Ego and Narcisism Ruined a Perfectly Good Company

I am a search engine optimizer and anyone that has claimed they are a search engine optimizer knows what SEOmoz is. That awesome company that paved it's way into the depths of the SEO world through their friendship, coolness (that we all longed for), and the promise of help from other SEO experts. Rand. In this blog post Rand boasted his growth from the Newsweek Article of which he links to though the article no longer exists nor does it exist on the author's list of articles. In 2004 this little company began with a dream, a dream that a Son and Mother would build a successful Seattle based agency, and they did. The first two years were stressful financially. At times Rand was blogging about the financial strains they faced, and eventually reported their incredible growth at the end of 2006 with a blog post from

The pure joy I feel about coming through near-bankruptcy, times when Gillian told Matt and I to choose between who would take home a paycheck, and emerging with a solid financial footing is exceptional

Rand states that he and Matt were directed by Gillian to choose who took home a paycheck from time to time. From 2005 to 2006 the company saw a growth of over 90% they nearly doubled their employees (4 to 9) and the number of clients served nearly doubled as well (12 to 25). Rand claims they focused on large companies as clients as he states "Our rates are among the top 10-20% in the industry and the clients we work with include a pair of Fortune 500s (though neither is willing to reveal their identity). "  with the emphasis on neither is willing to reveal their identity.
So was Ran really telling the truth?
I am sure he was, or at least felt he was at the time, and we all reveled in the awe that was/is SEOmoz as a company that was growing rapidly.
Soon after that Rand took over as CEO (as Gillian stepped down to President) and began to run the company. He spoke at many conferences across the US and abroad. He networked with the young SEOs his age that all partied until the wee hours of the morning. He even married his beautiful bride who also was just as fun to hang out with. Rand was an SEO rock star and every SEO wanted to be him (or at least know him).
In 2012 Rand and Gillian had secured a round of funding from the Foundry Group and Ignition Partners led by Brad Feld. The company announced it's new found money with a less than serious press release complete with memes. In 2010 SEOmoz had started the transformation from an agency servicing clients to a company providing software to SEOs and their clients. SEOmoz cost a mere $99 a month to be a pro member and expected all of their members to upgrade to pro to use those services. Rand posted the numbers of use in his 2012 announcement of the fund raising:

• On an average weekday, ~150 marketers take a free trial
• Approximately 56% of those 150 free trials will convert into paid memberships
• Of those, ~40% cancel their membership in the first 3 paying months
• The remaining 60% (~50 out of our 150) keep their PRO subscription 13+ months on average (meaning the monthly cancellation rate is ~2.5%)
• Approximately half of those (~25) retain PRO membership for 18+ months
• Note: historically we've counted upgrades/downgrades, billing changes and some other dumb stuff in "churn" which likely inflates those figures.

Clearly these were impressive enough for a venture capital firm to through a large quantity of dough at them. Now I'm no venture capitalist but doesn't 150 people trying a SaaS out for free each week seem a little low? All of us marketers know that when you have low numbers like that percentages get very big and look quite impressive to the layman. Come on guys who hasn't shown percentages to clients rather than the good hard numbers so that they see you are doing such a great job for them?
Rand also shared his screenshot from Google Analytics showing a week over week growth period. In this screenshot there are roughly 400k average weekly visits giving them about 57k visits per day which is about normal for a company that provides a SaaS product and is (at that point) 8 years old (or 5 years old according to the Forbes Article).  
From 2012 to 2013 SEOmoz grew very quickly under the watchful eye of Rand Fishkin.
On May 29, 2013 Rand announced a new brand called "Moz" as they dropped the SEO. Unfotunately with that announcement came a lot of anger and frustration from the now Moz's client base including myself. I watched as I logged into my paid Pro account to send my clients their reports on how much we have improved their SEO to find that those reports not only had a different look but were completely gone. I was forced to send out an email to dozens of clients and explain that their reports I was sending them were about to change. I had no warning and a backlash you would never believe.
As Rand is so good with sharing his every thought with his readers he posted a Goodbye SEOmoz. Hello Moz! announcement and the sheep of SEOs boasted with revelry for the company. Though if you look through the true critics and users you will see that not everyone was hay with the change and even saw the same issues I faced with my clients.

As time progressed after the great launch the weight of the decisions Rand had made throughout the months leading up to the great launch he began to come to the slow realization that he had perhaps made a mistake. There are two posts Rand made after that moment in time that resonate with me the most. The one being his The Dichotomy of My 2013 Told Through 29 Photos in which Rand talks about his thoughts soon after the launch. He begins his post stating that he is writing from his rented home in Palm Springs, CA where the rich get to play and posted about a trip to Cape Town South Africa where the highly unsuccessful winner of the "MOZcation" contest existed.

while in Cape Town, I still had all the dreams of 2013 being another incredible year of nailing deadlines and doubling growth and not sweating too much over 100K in marketing expenses with hard-to-measure returns.

I have a difficult time sympathizing that he was in such a beautiful city at the expense of the company with so many people that adored him and his company while writing about it in the coveted Palm Springs private rental house. If we could all only be so lucky.

Of course, given that we were visiting from so far away and had traveled so far (25 hours of flying not including layovers), we took some time out to see the sights. Geraldine wrote magnificently about many of them, but one of the most moving (and, sadly poignant given Nelson Mandela‘s death last month) was a trip to Robben Island, the sight of Mandela’s 19-year imprisonment from 1963-1982. Walking around his prison yard, seeing his cell, and taking a guided tour given by a former political prisoner who shared time with Mandela was eye-opening, but remarkable. I feel so lucky to have seen a part of his life – and to be able to have an extra level of connection to someone I admire so immensely.

