The Skyscraper Technique: How To 10x Your SEO Traffic with Brian Dean’s Recipe for Success

There's no SEO courses. There were some, but they were few and far between. And there weren't many B2B-focused courses. Most of the courses were like, make money online, start, you know, 100 sites and rank them all for these exact match domains. There really wasn't like a legitimate course.

All right, everyone. Today we've got Brian Dean on the pod for the first time. And well, depending on which podcast you listen to, it could be the second time. But Brian Dean, he's also known as Backlinko. Neil and I have talked about him quite a bit. And he's also the co-founder of Exploding Topics. Backlinko, he just recently went through an acquisition, so we can talk about that a little bit as well. But Brian's super skilled, not just in the world of SEO, but just marketing in general. And just a very nice guy. Myself and another friend, we had dinner, I think last week or the week before, but the meal was— it was an incredible gut buster. And, you know, Brian was fortunate enough to— well, we're fortunate enough to get treated by Brian as well. So thanks for that, Brian, and welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Eric. I think I'm still recovering from that dinner. That was legit.

It's crazy. It's— yeah. Anyway, if you're ever in Miami, anybody, go to Cipriani. It's good Italian food. So anyway, let's kick it off a little bit, Brian. I gave a quick overview on you, but what's kind of the— what's the quick overview in your own words on who you are and what you do now?

So I'm best known for starting a blog called Backlinko that sort of evolved into this, like, a business, an SEO training company where we taught thousands of people how to level up their SEO. So basically the blog is for people that are just getting started in SEO or YouTube marketing or whatever part of marketing. And then we had different courses that taught people that wanted to get more advanced or just more in-depth in the material. And that's the business that I recently sold to Semrush. And then about 2 years ago, I started another site called Exploding Topics. Also sort of a side project, sort of a lark. And that's evolved into a real business too. So I spend most of my time on Exploding Topics and I'm still involved with Backlinko on a part-time basis.

Amazing. And so let's talk about Backlinko a little bit. I mean, how long were you doing it for? And You know, I think at a high point, and feel free to, you know, feel free to, um, I'll just talk about whatever traffic numbers you're happy to reveal. But, um, because the thing is, when you started Backlinko, it was an SEO blog, so it was already a very competitive space, right? It's a very saturated space. And, you know, typically people don't want to go into a red ocean, right, where it's very competitive. So, um, I think you started it in like, what, 2012, something like that? Yes?

Yeah, 2013.

2013. Okay, so that, that's Still not that long ago, right? And so you decided to start in 2013. Why go into such a competitive space? And what do you think really set you apart? And then how big did you get the blog?

I definitely didn't think about it that strategically. Like now, if I was going to launch something new, like when I launched Exploding Topics, I was all about the red ocean strategy, blue ocean, you know, stay away from competitive markets, go where they ain't. Different is better than better. I know all that stuff now. Back then I didn't know anything. I just knew I was learning about SEO, had my affiliate site that was doing really well, and I looked out there and I just didn't see any great content about white hat SEO. I didn't think about the space, how saturated it was, how competitive it was, even though, like you said, it was. But I was naive, which was actually to my advantage. I had no idea what I was getting into. I didn't know I was going to compete against Moz and HubSpot and these publicly traded companies and all this stuff. I was just like, I bet there's some people that would want to read this stuff. And before I knew it, it was like a real thing, a real blog. But it definitely wasn't planned. Like you said, if I could start again today with something, I wouldn't enter a competitive space like that. But my advantage, I think, was that I, I was willing to share my wins and losses and no one else was. So most SEO blogs were either agencies kind of giving fluff because they didn't want to give away their techniques and strategies that were working for them. Or it was people that were just hyping themselves up about how great they were. There wasn't a lot of in-between of honest people who were just like, here's this thing I tried and it worked. Like, even I didn't think it was going to work. Oh my God. So there were people like that, but there weren't that many. So in that sense, it wasn't a huge blue ocean. Like, the only other person I could think of that shared their personal wins and losses in the space consistently was Neil when I was starting. Like, he was big into Quicksprout at the time, and he was someone who would write posts about himself and how He was trying things and it was working. And then he would, you know, see, try something, it would work. And then he would write about it like a rapper. He'd like, you know, go through something and then he would make an album about it. That's what Neil was doing. And I was like, damn, that's so cool. Like, I want to do that. So I kind of went with that approach. And I think that's what helped me. And also the amount of effort I put in each piece of content, I think made a difference and helped me stand out a little bit.

