty much every client. And those that actually followed the recommendations that I made — and this would include a website redesign, improved content, some search engine tweaks, and things like that — I had seen, on average, about a 30 percent increase in traffic for the clients.

Jerod Morris: Wow.

Seth Spears: That made me really happy. Just seeing the improvement that the clients would make because that was directly influencing their bottom line. They’re making more money. They’re having more success, and I was really proud of that.

Jerod Morris: That had to be a moment of real pride. Is that something now that for prospective clients that you will tell them? Kind of slip in there like, “Hey, clients who follow our recommendation are seeing 30 percent increases over the ones who do not.”

Seth Spears: I wouldn’t say still because I think the game has changed so much, and there’s so much more competition. Yeah, there were things that we were doing, and still do, that cause you to see a lot of growth. At the same time, I feel like I was on the cutting edge, but everything has caught up so much.

There’s so much noise just in the online space. The competition is a lot greater. Google’s in a state of flux. Social media — just the reach that we used to be able to get on social media — it’s not the same now. Now it’s pay to play. I still think there’s huge opportunity if you’re willing to throw a lot more money at it than before.

Because I always focus on the organic side, but I’m slowly beginning to transition and realize that the paid side is probably where the biggest bang for your buck is right now — just because it’s so much more pay to play.

Jerod Morris: Which, I suppose, was always the inevitable outcome of social media.

Seth Spears: I guess. It’s unfortunate that that’s what it is, but I guess that’s just the nature of markets, you know?

Jerod Morris: Yeah. All right, we’ll take a quick break. When we come back, I’m going to ask Seth about his most humbling moment as a digital entrepreneur.

Jerod Morris: 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. 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 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 marketing 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.

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Now, back to my interview with Seth Spears.

All right. Seth, tell me about the most humbling moment in your career as a digital entrepreneur thus far and, most importantly, what you learned from it.

Seth’s Advice on Just Because You Can Do Something, Doesn’t Mean That You Should

Seth Spears: Probably when I realized that I took on a client — it was a good sized project — and then I had to fire them about a week into the project, realizing that it wasn’t a good fit, that they were very needy and high maintenance. The amount of handholding that they needed, myself and my team would not be able to provide that.

It made me take a step back and realize that I needed to improve my processes as far as onboarding and do a better job of due diligence to make sure that I was only taking on clients that were a good fit. Just because there was an opportunity to make a lot of money there, if it’s not a good fit, it’s not worth it.

I’d say that was definitely the most humbling and also one of the biggest lessons that I learned in business — just because there’s opportunity, doesn’t mean you need to take it. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Jerod Morris: That’s a great, great lesson to learn.

In 2014, you learned that because you can provide a service for a client, doesn’t necessarily mean you should, as you explained. You also, I was reading, you got tired and kind of burnt out. You decided to scale back and go to more of a one-on-one marketing approach. Can you talk about that time period, what you learned for it, and how it’s helped you move forward?

Why Being a Self-Learner Has Helped Seth Accomplish What He’s Set Out to Do

Seth Spears: Yeah, so when I got started, it was just me — just freelancing, consulting and strategy, website design, SEO, social media, and all that stuff. Then I began to scale up and bring on a team. I basically had formed a little digital agency from about end of 2011, early 2012, until the beginning of 2014.

Like I said, I took on a couple clients who just weren’t a good fit and just some bad experiences. I had an employee or two that left, and I realized, “You know what? I don’t like the managing the employees. I don’t like offering all these different services.” I was offering so many different services to clients based on whatever they wanted. Then either the on-staff employees that I had would handle that, myself, or I would contract out some of it — just whatever the client wanted.

Then I realized, “Just because I can offer something, doesn’t mean I should offer it. Maybe it’s time to look at what I’m good at, what I really enjoy, and focus on those things.” And that’s what I did. I really narrowed the focus as far as specifically to the consulting and strategy side, just to work with digital entrepreneurs, online business owners. Specifically to help them figure out what they needed and only work with those.

I stopped offering all the other services, like the done-for-you social media and SEO work and some of the website design, although we still do a little of that. But I really narrowed the focus down and only began offering just those services that I thought that I was the best at and enjoyed the most.

Jerod Morris: What does your business look like now? Because you have Spears Marketing where you’re doing client work, and then you also are obviously with Wellness Mama as well, where the blog and lots of digital products there. There’s really two sides to the business right now, right?

Seth Spears: Yeah, so Katie and I have a partnership there as far as she handles all the content, and I handle all the strategy and everything, the technical side of everything. They’re two completely separate businesses. But yeah, that’s strictly a passion play. She loves to help people on the side and tries to help as many people as possible.

That was another one of those accidental businesses that was nothing more than a hobby, that grew, and that I basically use WellnessMama.com as a testing ground for client work. Like, “Hmm, I think this might work. Let’s try this.” Or, “Let’s try this new technology.” Or, “How about we try this with social media, SEO, or whatever.” It just so happened it worked really well.

Again, we were in the right place at the right time for it, but at the same time, there was a lot of work and effort that went in to it. A lot of content created and a lot of strategy. We’ve been strategic with it as well, but it was definitely one of those accidental things and not something that we set out to say, “Hey, let’s create a business there.”

