Interview with Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

— Hello, Sarah.

— Hello.

— First of all, I'm very appreciate you, uh, welcome our interview request.

— Yes, I'm happy to do it.

— Yeah, you have so interesting background, and you also have been in Turkey before, actually.

— Yeah.

— And can you please talk about your story, your background, and your story of joining to the malls as an eight number eight employee, right?

— Yes.

— Okay.

— Yeah, happy to do that. So, um, yeah, it is an honor to be interviewed by you. I have a real fondness in my heart for Turkey, and the Turkish people, I think, are so kind and so welcoming. I did a study abroad in Istanbul and, um, was very impressed with how, um, how generous the Turkish people are and how much they like to sing when they get together.

— Yeah.

— And they have a lot of fun and, um, yeah.

— It looks like you get lots of experience in Turkish culture.

— Yes, I, I sure did. And their love of just their love of music and eating and good food and, um, to be surrounded by so much history and art, uh, was really, really something. So I, I have a lot of very fond memories.

— Yeah, actually, if you love to read or explore about history.

— Yeah.

— It's one of the best places to be.

— Exactly. And I one of the classes I took was an art history class, a history art of the.

— Actually for Turkish culture and Turkish history?

— Um, I, I did study, um, the history of the Turkish language.

— Mm-hmm.

— And I studied, um, art history that didn't have a Turkish focus of just Turkish art, but, um, because so much of the world's great civilizations were either centered in or around Turkish history, I, I really felt like you could see a lot of the influence.

— Why did you prefer Turkey and the exchange program? I think you have been in Kochi University.

— Yes, I was in Kochi University. Um, well, to be honest, um, I didn't have proficiency in a foreign language to be able to study abroad in a native language. So my, I spoke a little French, but my French wasn't good enough to study French.

— Oh, you need to have some, uh.

— Yeah, generally, yes, right, to go to university in Germany.

— I've heard about the English in I've heard about the Semi-Italian.

— Yes. And so, yeah, so, so what I valued about Kochi University is that they, they taught in English. And so it was a way for me to have, um, a really different cultural experience and still do study abroad and, uh, even with my unfortunately limited language skills. So that was one of the reasons I ended up in Turkey. I thought, "This is gonna be a really unique cultural experience, um, but I can continue moving my education forward and, and succeed there." So, and it was great. It exceeded my expectations, actually.

And it was an interesting time to be there because they, the terrible earthquake had just happened.

— Oh, really?

— Yeah. And people, um.

— And then you were in Turkey, and.

— So the earthquake happened, I felt like, end of July, beginning of August, and it must have been.

— Yeah, yeah, it's.

— 2000.

— Something like this.

— 1999.

— Okay. You have been in Turkey in 1999?

— Yes.

— Okay.

— And it was changing the New Year to year 2000.

— Oh.

— So I celebrated New Year's, uh, New Year's Eve.

— You have been on the August, right?

— Yeah.

— Oh, wow.

— I came, I came at the very end of August, only weeks after that terrible earthquake.

— Wow.

— And it was, it was a fascinating time for the people of Turkey and the amount of healing they were going through and just the fear. And there were some aftershocks, actually, in the city at that time. And, um, it was, it was heartbreaking and fascinating to see.

— Yeah.

— And then also during the Y2K flip.

— That is 1999 or something like that.

— Yeah. Yeah.

— Actually, I think, like, it's just like 2007 or '08 or something like this.

— Yeah. No, no. I, that's when I joined MOD, was 2007.

— Yeah.

— And this would have been, um, I 'cause I remember another, you know, there was a lot of fear around Y2K at the time, and that was, was the sort of global banking and travel all gonna melt down when the computers flipped from '99 to 2000.

— Yeah.

— And I remember, in particular, family members feeling very nervous for me that I might get stuck in Turkey.

— Yeah.

— When this, you know, global meltdown happened.

— Yeah.

— Um, and obviously, then it that ended up being a non-event. And it was, I thought, a real privilege to be in such a, um, historical capital of the world at that kind of momentous state change and being in Taksim Square at that time.

— Yeah.

— It's just a really wonderful experience. And, um, yeah, I have a lot of fondness.

— And you have been the best time of the Turkey, actually, and before 2000, and it's not that much crowded and.

