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How One Successful Digital Entrepreneur Stays Entertained by Her Business

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How One Successful Digital Entrepreneur Stays Entertained by Her Business

Sarah Morgan may rub some people the wrong way with her dedication to naps, her casual approach to online interaction, and the occasional curse word in an email. But make no mistake: she’s serious, works hard, and has found a way to create a lucrative digital business that keeps her, above all, entertained.

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In this 30-minute episode, Sarah and I discuss:

  • How she went from corporate job and circus performer to thriving digital entrepreneur
  • Why she won’t apologize for cursing, naps, or walking her dear old dog
  • The joy she felt in that moment when she realized she was making more as a digital entrepreneur than she had been at her corporate job
  • The work habits and discipline that help her get work done and keep moving forward
  • Her failed Photoshop course — and what she learned from the experience
  • Why hanging out in her communities (on her couch) fuels her why

And much more — including my rapid fire questions at the end, in which Sarah shares how Simon Sinek, The Real Housewives, and the opera have influenced her career.

Listen to The Digital Entrepreneur below ...

How One Successful Digital Entrepreneur Stays Entertained by Her BusinessJerod Morris
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The Show Notes

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  • @xosarahmorgan
  • Jerod Morris

The Transcript

How One Successful Digital Entrepreneur Stays Entertained by Her Business

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, on-going 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 build better digital businesses. I am your host, Jerod Morris, the VP of Marketing for Rainmaker Digital, and this is episode number 32.

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 a little bit 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 four years ago was working a corporate job that she didn’t love anymore. She began growing her blog, building her email list, and expanding her social media following. After nine months of serious hustling, she made her escape and literally ran away with the circus. We’re going to have to ask her about that.

Now she spends her days teaching other bloggers, freelancers, and solo business owners how to create a kickass online presence through ebooks, workbooks, and courses so that they can conquer their goals too. She is Sarah Morgan, and she is a digital entrepreneur.

Sarah, welcome to The Digital Entrepreneur. How are you?

Sarah Morgan: Thank you for having me. I’m good. How are you?

Jerod Morris: I’m very good. Very good. Very excited for this chance to talk. Looking forward to it.

Sarah Morgan: Thank you.

Jerod Morris: I have to start out with this. When I was doing some research ahead of time, I read on your website a little bit about your history. I want you to, obviously, get into telling us more about that, but there was one line that I found particularly interesting, and we have to start here. You said, “After nine months of serious hustling, she made her escape and literally ran away with the circus.” Can you …?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. My fans were excited about that.

Jerod Morris: Can you unpack that sentence for us a little bit?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. I guess I can tell you my whole journey and how that fits in, because I did also have a real job as well.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, let’s do it.

How She Went from Corporate Job and Circus Performer to Thriving Digital Entrepreneur

Sarah Morgan: I’m a blog strategist. I started blogging when I was a teenager. I used that to learn web design and development, and then after college I got a corporate job doing web design at a TV station in Detroit. I’m originally from Michigan. At some point in there, like most people that end up self-employed, I was not loving my job anymore. Not loving getting up and going to work, the projects, or anything that I was working on. I started a side hustle doing freelance web design. Around the same time, I had a — I call it my “side, side hustle.” That was as a circus performer. I was performing Cirque du Soleil aerial silks and trapeze, that kind of stuff.

Jerod Morris: Wow.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. So I was performing a lot and I was teaching. I was blogging in the morning and then going to work and blogging. Getting my work done really fast. I was very efficient. Then, editing photos, coding, and doing all of that stuff any time I had a minute at work. And then, after work, I would go and train, or teach, or perform, or go and do more web design client work.

Jerod Morris: Wow. How did you have time for all of this?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. It was more like, “How did you have time for anything else?” because I pretty much … It was like a year, nine months where I was doing everything all at once, and I didn’t do anything else. I wasn’t partying. That was in my late 20’s. How long have I been doing this, four years?

I should’ve been going to the bar and going out to dinner, doing all kinds of stuff. I was working like a crazy person. I always say I was working 25/8. I was working from the second I got up until the second I went to sleep, and I loved it … 95 percent of the time. The rest of the time, I was super stressed out.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. I don’t want to dwell on this too long because it’s obviously a show about digital entrepreneurship, but I am interested about the performing part of it, because that seems like this outlier detail about your whole story. Is that something that you had grown up doing, and what are you … Are you still doing any of that now?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, I moved to San Diego a little over two years ago. I still teach. I don’t really perform anymore because it takes a really high level of training. I would have to be in the studio training six, seven days a week, and at the moment I’m feeling lazy about that. I’m really focused on building my online courses. So I’m still teaching and I still go in and train every once in a while.