Jerod Morris: But you know it’s funny how often that’ll happen. You have a main business, and then you have maybe a sandbox that you’re kind of ‘playing in.’ You’re trying stuff out, and eventually there’s kind of, “Whoa, there’s an audience here. I’ve created digital products, and there’s a real business here.” I’ve had that happen to me, too. It’s funny how that happens.

The Importance of Focusing on What You’re Good At (and Where There Is Demand)

Seth Spears: Yeah, exactly. It is very funny how that transpires. There are two schools of thought here. Some people say that you should just do what you love and the money’s going to follow, but I disagree with that. I think that, if there’s no demand for what you love, then the money’s not going to follow. You might enjoy it, but you’re going to be broke. Then eventually you’re going to hate it because you can’t support yourself.

I think you should focus on what you’re good at and where there’s demand for, and then you’ll learn to like something. If you’re that good at it and it’s bringing in money, you’ll learn to like it enough to do it. But having a side project that you enjoy and not even trying to use that as a business, or trying to monetize it necessarily, but just dabbling in that sandbox to play and just because it’s a passion project, I think that’s a good thing. It takes you away from the day-to-day and helps the creativity juices to flow.

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

How to Evolve and Enjoy the Journey of Taking the Next Step That Makes Sense (Even When There’s Pain Points)

Seth Spears: ‘Evolving.’

Jerod Morris: I like it. Where do you want to evolve to?

Seth Spears: I don’t know. I think the journey over the past several years has just been flying by the seat of our pants. It’s never been planned out to say, “I’m here. I want to be here.” There’s been elements as far as short-term goals. “Hey, I want this much traffic, this many subscribers, or maybe even make this much income per month.”

But as far as the long-term, five, 10 years down the road, I think the Internet is constantly changing so much. It’s very hard to set those long-term objectives just because there’s so much flux and volatility, especially when it comes to Google, Facebook, and everything.

Jerod Morris: Well, hey, that’s part of your story — not necessarily knowing where you’re going to go but just taking the next step that makes sense.

Seth Spears: And trying to enjoy the journey as much as possible, which I’m not that good at all the time, but I’m working on it.

Jerod Morris: What is your biggest recurring pain point as a digital entrepreneur? What sometimes doesn’t allow you to enjoy the journey as much as you’d want to?

Seth Spears: Seeing dips in traffic and not understanding why. A couple of years ago, I felt like I had Google figured out. I can rank pretty much any website, you know, “We put out this type of content. We promote it here. We do this and this and this, and it works.”

Now, I feel like their algorithms have gotten so very specific, and it’s not a one size fits all. There’s so many variables that, for different clients, it’s a lot harder just to get content to rank than it used it be. So trying to figure out that whole game, it’s a never-ending process. I’d say, currently, that’d be one of my biggest pain points.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. What element of your work gives you the most satisfaction on a daily basis? Not necessarily the outcome, seeing X, Y, Z success, but what part of the actual work gives you the most satisfaction?

Why Seth Thinks It All Comes Back to the Freedom to Work When You Want

Seth Spears: I think it goes back to our conversation earlier as far as the time freedom. This might not be the answer you’re looking for, but just realizing I can work a whole lot right now, work 60 hours this week, and then next week I can take off and only work 10 hours. Is that the answer you’re looking for, sort of?

Jerod Morris: Yeah, sure. Because to me, that’s the kind of thing that, in the moment, keeps you motivated to work right now. It may not be that you necessarily love researching SEO in this very moment, but because of what it allows you to do later, I think that’s definitely a fair answer to that question.

Seth Spears: Yeah, exactly. I think the other side of it, I like seeing progress made. I like being able to do something and see the outcome from it. If I put in a whole bunch of effort and I spend, say, an hour crafting an email, either for myself or for a client, and then see the outcome of that — see the open rates increase and the click throughs based on that — I really enjoy that side of it as well. Even though I’m not a copywriter per se, but just seeing you put in the effort, you put in the input, and then the output is positive.

Jerod Morris: By the way, I just want to commend you on your use of the phrase ‘crafting an email’ as opposed to just writing an email. It truly is crafting it when you’re trying to write something that’s good that will drive an action that will be enjoyed. It really is crafting. I appreciated that turn of phrase right there.

Seth Spears: Very much so. And that really is an art and a science. It’s funny how trying to get out of your own head and just write I’ve always said I’m a better editor than I am a writer. I’m a good writer, too — or I feel like I am — but it takes me longer to do that. I’d rather take something that someone has already created and tweak it to make it that much better. I feel like my strengths are better there as far as not creating something completely from scratch, but taking bits and pieces from here and here and here, and making something so much better, 10x-ing it or more.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. So let’s open up your toolbox. What is the one technology tool that contributes the most to your success as a digital entrepreneur?

The Not-So-Secret Tools in Seth’s Toolbox

Seth Spears: The one technology tool. There’s so many. Obviously, WordPress is huge because everything’s online, so using that for website build-outs. Google Apps would obviously be another one, and Dropbox. I’d say those would be the three that I couldn’t live without. There’s lots of other ones as well, like smaller ones like Evernote.

Jerod Morris: Is there one kind of off-the-radar one that people might not be familiar with that’s maybe a newer one that you found to be especially useful?

Seth Spears: As far as a general one, not that I can think of right now, but an app that I really like as far as just content creators one of the things that I focus on over the past year or so is website speed and really focusing in on and proving site speed because that’s something that Google really looks at. And images are a big, big issue. Because people upload massive images, and that takes longer to load, especially if you’re on mobile.