Yeah. And so those that are kind of newer to marketing, they might not be familiar with your skyscraper technique. So I want to, you know, rejigger some of the The classics that you've had, right? So can you talk about that? Because that's, I think that's what really set you apart because everyone else was kind of half-assing it while you were full-assing it.

Yeah, the Skyscraper Technique was a strategy that I developed where basically instead of creating content from scratch, so you have a topic in mind, you're like, should I create a guide? Should I create a list? Should I do a case study? Takes a lot of the guesswork out because you just look at what's already working and then you improve on that. Back then when I started to like talk about the technique in 2013, it was a lot easier because the content bar was a lot lower. It was easy to level up over somebody else. It's still very possible, but it was a lot easier. And then what you do is you reach out to the people that shared or linked to the first post and just let them know you have this other one in a non-pushy way. And a lot of times they'll be receptive to your outreach because they already shared that thing, they already liked that thing. And you have something that's better, more up-to-date, has more visuals, it's just improved in some way. And the strategy itself with that name ended up taking off. Like I just gave it, slapped a name on it, thinking it sounded pretty cool. And next thing I knew, it was being covered in like media sites, industry blogs, and people still talk about it today. Every time I go on a podcast, someone asks me about the Skyscraper Technique. I didn't think it would have legs like it did.

Yeah, that's the key thing because most people are— most people might look at you as the SEO guy, but I think of Brian more as like the copywriter, the content creator. And so there are a couple of things you do. I would recommend people just go take a look at Backlinko. It's still there. But the Skyscraper Technique, I think— I don't know if it's you that talked about 10x content, But you have branded phrases that it's easy for people to repeat. And we've repeated that phrase on this podcast quite a few times, right? So when it's easy, it's catchy. People are just like, oh, Skyscraper Technique, Ryan Dean. So yeah, I guess, are there any classics you would recommend people go check out on the Backlinko blog? Just because there's a lot.

Yeah, that's definitely one, the Skyscraper Technique case study. That case study is an important one because once you understand that, that helps you with your framework for creating content in general. There's another one that I really like that I would recommend reading, which is Skyscraper Technique 2.0, which is basically you take content and it's designed to match search intent better than anyone else. So instead of just creating something that's objectively better, it's specifically for search intent. And I go through my journey of like publishing stuff that got a bunch of buzz in the beginning, then wouldn't rank, and how I was able to turn it around using this, this strategy. I also have a copywriting guide, The Definitive Guide to Copywriting. I would highly recommend reading that one. It's like kind of my brain dump of all my best copywriting stuff in one guide.

Amazing. So can you talk about the business model with Backlinko? And then we'll work towards moving on to exploding topics. But the business model for Backlinko, first you just started writing, you started to build traffic. How much traffic did you get it up to monthly?

I think the height was like 650,000 uniques a month.

Okay, so that's a lot. 600,000 uniques is a ton. And so from there you're like, okay, you know, I'm going to make this a business now. So what was the business model? How did you make money exactly for Backlinko?

So luckily I landed on the business model that ended up working right away. I knew I didn't want to do consulting. I had an agency before and I knew I didn't want to do that again. So there wasn't a lot left in terms of options. I knew I didn't want to do software because I didn't know anything about coding or technology. I'm pretty like not tech savvy. So the natural thing was courses. And I looked around, I was like, there's no SEO courses. There were some, but there were few and far between. And there weren't many B2B-focused courses. Most of the courses were like, make money online, start, you know, 100 sites and rank them all for these exact match domains. There really wasn't like a legitimate course. It was like, hey, I work in-house SEO, or I run a small agency, or I have my own startup and I want to learn how to do SEO. There really wasn't like a legitimate in-depth course like that. So that's the first launch that I launched. A course that I launched was an SEO course called SEO That Works. That ended up being our flagship course for the whole time. Upgraded it obviously and relaunched it a few times. And then from there, created a course on YouTube marketing, another one on how to create courses, another one on digital PR. And that's That ended up being the business model, made 100% of the revenue at Backlinko from courses.

Wow, okay. And how much were these courses, by the way?

It varied a bit, but like, if you get the lowest tier on one of the lowest courses, it was like $1,000, and the highest tier on the highest course was like $6,000.

