Building A Successful Business in the Midst Of Economic Crisis with Seth Goldstein

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the work at home rock star podcast.

Excited for today’s guest. He’s the principal creative director of Goldstein media, and he helps people get found online. Super excited to be rocking out here today with Seth Goldstein. Hey, Seth, you ready to rock?

Seth Goldstein: That’s rock and roll, buddy. That’s rock and roll. That’s rock and roll. You make it start off here.

Tim Melanson: We always start up here in a good note. So tell me a story of success in your business that we can be inspired

Seth Goldstein: by. Oh, there’s, there’s so many, and there’s so many, there’s not a lot at the same time, which is kind of funny that way. If there’s ups and downs and all that stuff. Well, one of the big successes of my business was getting it started.

I started it during the recession, the great recession of 2008, the best time to start a business. I joke when I say that, and I always kind of pull back and say, well, you know what? A lot of people, when downturns happen, they go off onto their own and say, I’m done working for the man. Some people just.

Stay there like I have for 15 years. Others go back and work for the man after a few years of trying it on. So this is my biggest success [00:01:00] is getting this thing started, getting it rock and rolling, to say the least, and, um, it’s been doing for 15 years to me, that’s a success. I’m a 15 year overnight success.

Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Getting it started is always the, the most challenging part. So what was like, what held you back from getting started earlier?

Seth Goldstein: Well, mainly because I was a journalist for six years, newspaper journalists from remember those things, newspapers. So I got a reference for newspapers. What’s that?

Exactly. Exactly. Like the old print, I’m an old newshound. Exactly. So I got a reference for newspapers. I’ve been doing websites on the side since, since 98, then left burned out from newspapers, my wife said, well, why don’t you do web design? You’ve been doing this on the side this whole time. So that’s kind of why in 2008, I decided, all right, I’m gonna.

Do web designs, nothing was really holding me back because of my other career. So, right.

Tim Melanson: Um, okay. And so then with the, the good note, you know, sometimes there’s a few bad notes. [00:02:00] Oh, there’s

Seth Goldstein: always a bad notes. So I’m

Tim Melanson: wondering, yeah. Can you share, you know, something that just didn’t go as planned and how, you know, we can avoid it or recover from it if it happens to

Seth Goldstein: us, the first three to four years didn’t go as planned because I went to school for journalism and.

I didn’t go to school for business. I didn’t have, I don’t have a business degree. And so the first two, three, four years were really a hard knock, you know, learning how to do business, how not to put your foot in your mouth, how to, you know, ask for the right amount of money and then not, you know, under charge or overcharge charge the right amount.

So really it’s just, I mean, you can always learn from other people whether or not you actually follow through and actually not do the same mistakes. It’s very rare. Yeah. I

Tim Melanson: hear you. And pricing, you’re right. Pricing

Seth Goldstein: is a. It’s hard,

Tim Melanson: it’s super hard, and you don’t take things into account like, uh, you know, you, I think a lot of times you think about your hourly rate, but you don’t necessarily think about all the other [00:03:00] extras that you’re gonna have to pay for

Seth Goldstein: if you run your always have to mark it up a little bit.

That’s your hourly rate. And then I always say hourly rate and then triple it. Triple it. Yeah,

Tim Melanson: that’s a good guideline. And, and I mean, because there is always going to be other things that you’re gonna have to pay for. That there’s always you’re always you’re not gonna see coming. Actually, is there what was the one thing if there was one thing that you could pick that kind of.

You didn’t expect that bill coming in.

Seth Goldstein: What, what would it be? Oh man, the hosting bill, the hosting bill always knocks me over the head, even though it’s, it’s covered by the clients. It’s still always something like, Oh my God, it’s painful to see every, every month because it’s like, I maintain their sites, I run them, the hosting for them.

But you know, ultimately I’m in there with the servers every day. I’m, I’m subleasing them from a provider. I’m managing the relationship with the provider. And if something goes south, they deal with me. They don’t deal with the end user, which is beneficial to them because the end user doesn’t know their head from their [00:04:00] backsides.