But when I was back home in Detroit before I moved here, I was performing a few times a month. I did outdoor festivals, fairs, and corporate events. I did, actually, a couple of NBA halftime shows. I got to perform with Salt-N-Pepa, which was crazy.

Jerod Morris: Wow. Hey.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. They’re like, “Do you want to come and do this show?” I was like, “Yes. Yeah, whatever you want me to do, no problem.”

Jerod Morris: Of course. Yeah. When you do your online courses, are you doing a lot of video stuff? Are you on camera for the courses?

Sarah Morgan: Some of them I am. I have one course, my main blogging course about growing blog traffic and your email list.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: I am on camera doing video for every single module.

Jerod Morris: This performance history that you have, does that come out at all in your videos? Are you able to use any of that, or is it more just like sitting in a desk straight into the camera?

Sarah Morgan: I’m not sitting at a desk. I’m more of a work-on-the-couch kind of person, so it’s a little more relaxed probably than most people that make online courses.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, I’m not upside-down or anything, or wearing the clown makeup.

Jerod Morris: Not yet, but for future courses.

Sarah Morgan: Not yet. Yes.

Jerod Morris: Sarah, I’ve always believed that the number one benefit of digital entrepreneurship is freedom.

Sarah Morgan: Yes.

Jerod Morris: The freedom to choose your projects. The freedom to chart your course. 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?

Sarah Morgan: I’m going to go with freedom as well. I really am bossy, so I like being in charge and I like deciding what project I work on, who I’m working with, who I’m collaborating with. I like being able to structure my own days. I like being able to like fly home to see my family whenever I want. Michigan is cold so I don’t really do it that often, but I can if I want to. Also, that I can experiment. I can try something, and if doesn’t work then it doesn’t work and I can try something else. There’s nobody going to come down and with a hammer on me or something like that.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: I’m able to move a little bit quicker than I would if I was doing this same type of work under someone else at a corporate job or something.

Jerod Morris: Sure, so you described what you were doing before you got to the point where you’re at now. When was that moment when you said, “Okay, I’m pivoting and I’m going online. I’m doing this full-time with ebooks and with courses, and this is how I’m going to make money.” What was that decision like?

Sarah Morgan: It started a couple years in. Maybe three years in to the seven years at my corporate job, I had a moment of feeling like I didn’t enjoy designing websites anymore, and that was something I had been doing since I was like 13.

I always say I had a mid-20’s crisis. I was like, “If I don’t design websites anymore, what am I supposed to do?” I didn’t have any other interests, hobbies, or career path. That was my thing. So I panicked. That’s when I started blogging again. I had stopped for a couple of years because I was doing a lot of design work and writing news stories, which is super boring. I was doing that all day at my corporate job, so I stopped blogging.

At that point, I started blogging again. I started getting a little bit more into creative design and blog design, and I realized that I had people coming to me and asking for blog headers or asking questions about how to format their own website. I ended up starting a little bit, and then nine months before I left my job I got very serious. I was really unhappy. I really didn’t want to go to work in the morning.

I decided, “In a year, I’m leaving my job. Next September, I’m leaving. That’s it.” I think my boyfriend at the time and my parents were a little bit concerned for my mental state of being. I was like, “I’m leaving my job. I can’t do this anymore.” This is 40 hours out of my week that I’m unhappy.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. I decided, and from that point on, I worked like a crazy person to make it happen.

Jerod Morris: Sometimes you got to put your own back against the wall and you find out what you’re capable of.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, absolutely.

Why She Won’t Apologize for Cursing, Naps, or Walking Her Dear Old Dog

Jerod Morris: I’m looking at your website, and you’ve got your tagline on here, “The no bullsh*t blog strategy for the daring and driven.” I’m curious, as you went about developing your brand and putting this all together, did you just follow your own personality, or were you very intentional about adding a little bit of an edge to how you were going to present yourself?