There you go. See, there's a skyscraper component to that one too.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's good. So here's the interesting thing too, like the acquisition to Semrush, SEMrush, whatever you want to call them, and they're a publicly traded company, they've always done really well. They're not even just an SEO tool anymore. becoming much more of a platform. Um, and so, you know, usually you don't see these types of companies deciding to buy like, um, like an education business, let's just call it that. And, um, you know, maybe you can speak to that a little bit because I think this is good for people to know. Cause I think there's a lot of course creators that listen to this podcast.

You're right. It's not very common. Like you're seeing more software companies buying media brands like HubSpot buying The Hustle and others. There are other examples like Morning Brew got sold. So they're buying audiences in a lot of cases, but I think why course creators are an attractive acquisition target for a software company, or just a big company in general, is for 2 reasons. First of all, to sell the course, you need to have an audience. There's, you know, if you have a successful course business, you have an audience, period. So that's the main reason that I think a company would want to buy you. The courses are nice, but a lot of times they already have a business model, so they're not really interested in your course revenue that much, especially how it compares to their massive budget. So, and then they don't want to get into the whole business of selling them, doing customer support, things of that nature. So I think in most cases, they're going to want to buy mostly the audience, but why they like the courses is because that's great material that they can use for, you know, a free course for a certain level of their service, or as a lead magnet, or just to put on their site in general, depending on the situation, how they want to use the course. So you have this library of assets that you're selling along with the audience, which is really valuable to another business. So if it's a business that's like, look, we're crushing it with our product, our education is, you know, needs— wants— we want to improve our education. That's why Semrush bought back Linqo because they were like, our software is great, people are buying it, our retention is great. We want to work on this education component. We could learn it in-house, We could hire a chief education officer and we could hire 10 people and we could have them make videos and maybe it won't work or maybe it will. Or we could just buy this guy's business, take all the courses, use them how we want, buy all this content, and then we get some in-house knowledge from someone who's done it. It's a no-brainer for that business. So that's why if you're a course creator, as long as you have that audience component, I think you're going to start seeing more acquisition offers come in.

Yeah, it's, at the end of the day, I think if you take matters into your own hands, if you want to be proactive about it, it's a strategic acquisition, right? And if the story makes sense and if it's a 1 1 3 scenario, like what I think this is, I mean, 600,000 uniques at the height is nothing to sneeze at. Plus, Semrush, I mean, plugging that into the courses that you have too, it just makes a lot of sense because of all the goodwill that you've built up and you recommend that, right? And plus you have strong domain authority too. That always helps. So let's talk a little bit about Exploding Topics. So, you know, how did you even start this in the first place? I think there's an interesting story there. And, you know, what's the mission there? Yeah.

So I started it like— the process was about 2 and a half years ago. I was like, man, there isn't any good service or tool focused on trends. You have Google Trends, which is fantastic for, you know, about a trend and you want to research it and know what state it's trending in and how much it's trending compared to other stuff. It's perfect for that. The problem is there was nothing to kind of show you a trend that you didn't know about already, to reveal a trend, to say, hey, have you heard of X? And they're like, no, I never heard of that. And here's some data behind it, here's why it's growing. So about 2 and a half years ago, I hired a developer to scrape Reddit and look for terms that were trending and bubble them up and create sort of a tool that we could use to find them and extract them and, I don't know, sell them somehow. It was sort of an early prototype and it didn't work. It had so much noise. The signal was, you know, 1 out of every 1,000 actually made any sense, and even those weren't that good. And then my developer at the time sent me this site that someone else had created that was 10 times better than anything I could have imagined. It was perfect. It was like, man, this is what I should have been trying to make in the first place, and it executed way better than I could have ever done it myself. So I reached out to him This guy's name is Josh, and I bought the site on our first call. Within like 20 minutes, we had a sale done, and it ended up being an acquihire where he's, he's on board now. Now he's my co-founder of Exploding Topics, and we rebranded it. It was called like Trend.co with 2 N's. It's really confusing. So we ended up just rebranding it to Exploding Topics, launched it on Product Hunt, and it's been great. It's been growing ever since, and it's, it's a really fun project to work on because you get exposed to these Weird trends that you would have no idea exist otherwise.

So what would be like a good use case, Brian, like for people that are trying to like figure out how to use this?