— Yeah.

— If you're able to come to Istanbul at any time, and it's, it's right now, it's crazy, crazy and so, so crowded. So.

— Yeah.

— Yeah, it's, it was, uh.

— It was a special time. I do wanna go back. I do wanna go back and sort of revisit places and see how they've changed. And I also, um, you know, I loved I was spent time in, um, Izmir, and I and just lots of little coastal cities.

— Oh, it's nice.

— Isn't it really? Okay. It's really beautiful.

— Uh-huh.

— Um, and beautiful leather goods. I remember thinking, like, "I can't get the leather there."

— I can't get the jeans leather. I hope I can get them to Izmir for my wedding. Yeah.

— Oh, congratulations to you.

— Thank you.

— And I bet it's very hot there right now. I bet it's as hot as the diggins there right now.

— Yeah.

— Um, yeah, and I still think Ephesus I've, I've got to do a lot of travel in the world, and I think Ephesus stands out for me as, um, one of my most magical, um, places I've ever visited for historical ruins. It's just nothing quite like it. And, uh, yeah, you're what a what a wonderful gift Turkey has in all of these famous sites, so.

— Yeah.

— Yeah.

— Well, thanks a lot.

— Very special, very special time.

— Yeah. I, I think that you start your professional career after then returning, uh, from Turkey to US after.

— Yeah.

— You finishing your M.

— Exactly. And so then I, I finished my undergraduate degree in literature and philosophy, and then I went to law school. And, um, while at law school, I met, uh, through a friend of mine at law school, I met Rand, actually.

— Oh.

— So he was studying law, but his good friend was. And so we got to know each other and became friends. I graduated law school and then practiced law for a few years. And, um, I was ready for a career change at about the same time that then SEOMAS was, um, taking its first round of funding, so Series A capital investment. And, um.

— Before you joined, right?

— Yeah. So it was, it was right about the same. So when I had given notice at my law firm that I was going to leave, um, at the same time that Rand and Jillian were talking to various investors.

— Mm-hmm.

— And so we knew, and they knew that it was sort of on their horizon and decided, you know, "Yeah, okay. Let's, you know, let's try to make this work." And, um, I believe the Series A closed, and my first start date was, like, the day after, right?

— Oh, really?

— Yeah. So, um.

— It was a wonderful time of growth.

— Yeah, it was a wonderful time to be there to be at MODS. And it was already then a very special place. And, you know, Rand and Jillian, I think, share a big passion around generosity and empathy for others. And you could really feel that in the amount of care and attention and love they had for both the broad SEO community and for the people who worked with them. And so it was I felt really lucky to be there. And it was a very big change for me from law.

— Yeah.

— A very big change.

— Very big change.

— Yeah. Yeah.

— What was your first position on the MODS? And I, I think it's not actually a law-related position.

— I, I well, it my first job title was general counsel, which is very unusual. So it's basically being an in-house attorney for the company. And, um, you know, I knew so little about running a, a business or a startup, and neither did Rand. And so, you know, we didn't even realize how silly of an idea that was to have your own attorney on staff for a small company like that.

— Yeah.

— Um.

— And it's not a legally problematic business.

— Exactly.

— It's not a software business.

— It's not highly regulated.

— Yeah.

— It was a very unusual choice.

— It's not like Uber, Lyft, and any other companies who are dealing with laws and etc.

— Precisely. And so that should give you insight into how little we knew about running a business or, um, a technology startup. And I really have a lot of gratitude for Rand and Jillian taking that, that and placing it on me. And, um, I, I can't think of anyone else who would have hired me and allowed me to have the experiences that I was able to have at MODS. I got to, um, learn this really exciting new area of marketing. I ran the marketing team for a while. I, I got to learn all about finance, and I had, I had no background in finance before.

— Mm-hmm.

— Um, I got to learn about, um, product development. I mean, I had no background in product development and got to a lot of learning by doing and learning through mentorship with other people.

— Uh-huh.

— So just along this career at MODS, I feel like I've had, um, the experience of a lifetime that has allowed me to see so many different kinds of things. And we've been through a lot, uh, as a company, and I and, um, every single one of those experiences has taught me something. So I feel just a ton of ton of gratitude.

— And after then being general counsel, what's your next position?