Nothing personal to the end user, but that’s not their job. It’s my job to keep things rocking and rolling, so. Yeah,

Tim Melanson: you know what it was for me? What? The

Seth Goldstein: tax bill. Oh, yeah. Oh, you didn’t prepare for that. Oh. Yeah, that’s even more painful. That’s even more painful. Yeah, those

Tim Melanson: are tough. Even, even your account bill to, to get your taxes

Seth Goldstein: done.

That is, that hurts. That hurts, that hurts. You know,

Tim Melanson: it’s not the same thing as going down to, I don’t know if you guys have HR block down there, but we’ve got this big chain all over Canada. And, you know, you go down there and you pay whatever it is, a hundred bucks less than that

Seth Goldstein: for, uh, usually screw something up.

Yeah, yeah. You just screw something up so it’s not worth it because you’re dealing with IRS and you screw something up on your tax bill. Yeah. But nothing is quite like doing, dealing with the IRS in the United States though. Oh God, they’re evil.

Tim Melanson: Well, it’s similar here in Canada too. Um, but, uh, but yeah, I mean, get your own accountant for sure.

Seth Goldstein: Get an accountant. They’re worth their weight in

Tim Melanson: gold. They’re worth the money. Yes. It will, it will knock you on your butt when you see that bill, but it’s worth it.

Seth Goldstein: Would you [00:05:00] rather do it yourself? No.

Tim Melanson: No, not at all. So, okay, right on. Now, uh, what about, let’s talk a little bit about the, the instruments, the tools.

What, what kinds of tools do you use in your business

Seth Goldstein: to get success? Oh, I love the tools. The tools are so much fun. Sometimes they’re a little dangerous because they add up and that’s another bill that kind of hits you over the head sometimes, but like, I love Agorapulse. Agorapulse, you know, it’s actually their CMO is a fellow Canadian.

He’s over in Ottawa. And so I’m good friends with him and I’m like, you know, I’m going to try out your, your, your product. And that’s one of my favorite tools for managing social media. It’s my clients for myself, all that stuff. But also I’ve been finding these AI tools like Lex. page is really cool. It’s, it’s an open beta, but no, it’s an enclosed beta, but it’s free right now.

And then there’s, there’s chatGPT is kind of ubiquitous. There’s Fathom that. fathom. io, fathom, no, fathom. fm, there’s castmagic. io, all these great things for podcasting. So when I do my podcast, [00:06:00] Entrepreneur’s Enigma every twice a week, it’s always helpful to have the show notes written for you. It’s me trying to write the show notes up myself.

Yeah, I

Tim Melanson: use Fathom as well. Fathom, uh, the owner of Fathom was on this podcast. That’s

Seth Goldstein: how I found out about it. Yeah, Daniel, I just talked to him this morning, actually. Yeah,

Tim Melanson: it’s, uh, it was a great episode too. And, and actually I’ve been using it ever since. I was a little bit, uh, hesitant to use it at first.

And then I started using it now. I can’t, I mean, it is, it is the best nose taker that I’ve seen. And I’ve, I’ve tried to use like fireflies and some of the other ones that are out there.

Seth Goldstein: No, it does so much for you. And it finds, finds the quotes that you never thought you’re going to find. Mm-hmm. .

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah.

But, uh, but nowadays, like you said, with the AI tools, like, man, there’s so much out there to help. Mm-hmm. , can you imagine if you had started your business now as opposed to, you know?

Seth Goldstein: Yeah. It would definitely be different though. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Um, mind you, I, I imagine that there’s probably, it [00:07:00] probably balances it out with the, with the competition now.

Yeah. ’cause back then, I mean, who are you competing

Seth Goldstein: with? Right. Yeah, exactly. The competition’s different now and it’s definitely evolved. A lot of people are like, oh, I do AI for you. I do AI for you. I’m like, well, I don’t do AI for you. I supplement with ai, but I do do all the stuff myself. Because ultimately that’s when differentiator is that, you know, not relying on shei B T to be say, something intelligent call.

