Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You ByWP Engine

Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting.

Start getting more from your site today!

Rainmaker.FM

The Digital Commerce and Content Marketing Podcast Network

  • Home
  • Shows
  • Hosts
  • About
  • Home
  • Shows
  • Hosts
  • About
  • Member Area
  • Log In
Menu
  • Log In
  • Free Training
7-Figure Small with Brian Clark
Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer
Copyblogger FM: Content Marketing, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, and Social Media Marketing
Get More Clients With Smarter Email Marketing
Hack the Entrepreneur
Members Only
Rainmaker.FM Elsewhere
Site Success: Tips for Building Better WordPress Websites
StudioPress FM
Technology Translated
The Digital Entrepreneur
The Missing Link
The Showrunner
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
Youpreneur with Chris Ducker
Zero to Book
The Digital Entrepreneur
hosted by Sean Jackson and Katy Katz

The Power of Not Being Stubborn

  • Social:
  • Link:
  • Embed:
https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/digital-entrepreneur-033.mp3
Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes
Previous Episode:How One Successful Digital Entrepreneur Stays Entertained by Her Business More Episodes Next Episode:Why Trusting Your Instincts Can Lead You to Your Passion

All Episodes:

May 17, 2018

Stop Being Afraid and Start Building Your Business

May 10, 2018

Crazy Creative Ideas for Content Repurposing

May 3, 2018

The Creative Way to Use Video Marketing on LinkedIn

April 19, 2018

Is Blogging a Waste of Time?

April 12, 2018

The Smart Way to Grow Your Service Business Using Content Marketing

March 29, 2018

Rand Fishkin’s rise to fame…and fortune?

March 8, 2018

The Psychology Required to Successfully Grow Your Business

March 1, 2018

The Secret to Guest Blogging on Your Favorite Website

February 22, 2018

How to Make Money from Podcasting

February 15, 2018

Is Facebook Marketing Dead?

February 8, 2018

How to Build Meaningful Membership Communities

February 1, 2018

What Every Online Marketer Must Know about Google Analytics

January 25, 2018

Is Google AMP a Waste of Time?

January 18, 2018

The Ultimate Framework to Help You Achieve Your Goals in 2018

December 20, 2017

The 6 Top Online Marketing Trends for 2018

December 14, 2017

Why You Should Start a Digital Marketing Agency

December 7, 2017

Does Traditional PR Really Matter Anymore?

November 30, 2017

The Current State of Search, Social, and the Open Web in 2017

November 22, 2017

How to Protect Your Online Reputation When Disaster Strikes

November 7, 2017

Does Online Marketing Suck for Women?

October 26, 2017

Can Social Media Drive Sales, or Is It a Waste of Time?

October 19, 2017

How (and Why) You Should Sell Your Online Business

October 12, 2017

The 5 Things Your Customers Actually Want to Buy

September 28, 2017

The Essential Chatbot Resource for Online Entrepreneurs

September 21, 2017

The Smart Way to Build and Grow a Profitable Podcast

September 14, 2017

How to Build and Profit from a Hyperlocal Community Site

September 7, 2017

How to Handle Negative Online Reviews

August 24, 2017

The Biggest Challenge to Running an Online Business

August 17, 2017

The Secret to Becoming an Online Expert

August 10, 2017

Does Your Online Business Fill Your Life with Purpose?

August 3, 2017

How to Deal with the Stress of Running an Online Business

June 1, 2017

Emerging Online Marketing Trends for 2017

May 25, 2017

The Biggest Mistakes Online Entrepreneurs Make and How to Fix Them

May 18, 2017

Should Online Entrepreneurs Write a Book?

May 11, 2017

A Different Way to Think About Your Online Competition

May 4, 2017

How to Recruit the Best Talent for Your Online Business

April 27, 2017

How to Hire the Right Contractor or Employee for Your Online Business

April 20, 2017

The Essential Guide to Hacking the Growth of Your Online Business

April 13, 2017

How to Do Simple PPC Advertising for Your Online Business

April 6, 2017

A Simple Framework for Pricing Digital Goods

March 30, 2017

How to Use Amazon Publishing to Grow Your Online Audience

March 16, 2017

What Online Entrepreneurs Need to Know about Affiliate Marketing

March 9, 2017

Does Email Marketing Still Work?

March 2, 2017

Does SEO Still Matter?

February 23, 2017

Is WordPress the Right Solution for Building Your Online Business?

February 16, 2017

6 Business Insights that Could Radically Increase Your Online Engagement in 2017

February 9, 2017

Can Customer Insights Really Drive Innovation for Your Online Business?

December 15, 2016

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

December 8, 2016

Lessons on Business and Life from the ‘Zen Master of Marketing’

December 1, 2016

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

November 17, 2016

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

November 10, 2016

Why Trusting Your Instincts Can Lead You to Your Passion

November 3, 2016

The Power of Not Being Stubborn

October 27, 2016

How One Successful Digital Entrepreneur Stays Entertained by Her Business

October 20, 2016

How to Create Impact That Endures (Instead of Ending Up in a Landfill)

October 13, 2016

How Will Falconer Stopped Trading Dollars for Hours and Found His Calling

October 6, 2016

Are One-on-One Connections the Key to Jumpstarting Your Online Business?

