In this episode of Office Hours, SparkToro founder Rand Fishkin discusses how he turned his fascination with SEO and his gift for teaching into a thriving business, his “quiet work” model, and his criticism of venture capital.
Fishkin has always had a knack for teaching that he attributes to a dysfunctional home life, in particular, a father who was quick to anger.
“And so a lot of my emotional energy and training just growing up was like, ‘Okay, how can I inform this person and keep them happy and, like, not let them get angry?’ “, he said.
This experience made Fishkin approach problems differently. At first, his teachers used this ability to encourage him to teach his classmates one-on-one.
“I can see it in myself even now. right? When I’m around people, I can engage them, I can make them feel good about themselves,” he added. “Thanks, Dad.”
This skill would serve Fishkin well when he delved into the world of search engine optimization, one of the first web practices that would help businesses outrank their competitors. He founded a blog, SEO Moz, which would later become Moz, a leading software company in the search engine optimization space.
As search engines grew in importance, he said, a number of “snake oil salesmen” seized the interest, peddling tightly controlled secret practices to deliver better results to their clients. SEO Moz went the other direction.
“At the time, the SEO world was full of these types of people, and it was full of people who believed it was important to keep what they knew secret,” he said. “Without realizing that this is not what consultancies are about, right? You share your knowledge openly. And then people will hire you because they won’t do it themselves.”
As the consultancy expanded, Moz developed tools to help check and optimize websites’ search performance. Fishkin, ever the professor, suggested that the company take them public.
“I [our developer] it was like, ‘No way. No way. Like, our servers will crash.
Fishkin suggested the company charge users a nominal fee to use them to offset costs. In doing so, Moz became one of the first software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, growing to 130 employees and exceeding $30 million in annual revenue at its peak.
Now, as co-founder of audience research software startup SparkToro, Fishkin said he’s trying to rethink basic assumptions about startup culture. In particular, he wants to get away from the idea that to build a great company, you have to burn yourself and your employees out.
“Quiet work means we prioritize our lives over our work lives,” he said. “We try to intentionally build a business that never demands (sometimes we put in more hours), but we never demand more than 30 hours a week.”
That means being lean and focused, and discouraging employees from taking work home with them. It also means growing at a sustainable rate and making sure the company has the right investors and can deliver on the promises they make to them.
“And the quiet work in many ways is to say, how can we keep Rand and everyone else who works here happy and healthy and able to contribute for decades, instead of, ‘Do you think we could burn this kid in six years and maybe get a big home run?’”
So far, it seems to be paying off. Fishkin said that SparkToro’s growth is just behind what Moz was in its first two years and profitability is much higher.
“I attached my identity to this company [Moz], I want to be able to do it again. And I want to be able to do it in a way that I love, that I don’t feel like I’m a prisoner of it,” he said.
Spencer Rascoff, host of The Office Hour and co-founder of dot.LA, is an investor in SparkToro.
Want to hear more episodes? Sign up for office hours toe, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.
From the articles on your site
Related articles on the web
[ad_2]
Source link
