All the best Mr. Fishkin
Rand Fishkin is probably the most quoted person in online marketing. If you've been working in marketing you've probably seen his face, one of his Whiteboard Fridays videos or read a quote of his in a trends report. He's a proper SEO geek. He's a legend. He has his own memes.
There are many things I learned from the Wizard of Moz (the online marketing software company he founded and run for several years). I like that he practices what he preaches. He seems like a hands-on person that has done many times what he's talking about. I like that he constantly seems to be learning and exploring. And I like that he shares what he learns, in his own quirky way.
He announced this week, in a brutally honest way, that he was leaving the company to do other stuff. I highly recommend you to read his article. Farewell to him. Here are 3 paraphrased quotes that resonated with me.
About empathy as a founder.
“The best skill I’ve developed and the one that’s served me best as a founder, a CEO, and a marketer is empathy. Being able to put myself in the shoes of other people and imagine their pain, their problems, their workflows and speed bumps has been invaluable both on the product side and in creating content. ”
About customers versus important people 'in your boardroom'.
“At Moz, weighting powerful, important, high-profile people’s opinions higher than our customers opinions inevitably led to doom. Dumb. When building a company, customers (and potential customers) > almost everyone else.”
About magic tricks that don't work.
“Tricks, hacks, and individual point solutions never made a big impact for us (and honestly, they’ve never made a big impact for any other company I’ve worked with or advised, either). For years I thought that the one right move would accelerate growth or the one right feature would make everyone love our product. But in fact, it’s when the whole became better than the sum of its parts that magic happened. ”