👉🏼 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 highlight
• 0:48 | Intro to Rand Fishkin
• 2:56 | What drew Rand to a career in marketing?
• 6:20 | Rand's SEO mentors
• 10:09 | What made Rand bet on SEO?
• 16:01 | Moving from consulting to software
• 19:41 | The non-scalability of consulting vs the omnipresence of tech
• 28:47 | Rand's experience with depression as a founder
• 37:03 | Rand's 3-Step Framework for startup founders
• 43:08 | The mistakes founders make while marketing
• 46:43 | Community's role in marketing
• 52:42 | The secret to an uber-profitable 3-person startup team
• 59:48 | Building the 'contentment' muscle
• 1:07:11 | Marketing trends from 2023
• 1:11:01 | Rapid Fire 5: Rand's favorite marketing person to meeting Oprah for the first time
• 1:19:31 | Wrapping up

👉🏼 Resources mentioned in the pod:

• Shoutout.so
• 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
• Moz: https://moz.com
• FTC 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/8
• Aaron Wall: http://www.seobook.com/about.shtml
• Nandini Jammi and Claire Atkin of Check My Ads: https://twitter.com/CheckMyAdsHQ
• Nathan of ConvertKit: https://nathanbarry.com/

👉🏼 Where to find Rand Fishkin:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/randfish
• Linkedin: 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/5harath
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@5harath
• Website: https://5harath.com/
• Newsletter: https://5harath.substack.com/