Rand Fishkin - How anyone can be legendary at marketing!

👉🏼 About the Guest:Rand Fishkin is cofounder and CEO of SparkToro, makers of fine audience research software. He’s dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his writing, videos, speaking, and his book, Lost and Founder. When Rand’s not working, he’s usually cooking a fancy meal for the love of his life, author Geraldine DeRuiter. If you bribe him with great pasta or fancy cocktails, he’ll pull back the curtain on big tech’s dark secrets.👉🏼 About the Host:Sharath is a founder, creator, and community builder. He is also a serial maker who built and shipped 15+ projects using no-code tools. His SaaS product Shoutout generates $30k ARR which was sold to a UK-based product studio. Prev, Sharath worked for world-changing startups like Product Hunt and On Deck, where he helped build and nurture communities. He also grew his audience on Twitter from 200 to 20,000 using give-first principles and creating high-value content. Currently, he is the Head of Community at Threado and runs a newsletter called Sharath's CliffNotes alongside hosting this podcast.Timestamps:0:00 | Episode highlight0:48 | Intro to Rand Fishkin2:56 | What drew Rand to a career in marketing?6:20 | Rand's SEO mentors10:09 | What made Rand bet on SEO?16:01 | Moving from consulting to software19:41 | The non-scalability of consulting vs the omnipresence of tech28:47 | Rand's experience with depression as a founder37:03 | Rand's 3-Step Framework for startup founders43:08 | The mistakes founders make while marketing46:43 | Community's role in marketing52:42 | The secret to an uber-profitable 3-person startup team59:48 | Building the 'contentment' muscle1:07:11 | Marketing trends from 20231:11:01 | Rapid Fire 5: Rand's favorite marketing person to meeting Oprah for the first time1:19:31 | Wrapping up👉🏼 Resources mentioned in the pod:Shoutout.soSparkToro: https://sparktoro.com/"Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World": https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Founder-Painfully-Honest-Startup/dp/0735213321Moz: https://moz.comFTC Proposes Rule to Ban Noncompete Clauses, Which Hurt Workers and Harm Competition: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/01/ftc-proposes-rule-ban-noncompete-clauses-which-hurt-workers-harm-competition👉🏼 Shoutouts to awesome people:Amanda Natividad: https://undefeatedunderdogs.com/8Aaron Wall: http://www.seobook.com/about.shtmlNandini Jammi and Claire Atkin of Check My Ads: https://twitter.com/CheckMyAdsHQNathan of ConvertKit: https://nathanbarry.com/👉🏼 Where to find Rand Fishkin:Twitter: https://twitter.com/randfishLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randfishkin/Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@randfish SparkToro: https://sparktoro.com/"Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World": https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Founder-Painfully-Honest-Startup/dp/0735213321👉🏼 Where to find Sharath:Twitter: https://twitter.com/5harathYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@5harathWebsite: https://5harath.com/Newsletter: https://5harath.substack.com/