— Yeah.

— I think that you did lots of jobs.

— Yeah.

— What makes you a great CEO? Because, you know, all parts of the company and.

— Yeah. I, I mean, I, I, I aspire to be a great CEO. It's a constant learning. But, um.

— Uh-huh.

— So it was general counsel, and then I became the chief operating officer, uh, about six months in. And that was a really great title for me because it is kind of a meaningless title. It can mean a lot of different things.

— Yeah.

— Depending on the company.

— Operation is so.

— What is operations, right?

— MODS.

— Yeah. And so it allowed me to be able to use influence to really learn a lot and hopefully move the business forward, always being the goal to move the business forward. Um, and then after so that was my longest tenure title. And then I was, um, president for, uh, a brief period of time before taking on the CEO role.

— Yeah.

— About three and a half years ago. So it's been, like I said, a pretty incredible.

— Yeah. What's changed in your life? And it's a big change for you and.

— Mm-hmm.

— Being president or the CEO and.

— Mm-hmm.

— What kind of new responsibilities are on your arm? And.

— Yeah.

— Maybe you can talk about this, this kind of stuff.

— Yeah.

— And after that, I will ask the most future vision.

— Yeah, absolutely. Um, well, I think one of the things I admired about Rand is that he is very inclusive in his leadership, and he likes good ideas to come from anywhere. And so I was fortunate in my period as chief operating officer and as president to be able to influence the strategy as well. And it's a big difference between influencing and owning the strategy. And one of the things I, I took from Rand was how he, he really did like to listen to a lot of different people to get ideas of what to do at MODS. And I've tried to do the same thing.

Although in the end, it's the difference is I have to make the call. And there are certainly more than one way to have success, and there are many different paths open, uh, to MODS. And so I've, I've, uh, had some successes, and I've had some failures, right? I've, I've in the end, I've made some good decisions, and I've made some bad decisions. Um.

— And the good decisions always come from the bad decisions and the bad experiences. So.

— Yes.

— You learn from them.

— I'm learning as I, as I learn as I go. And we, the company, are learning, right? The people around me learn along with me. And, um.

— Sure.

— And so it's so that's been, um, that's been a very interesting shift from being the influencer to being the person who, in the end, um, still taking influence from others, but in the end, you have to be accountable, right, to that, um, for better or for worse. Um, other there are other things that are sort of smaller in nature that have been impactful for me. Um, for example, um, Rand was a very public CEO, just like he is a very public individual contributor. He is.

— Actually, he's a company's face.

— Yes, very much.

— He's very much.

— And nobody knowing.

— Yeah.

— Not knowing Rand Fishkin.

— Exactly. Exactly. And so that's always been part of, um, one of the part of his influence in ways he's contributed at MODS. And, um, for me, that does not come as naturally, and it isn't, um, it isn't something I have invested in particularly, in part because Rand has always been there, and he's so good at it. He's such a natural.

— Uh-huh.

— It's not like you can still learn it, but it's Rand's the, the approach in here is.

— Yeah.

— Like, more natural and comes.

— Yes.

— Coming from heart.

— Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And he has, he has both the passion and the practice of it now.

— Yeah.

— After this many years. Um, and so being in the CEO role, it is a more public role than president or chief operating officer. And so while I am still nowhere near, uh, Rand's level of involv and external involvement.

— Yeah.

— I have certainly increased the amount of external, um, public-facing, um, roles, uh, role. And.

— Well, I think that it's totally different two different things. And.

— Yeah.

— It's being CEO. Okay. You can still be the company face, but the contribution to the company and the community actually has a strong, um, business and the responsibility of the CEO role. It's not like a great balance. And, you know.

— Yeah.

— Sometimes I'm doing the best thing, and you are doing right now is the.

— Yeah.

— Uh, better way. And actually.

— Yeah.

— On your case, I think that's why you are the CEO of MODS right now.

— Yeah. I, I definitely think there's more than one way to be a CEO, and there are different kinds of CEOs, and they, and they each bring their own strength. And, um, I will, I will never be Rand. I couldn't even attempt to be Rand, right? And 'cause he's one of a kind, and his and his gifts are, are so strong and are different than my gifts. And so, um, certainly, I have been, uh, more operational focused and will continue to be operational focused, although increasing my amount of external visibility, um, even with through things like this, right? I, I have never been comfortable on camera, but I'm learning to do so.