There’s an app called ImageOptim. You can download it for Mac and I think PC as well. Basically, you just drag your images into this little app that sits in your dock and it smushes it down. It reduces the size of it without any loss of quality, so it gets rid of all the underlying data that is added to an image when you take a picture. So when you upload that to your site, it’s going to be quite a bit smaller. In turn, it’s going to improve your site speed.

Jerod Morris: Nice. What is the non-technology tool that contributes the most to your success?

Why Seth Loves Unplugging to Enjoy the Great Outdoors

Seth Spears: Taking time away from the computer, from the phone, from being inside, and just getting outdoors. I’m a bit outdoors guy, so I love hunting, camping, and all that fun stuff, skiing. Getting away so you can take a mental break and just get in touch with nature and relax.

Then, also, reading something good from an actual physical book. I think there’s something about holding a physical book in your hands and sitting back and just reading, and not just reading on your phone, on the computer or Kindle, or whatever.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I agree with that. Earlier I asked you for the one word that you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today. You said evolving. When we talk again in a year, what would you want that one word to be?

Why Seth Wants to Evolve into a Place of Consistency

Seth Spears: ‘Consistency.’ Consistency is something that most people struggle with — whether that’s business consistency, personal consistency, your personal life, business life, whatever. I think I’m pretty consistent, but that evolution of things it’s hard to stay really consistent — whether it’s your making X number of dollars per month, you have X number of clients a month, or X number of traffic, whatever.

Trying to make things so that they’re more consistent across all those so that you don’t have the flux of being up or down with clients, revenue, and traffic, et cetera.

Jerod Morris: I have a few rapid fire questions for you to close out. Are you ready for these?

Seth Spears: Yeah, let’s do it.

The One Book Seth Would Insist You Read

Jerod Morris: If you could have every person who will ever work with you or for you read one book — and obviously, they would read it as a physical book — what would it be?

Seth Spears: I’m going to go with Brewing Up a Business by Sam Calagione, the founder of Dogfish Head.

Jerod Morris: Oh nice.

Seth Spears: It’s a phenomenal business book about entrepreneurship, business, and marketing from somebody who’s crazy passionate about what he does. I read this years ago and just really connected with his story, his work ethic, and the way he sees the world and business in general.

Jerod Morris: Also a great brand of beer, too.

Seth Spears: Yes it is.

Seth’s Ideal 30-Minute Skype Call to Discuss His Business

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

Seth Spears: I’m going to go with Jeff Bezos from Amazon. I think he would have a lot of insights just where things are going and heading digitally just because he has been such a visionary over the years and Amazon has gotten so big and all the other things he’s doing as well. I think having a little call with him would definitely be interesting.

Jerod Morris: What would you ask him? What would be your first question?

Seth Spears: Did you envision where Amazon is now, or was it just a natural progression? That would be one thing.

Jerod Morris: I would love to hear that answer.

Seth Spears: And where do you see things going over the next five years?

Jerod Morris: Very good.

The One Email Newsletter Seth Can’t Do Without

Jerod Morris: What is the one email newsletter that you can’t do without?

Seth Spears: I’ve pretty much unsubscribed from almost every newsletter just because email is such … I get too much. But the one I’m really digging right now is Brian Dean from Backlinko.com. He’s got a really good one. He focuses on SEO and some social media, but I feel like he’s got his finger on the pulse of the search game right now. I really enjoy his. He’s a great writer, too.

Jerod Morris: Brian Dean, Backlinko.com?

Seth Spears: Yup. Backlinko.com.

Jerod Morris: Okay.

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

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

Seth Spears: I am very passionate about quality. I always look for the best. If it’s not incredible quality, craftsmanship, I really don’t care for it. So I’m going to say Saddleback Leather Company. I came across them five or six years ago, and I read something about them. They were just the small little company in Texas that created these amazing leather bags.

Over the years, I’ve purchased some, and the quality’s just amazing. They’ve built up an incredible following. They’re pricey, but their story is fascinating and just their focus on quality and not skimping on quality based on price or whatever — so I would say one of their bags.

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

Seth’s Biggest Productivity Hack for Doing Meaningful Work

Seth Spears: I think kind of like I mentioned earlier, just getting outside and disconnecting from technology for a while. Probably over the past month or so, I’ve been somewhat burnt out just because I worked so much over the past several months. The past four weeks or so, I’ve basically kind of taken a little time off and I’ve gotten outside.

I’ve been hunting a lot. I’ve been camping, taking my kids and just hiking and stuff. Just getting away, reconnecting with nature, getting away from technology, and realizing there’s a lot more out there to see and do and not just being in front of a computer all the time. That’s really tough to do as an online entrepreneur.

Jerod Morris: Yeah it is.

How to Get in Touch with Seth

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

Seth Spears: Either Twitter, my handle’s @SpearsMarketing, or on my website SpearsMarketing.com/Contact.

Jerod Morris: Excellent. Well, Seth, this has been a great conversation. Appreciate you being on here and lending your insight to us.

Seth Spears: Thanks, Jerod. Great talking to you as well.

Jerod Morris: Yea, take care.

Seth Spears: You too.