Sarah Morgan: That’s my personality. If you talk to me in person I will probably swear at you. I get people that email … I used to be on MailChimp, so people could write a comment when they unsubscribe. All the time people would say, “You swear too much. I can’t take the cursing,” and I’m like …

Jerod Morris: You swear in your emails?

Sarah Morgan: Oh, yeah.

Jerod Morris: Yeah?

Sarah Morgan: I try to not drop the f-bomb too much anymore. I’ve pulled back a teeny-tiny bit, but yeah. I say all the other four-letter words. That’s the way I sound.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I think that’s interesting. I think some people shy away a little bit even if that is their natural way. Have you found that it has helped you to attract the kind of people that are going to be your best kind of customers and repel the people who won’t?

Sarah Morgan: Yup, absolutely. That’s one of the reasons that I’ve never been shy about swearing or writing in the way that I speak, or creating videos and not being in a blazer at a desk. I’m always sitting on my couch or I’m sitting at my kitchen table, and I’m dressed the way that I always dress. I think that does attract the right people to me. Because I do a lot of … I run online communities for all my courses. I do weekly hangouts for some of my courses, and I don’t want to be hanging out with people that aren’t on the same vibe that I’m on.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, just a very authentic way of doing business.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, it brings in the right students and I always have fun when I’m doing the consulting and coaching.

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

The Joy She Felt in That Moment When She Realized That She Was Making More as a Digital Entrepreneur than She Had at Her Corporate Job

Sarah Morgan: Ooh, that’s a big one. Okay. It was when I realized I was making more money being self-employed than I had been making at my corporate job.

Jerod Morris: Wow. Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: That was about two and a half, three years in. I just remember standing in my kitchen and being like, “Holy sh*t. I make more money doing all of this stuff by myself than I did working for somebody else.” It’s crazy. I didn’t think — I really assumed, “I’m going to be making $30,000 a year, and that’s fine if I can work from home and build my own business. That’s fine. I’ll be a starving artist or whatever.”

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: I did not expect that to happen at all. When it did, I was really shocked and really proud of myself.

Jerod Morris: Was it a steady progression to that point, or were there some pretty big jumps that got you there?

Sarah Morgan: It was definitely a whole year of doing webinars and finally growing my email list. Finally taking all of the advice in creating an email list. The couple years before I’d been making $25,000 to $30,000 a year, and then yeah, that one year I more than doubled my income.

Jerod Morris: Wow. Congratulations on that, by the way. That’s fantastic.

Sarah Morgan: Thank you.

Jerod Morris: Alrighty. Let’s take a quick break. When we come back, I’m going to ask Sarah about her 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. You need the ability to create content types ranging from blog posts, to podcasts, to online courses. 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.

You have two choices. One, you can piecemeal it all together, pay more in total, and then cross your fingers and hope everything plays nicely together. Or, number two, 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 one of a hundred different places for support when you have a question, with Rainmaker, it’s just one support team ready and excited to help you out.

All of these reasons and more are why Raimaker.FM runs on the Rainmaker Platform 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. Go to Rainmaker.FM/Platform and start your free, 14-day trial today. That’s Rainmaker.FM/Platform.

Now, back to my discussion with Sarah Morgan.

Alrighty. Sarah, you told us about your proudest moment as a digital entrepreneur. Now tell us about the most humbling moment in your career as a digital entrepreneur thus far, and most importantly, what you’ve learned from it.

Her Failed Photoshop Course and What She Learned From the Experience

Sarah Morgan: Okay. I definitely have had a course that was a failure. I did a Photoshop course, but I didn’t really take into account that people would have to purchase Photoshop in order to take my course. It was like, “Spend $500, or $200, or whatever on Photoshop, and then also spend $300 on my course.” It didn’t really work. That was a bummer because I put a lot of time into it and it was a really good course, but the people that were buying it were the ones that were already in my audience and already had Photoshop, and that was not enough for it to be sustainable.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, so what have you done with that course? Is that still out there just for folks who can use it, or did you shutter that one?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. It was online for maybe a year after. I just left it in my shop. A few people purchased it, but eventually I really wanted to drill down on blogging and create a progression of courses, so I took it offline.

Jerod Morris: Is there anything that you would do differently with that course if you were going to re-launch it? Obviously there’s an inherent challenge there with needing people to buy Photoshop, but how would you approach something like that where you have a useful skill to teach but you’ve got this barrier there where people need to buy X product? Is there anything that you would do differently in a similar situation? Maybe it’s just not do the course, but is there anything else?

