12. Leave Your Ego at the Door with Rand Fishkin, Founder, Moz / Founder, SparkToro

Enoughness with Lisa Carmen Wang

Letting go can be extremely difficult. When you build something from the ground up and work on it for years, it becomes part of you. Today's guest, Rand Fishkin founded Moz, which has grown into one of the most massive SEO empires. Moz now has 36,000 customers, 160+ employees and does around $47 million dollars in annual revenue. Just recently, Rand Fishkin has stepped away from the day-to-day operations of the company and is ready for the next adventure. But what prompted him to leave the empire he built? In today’s interview, we discuss the pressure for entrepreneurs to fit within the Silicon Valley model of success, and how venture capital can be detrimental to a founder in the long run. We cover a lot from self-doubt to arrogance to the need to confront. Rand talks honestly about his difficult move out of the CEO position at Moz and into building his next venture, SparkToro. In This Episode, You Will Learn: How SEO is still the best practice for driving traffic to a site (03:10) Importance of trial & error and learning as you go (04:10) The vision Rand had for Moz early on (12:12) Why you don't need to build the next Facebook or Amazon (28:00) How arrogance and depression are connected (31:40) Stepping down from the CEO position (39:20) Rand's new book and promotion around it (44:35) Some Questions We Discuss: What's your background? (03:53) Did you enjoy raising capital for Moz? (07:07) Do you consider yourself an emotional or more logical person? (16:44) Why don't we talk enough about depression in the business world? (21:43) How do you define success? (27:06) Who are some of the entrepreneurs that you admire? (29:29) Links and Resources Mentioned (https://sparktoro.com/) --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/enoughness-lisa-wang/support