Yeah, the 2 main use— the number one use case is for investors. So people that are like VCs, especially early stage, sometimes Series B investors, they're just like, we want to know 2 things. We want to know what's trending in general. So when a startup comes in our door and they're like, hey, we have this thing, thing, they're like, oh, okay, that's a trend. As opposed to the startup is always going to push whatever they're doing as some big trend as part of some bigger trend. Like, no, no, I've seen this before. This is a legitimate trend. And also specific startups. So we actually spend a lot of time looking at specific startups that are growing and sharing those too. That way they can invest in them. The others are like content marketing people that want keywords that are trending that aren't competitive yet.

Wow, this is Freaking, I use this every now and then, but I need to be using this more. And we were kind of talking about how like you probably can segment out the pricing based on the topic. Um, but that's something we can nerd out on later. Um, cool. So, okay. This is smart, right? Like you, you were looking to build something. You're like, crap, I don't have a good solution here, but you found something in the meantime. And you basically, it was like an acquihire, right? Um, so without going into maybe too many details, like how did you pitch that? And I'm assuming you own majority now, right? So.

Yeah, I own 100%. So—

Wow, okay.

I can tell. Yeah, well, it was very early. Like, you have to understand, when I contacted him, it wasn't Exploding Topics. It was this little side project that the only traction it got, it was on Hacker News for like hours, which can be pretty significant, but it was— that was it. It was cool what he built, but it didn't have a lot of traction yet. Like, didn't have an email list, didn't have links, it didn't have consistent traffic. So what I was buying is not what you Can see now. It was, you know, much, much earlier in the process. I think it would have been successful no matter what because Josh is great and what he built was great, but it helps to buy it. So number one thing I would say, if you see something that you might want to be interested in buying, just reach out to the person. I didn't know this guy from Adam. He didn't even know Backlinko. I just emailed him and we got on the first call and just see, just kind of chat. But my email to him did talk about potentially having an acquisition. And actually, Semrush, when they reached out to me to buy back Linko, their email said the same thing. So I wouldn't beat around the bush. Like, if you want to acquire a thing, just say it in that email because they're going to be much more likely to reply. If they're even remotely interested, they're going to see dollar signs and say yes, as opposed to, hey, I really like what you're building, you want to talk about partnering up, or some vague stuff. You reply, you're probably going to get a low reply rate. So if you're interested in buying something, just reach out, say, hey, interested in talking about acquiring it. If you're interested, let's hop on a call pretty soon. And then I just chatted with him about how he started it, what's going on, any revenue, some basic numbers. And then with pre-revenue businesses, it's really hard to put a valuation on it. So I just sort of pulled a number out of thin air that I thought was fair and compensated him for his time in building it and took into account the fact that he'll be hired full-time to continue with it. So that's sort of a carrot for certain people. that want to continue working on their project and, you know, don't have any revenue.

Got it. So it sounds like you gave— you guys agreed on a price there, and then you also said, I'll give you a salary as well.

Yeah, exactly.

Got it. Okay, cool. Yeah. So Exploding Topics now, I mean, you know, what numbers can you speak to around the business right now? What are you comfortable sharing?

Anything we can talk. Right now we're about $500K ARR. And hopefully we'll hit a million by the end of the year, maybe a little bit more than that depending on how things go. So yeah, and the big driver in the early days was the, um, the tool itself because it's pretty cool, like you said, Eric, when you, when you check it out. So people do share it, people do link to it. But the big thing now is the blog. Like, I've been editor-in-chief of the blog because I don't trust it in anyone else's hands, and that's growing super fast. Like, we're, uh, we 10x'd The blog traffic over the last year, we're at like 100,000 visitors a month just to the blog, about 200,000 to the site. And I'm seeing that the stuff that I was doing for Backlinko works so much better outside of this insanely competitive SEO niche. I'm like, I should have done this sooner. So yeah, those are the big numbers. We have an email list that's about 70,000 newsletter subscribers. We send some of our interesting trends every Every week, and people tend to like that.

Wow. So if someone came to you right now, they're like, hey Brian, I'll give you 10x on your AR, I'll give you, uh, I'll give you $5 million, what would you say to them?

I'd probably say yeah.

Yeah? Okay, there you go.

10x is pretty hard to turn down, man.

There you go, everyone. Um, cool. Yeah, so amazing.

Call me.