It is a spicy auto. Yeah,

Tim Melanson: that’s exactly what it is. And, and I find it’s great for, um, like I find the hardest part is that blank page. Right. Oh, it’s the worst. Yeah. Right. It’s just, it sucks. But if you can get chat GBT to fill in that blank page and then you can just go in there and edit it, I find it saves so much time.

And then on the other hand, if you have a chunk of, of, of something that someone’s given you, drop that in a chat GBT as well. And it’ll actually, you know, pull out the parts that you need. I find it’s

Seth Goldstein: great. It’s great. Also, when they write, when I asked them for the bio and they write in the first person, [00:08:00] I want it in the third person.

I’m like, make this third person. It does it for me. Yep. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: It, but I mean, I think that the, the cool part that I think about these AI tools is that, um, when you want to get something done, when you want to leverage your time, you had to hire a person to do that stuff. And then that person, uh, doesn’t really know you, right.

They don’t really know what you’re trying to do. And you have to, you spend years, probably sometimes, definitely months. Onboarding these people to help them think the way that you think when you use an AI tool, it’s you, you’re, you’re doing your own thinking. You’re just having someone to help you with all those nitty gritty details.

Seth Goldstein: Right? Absolutely. It’s, it’s, it’s just augmenting your intelligence. Yeah, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst,

Tim Melanson: sometimes for the worst. Yeah. And you, you,

Seth Goldstein: you, you saw my, um, bio that I gave you both. I gave you the chat GPT one, which was like way over the top. And I think he’d be the one that I wrote when the, you know, when the one that I gave you was that [00:09:00] was like ink stain journalist.

And Oh my God, it was very flowery. I was like, that’s hilarious. I’m going to share it. And someone wants to use it. They can, but I’m like. They don’t have to.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. That’s cool. So, so yeah, lots of great tools out there nowadays to help us. All right. Let’s talk a little bit about, um, you know, learning from the best.

So tell me about how you, like, do you hire coaches? Do you have mastermind? Like, what do you do in your business?

Seth Goldstein: I joined a bunch of groups like that are mastermind ish. So in the WordPress space is a place called PostStatus, which is a bunch of WordPressers that really help each other out. And that’s a paid, you know, Slack group and there’s Pavilion, which is a really expensive mastermind kind of.

Like minded C suite executives that I can bounce ideas off of that’s really good. So it’s finding your community, it’s finding your tribe. You don’t have to necessarily get a coach per se. I’ve looked at coaches and I’m like, you know, they all know much more than I do. They’ve just been in business a little bit longer.

So when [00:10:00] they are. When they are trying to sell them, they’re, they’re, they’re a dime a dozen. You have to find the right one. You gel with and all that. And then, then look at the price tag and say, is this worth my time? So the masterminds are kind of key. Yeah. So what do you do

Tim Melanson: in those

Seth Goldstein: groups then when you find them?

Well, I’ll contribute back a lot. Like if someone has a question about websites or I’ll throw it out to them. If I have a question about sales or contracts or whatever, I’ll throw it into the group and say, Hey, how can people help me? So it’s all kind of stretching each other’s backs.

Marc Mawhinney: Hi, it’s Mark Mueni from Natural Born Coaches, and I want to give two very big thumbs up to Tim Melancon and his Creative Crew Agency.

I have been using them for a long time, and I am 100 percent happy. They get the job done right. They are fast, and they let me focus on my business. I don’t have to worry about anything. So again, I want to give them two very big [00:11:00] thumbs up. I have no problem recommending them. I don’t give testimonials for everyone because my name is attached to it.

But I gladly do so for Tim and the Creative Crew Agency. So use them. You won’t regret it and good luck.

Tim Melanson: And how, like, do you sort of allocate a certain amount of time? Like, ’cause I mean, I can get sucked into those groups big time.

Seth Goldstein: Yeah. That, that happens a lot. .

Tim Melanson: So what, what do you do? How, how, how do

Seth Goldstein: you Uh, when I get spare moment, I jump in there real fast.

Like I jump in there real fast. I try and go in loose once a day to the groups and go through, spend about an hour in them. But then every once in a while I’ll jump back in and see if anything responded or whatever. So, but generally an hour, I’ll give a day to it or a half an hour to an hour of this, you know, focusing on myself on my business and trying to make sure it works well, you know, make sure all the gears are oiled and stuff.

