https://youtu.be/D6IKmQRD84k
Charles Frydenborg is the CEO of MarketMuse, an AI-driven platform that helps transform how content creators research, plan, and craft their content. We talk about how to keep up with Google’s ever-changing search algorithm, the key elements of an effective content marketing strategy, and why written content is here to stay.
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Build Topical Authority with Charles Frydenborg
Our guest is Charles Frydenborg, the CEO of MarketMuse. MarketMuse's AI-driven platform helps publishers, e-commerce managers, and creators write more effectively and persuasively about their topics of choice. Welcome to the show, Charles.
Thanks, Steve. I appreciate the opportunity.
It's great to have you here. So Charles, tell me a little bit about your story. How do you become the CEO of MarketMuse and what's been your journey to that point in your life?
Sure, thank you for the question. So, I mean, I think there's a short-term answer and a longer-term one. The short-term one was that after spending two years at MarketMuse, leading the revenue part of the organization, given where we were and the challenges that we faced, the leadership team and the board asked me to move into this role, which was humbling and very gratifying, as you might imagine, at the same time.
When I look back though, at the longer term path, I think the most important part of that journey, as I look back, is my ability to go through very honest introspection. I think it's very hard for all people to look in the mirror and see what's really there, as opposed to what they want to see. I'll be the first one to admit that I grew up a little bit later than a lot of other people, and it took me a little bit longer to figure things out.
But every step along the way, whether it was when I started my sales career at Gartner, when I became a sales leader for the first time, as my responsibilities continued to expand throughout my career, I feel like I was always able to look at me and understand that I was growing, that I was developing strengths, but that there were a lot of things that I needed to work on. I had a lot of opportunities for growth and I kept focusing on that and focusing on that and became a better person, a better husband, a better employee, a better leader, and it's pretty wild how things turned out.
Tell me a little bit about your journey in developing and growing market views. And we said there's going to be a reason why you were appointed the CEO. And specifically, I'd like to learn a little bit about any frameworks or I could imagine blueprints that you picked up along the way and you applied in your business.
I think what led me to be asked to move into this role and the EOS framework are tied very closely together. MarketMuse is blessed with two incredible co-founders, Aki Balog and Jeff Coyle, who created the company and brought us through our early stages. And we were growing at a really nice rate. But MarketMuse, like a lot of other companies, second week of March of 2020, the world changed and we were confronted as a VC funded company with a very difficult situation where our expense run rate was high and our growth targets went from something we felt very confident about to something that became entirely unattainable in the space of three or four months.
And as we look to figure out how to overcome those challenges, the sentiment was that we needed to instill more discipline into the business, more structure, more focus around, around really what we needed to do if we were going to come out of the economic impact of the pandemic as a stronger company. And, you know, I'm, I'm not going to misrepresent it. As you know, installing a business framework is not a one-day or one-week thing. It is a long process, and it requires all facets of the organization. But the leadership team, the company, has embraced it, and I feel we've made some great progress here in the last year.
Installing a business framework is not a one-day or o...