Ross Simmonds on The Power of Reddit

Christopher Penn (0:07)

This is Marketing Over Coffee with Christopher Penn and John Wall.

John Wall (0:15)

Good morning, welcome to Marketing Over Coffee. I'm John Wall. Today's guest is Ross Simmonds. It's been an interesting story. He came to me, Greg Poirier from Ateco.

He's my source for a lot of Salesforce stuff. You know, anything comes up on that front. I'm always talking to him. I had him on the show. He forwarded me a LinkedIn post from Rand Fishkin of Spark Toro. And it was Ross's original research. And I was reading this paper about Reddit conquering everything. And I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. And as I dug in, I was like, how have Ross and I not even talked? But of course, you know, this space is so huge that there's so much going on and it's insane.

But so all that to say, I'm thrilled that Ross is here to join us. Ross, thanks for spending some time here.

Ross Simmonds (0:58)

John, thanks for having me on. Super excited to be here and it's always great when so many mutual friends and contacts can put us together. So I've known Rand and Greg for quite some time, so I'm glad that we could finally connect.

John Wall (1:09)

Okay. Now, your research is about, as I had mentioned, Reddit just dominating search results. But let's back up a little bit. I mean, so you're obviously deep into analytics. And I know you're also into distribution is something that you focus in and are deep into. But what happened? When you were a kid at school, did you know that, I mean, it's so funny, there was no internet, there was no AI, there was none of this stuff. So what subjects did you gravitate to? And it kind of what got you on your career path?

Ross Simmonds (1:37)

Yeah. So I was always obsessed with writing. Like I always had like a itch to create and write. And when I got into about university, I started a fantasy football blog. But when I was in elementary, I had the early bug and interest in entrepreneurship. So I always wanted to kind of work for myself. And then this internet thing, when I was in university, really started to open my eyes to this idea, that if you create stories on the internet, you can reach people all over the globe. I remember one of my first websites that I had run was all about fantasy sports. I had another one about this video game called The Sims. And they both were like building like massive audiences.

But my traffic was going up, but my marks were going down. And my mom said to me, like, why don't you just start writing about what you're learning in school? So then I started to publish insights about marketing and social media. And I started to do research and started to publish what I was learning. And the internet started to pay attention. And I started to get opportunities to consult and help brands and businesses. And it just opened up the world of tech and marketing for me. And I just continued down that path. And you fast forward 15, 20 years later, and here I am still still in the space.

John Wall (2:46)

That's amazing. Okay, dragging us off topic, but I do have to ask, is there anything still going with The Sims or is that chapter closed?

Ross Simmonds (2:53)

So it's funny, I've closed the chapter, but my sibling, my sister, who I actually started the website with, still runs in, is successful in managing it, and has built up a massive community on The Sims and even met her now husband through this community that we created when we were in university. So it's wild.

John Wall (3:09)

Yeah, that is amazing because that was a moment in time that was, you know, that game completely dominated for so long. It's just a top of everything.

All right, so tell us about your workday now. So you said you kind of got dragged into more and more consulting. It's funny. We see people where this happens. It's just kind of if you keep answering questions, eventually people realize that you're the person they go through. So is that the route that you went? Did you start your own firm and run or did you work with another firm at some other point? Kind of what brought you to that point of starting up as your own consultancy?

Ross Simmonds (3:38)

Yeah, so my journey was interesting. I had a few years where I wanted to go into the agency world so I could learn a little bit about agency in general and then I wanted to use that experience to go out and eventually create my own. So I did that. I spent a few years working in host at a big agency, spun out as a freelancer and as a freelancer, I was able to actually start multiple businesses. So I've run everything from coffee companies to cleaning companies, to tech startups, etc.