— No.

— In time, right?

— Absolutely.

— I'm learning to do so. And, and it's part of the job and, um, and to do more of that kind of thing. So.

— Yeah.

— Um, yeah. So there have been a lot of interesting changes at MODS, right? Um, and, uh, we have been very much focusing on, I would say, core SEO in the last year.

— Yeah.

— And improving the core experience of the product.

— I think it's a great decision.

— Thank you. Yeah. And, and we, you know, we want to provide a really high-quality experience. You know, none of us get out of bed in the morning thinking, "Gosh, how can we make bad software?" You know, we all wanna make something amazing that really helps people do their work and that they enjoy using.

— Mm-hmm.

— So, uh, most of the team has been focused on improving the core customer experience.

— Mm-hmm.

— And then we've also been working on some innovation on the local SEO side and really growing that part of the business as well and have enjoyed some success with that. Um, we have a big slate of projects that will continue to focus on core SEO, and probably those will wrap up around Q1 this coming year in 2018.

— Wow.

— Yeah. And, and some of those are through technology, and some of them are in, I would say, through customer experience and flow and how the product is organized and how you use it 'cause we think we have a lot of opportunity to improve that.

— Mm-hmm.

— Um, the product today does a lot that, uh, people don't even know about 'cause it's hard to find and hard to use. And so we're hoping to solve some of those discoverability pro-problems as well. Um, and then after that, you know, I have I have a lot of passion on, um, two, two different things. One is continuing to track how the interface of search is evolving. Um.

— Mm-hmm.

— There's, of course, voice-initiated, and there's voice-response. There are these sort of cards. There's the mobile experience depending on the size of your screen.

— Yeah.

— Uh, from my view, search there's never been a ti a better time to be in search. I think it's becoming more ambient. It's so it's everywhere around you now. And with that comes incredible opportunity because people are searching more than ever. Um, it also comes incredible challenges 'cause the, the, the interface of that search looks different, right? It's different if I'm talking to my Google Home than if I'm on my desktop or what have you.

— Yeah. Yeah.

— So I that's fascinating, and we're gonna continue to track how those different kinds of search results change in format depending on where you're doing the search. Um, and that is a lot of work. I mean, it's exciting work. There's a lot of research, uh, to do in that area. And how do we understand those things? How do we track them? And then how do we help people optimize for these different contexts? Um, so continue.

— And also it's the MODS mission, I think.

— Yeah.

— It's not only software perspective, but also.

— Yeah.

— In a community. And.

— Yes.

— This is what makes MODS is MODS. And.

— Yeah.

— Actually, and the focusing on the SEO again.

— Mm-hmm.

— In the product perspective.

— Yeah.

— I really want to, uh, learn about that. You know, SEO has different fields, and in software market especially, and some tools are doing fast scrollers.

— Yeah.

— Some tools are doing the best keyword tricking.

— Yeah.

— And all of them are, uh, focusing on the different fields. And what, uh, your future approach, uh, about SEO, uh, will touch these endpoints, or will you continue to be a suite for marketers and all-in-one solution maybe?

— I don't see MODS uh, one of the lessons I have learned is that it takes a lot more resources than we have at our disposal to do that breadth, right? We made an attempt to go into some content marketing and some social media marketing. And really, we overextended ourselves because there are whole you know, there are companies that have 50, 60 million dollars of investment just focusing on those one problems.

— Yeah.

— And so that was a hard lesson to learn, a painful lesson to learn. Um, and so we've refactored and instead have realized that we can still contribute to helping social media marketers or content marketers succeed, but we do it through teaching them about SEO. And we're gonna stick to our core, which is SEO.

— Yeah.

— And our core belief is that you will be a better digital marketer, marketer in general, if you understand the basics of SEO. So MODS doesn't have to do we don't have to be the end-all, be-all for everyone. I don't need to have the tool that does all of your marketing activities, but I do wanna be the tool you go to when you wanna understand your SEO and how it's performing and how, how search is changing. So I don't expect you shouldn't expect MODS to, um, go beyond the purview of SEO. Uh, SEO is big enough and complicated enough that I think we can spend all of our time and effort there and still have, you know, lots and lots of work to do for a long time.