Jerod Morris: My thanks to Seth Spears for taking the time to join us on this episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. Also, as always, thank you to Caroline, Will, and Toby for helping to make this episode a reality.

And thank you for joining us. I always appreciate your attention here to The Digital Entrepreneur, and I’d love to hear from you. Shoot me a Tweet @JerodMorris. Let me know your thoughts on this episode, guest ideas that you have, future topics you’d love to see us cover — always love hearing what you think of the show.

All right, thank you, and I will talk to you next week on another brand-new episode of The Digital Entrepreneur.

The Transcript

How Becoming a Digital Entrepreneur Helped Jarmar Dupas Get His Life Right

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. This is episode No. 36.

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 started his journey out of frustration. He didn’t have anyone to turn to when it came to his problems with money. He knew something had to change, and so it did. He did. He began to question his beliefs about money and who stood to make the most from financial advice from mainstream media.

After intensive research, he learned from those doing it wrong. Today, he wants to help others achieve financial freedom. He gives his advice through his podcast, Get Your Money Right, where he strives to help others take back their purchasing power. He is Jarmar Dupas, aka The Money Misfit, and he is a digital entrepreneur.

Jarmar, welcome to The Digital Entrepreneur.

Jarmar Dupas: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jerod Morris: No, it’s awesome to have you here. You and I first became acquainted as part of The Showrunner Podcasting Course. You joined the course when we launched it. How’s the podcast going?

Jarmar Dupas: The podcast is going pretty good, actually. It’s surprising. After taking the course, just decided to start it with you and Jonny helping me out. It’s been growing ever since. I’m not on your level or Tim Ferriss or anything like that, but it’s amazing the tens of thousands of downloads we’ve gotten from just my little old voice. I don’t do any interviews or anything like that. It’s been great.

Jerod Morris: It’s been all monologues and you basically giving people advice. Your show is Get Your Money Right. So you’re giving people advice about money, and it’s just been you so far doing monologues.

Jarmar Dupas: That’s it. I think what really helped a lot, and I learned from The Showrunner course, was getting into New and Noteworthy. We jumped off to get a good start, got into New and Noteworthy, and got a good boost from that. I guess it just resonates with people. I’m just pretty much just telling my story, talking about money as it relates to real life, that a lot of the financial gurus don’t dig into. Either they’ve made it and forgot what it’s like to still be going through a journey in life or maybe had some other situation.

So I m just telling my story, and it’s helping people apparently. It’s been a lot of fun.

Jerod Morris: Very nice. Well, the podcast is obviously an important part of what you’re doing. We’re going to talk in this episode about your journey as a digital entrepreneur. I’m sure that we’ll be touching more on the podcast and how it fits in. But I want to begin with the question that I always ask our guests to begin these episodes.

That is this. I’ve always believed that the number one benefit of digital entrepreneurship is freedom — 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. For you, what is the biggest benefit that you have derived from being a digital entrepreneur?

What Jamar Sees As the Biggest Benefit of Digital Entrepreneurship

Jarmar Dupas: Man, that’s not fair, Jerod. You already took the answer.

Jerod Morris: You’re allowed to agree with it and expand on it. That’s totally fair game.

Jarmar Dupas: I definitely do agree with it. I guess if I had to add onto it, one of the biggest benefits of being a digital entrepreneur — and it’s fun because you get to see what’s coming down the pipe — we’re turning into a digital world. The world is digital.

If you’re going to be an entrepreneur in this day and age, what other type of entrepreneur would you want to be other than a digital entrepreneur? At least, definitely from a marketing and customer outreach perspective, being digital is almost vital these days. Definitely the freedom, but also being able to see into the future and be prepared for what’s to come.

Jerod Morris: That’s a great answer. One of the reasons why I structure the question that way is because I know most people will say freedom, so I like to get that one out of the way. But everybody always has a unique perspective after that. Yours is one we haven’t heard before, so that’s a great one.

Jarmar Dupas: Awesome.

Jerod Morris: Let’s go back. Let’s get into your story a little bit. Take me back before you became a digital entrepreneur. What were you doing, and what was missing that lead you to want to make a change?

The Moment That Got Jarmar’s Ears ‘Buzzing,’ Which Got Him Interested in Entrepreneurship

Jarmar Dupas: Oh, man, what was I doing? I’ve done a lot of things. I think like a lot of entrepreneurs I meet today, I’m just all over the place. There’s so many things that I want to be doing. I started off, I was born at a young age. There was college, and I wanted to be a doctor, believe it or not. I wanted to go to medical school. I was pre-med in undergrad, and then halfway through that decided I didn’t want to do that because it wasn’t what I thought it was. I wanted to make money. I wanted to travel the world.

I met a guy one day who said he made like $40,000 a month. I was like, “You’re lying. Nobody pays anybody $40,000 a month.” I’ve never heard of such amounts of money. Growing up, we were taught if you could be a doctor, lawyer, even the post office worker, or something like that, then you’ve got it made. When I first heard of that, the gentleman who told me said, “You’re right. Nobody’s going to pay you that much. You have to earn that much.” That’s when I first got my wind of what entrepreneurship is.

It’s funny because I’d never even really heard it that way or even thought that I could be an entrepreneur. It was always grow up, go to school, and get a job. I didn’t even think of me or anybody around me being a business person. That’s kind of when my ears started buzzing. I got my foot wet, and the whole network marketing MLM-type of direct sales type of businesses. I did okay with that. That wasn’t really my cup of tea. Then I started a bartending business.