Sarah Morgan: I think I would have focused more on design, and then included tutorials for Photoshop and a couple of the online free design platforms so that it was accessible to anyone. But for me, I really … When I learned Photoshop, I felt like I learned maybe like 10 percent of it, so that was my intention with the course, is that you really miss all of these tools that are really helpful. But it didn’t really work. It definitely needed to be more accessible by having a free platform that people could try all of the tech tutorials for.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that with us. I appreciate it.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: 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.

Sarah Morgan: You’re getting me with all these questions.

Jerod Morris: And it can’t be a curse word.

Sarah Morgan: I’m feeling very entertained by my business right now. I’m just trying lots of stuff.

Jerod Morris: Oh, that’s a good one. We haven’t had anybody use that word before.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. It’s always been entertaining, but the more I get interesting opportunities — I had the opportunity to go to New Orleans and speak at a conference which was like, “Okay, sure.”

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: “I would love to go to New Orleans for free. If I have to get on stage and speak, I can probably do that.” Yeah, it’s been entertaining to see what’s happening, interact with my audience, and build communities. I’m just having fun over here.

Jerod Morris: Is that something that you want to do more of, speaking?

Sarah Morgan: I think it is. I would panic in high school, and middle school, and college when they would call on me or where you had to write a presentation and you had note cards and stand up in front of class. That was my worst nightmare.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: Somehow, I think through teaching and doing webinars, I’ve become a lot more comfortable talking to people and having people all stare at me all at once. So it was a really good experience to go and speak at the conference, and I think I would do it again.

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

The Work Habits and Discipline That Help Her Get Her Work Done and Keep Moving Forward

Sarah Morgan: Oh, probably getting enough done. I can have 15 tasks every single day. I’m always adjusting and adding. I just adjusted the end of some of my email sequences, but now I want to go back through and do it to all of them. I could literally work non-stop and not sleep and not eat.

So really staying focused and organized. I’ve been using Asana, which is very helpful in order to get specific things done and put off adjusting all of those email sequences to next week or next month, or something like that.

Jerod Morris: That is a pretty common recurring pain point, I think. That’s the one. It’s the double-edged sword of freedom. You have this freedom, but then there are so many different things that can fill up the time. How do you, a) keep your priorities in order and make your choices for what you’re going to do, and b) try to keep some barrier around your professional life so that you can have a personal life as well?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. So I said Asana, that really helps. I generally try and put like three tasks per day, three big things. And I plan a quarter in advance. So I know for November and December, while I haven’t gone through and added daily tasks, I know I’m going to be reworking one of my courses in that month. I have my end goal for those two months, and then I can go in and say, “This week I need to do the sales page. This week I need to do emails. This week I’m going to go through lessons or videos.”

Having those larger goals and then breaking it down into months or weeks, and then breaking it down into days and not putting too much into each day. One of the nice things about Asana is that I can go back through and see, “Really, what did I accomplish every day? Can I do 10 things? No. Okay. I can only do 5 things every day.” If I’m doing video, that’s probably going to take my whole day. If I’m writing a blog post, I can probably add in another two things.

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

Why Hanging out in Her Communities (on Her Couch) Fuels Her Why

Sarah Morgan: Hanging out with my communities, for sure.

Jerod Morris: Yeah?

Sarah Morgan: I love talking to people. It’s two things. It fuels my “why,” my purpose and motivation for creating courses and doing what I do — blogging and writing emails. But it also is really great research. Any time I build a course, do a webinar, or send an email, it’s generally because one of my students or community members has had a question or is trying to figure something out that they’re stuck on. Then I can take that and turn it into something that works for my entire audience. So that’s been really nice, to do daily, really easy research.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. You mentioned before how much Asana has helped you. I want to open your toolbox a little bit and figure out what tools you’re using. In addition to Asana, what’s another technology tool that contributes the most to your success?

Sarah Morgan: I’ve got three that I’ll tell you. I love ConvertKit for doing emails, sending emails to my list. Their tagging tools are amazing. I was on MailChimp. This blows MailChimp out of the water. It’s so easy to segment my list and send emails just to people related to the specific things they’re interested in so that I don’t have to send thousands and thousands of people every email. That never works.