Yes, I am sure that running a company is so much like being in prison for standing up for your rights.

We also spent an amazing four days in Bushman’s Kloof, which was called, perhaps, the best hotel in the world, and based on my travels so far, I’d agree with that sentiment. The long drive from Cape Town took us to a much hotter, drier region, filled with amazing animals, gorgeous scenery, some of the world’s oldest rock and cave art, and incredibly luxurious amenities. It was without question, one of the most remarkable experiences of my life (and only made affordable by a special they were running combined with several of us pitching in rooms together).

My sympathies continue as I spare most of the rest of his travels and pictures his wife took to go along with them.

The photo above, taken on the beach in front of our hotel, makes me look a little downtrodden, which I was. It was during the conference that I had a series of emails and calls with the Moz team and board, making some tough (and ultimately unwise) decisions about what to do after that latest delay to Moz Analytics. For almost a year prior, we’d thought that launch was only 30-60 days away. After some changes to the team in late April and some deep dives from Anthony (our CTO), we understood that there was no chance of a launch until late September or early October. The budget implications were nasty. The team morale ones were equally bad. I remember laying awake in the hotel room for hours, trying not to wake Geraldine. It’s the first time I can recall starting to call the cycle of doubts and fear in my head, The Loop.

Yet he continued to travel the country to beautiful locations and my sympathies continue.

Actually, despite spending almost 100 days on the road this year, I spent more days in the office this year than in the past several (2011 and 2012 were both well over 100 days on the road). I took the photo above by running into a meeting I wasn’t supposed to be in (on the topic of “Moz Local,” something we’re launching in 2014). In the foreground on the left is Dudley Carr, who now runs several of the engineering teams, including Moz Analytics. Dudley took over the project in late April, and was the bearer of bad news about the date pushing out to the Fall. To his credit, we launched that project right when he said we would, and his estimates and cadence have continued to be solid. I’ve grown to love Dudley’s deep, booming laugh, his creative ideas about how to work around missing data (like Google’s not provided), and the way he creates excellence around him.

Just 12 short days after this post Rand announced his stepping down as CEO. I am pretty sure you could see the writing on the wall and Rand, I assume, could as well. With just 8 months later that year Rand followed all of this up with an announcement (or excuse) that he was depressed the whole time. He mentioned on several occasions how he should have listened to others advice and yet he continued down the path he was on. Yes the great Rand Fishkin who singlehandedly grew SEOmoz into the mystical unicorn he willed it to be to grab millions of dollars from investor's and fool a flock of sheep spanning 400k plus visitors per week was depressed the whole time.
In the end I feel Rand is walking away playing the victim on all of this by chocking it up to depression. I fully anticipate all the sheep with a backlash of "You are lying" and "take that back Rand is a God" in my comments or perhaps I will get lucky and hear crickets since no one reads my blog anyways. I'm just a girl in SEO and no one listens to us anyways.
What really gets me about the way the company and Rand have handled themselves is that they have all forgotten SEOmoz's co-founder Gillian Muessig. Rand's Mom was the woman behind the man that believed in him and grew the company to success before he took over and led it to it's demise. He has since handed it over to Sarah Bird another woman in the SEO industry who should be considered a God to have solved all of Moz's problems in building back that trust that Rand throttled.
I call Rand a narcissist because not only has he shucked his responsibility to depression, but he has been known to ignore people that challenge him. I know many in this industry and that work for him that have questioned him and pushed back on him only to find that he no longer gives them the time of day. Rand has mentioned therapy and his new found light on his depression yet he is doing nothing to repair the damage he has done and apologize yet speak with those who he has hurt during this process.
There are a lot of successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs that struggle with depression. It has been happily brought to light by Inc Magazine in their September 2013 issue for which the received an award for in the Magazine Personal Service category in the 2014 Annual Awards Contest of the Deadline Club, the New York City chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists in September 26, 2014 just weeks after Rand's post. Since this article was published a wave of shares on social media and many articles and light on the subject of depression in entrepreneur's has followed.
It is sad to say the least when an entrepreneur falls into a depression. The article itself highlights it the best.

Successful entrepreneurs achieve hero status in our culture. We idolize the Mark Zuckerbergs and the Elon Musks. And we celebrate the blazingly fast growth of the Inc. 500 companies. But many of those entrepreneurs, like Smith, harbor secret demons: Before they made it big, they struggled through moments of near-debilitating anxiety and despair--times when it seemed everything might crumble.

In addition Brad Feld that exact man that provided Rand with the massive round of funding that allowed his company to grow so quickly and make decisions that were frivolous at best.

Brad Feld, a managing director of the Foundry Group, started blogging in October about his latest episode of depression. The problem wasn't new--the prominent venture capitalist had struggled with mood disorders throughout his adult life--and he didn't expect much of a response. But then came the emails. Hundreds of them. Many were from entrepreneurs who had also wrestled with anxiety and despair.

Could there be a link between the two? Did Rand and Brad go through their depression together? Was Moz the cause of both their depressions?
Whether the two are linked or completely unrelated is between Rand and Brad. But in the end entrepreneurship is difficult at best and not the get rich quick successful companies that all those sheep think they are. While CEOs blogs are there to talk to their followers and provide insight into what they are thinking and who they, remember that we are all marketers just marketing ourselves to the world. We are always going to shine the positive on ourselves no matter how ugly we truly are.
So next time you worship another Rand Fishkin no matter what industry you are in I leave you with this thought: Don't always believe everything you read on the internet.