Jerod Morris: Really?

Jarmar Dupas: Yeah. I started a bartending business. I was doing private parties, which was something else that kind of just fell in my lap. I had no idea that people actually hired people to come to their house and stuff like that to do parties, to bartend and mix drinks.

Jerod Morris: Had you been a bartender before, during that, or was this something that you trained specially to do because you had this business idea?

Jarmar Dupas: Well, I went to a bartending school because I needed money. I went to bartending school. One of the instructors that was there, he asked me one day if I wanted to do a private party. I was like, “Sure, why not?” That grew onto something else. One day I couldn’t make it. I asked a bartender friend that I knew if she could make it for me, go to the party for me, and I charged a flat rate per hour plus tips.

I told her, “I’ll just pay you all my money.” She said, “No, I’ll just keep the tips. You can keep what they pay you.” That was my first taste of making money without having to actually be there, actually doing work for the money. I was like, “I like this.”

Jerod Morris: Yeah, no doubt.

Jarmar Dupas: That kind of grew from there. Then I had some guy come and bought my business from me after that. I was doing Super Bowls. I even did a party for Puff Daddy. It was a bunch of crazy stuff.

Jerod Morris: Oh really? Wow, we might have to do another episode and just talk about stories from your bartending experience.

Jarmar Dupas: Yeah, it’d have to be a late-night edition for that.

Jerod Morris: I bet.

Jarmar Dupas: Can’t let my wife to listen to that. I sold that business. I blew all that money. I started consulting for other people who owned bars, and I was running bars. Then I got into commercial real estate. I’ve done so many different things.

How Being a Digital Entrepreneur Has Been Conducive to Creating Jarmar’s Desired Lifestyle

Jarmar Dupas: To make a long story longer, what brought me out of that was I wanted to get married. I was like, “Okay, this life is not conducive for being married.” I had to find another way.

I remember that time. I actually saw Copyblogger. I was actually on their emails list. I didn’t really pay much attention to it until years later. Now, I’m all over you guys’ stuff. Everything, Rainmaker Digital, I’m all in on. I’ve always wanted to have freedom. I’ve always wanted to be able to live on my own, do my own thing.

That’s what attracted me to a lot of things I’ve ever done, was how does it fit around my own lifestyle? I knew if I wanted to have an awesome marriage and have an awesome lifestyle. Being in the bar business probably wasn’t going to be conducive for that. I had to get out of that.

Jerod Morris: That led you to where you are now?

Jarmar Dupas: Yeah, so I’m actually a firefighter. I work ,unlike most of the people that you have, I actually still have a job. That fell in my lap as well, too, but it was also part of the design. As a firefighter, we don’t work every day of the week. We batch our hours, so to speak. We work 24 hours at a time or 48 hours or whatever, depending on what city you’re in.

That was attractive to me because I can get these hours out of the way and have several days off to pursue my entrepreneurial goals. I could still make some money, and I can manage some money that was steady, so to speak, that could fund my entrepreneurial dreams. That was the thought process behind that.

Jerod Morris: That’s why I love this story because you’re right. A lot of the people that we’ve had on The Digital Entrepreneur are people who have gotten to the point where they’re doing it full time. But for so many people, those stories have a part in them where people are working, and they have a side hustle. The goal, of course, is to make the side hustle the full-time job.

But most people have to go through that transition and manage priorities, manage time, manage money, juggle all the things like you’re doing right now. This will be a great perspective.

Jarmar Dupas: Absolutely.

Jerod Morris: Tell me about the milestone or the moment in your career as a digital entrepreneur, with the work you’ve done online, that you are the most proud of.

The Simplicity of Jarmar’s Proudest Moment and What You Can Learn From It

Jarmar Dupas: To be honest with you, it’s just starting. It’s the biggest milestone because it’s the biggest fear, I should say. Not even really fear because I don’t believe in fear, but more of a doubt. I don’t think people really fear. I think they have too much doubt. Doubt, of course, leads to fear. Doubt is just a lack of information.

I think one of the things that The Showrunner course helped me do, and even podcasts — not just this one, but all types of podcasts — and seeing examples of other people doing things, it gave me enough information to drive out doubt. I was like, “Look, if this person can do it, I can do it.” Even in those times of doubt, I said, “I got to get started.” Even my show today is not where I dream for it to be, but just getting started was I think the biggest milestone for me that got this thing moving.

Jerod Morris: I’m glad you said that. In all the work that we’ve done helping people with podcasts, and it’s the same thing with starting a business or any kind of online pursuit or side hustle pursuit, that fear of starting can just be so pervasive and can stop people in their tracks.

I’m glad that you highlighted that as something that you’re proud of. It’s something easy to overlook. “Oh I started, who cares?” No, that is the biggest hurdle for so many people. I’m so glad that you mentioned that. Kudos to you for starting. That’s awesome.

Jarmar Dupas: Thank you. But let me say this, though, I got into your course about this time last year. I didn’t start till March.

Jerod Morris: Hey, that’s okay.

Jarmar Dupas: But I started.

Jerod Morris: Exactly.

Jarmar Dupas: For anybody who’s out there who is beating themselves up about it, it’ll happen. Just keep getting that information in, and just do it. Just do it.