I really loved Tailwind for scheduling blog posts to Pinterest. I get 90 percent of my social media traffic from Pinterest, so I always have that scheduled in advance.

Jerod Morris: Oh, wow.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. It works. It’s not just for recipes and makeup tips.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. How do you do that then, with Pinterest? Do you have to have a pretty defined visual style? Do you create specific blog post images that go with your posts? What’s your strategy with Pinterest?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. My blog post images are Pinterest-sized. They’re giant, big, tall images. Then I pin those into my boards and group boards. I use Tailwind because I can pin 1 pin to like 20 boards in literally 2 seconds. It’s two clicks and then they’re all in there, they’re all scheduled. So I can pin a ton of content, which Pinterest really likes. I can pin a lot of content all day long, and I only am working maybe 5 or 10 minutes, depending on how lazy I’m feeling.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Wow, very cool. That sounds like a really neat program.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, and then I also use Buffer. For Twitter and Facebook I use Buffer.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. What about the non-technology tool that contributes the most?

Sarah Morgan: Can I say my couch? Taking a nap?

Jerod Morris: Sure, whatever works.

Sarah Morgan: That’s what I do when I need a break. I just pass out.

Jerod Morris: Okay. How important is that, though? I think a lot of people are scared to take a nap or take breaks, always feeling they have to fill every moment with work. Is that a big part of what keeps you fresh and keeps you going?

Sarah Morgan: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I am very serious about sleeping. If I need a nap, I know that I’m going to produce crap work if I try and push through when I’m falling asleep. So I’m all about taking a nap. Especially if I do the circus training in the morning, I need a nap and then I can wake up and actually work. Yeah, that and taking my dog for a walk. I know a lot of people — people get mad at me. I have a blog post where I detail how my day runs, and that is the only post on my website that I get hate comments.

Jerod Morris: Really?

Sarah Morgan: They’re very mad that I can walk my dog during the day and take a nap.

Jerod Morris: By hate comments, do you mean like jealousy-driven like, “I wish I could do that.” Or like, “You should be in the community paying your attention to us?”

Sarah Morgan: No, it’s like, “How dare you say you’re productive when you take a nap during the day.”

Jerod Morris: Oh.

Sarah Morgan: I’m like, “I don’t know. That’s how I work. Sorry.”

Jerod Morris: Yeah. It all goes to quality over quantity.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: If you’re able to get more better work done in a shorter amount of time because you’re fresher, then it all works out.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, or else you just end up burning out.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Sarah Morgan: That’s not worth it.

Jerod Morris: 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, “Entertained,” which is a great answer. If we talk again in a year, what word would you want that to be?

Sarah Morgan: Oh, man.

Jerod Morris: It has to be different.

Sarah Morgan: I probably still will be entertained. Something to do with expanding.

Jerod Morris: Okay.

Sarah Morgan: I have a free beginner blogging course, and I would like to really expand the number of students that are in that course. That’s my main goal for next year is to like 10x that so that I can get a lot more people online blogging. I have tons of middle-aged, 50-something women who are coming into my courses, which is not … My branding is not really geared toward that person, but they’re showing up in droves and I love it. Yeah, I want to expand. I want things to be bigger.

Jerod Morris: What’s your current attraction strategy? How are these people finding you and how are you targeting the people that you –not that you don’t want those people — the people that you are targeting. How are you going about doing that?

Sarah Morgan: Through social media. Sharing my own blog content on Twitter, I get a lot of traffic. And Pinterest — like I said. Then I run Facebook ads every once in a while. I’m about to run one in the next day or two for my list-building course, so that will bring in a whole new audience. I try and target outside of the people that I already have.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, so that will help bring in lots more people.

Jerod Morris: Cool. Good luck as you work towards continuing to expand.

Sarah Morgan: Thank you.

Jerod Morris: I’ve got a few rapid-fire questions here to end with. I will let you know, most people I send these questions to ahead of time and I forgot to do it in this case. But you seem ready, like you don’t need them ahead of time, so I think we’ll be okay. I think you’ll do a perfectly fine job answering these. Are you ready?

Sarah Morgan: Yes.

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?

Sarah Morgan: It’s Start with Why by Simon Sinek.

Jerod Morris: Good one.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah, I love … I just saw him speak and it blew my mind.

Jerod Morris: Did you? Where did you see him speak?