Yeah, give Brian a break, give Brian a call. And by the way, the companies that you work with, these are big companies, right? Shopify, Apple, Netflix, right? So yeah, pretty big. By the way, how would How do Shopify and Apple utilize Exploding Topics? I'm curious though.

I don't know, like, we just send them our trends. I have no idea, like, those particular examples, like our enterprise customers. I know a lot of them use them. They have like a tech sort of committee. Like, I know a lot of our bigger enterprise consulting client types, they have like a tech committee, and they all share reports on trends and sort of keep up to date in that department. And we have Netflix too. I don't know what they do with it either.

Yeah.

Um, that's another one I'm always wondering, like, if they're going to create a show about portable bidets or whatever, some weird supplement we're talking about.

That's funny. Um, but by the way, I, I do want to rewind kind of back to the beginning of your career and starting businesses because, um, you know, on the Marketing School Podcast, we talk about how it's, it's, you know, you work— sometimes you have to work for free in the beginning. Sometimes you have to work for, for cheap. And it takes a long time to see success, right? So correct me if I'm wrong here, but basically from what I understand, your first 5 businesses failed. And, you know, somehow, I mean, you learned your lessons there. And then I think even early days you were working, when you were working with Neil, when you were helping him with the videos, we talked about this story. So the story is this. So I used to work at an online education company and basically I was, um, Neil was an advisor at that company. So Neil and I talked all the time and I basically would tell him how things were going. And he's like, you know what? I want to do the same thing for Quicksprout, right? I want to make these courses. And then, um, then he enlisted the help of you and, um, you know, I'll let you kind of continue on the story from here in terms of like how you started to build your name. And sometimes you have to like eat poo poo to kind of, you know, get ahead.

Oh, 100%, man. I mean, it's so funny because we talked about When Neil contacted me if I was interested, I was like, of course, you know. Well, first of all, I cold emailed Neil. That's the only reason he even knew who I was. I took this course that was like, email someone every week who you respect and just say, you know, you appreciate their work. And Neil was the first person on my list. And I emailed him and then we got on the phone like that day because he's big on phone calls. So he was just like, hey, can we talk? I'm like freaking out, like, oh my God, I'm going to talk to Neil Patel. So I got on the phone and talked him and he was actually really cool. And I ended up working on this sort of small project for him and he was like, good, now can you do videos?

Hmm.

And I'd never done a video really in my life at that point. I was like, all right, yeah, I can do it. $50 a video, not realizing that each one was gonna take me like a day to do. Like, and I was, and I was responsible for editing them. So I had to like come up with a topic. Eventually you came in and helped with topics because I was running out, you know, filming them, Messing up a million times doing screencast videos, like clicking the wrong thing, not knowing you could just edit easily, going back, then editing it, adding arrows pointing to buttons. It was a lot of work. But funny thing, we joked about that the other night at dinner, how cheap it was, like $50. But we both agreed, going back, I would do it for free.

Mm-hmm.

Like, that's how valuable it was. It's $50, wasn't, you know, nothing. But going back, I would do it for free just because it helped get my name on the map. It helped Build a relationship with someone like Neil, I helped him out. So it was definitely worth it. I mean, one time eating poop, the ultimate eating poo poo experience of my life was when I first started as a freelance writer, I was on Elance. Remember Elance?

Yep. We were talking about this. We were both on Elance.

Oh yeah, we were both on Elance back in the day. And I was a freelance writer and my niche was nutrition because I'm a dietitian back in the day. So I was like, all right, I'm going to be the nutrition writer and I'm only going to cover nutrition stuff. But I realized from being on Elance as a buyer before this, like you need reviews to get or no one will hire you. So there was a guy put a job out for 50 articles about men's health and I was like, the lowest you could bid on Elance at the time was $50 and I'm like, $50, a dollar an article, like whatever, I just need a review. So the guy sends— this guy probably saw me and was like, what an idiot, like he couldn't have hired me fast enough and I'm like a dietitian with a master's degree nutrition and I'm writing a dollar an article. He was probably like, unbelievable. And he sends me the list of keywords that I'm supposed to write these articles about, and it's all about how to get rid of man boobs. Like, get rid of man boobs, remove man boobs. It was all these man boob related terms. So I had to come up with like 50 ideas on how to write basically the same thing, like exercise and lose weight and whatnot. And that— I got a 5-star review, and then I was off. on Elance after that, that helped me get started on there. But that was a real, like, just doing whatever it takes in the early days moment.