Jerod Morris: Absolutely. Let’s take a quick break. When we come back, I’m going to ask Jarmar about his most humbling moment as a digital entrepreneur. We’ll be right back.

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Now, back to my interview with Jarmar Dupas, and he, in a little bit, talks about how he uses Rainmaker for his business as well. Stay tuned for that.

All right, Jarmar, tell me about the most humbling moment in your career as a digital entrepreneur and, most importantly, what you learned from it.

Why Jarmar Was Humbled by Realizing the Work It Takes to Do Something Great

Jarmar Dupas: I don’t know if this is a moment, but more of a process of looking at my numbers and then comparing myself, my show, my business to other people. It was humbling because I started to realize the work that it takes, that goes into doing something great. It goes into doing something outside of the norm, so to speak. It’s really humbling that I get to see other people doing such great things.

I’m out here, and I’m working. It’s like, “I’m working, I’m working, I’m working,” and not sure if it’s working, but then you see the results. Then you hear other peoples’ stories. It humbles me to sit back and look at that. It gives me grace for myself. Like, “Look, maybe you’re not making a million dollars a day, but have some grace, sit back and relax. You’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. It will all happen in due time.”

Jerod Morris: Yeah. We talked about the podcast. Can you give us a little bit of an overview I guess of what your business is right now? I know from looking at your website it looks like you’re starting to build a membership. Do you have any streams of revenue yet, or is that something that you’re planning on for the future? Where are you at with the business right now?

Why Jarmar Sometimes Gets in His Own Way and How He’s Trying to Overcome It

Jarmar Dupas: Right now I’m still in that discovery mode. Working on a course right now. I’ve done a few webinars for research. Really, I’m in a stage of serving — serving my audience, finding out what they want, what resonates with them. It’s funny because I don’t have any services on my site, but I get people that email me all the time and say, “Hey, could you sit down with me? I want to talk about this money thing.” Or, “Me and my wife, or me and my husband were having an issue. How do you and your wife do this?”

My revenue has come out of that, people emailing me. I go, “Okay, we’ll sit down.” I guess you call it one-on-one consulting so to speak. Initially, it was going to be podcasts and courses, but I’m finding so much more by talking with people one on one.

Jerod Morris: I’ll tell you, it’s one of the themes that I’m starting to find out here as we go through these episodes of The Digital Entrepreneur. You find that a lot of people start out doing the services, or doing the consulting, and really learning from those one-on-one experiences and using that to then inform a course. A lot of times they even thought, “Hey, I’ll do courses first.”

Of course, while you’re doing that, you have to pay the bills. That’s where the consulting and the one-on-one stuff comes in. I think there’s a benefit to doing that because I’m sure you’ll learn — and probably already have learned from those experiences — so much that it will inform or make your courses even better.

Jarmar Dupas: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve learned quite a bit. The things that I think that I should talk about a lot of times, it’s not exactly what everybody wants to talk about. I talk about money, but a lot of people want to know about credit. How do we get that credit? — which is a part of the whole equation, but I didn’t realize how much of a mystery it is to so many people. Those are the kinds of things, things like that.

Jerod Morris: What is the one word that you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today, if you had to pick one word?

Jarmar Dupas: I’d probably say ‘raw.’

Jerod Morris: Raw?

Jarmar Dupas: Yeah, just really raw. Just like a ball of clay. I’m still in that period of trying to mold it, trying to figure out which way this thing is going to go — which I think all entrepreneurs are always doing that. I think Brian Clark talks about that quite often, about pivoting. If you look at his career, look at where Copyblogger has come from and where it’s going, you watch all these pivots. I think it’s part of the natural evolution of a business. Definitely, I would have to say raw right now.

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

Jarmar Dupas: Getting in my own way. I have so many ideas.

Jerod Morris: I laugh because I feel you.

Jarmar Dupas: I’ve got so many ideas and so many things that I want to do and think I should do. But then it’s like, “Okay, get this one thing done first.” That’s a re-occurring battle that I have with my own self like every day.

Jerod Morris: What element of your daily work gives you the most satisfaction?

The Element of Entrepreneurship That Gives Jarmar the Most Satisfaction and How It Inspires Him to Keep Moving Forward

Jarmar Dupas: Just hearing the stories. I just got an email the other day from a single mom. She has three boys, and she just was bouncing checks and overdraft fees, all this other stuff. I sit down with her, and I talked to her about her money and everything. One of the things that happens a lot of times — I know it’s not particularly about digital entrepreneurship, but just to tell the story — is people over pay their taxes, or they just ignore. They’re distracted by life.

This young lady was getting a tax refund of like $6,000 a year, but she was bouncing checks. She couldn’t make ends meet. I said, “We can make adjustments on your tax returns. That’s a $500 a month pay raise you can give yourself instead of waiting all the way until April or whatever.” We did that. Walked with her onto the IRS website. There’s a little calculator. She typed in her numbers, and it spit out her W-4 for her to change her deal.

She hits me up like three months later. She’s like, “I got a new job. I’m working on a new skill. I’ve made more money. My sons are doing better in school.” Those are the things like that, it blesses me. This is the reason why I do it.

Jerod Morris: There’s nothing better when you create content, especially any kind of educational content, and you get those stories. It’s like hearing you talk about starting after taking The Showrunner Podcasting Course, and those kind of stories. You’re right. There’s nothing better at all. Definitely the most satisfying.