September 29, 2016

How Jay Baer is Navigating New Waters With His Latest Digital Product

September 22, 2016

The Upside of Setting Outrageous Goals

September 15, 2016

Sean McCabe’s Tried-and-True Techniques for Getting More Meaningful Work Done

July 28, 2016

Why You Should Build a Business That Shines a Light on Your Talents

July 21, 2016

How to Market Like a Magnet and Build Your Personal Brand

July 14, 2016

The Two Biggest Keys to Consistently Doing Work That Matters

July 7, 2016

How Joanna Penn Designed the Lifestyle (and Career) of Her Dreams

June 30, 2016

Is Your Email Marketing Leaving Money on the Table?

June 23, 2016

3 Simple Hacks for Better Copy and More Conversions in Less Time

June 16, 2016

Practical Advice on Turning the Challenges of Building Membership Communities Into Opportunities

June 9, 2016

Brian Clark is Doing … What?

June 2, 2016

Sonia Simone’s Secret to Starting the 1,000-Piece Jigsaw Puzzle of Building a Successful Business

May 26, 2016

Does Your Social Media Strategy Need a Mindset Shift?

May 19, 2016

Brian Clark’s Lessons From a Decade of Developing Successful WordPress Products

May 12, 2016

How Virtual Reality May Shape the Future of Digital Commerce

May 5, 2016

WordPress Product Development: Start with the Business Problem

April 28, 2016

The Myth of Set-it-and-Forget-It Marketing

April 21, 2016

Making This Common Mistake Could Kill the Profitability of Your Online Course

April 14, 2016

Why You (Still) Don’t Need a Mobile App That is Separate From Your Website

April 7, 2016

5 Key Concepts to Understand About Tracking, Testing, and Making Decisions

March 31, 2016

5 Compelling Reasons Why You Should Use Free Online Courses as Lead Magnets

March 24, 2016

A Rainmaker Case Study on Using the Access Approach to Drive Business Results

March 17, 2016

5 Benefits of the ‘Access’ Approach to Online Marketing

March 10, 2016

How Adaptive Websites Deliver an Exceptional Experience While Accelerating Profit

March 3, 2016

How Email (Still) Creates the Profit Engine of Your Digital Business

February 25, 2016

Secrets of a Six-Figure Online Course Builder

February 18, 2016

The 5 Elements of the Modern Marketing Website

February 11, 2016

Who Is a Digital Entrepreneur?

October 22, 2015

What is Digital Commerce?

October 15, 2015

Behind the Scenes: The Rebranding of Copyblogger Media

September 3, 2015

How to Create Legendary Content That Builds Your Business

August 20, 2015

6 Steps to Building an Audience That Builds a Business

August 13, 2015

How the Integration of Content and Commerce Creates a Winning Difference

August 6, 2015

Native Commerce: Media That Makes Real Money

July 30, 2015

Behind the Scenes: The Reimagining of Copyblogger.com

July 16, 2015

The Membership Imperative and the Persistence of Audio Content

July 2, 2015

Darren Rowse on the Intersection of Blogging and Digital Commerce

June 18, 2015

Three Subscription Revenue Models for Digital Content and Services

June 11, 2015

The Two Components of The Perfect Online Business Model

June 4, 2015

Is Creating Online Training Programs a Viable Business Model?

May 28, 2015

How to Succeed in Online Education (On Your Own Terms)

May 21, 2015

Behind the Scenes: Authority Rainmaker, the Next Wave of Rainmaker.FM Shows, and the Departure of Robert Bruce

May 14, 2015

Will Millennials Kill Email Marketing?

May 7, 2015

Does Audio Create Authority Faster Than Text?

April 30, 2015

A Much Better Revenue Model for Podcasting

April 23, 2015

How Online Courses Accelerate Any Business Model

April 16, 2015

How to Escape the Social Media Swindle

April 9, 2015

Why Every Great Website is a Membership Site

April 2, 2015

How to Become a Digital Media Showrunner

March 26, 2015

How to Start a Podcast Network

March 19, 2015

How to Build a Profitable Email List With Social Media Advertising

March 11, 2015

Why Copyblogger Media is Betting Big on Podcasting

March 2, 2015

Henry Rollins on the Art and Business of DIY Media

February 25, 2015

Three Misconceptions About Modern SEO That Confuse Content Marketers

February 16, 2015

How an Email Newsletter Publisher Built an Audience of 223,991 Subscribers

February 9, 2015

Has Social Media Killed Consumer Trust?