Sarah Morgan: He came to San Diego and did Creative Mornings.

Jerod Morris: Very nice. Yeah. I have not yet seen him speak other than, obviously, his TED Talks and online, but I imagine that had to be pretty great.

Sarah Morgan: He’s super funny. It was awesome.

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

Sarah Morgan: Oh, man. You might laugh at me for this. I want to talk to Bethenny Frankel from …

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: The Real Housewives are my guilty pleasure. But I think she is a badass, so that’s who I want to talk to.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Hey, there’s no judgment with these questions. Whoever you think will help. What is the one email newsletter that you can’t do without?

Sarah Morgan: I don’t really subscribe to anything.

Jerod Morris: Really?

Sarah Morgan: Honestly. I like a real clean inbox. Yeah. I don’t subscribe to anything.

Jerod Morris: Is that because you want to keep it clean or because you don’t find value in an email newsletter subscription?

Sarah Morgan: I don’t take the time to read emails when I’m subscribed to them because there’s so much other stuff in my inbox. I’m like, “Oh, there’s 30 unread messages here. I’m going to wait to read this.” I would start putting them into a “To Read” folder and then I would never read them. I just unsubscribed from everything so I can focus on the most important stuff that’s showing up.

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

Sarah Morgan: Oh my gosh.

Jerod Morris: This is the one that always seems to get people.

Sarah Morgan: I am a big reader. I’ll read like a hundred books in a year, so that is my thing.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: Okay. I really like going to the opera. Does that count?

Jerod Morris: Of course. Absolutely.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: Just as an escape, or have you … Is there anything that you’ve taken from that experience that has helped you in what you do?

Sarah Morgan: Mostly, as an escape. It’s so different than the world we’re in today.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Sarah Morgan: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: Okay.

Sarah Morgan: I love it.

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

Sarah Morgan: Definitely tracking my tasks in Asana. It doesn’t work to have that never-ending to-do list. Once I put everything in there and started really keeping track of what things were getting done, I can look back and see like, “Oh. Well, that week, I got nothing done. High five to myself.” It really helps to keep me accountable and see what’s getting done and what’s not getting done, and how long things realistically take. Because I do have days when I put 15 things into it and 2 of them get done. Yeah. It keeps me in check.

Jerod Morris: That’s because you’re always walking your dog and napping.

Sarah Morgan: Of course.

Jerod Morris: Okay, so what —

Sarah Morgan: My dog is old. Those walks only take about 10 minutes.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. My final question for you. What is the single best way for someone inspired by today’s discussion to get in touch with you?

Sarah Morgan: Come over and hang out with me on XOSarah.com or find me on social media, @xosarahmorgan.

Jerod Morris: That is XOSarah.com?

Sarah Morgan: Yup.

Jerod Morris: Perfect. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on The Digital Entrepreneur and lending your insight.

Sarah Morgan: Thank you for having me.

Jerod Morris: This was great. Absolutely, and good luck expanding your business in the new year.

Sarah Morgan: Thank you.

Jerod Morris: Thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. Always appreciate those of you who listen all the way to the end. You are the true Digital Entrepreneur diehards. Of course, my thanks to Sarah Morgan for joining us, and my thanks to our production team here at Rainmaker.FM: Will DeWitt, Caroline Early, Toby Lyles and his team. The show would not be possible without you all, so thank you very much.

And a reminder: go to Rainmaker.FM/Platform to take the Rainmaker Platform for a free test-drive. See if it’s for you. It is the all-in-one solution for digital marketing and sales. I think you will find that you like it and you will find it useful. If you have any questions, comments, anything, hit me up on Twitter, @jerodmorris. That’s @jerodmorris. I will look forward to speaking with you next week on another brand new episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. Talk to you then.

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Comments

  1. Attila Beres says

    November 4, 2016 at 11:26 AM

    This was so fun to listen to! I have admired Ramit Sethi for a long time for actively and ruthlessly weeding out the people from his list who are not compatible with his personality and his preferred people whom he wants to serve. And Sarah does something similar, but at the same time also having tons of fun and time out for herself as well. She`s got such a playful vibe, it was a true joy listening to her talking. I`m sure that for those folks who feel they are only good enough if they achieve/work their ass off/remain politically correct, what she says is outrageous. But to me it is very inspiring and common sense. Thank you guys!

    Reply

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