What happens when you create a venn diagram that combines discovering your passion with providing unique value and figuring out where your audience is listening? In this podcast, Rand Fishkin, founder and CEO of Moz, believes that is how you find your sweet spot.
As with most entrepreneurs, Fishkin knows a little bit about how failure can eventually inspire success. After dropping out of college in 2001, he began working with his mom at an agency where they offered clients web design and marketing solutions. However, they began drowning in debt, amassing over $500,000 from overhead expenses. In 2004, he started a blog called SEO Moz. “I spent four hours a day writing blogs. For the first year, it wasn’t really attracting anyone or resonating with a particular audience,” Fishkin recalls.
But after a year of publishing blogs five days per week, eventually the audience came: SEO Moz (renamed Moz) became a credible source of information about the newest marketing phase - search engine . In fact, the blog became so successful that in 2007, he was able to pay off his debt. While discovering his sweet spot took some time, Fishkin notes, “I have not seen someone in the content marketing world where someone was automatically a massive success.
The founder of Buzzfeed had over 11 years of publishing experience before it became what it is today. It’s all about shifting your passions to an area where you can provide unique value.” Additionally, he notes that entrepreneurs should keep their ear to the ground to find where their audience is to avoid choosing the right platform to promote their service or product.
As a public figure and thought leader, Fishkin has a few nuggets for entrepreneurs. First, they must be willing to learn, adapt and change for their audience. Additionally, it’s key to experiment with new platforms without over investing in them, in order to continue to grow and learn. Find out more words of wisdom by clicking the link !
Is there a formula for success? This week’s Paper Napkin Wisdom guest, Geoff Smart - CEO of lead consulting firm ghSMART - proposes just that . Dr. Smart, the best selling author of Who: The A Method for Hiring and the newly released Power Score: Your Formula for Leadership Success, holds a PhD in Psychology and has spent the last twenty years collecting and synthesizing data from over 3000 leaders and their teams.
While most books on leadership suggest that most prominent trait of successful leaders is honesty, Dr. Smart discovered that this wasn’t necessarily a special trait, and that most people (successful or unsuccessful) rated themselves highly in this category.
The Power Score (P x W x R) takes a look at the empirical data surrounding common traits of leaders and proposes that if teams are good at prioritizing, hiring the right people and building the right relationships, they are twenty times more likely to be successful than if they don’t have these traits. The concept was birthed by his publisher, who suggested that Dr. Smart take a more holistic approach to his new book as opposed to just providing tips on hiring as he had for his previous work “Who”. “The formula is multiplicative,” Dr. Smart explains, and akin to an athlete performing in a triathlon -- he or she must be good at all three in order to be successful.
The “P” stands for prioritizing and refers to the need for leaders and their teams to be equally plugged into the top goals and objectives of the organization. According to Dr. Smart, only 24 percent of leaders in the sample were good at prioritizing, while 90 percent said they had too many priorities. Working collaboratively to establish goals and a step-by-step process to achieve them is crucial to the success of any team.
The next letter in the equation, “W”, stands for Who. This value represents the team members themselves and evaluates whether they are all-stars or average from the beginning of the hiring process. To dig a bit deeper, Dr. Smart suggests asking the following questions prior to hiring a new team member:
Because the majority of managers worldwide only have around a 50% retention rate for the staff they hire, these questions are pertinent in order to ensure the new hire will bring value to their new team.
Finally, “R” stands for relationships. “Simply stated,” Dr. Smart explains, the right people need to be talking at the right time.
Check out the latest podcast and Dr. Smart’s new book to learn more about the formula for success!