February 3, 2015

Split-Testing 101: How to Know Which Words Work

January 27, 2015

5 Traffic Strategies That Build Your Curation Audience

January 19, 2015

3 Ways to Grow Your Curated Email Newsletter Faster

January 14, 2015

Position Your Content Curation for Success With These 5 Essential Elements

January 7, 2015

Behind the Scenes: 2014 in Review and the Road Ahead

December 16, 2014

Seth Godin on Stepping Up and Making it Happen

December 11, 2014

Michael Hyatt on Building a Media Platform and Becoming a 10-Year Overnight Success

December 9, 2014

David Siteman Garland on the Infinite Scalability of Online Courses

December 1, 2014

Pat Flynn on Entrepreneurial Inspiration and His Profitable Content Strategy

November 25, 2014

Jay Baer on “Generosity Marketing” and the Power of Business Podcasting

November 19, 2014

How to Use Content Curation to Create a Recurring Revenue Business

November 12, 2014

7 Ways to Find a Topical Market that Will Fuel Your Digital Commerce Business

November 5, 2014

The Crucial Starting Point for Building a Digital Commerce Business

October 8, 2014

Behind the Scenes: The Launch, Membership Sites, and What Punk Rock has to do with Content Marketing

September 25, 2014

Keep Them Fascinated: How to Discover Your Winning Difference as a Content Marketer

September 2, 2014

The Key Element of 21st Century Persuasion

April 3, 2014

The New Rainmaker as Magical Mentor on the Buyer’s Journey

March 24, 2014

Behind the Scenes: How the New Rainmaker Strategy Evolves in Plain Sight

March 11, 2014

The Critical Thing You Need to Earn Targeted Traffic – Today, and into the Future

March 5, 2014

8 Ways a Digital Media Platform is More Influential than “Marketing”

February 19, 2014

Why the New Rainmaker is a Digital Media Producer

February 11, 2014

Behind the Scenes: How (and Why) New Rainmaker is Produced

February 4, 2014

How to Build a Lucrative Asset While You Make it Rain

January 28, 2014

Why a Personal Media Brand Beats “Marketing” Every Time

January 21, 2014

Why the Key to Business Success is Media, Not Marketing

November 3, 2016

The Power of Not Being Stubborn

What do advanced sports analytics have to do with digital commerce? Well, everything — at least when it comes to the story of Ed Feng and his site The Power Rank.

Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You ByWP Engine

Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting.

Start getting more from your site today!

In this 31-minute episode, Ed shares a number of lessons he has learned in his half decade as a digital entrepreneur:

  • Why he’s so committed to “doing remarkable things.”
  • How not being stubborn was the key to turning a hobby into a thriving business
  • The important advice from Sonia Simone … that Ed ignored (and later regretted)
  • Why he’s struggling to move forward with a podcast
  • The classic book that has made a huge impact on Ed’s ability to build his audience and convert customers

And more. Plus, Ed answers my rapid fire questions at the end … which includes one of the simplest productivity hacks you’ll ever hear, and mention of this sensational video: Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes – The Joy of Stats.

Listen to The Digital Entrepreneur below ...

The Power of Not Being StubbornJerod Morris
  • Social:
  • Link:
  • Embed:
https://rainmaker.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/digital-entrepreneur-033.mp3
Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes

The Show Notes

  • Enchanting Marketing by Henneke
  • The Power Rank
  • @ThePowerRank
  • Jerod Morris

The Transcript

The Power of Not Being Stubborn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jerod Morris: That’ll help.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jerod Morris: Yeah, Third Tribe.

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

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

Jerod Morris: Yes.

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

Jerod Morris: Yes it is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ed Feng: Harbaugh, yeah. No,

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

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

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

Why He’s Struggling to Move Forward with a Podcast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jerod Morris: Even more accurate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ed Feng: Sure, absolutely.

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

Ed Feng: Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

Ed Feng: Exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jerod Morris: Do something. Get back at it.

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

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

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

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

Ed Feng: I do.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I do the same thing.

Ed Feng: Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never Miss New Shows and Episodes on Rainmaker.FM

Get the best of the Rainmaker.FM network in a single weekly email, along with two weeks
of free training that will change the way you think about online marketing ...

Free Registration

You might also like...

Hit Publish

Why Interactive Content is Easy-to-Create and Puts Your Business Firmly in the Spotlight

Listen to episode
Members Only

How to Enhance Your Membership Site With Live Events

Listen to episode
The Showrunner

No. 068 The Showrunner’s Dilemma

Listen to episode
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience

The Best of The Writer Files: Volume One

Listen to episode
The Digital Entrepreneur

How an Email Newsletter Publisher Built an Audience of 223,991 Subscribers

Listen to episode
Hack the Entrepreneur

Here’s the Key to Turning Your Failures into Opportunities …

Listen to episode

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You ByWP Engine

Discover why more than 80,000 companies in 135 countries choose WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting.

Start getting more from your site today!

Copyright © 2023 Rainmaker Digital, LLC. Powered by the Rainmaker Platform.

Privacy Policy  ·  Refund Policy  ·  Cookie Policy  ·  Terms of Service  ·  Contact