Rand Fishkin is known for founding an incredibly successful company — while keeping an unwavering commitment to his core values.
You may have noticed, if you look around at the general business landscape, that a lot of successful founders are a bit cocky. They tend to overestimate the role of their own genius in their success — and underestimate the hard work of their teams and the luck that went into that success.
(And no, for the curious, I’m not counting Rainmaker Digital founder Brian Clark in that group.)
Rand Fishkin isn’t like most founders.
For example, founders of successful businesses typically play certain cards close to the chest. They’re highly selective about what they reveal about their businesses. And there are some strong business reasons for doing that.
Rand, on the other hand, is radically transparent about the good stuff and the bad in his business.
“Transparency is synonymous with Rand Fishkin, in a fantastic way.” – Brian Clark
Sometimes that transparency has come at a price. But it’s one of Rand’s deepest core values, as well as a foundational value for his business. And while his commitment to extreme transparency has closed some doors … it’s also opened some amazing ones.
Moz’s long, winding path to “overnight success”
Like so many stories of explosive growth, the company now known as Moz started out on a rather winding path.
The company started life as SEOMoz, a side project for Rand while he taught himself SEO. Eventually it became a full-time consulting