There you go. Whatever it takes in the beginning. I think most people aren't willing to eat that poo-poo. So one thing we talked about, I don't want to touch upon this too much because sometimes it gets toxic even talking about it, but we kind of joked about how, you know, Twitter is a good place to learn, right? But for whatever reason, SEO Twitter seems to be the most toxic place. So this is really a recommendation for for everyone here. Like, if you're going to go try to learn this stuff, go learn from people like Backlinko. Ahrefs has good content on this. There's some good YouTube channels too. But for whatever reason, just hanging out on SEO Twitter, it's like a crabs in a bucket mentality. So we talked about this. I don't know if you want to add anything to that, but I just wanted to touch upon it real quick.

Yeah, you're 100% right. Like, I try to stay away from it, but sometimes it comes to me and I can't avoid at least seeing it. I don't engage at all. Because there's just no point. The other problem with SEO Twitter is just because it's focused on like the latest update, the latest controversy, the latest thing some Google representative said and whether it's true or not. And it's really easy to not see the forest for the trees as opposed to reading good sites that talk about SEO, watching YouTube channels that talk about SEO. You can get a bigger picture of what's working as opposed to like a Google rep Said that if you use the sponsored tag instead of the nofollow tag, this happens. Like, who cares? It doesn't make any difference. So it's easy to get lost in that. And of course there's always drama. Somehow it's the most boring industry. There's drama constantly, but somehow there is, and it's easy to get sucked into it. So yeah, I'm with you 100%, Eric.

Yeah. So actually, Brian, you touched on something really important. Early in my career, early in my SEO career, I was so focused on the tactics all the time, all the little micro details. But then when you think about it, like SEO is just to help with marketing and marketing helps with business, right? And so now, like when you think about, when you think about growing a business, you start to think more strategically. And, um, you know, we've, Neil and I, we've talked about this on the podcast before. It's, uh, you know, it's, there's a time and place for tactics. You're going to always need someone to execute, but you know, as you get stronger in your career, you're probably going to lean more towards the strategic side and you have to get out of the micro. So anyway, that's enough about SEO. I do want to talk about— so you've— when I first met you, you were living in Berlin. Now you're in Germany and now you're in Portugal, right? I think you're in Lisbon. So can you talk about kind of your mindset there and how it's been for you overall, just to open the minds for people?

Yeah, it's been interesting. I was definitely in Berlin, I'm pretty sure, when we first met. I traveled for like 2— I lived in the States my whole life. I basically never left the States. until I was like 26. And once I left, I was like, this is so cool. There's all these other experiences. I spent about 2 years in Asia backpacking around and living in different places like Hong Kong and Bangkok. And then I went to Europe for a backpack there for a while and ended up in Berlin and really liked it. And then I was like, man, I want to go back to the States. The problem I always had with going back, I could never find a city that like had everything. Like I wanted a city you could walk in, but also good weather and all this stuff. It's really hard to hit the criteria. I find— I found that Lisbon was the city for me at that point. Like, I want to get out of the cold. That was a big thing. Berlin's great, but it's horrible weather. And I was like, Lisbon, it's warm, it's chill, you can walk everywhere. It's, it's all that stuff. So that's sort of how I ended up here, and, and it's, it's great.

Got it. And how long have you been in Lisbon?

About 3 years.

3 years. And then, uh, what's the cost of living look like there, just so people get a sense?

It's a lot cheaper than a major city in the It's like it's a capital city in Europe, but it's one of the cheaper ones. Like my apartment, which is insane, it's like a duplex with tons of rooms and a terrace, it's a backyard and stuff, it's like $3K a month. It gets you a lot here.

Wow, okay, there you go. And the food, the food's pretty good, right?

So it's very good. Yeah, it's a lot of seafood, a lot of grilled fish. If you're into that sort of thing, it's definitely the place.

Amazing. All right. And so, Brian, I'm curious too, in terms of your learning stack right now, like, what does that look like for you? What are you watching? What are you reading? What are you listening to?

Right now I'm taking a break from like any self-improvement like that. It's a weird answer, but the acquisition with Semrush was really involved, really tons going on, really stressful. And I was still running 2 businesses at the same time. So I'm reading like just Random stuff. Like I'm reading about Edward Shackleton and his trip to the Antarctic. I'm not listening to any business podcasts.