Um, and, and I like I said, I think that's particularly true in this dynamic age where search is changing.

— It's also hard for you, I think, as a CEO.

— Yeah.

— You have many responsibilities, but also you need to improve yourself in different fields.

— Yes.

— But also actually, there's a search industry which is growing so fast.

— Yeah.

— You also yeah. You are not in product team, but you also need to understand what's going on here.

— Yes.

— And you also need to manage the team. And both of them are really, uh, different disciplines.

— Mm-hmm.

— But you also need to mix them together.

— That's right. I mean, my, uh I, I am just one human. And, um, you know, MODS is built of many people. MODS is bigger than any one person. And one of the one of the interesting things I have learned, um, is that that change of having different people come into the company, they come, they contribute something amazing, and then they move on to the next thing in their career is it's always emotionally challenging 'cause I feel like I love everyone, and I there's so many great people, and it's hard when they leave.

But the very fact of them leaving brings opportunity for new people to come in, which brings us a whole new awesome ideas and set of disciplines and contributions we never could have imagined. And so this constant churning of people into the company that contribute something and then move on is how MODS stays creative and relevant and innovative. And so I think of my role as, like you said, I can't be a master of any one particular discipline.

— Yeah, actually.

— I can't. And I don't think it would be the highest service of the company.

— Yeah.

— All I can try to do is create a place, an environment where great people want to come and contribute their special skill and hopefully an environment where then we can actually incorporate it and use it and apply it, right? And, and that people can feel like they've learned and done great work here at MODS and then launch them to whatever their next dream is, right? So like, that's my goal 'cause I, um, being an expert in it in any one thing is.

— I think it's.

— Unachievable, frankly.

— Yeah.

— For me, unachievable. Maybe others, but not for me.

— Yeah. I think it's right because I, I'm, um I've, I've read your one of interviews about the, the interview questions you need to ask.

— Yeah.

— About recruiting. Maybe you remember. What I love about the MODS and you're asking to the people, "Are you lucky in the life?"

— Yes. Yes.

— It's really crucial question. And.

— Yes.

— It also aligns the people's approach and positivity and their.

— Yeah.

— Uh, point of view to the life and etc., all kind of stuff. And, and.

— Yeah.

— Actually, for the recruitment as a CEO, one of your key responsibilities. And it's great to see that you are also doing good stuff in here, actually, not only in SEO.

— Yeah. I hope so, right? I hope so. I, I do think, um, that's one of the things that makes MODS special is that it's a company that from the beginning, again, from Rand and Gillian, as founders, always knew that it was part of a community, that it wasn't just they were never just here just to build a great business.

— Mm-hmm.

— And, and that fits with my orientation in the world as well. Like, I think of my job as a human being is to try to make the world a little better.

— Yeah.

— Um, and I don't think I could stay at a company's only job was to make the company succeed.

— Yeah.

— I consider that maybe my primary job because that's my fiduciary duty, my sort of legal duty. Like.

— Yeah.

— Okay. I've gotta make this company succeed because.

— Yeah.

— If the company doesn't succeed, I can't hire great people. I don't have the influence, and I can't do all those second and third-order things I wanna accomplish. And those things, you know, they start with, "How do we make the whole industry better? How do we make professionals better? How do we make this industry understood? How do we grow people to be great professionals in it and who are good to each other? How do we try to create an, an experience and a culture and as an industry that we all wanna be a part of and can be proud of?"

And then once you get past the sort of SEO industry, um, and industry and community, you get to like, "How do we engage as humans on the planet civically, right? How do we create, um, an on an entrepreneur or startup ecosystem that we are all proud of and wanna be a part of and that's fair and just?" And, you know, it all starts with that in that centerpiece. If I can make that if I can make the business succeed, it will give me more and more of a platform to improve those other things that are really important to me and that I think are other ways that when I die and they're looking back on my life, I want them to be able to say, you know, "She cared about a lot of things, and she was multidimensional, and she tried to put her money where her mouth is and make the world a better place."

And, and not just say, "She made a lot of money for a company." That would be a disappointment for me if that's the only legacy I get.

— Yes, actually.

— Left behind.

— Because of your human being and.

— Yeah.