So let’s open up your toolbox real quick. What is one technology tool that contributes the most to your success as a digital entrepreneur?

Jarmar’s Not-So-Surprising (and Old-School) Favorite Tools

Jarmar Dupas: This is such a softball. I hate to sound like a fan boy, but it’s going to be, I have to say it, it’s the Rainmaker Platform.

Jerod Morris: Nice.

Jarmar Dupas: I work out of it. It helps my podcast, the blog, the website. It does the design for me because you get to kind of hire Rafal to do your design for you, off a template. It’s just the tool that I use. It makes everything easy for me. It’s all in one place. I use RainMail. I was one of the early adopters of it. It just makes things, for me, easy.

Jerod Morris: Very nice. I love the design that you have on your site, too. You’re using Digital Pro, which is the same one that I use on my site. I love it. What about the non-technology tool that contributes the most?

Jarmar Dupas: It’s not very green, but paper. I like pen and paper. I have a paper calendar that I work out of that’s on my desk. It’s a little folder that I use. I jot down my thoughts on paper. I journal to get all this junk out of my head. Non-technology, I guess, it’s using paper and ink pen to kind of get things out of my head.

Jerod Morris: We’ve had a few people say that. Pen and paper still holding on strong, even in the digital age. There’s something about — and I like it, too — being able to work it out with a pen. I don’t know. There’s a better feeling when you do it.

Earlier I asked you for the one word that you would use to sum up the status of your business as it stands today. You said raw. When we talk again in a year, what would you want that one word to be?

The Power of Being ‘Systematized’

Jarmar Dupas: Let’s go with ‘systematized.’ I like systems. One of the big draws of my podcast and the work that I do is I kind of design systems around money, so you don’t have to think about money so much. I think a lot of people struggle with money because of decision fatigue. I think I get some of that, too, with my digital business, trying to make decisions every day. I try to make a couple decisions early and just go through the day and just do the work.

Jerod Morris: I love that. I love that concept of decision fatigue and doing what you have to do, creating systems, to combat that. That’s great. I think a lot of people face that. Especially when you’re an entrepreneur and you have so many decisions to make and so many seemingly open-ended decisions, it can be really overwhelming.

Jarmar Dupas: Yeah. This goes to the people who still have the 9 to 5s and stuff. You’re dealing with that. Then you’re dealing with life. I have a wife. I have three kids. We got one on the way — which is the first announcement I’ve made on podcast, so congratulations on hearing that little exclusive.

Jerod Morris: Very nice, congratulations. That’s awesome.

Jarmar Dupas: You got all that. I have a dog, too. Can’t forget about my dog.

Jerod Morris: That’s right.

Jarmar Dupas: You got all that, and you’re trying to be a great person. You’re trying to be a great husband, a father, an entrepreneur, a friend, a son or daughter, you’re trying to be all these things. You don’t have any time to make too many more decisions. There’s already these other things that really need your focus. I am really a proponent for that.

Jerod Morris: Very nice. I’ve got a few rapid fire questions to ask you as we close up here. Are you ready for them?

Jarmar Dupas: Let’s do it.

The One Book Jarmar Would Insist You Read

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

Jarmar Dupas: I’d have to go with Proverbs in the Bible. There’s something about having all that wisdom. I think the word ‘wisdom’ even means the ability to live a skillful life. That’s probably one. If they’re allergic to the Bible, it’s something they can’t touch or something like that, it probably would be How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Jerod Morris: Oh that’s a great book.

Jarmar Dupas: For me, it taught me to focus on others and taught me how to talk to people. That is done so much for me. I tell people this a lot of times. My last four or five jobs that I’ve had, or gigs that I’ve had, I’ve not even filled out an application, even in the fire department. Don’t tell anybody this, but even working for the city, I had a job offer before they even had an application on me.

Jerod Morris: Wow.

Jarmar Dupas: Yeah. That’s just talking to people, winning friends, and things like that. It’s a great, great, great book that I think everybody should read.

Jerod Morris: I agree completely. I actually got the audio book for that and listened to it on a drive from Miami up to Virginia Beach like 10 years ago. It’s great. The headline of that book, it’s so benefit-driven. It almost sounds like it’s kind of selfish, like you’re learning how to manipulate people. But you get into it, and it’s all about listen to people, remember peoples’ names. It’s basically be kind, be empathetic. It’s some great lessons that, when you do them, you’ll see benefits from it, too. It’s terrific.

Jarmar Dupas: Absolutely.

Jarmar’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?

Jarmar Dupas: Probably Tony Robbins. To me, he’s kind of like that digital entrepreneur before it was really cool to be digital. Then he started on books, CDs, seminars, and things like that. Just to watch him grow and watch his business, to see what it is today, he’s a juggernaut. He has so many different avenues and things like that. I was going to say Brian Clark, but I think your last few guests …

Jerod Morris: Everybody says that. I think it’s like a subtle way of saying we want Brian back hosting the podcast, giving us these 30-minute episodes.

Jarmar Dupas: You go to Rainmaker.FM, you still see his little picture next to hosting. It’s like, “Well, come on, Brian, where you been?

Jerod Morris: I know. I’ll have to have him back on here. I’ll say, “Everybody wants a 30-minute Skype call with you, so we’ll do a big group call.”