Endurance.

Yeah, Endurance. Yeah, it's great, right?

Yep.

Yep. So I'm reading that. I'm not watching— like I'm watching trash YouTube videos about— like I'm watching Skip and Shannon Undisputed on YouTube all the time. I'm not doing any self-improvement right now. I'm taking like a mental break.

I think there's seasons for everything, right? And so I think That's one lesson for everyone. The other, I think it would be helpful if you maybe talked about some of the lessons around the acquisition. So, and maybe some mistakes you would avoid next time.

Yeah, tons of mistakes, tons of lessons. Like the number one honestly is get your legal stuff in order. If you even have an inkling that you want to sell, get your legal everything in order. That means contractors that you worked with, have them sign Stuff. Anything, any vendors you work with, have contracts, have them ready, have them available. Like, that's something I sort of flew by the seat of my pants with this. I never thought I would sell. And when due diligence comes with any acquisition, not just this one, they're going to ask for way more than you think. They're going to ask for everything. So you need to be able to provide that stuff. If not, it delays the deal. So if you're at all interested in selling, there's actually MicroAcquire has a great M&A course that I recommend going through, and he warns you of that in one of the videos. Due diligence is crazy. They're going to ask for everything. I was like, yeah, yeah, it can't be that bad. It's really bad. He's right. Andrew is 100% spot on with that. That's one thing I would do. The other lesson is the most important thing is the relationship you have with the potential buyer. It sounds like when you think of acquisitions, especially with a big company like Semrush, it's publicly You think it's all about numbers and the agreement and the contracts, and it's 2 lawyers, you know, pounding these boardroom tables saying, no, we want this term in there. It's really not like that in real life. It's really about the relationship you have with the person, because as much as it's numbers and digital, there's this personal relationship you have and you just trust the other party. And the trust can only go so far. You still do have an agreement, obviously, that you sign. But there's always wiggle room with the agreement that if one party wanted to kind of screw over the other one, they probably could if they wanted. So you have to have this trust factor in there, and that's something that was important to me. And when I talked to Max from Semrush, I had that right away, and I met him a couple times during the deal going on. I flew there to Boston a couple times to hang out with him, and I got a good vibe. I hope they got a good vibe from me, and that helped facilitate the deal a lot more. than any terms. That was huge. Once we had that sort of agreement in place where we were all chummy, it was a matter of just figuring out the details. It wasn't negotiating hard on this stuff. Not to say every acquisition is like that, but I think it's important to, before you get into any of the details, talk to the person, get to know them, and figure out what do they want out of this deal so you can provide it, which isn't always just the assets, the site. Sometimes it's you, your help, your expertise, Love that.

All right. And then final question from my side. You know, we talked about the books, kind of your learning stack right now. We talked about lessons. What's your favorite tool that could be personal or business that is not called Exploding Topics?

You got me there. You got me there. My favorite tool. I'm not a big tool. Let me look at my phone and see what I have on my home screen, because that will probably answer it. That says a lot, the home screen. Yeah, it does. I would say Brain.fm if you haven't tried that.

Brain.fm? Okay, they've been doing well, huh? So they even have an app now? I didn't even know that.

Yeah, yeah, they have an app. I use the desktop app, which is just their website, but I also have it on my phone and it's awesome for productivity. I don't know what it does to your brain. I'm probably gonna have like Alzheimer's at 48, but because it just has these weird sounds go that makes you concentrate, but it actually It actually does work pretty well. Have you tried it?

I've used it years and years ago, but it does put me into like a weird mode. But you definitely do focus. And I remember they had an AppSumo deal quite a while back.

Yeah, yeah, I did. That's what I got, I think. I think I'm still on the AppSumo deal because it was lifetime. So I'm pretty sure I don't pay anymore.

There you go. Well, I need to check if I— yeah, I'm gonna go find it. Maybe I'll listen to it later. But Brian, this has been great. What's the best way for people to find you online?

I would head over to Twitter. Twitter and follow me @BrianEDean.

There you go. You see, you're picking up your Twitter game too. We'll have to do another chat on that as it grows. Cool. Brian, thanks so much for doing this.

Thanks for having me, Eric.

The beauty of NFTs is that there's more incentive alignment here, meaning that let's say you buy a course for $1,000 or so, maybe you can sell it. If it's an NFT, you can actually sell it afterwards and it can actually appreciate too.