— We're not just the CEOs are not the robots who are just increasing the revenues and etc.

— Yeah.

— And also creating a culture that makes people happy. And I'm also managing an agency, and I cannot imagine such a world like that all the 30 people in the agency are unhappy people.

— Yeah.

— But we are raising crazy amount of money, and then, uh, revenue is so high. But what kind of CEO or any person can be happy in such a un such a unhappy situation in the office?

— Yeah.

— And so it's kind of a multidisciplinary responsibility.

— It is.

— Yeah. But I'm I can easily say that.

— Yeah.

— You are seeing the correct points according to my point of view.

— Yeah.

— And that.

— Working on it.

— Yeah.

— You know, even the point you just raised around happiness, I think, has been one that I've had an ongoing conversation in my mind about that I've been learning and as I experience new things and as we have successes at MODS and when we have failures at MODS, and we've had all these different kinds of experiences in between, even, even understand the notion of happiness and, and adding subtlety to that has been part of my growth because I have discovered that.

— Yeah.

— Sometimes the most important work I do, the best, most meaningful work I do also happens when I'm the least happy, right? It can be the challenging work. It sometimes the right, good thing to do is the hardest, most painful thing to do. And, um, I've learned that it's important for me to create an environment where we're all aiming for long-term happiness but not short-term happiness.

— Yeah.

— And that true excellence only really comes from a little bit of dis-discomfort, right? I'm either pushing myself technically to do something I've never done before, or I'm pushing myself to make a courageous sort of morally right decision that's hard to make or an unpopular decision that is still has just gotta be made. And I think that, that sort of notion of happiness earlier in, in my career, I would have said, "I want everyone happy all the time. I want everyone to be smiley. I don't want everyone to have a bad day at MODS." And as I've gotten older and hopefully a little more wiser, I have reflected back on that and said, "Sometimes the best work is a little bit unhappy for a while."

— Yes.

— And it's only upon reflection. It's like if you run a marathon, right? While you're running it, you might feel like crap. And it might be the hardest thing. You think, "Why have I ever signed up for this? This is awful. Oh my God, I have so many more miles left to go on this marathon. I wanna die." But when you get across the finish line and you reflect back and you feel, like, pride, you feel accomplishment, you feel satisfaction.

— Yeah.

— In a meaningful way, like, that is a kind the kind of happiness that I wanna share.

— I'm sure that the even the best marathon runners are not always running with a full smiling face.

— Right. Right.

— And it's pain. And the pain.

— Right.

— Comes with the growth. And.

— Mm-hmm.

— Yeah.

— And the best athletes, right, when they when it gets to the point where running a marathon is easy and they can run it with a smile, what do they do? They start doing the ultra marathons, right? They up the ante. They up the ante on themselves because it's about, like, understanding that with discomfort comes growth and that that's really where the sense of longer, longer happiness or achievement really comes from. So it's, it's been just an interesting conversation that I still battle with today on what is the right amount of discomfort. You don't want people to be distressed, but you also don't want people to think like, "Oh, to be to fit in here, you have to be smiling all the time."

It's okay to have a bad day or.

— Yeah.

— We're all gonna have bad days.

— Yeah. This wisdom teaches me a lot. I, I was still thinking, like, your first days, and everybody needs to be happy.

— Yeah.

— And everybody's smiling. And even something in general, and you cannot control the people's own lives.

— Yeah.

— And the family problems.

— Yeah.

— And always thinking to the people face and seeing them unhappy. And as a CEO, because you are responsible with everything, and people always think that, "Is there something wrong on this department?"

— Yes.

— "This manager and this middle manager, etc."

— Yes.

— And then you are thinking about it. But sometimes, yeah, creating focusing on the long-term happiness and then.

— Yeah.

— Uh, watching the flow is the better way.

— Yeah.

— Yeah. I think it's a great ending.

— Thank you.

— So it's, it's really a great lesson for me as a.

— Yeah.

— Uh, young CEO, uh.

— Yeah.

— Getting experiences from such an experienced person like you. And.

— Thank you.

— Thanks a lot for accepting our interview request.

— Yes. Thank you for having me.

— Have a nice day. Thanks so much.

— Have a nice day.

— Good shoes.

— Good shoes.

— Bye-bye.

— Bye-bye.