The One Email Newsletter Jarmar Can’t Do Without

Jerod Morris: What is the one email newsletter that you can’t do without?

Jarmar Dupas: ConvertKit I guess is a good one. They have a pretty good email, or newsletter.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, they do.

Jarmar Dupas: Yeah. If I had to pick one, I’d say ConvertKit is good. I’m not a ConvertKit user, but they have a good email.

Jerod Morris: Their strategy stuff is smart.

Jarmar Dupas: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

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

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

Jarmar Dupas: Probably my family. There’s a big portrait of us when I go outside of my office every day. One of the reasons why I try to batch my hours of work and want to be a digital entrepreneur is because I’ve always wanted to be an involved dad. I’ve always wanted to be around. My door’s always open. I work here in the office at the house. My kids can come in and be kids and stuff like that. They motivate me. They motivate me to try to make income from wherever I am, so I can be with them and do that good stuff. It’s a lot of fun.

Jerod Morris: I love that.

Jarmar’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?

Jarmar Dupas: I guess it goes back to my family. I first got this from Stephen Covey. He talked about I don’t know if you heard the story of the big rocks in the jar. I’ll tell it real quick because it’s a good story. There was a professor. He was in front of a class. He had these ambitious, very smart people in his classroom. He pulls up this huge Mason jar, and he puts it on top of a desk. He takes another bucket, takes a bucket full of big rocks. He puts all these big rocks in this huge jar. He asks the class, “Is this jar full?” He fills it up all the way to the top. They’re like, “Yes, of course it’s full.”

He takes out some smaller rocks or gravel. He takes the gravel and he pours the gravel into this jar, and he fills the jar all the way up with gravel. Then he asks the class again, “Well, is the jar full now?” They’re like, “Well, we thought it was, but apparently not because we see where you’re going here.”

Then he takes a bucket of sand, and then he pours the sand. The sand flows through the cracks that’s through the big rocks and through the gravel. Then he asks, “Is this jar full?” Of course, at that time, they say, “No, it’s not full,” because we know you got something else up your sleeve.

Then he takes some water, and he pours water. The water kind of sits in until the water starts overflowing outside of the Mason jar. Then he finally asks, “Is the jar full now?” Of course, it’s like, “Yeah it’s full.” The moral of the story is, if you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in. Most people start with sand or gravel. Then they can never get their big rocks in.

My productivity hack for me to get things done especially here being at home, my wife, she’s our chief home officer. She works from home. She raises the children from home. My kids are usually at home. My big hack is to make sure that they are taken care of first. I say, “Okay, we’ve got them settled. We got their activities going,” things like that. Now I can sit down, and I can go put in some work. If not, then I will be interrupted about a million times throughout the day.

Jerod Morris: So it’s a win-win. Take care of them first, and then you’re able to take care of yourself and get your work done.

Jarmar Dupas: Yeah. Here’s a tip, especially for you. I know you’re a new dad. Congratulations.

Jerod Morris: Thank you.

Jarmar Dupas: This is anybody with young kids out there or getting ready to have young kids, if you go out with your children, people always say, “How are your children so well behaved?” Well, I put the big rocks in first. I feed them and make sure they’re watered, and they have tinkled before we go out in public — and naps and things like that. You take care of things, and they’re angels. If not, they’ll wreck you. They’ll wreck everything you try to do.

Jerod Morris: Good advice. Very good advice.

How to Get in Touch with Jarmar

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

Jarmar Dupas: Just head over to my website, YourMoneyRight.com. Again, it’s just YourMoneyRight.com. Or just look me up on the podcast. The podcast is called Get Your Money Right. It comes out on Mondays. It’s for ambitious individuals. Specifically, I talk a lot about marriage and how to handle money with families, just kind of every-day life, and also my life as a digital entrepreneur as well. It’s a lot of fun. That’s probably the best way to get in touch with me. Of course, you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all that good stuff, too.

Jerod Morris: Excellent. Well, Jarmar, thank you so much, man, for taking the time. This was a blast. Awesome to have you on The Digital Entrepreneur.

Jarmar Dupas: Thank you so much. This is an honor. I can’t tell you how much this has blessed me to be on this show and to have even get an invite from you guys. Like I said, I’m a big fan of Rainmaker Digital. I love everything that you all are doing. Keep up the good work. Keep leading us to the promised land, so to speak.

Jerod Morris: That’s what we’re trying to do is serve people like you. It’s great to be able to have you on here and tell your story. This was great. Thanks, man.

Jarmar Dupas: Thank you.

Jerod Morris: My thanks to Jarmar for joining me on this episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. It was great having him on here and having him share his story with us. My thanks, as always, to Toby Lyles and the team that edits this podcast and makes it sound so good and, of course, to Will DeWitt and Caroline Early for their help on the production side.

Most importantly, my thanks to you, the loyal Digital Entrepreneur listener. Thank you for being here, for listening to the show. You are the inspiration, the one that we do this for. It’s great to have you here.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, words of advice, or Tweets about sports, because you know that I like those, Tweet me any time @JerodMorris. I always love hearing from you. Yeah, send me a Tweet. Let me know what’s up, and make sure that you join us next week because we’ll be back with another brand-new episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. Talk to you then.

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.

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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.

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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.