.svg)
Tim Soulo has been CMO at Ahrefs for 11 years. In that time, he's finished a book, built a $1M conference from scratch, shipped content strategies, managed crises, and kept a team moving fast.
But when asked what changed most about his last 90 days, he pointed to something unexpected: he stopped panicking. Not suppressed the panic. Stopped it. When angry tweets came about the pricing crisis, no stomach drop. When the ticket sales launch hit panic, it was just mechanics to solve.
The difference wasn't stoicism—it was repetition. He'd been through enough high-pressure moments that each new one felt familiar. Like person number 157 showing up with the same problem person number 156 had. This is the story of how exposure therapy works, what it actually feels like in practice, and how pattern recognition becomes your shield against stress.
Tim's Last 90 Days:
- Exposure therapy to stress — The core insight: stress stops working on you after you've lived through enough variations of the same problem. Tim deliberately creates small exposures instead of avoiding them, building immunity through repetition. By crisis #157, panic doesn't show up anymore.
- Ship at 70%, iterate live — Publishing incomplete work without approval creates constant small exposures. The team encounters mistakes live, gets real feedback, learns faster. Each exposure is one more data point.
- Hire 110%+ people, not 70% — Delegating to operators better than him means things go wrong differently than they would if he controlled everything. Each person's failure is a new variation he's lived through. More failures = more immunity.
- Consistency over quarterly growth — Tim doesn't sprint and crash. He does the same baseline output every quarter. This consistency means he's constantly exposed to similar problems in new forms. Repetition over novelty = stress stops working.
Ship at 70%, Iterate Live
AHREFS’ landing pages, blog posts, and research don't wait for his approval before shipping. His product marketing team published a landing page, didn't loop in approval, and launched it. Weeks later, Tim reviewed it and found things to improve. He gave feedback. They iterated. The version most people see is better. This works because a live, 70% version beats a perfect draft every time. By the time Tim reviews with fresh eyes, the team has sometimes already caught issues. The system: publish incomplete, improve in production, measure real feedback instead of theoretical concerns. Most leaders think this is reckless. Tim thinks waiting for perfection is the real risk.
The 110% Hiring Rule (Not 70%)
Tim directly challenges the popular advice to hire people 70% as good as you, free yourself up, and scale by delegation. For transactional roles, sure. For leadership? It fails. If you hire someone 70% as good at YouTube, your YouTube channel becomes 70% as effective. The hard part: finding 110%+ people isn't a recruiter's job. It's your network, noticing great work, and building relationships over years. But that's the only way to truly delegate.
The Crisis That Stuck
Ahrefs released usage-based pricing. Community backlash. For months. Tim describes it as psychologically draining—opening Twitter to see people joking about your company. Unlike other controversies that disappear in a day, this one stuck. Why? Because it was a product decision, not a marketing problem.The company's first instinct: explain better. Post explainers. Frame it differently. Didn't work. Because the problem wasn't unclear messaging. It was the actual pricing model. You can't market your way out of a decision people think is bad. Eventually you have to fix the decision itself.
Own the Three Things Only You Can Own
Tim's portfolio: content, podcast, book, events, product marketing, personal brand, ~20-person team, international marketing oversight. He can't own all of it. He owns product marketing deeply (because product decisions matter to everything downstream), personal brand (because his LinkedIn following is a channel), and book/podcast (because they're personal). He sets content strategy once a month, then trusts his content lead. He barely touches international marketing—his leader Eric adapts what works. The lesson: delegate everything to operators better than you. Own only what only you can decide, and own it completely.–
Exposure Therapy
Stress loses its power through repetition. Last year, slow ticket sales panicked Tim. This year, same situation—no panic. "We've been through that. I know what to do." It's not about becoming fearless; it's about pattern recognition. When you've seen a crisis 157 times in different forms, the next one is just another variation. This is why tenure matters: eleven years with the same team means Tim has lived through enough variations that stress no longer moves him. Anxiety still shows up, but it doesn't control him anymore. Familiarity converts panic into procedure.