So, and so how do you

Tim Melanson: convert that to an actual client, to a paid client? If, if, uh, if you’re.

Seth Goldstein: That’s what I’m trying, busy trying to [00:12:00] do, it’s tough. It’s tough trying to do all that. It’s tough trying to convert, you know, kind of learning into ROI. And a lot of times you can’t, you know, it’s just our, it’s investment in yourself versus investment in the bottom line.

And that, that investment on yourself will help the bottom line out in the long run. Yeah. So

Tim Melanson: you use the groups more or less as a, as a mastermind. So you ask as many questions as you

Seth Goldstein: answer. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, because I know that there are different ways that you can go about doing that. Like, sometimes you can be an expert in a group, and there ends up being people that just figure, you know what, I’m not doing this myself, but I’m going to

Seth Goldstein: hire this dude to do it.

Exactly. And then that’s usually what happens is say, Hey, Seth, I have a job for you. Or, Hey, Seth, we need a website done or whatever. So it works out. I mean, I’ve got some deals from them. It’s not my end goal to go in there and sell. My end goal is to contribute and be a good person. And what comes around goes around.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, [00:13:00] exactly. But the good news is that nowadays it’s what, you know, it’s fairly easy to find

Seth Goldstein: a tribe, right? You know, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. And you gotta think about, you can always try one out for a year and if it doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to say, all right, this doesn’t work right for me. I did that recently with a, with a cohort that was like, all right, that was fine.

I enjoyed it for a year, but I’m not in there enough for it to warrant the, you know, the thousand dollars a year. So. Oh, so you pay to be in these groups. Oh yeah. The ones with the best ones are the paid ones. There are some good ones that are, that are not paid, that they’re not a monthly due or annual due.

But the ones that are paid, I feel like you’re more skin in the game. Like you’re more apt to go look at it because, Hey, I put out 30 bucks this month to be in this group. Yeah,

Tim Melanson: yeah, I’ve always found that anything that you pay for, you’re going to take it more seriously than

Seth Goldstein: anything that’s free.

Absolutely, even if it’s five bucks, it’s five bucks a month or whatever. It’s something, there’s some skin in the game.

Tim Melanson: I think there was somebody who posted on social media the [00:14:00] other day, it’s like, uh, I’ve never completed a free course.

Seth Goldstein: I don’t, I don’t, I passed the CMO school in Pavilion because I was like, I’m getting my money’s worth here.

It made perfect sense for me to go into this and get some, you know, education in here and Pavilion has really great education programs for rev ops and all this good stuff that I didn’t learn originally in school. So I went back and I learned more marketing techniques and stuff and it made the, you made the, was it three grand a year worth it?

I mean, it’s expensive.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, well, and, and especially in the, in the web space, you know, there’s, there’s so many things coming out all the time, you sort of do have to kind of keep up on it because, you know, things change pretty quickly. And all of a sudden what you’re doing is no longer relevant because, you know, there’s something else, right?

And I imagine that’s probably similar in just about every area too, nowadays. Oh, absolutely.

Seth Goldstein: Yeah. So quickly. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: So now let’s talk a little bit about the, about the home office. So, you know, what. Oh, the

Seth Goldstein: home [00:15:00] office, my favorite thing. What does it look like? Tell me some. Oh, my home office is in my basement, which is always a joy.

You know, it’s in an unfinished basement, but I have, I have a nice bookcase behind me from Ikea. Gotta love it. Have my little, my little knickknacks and whatnot up there. You have to make your space worth it. They want to spend some time in, um, instead of facing on the other side of this is a, um, are two sliding doors that are just leaning up against the desk, but makes it so I don’t have to see the mess that’s behind it.

So, you know, I have a carpet on the floor and just kind of run with it, you know, and it’s nice not to always have a fake background. I mean, your fake background looks really good and it works well, but others don’t. So, yeah, my, my wife’s a graphic designer, so. Oh, well, there you go. Work it. Exactly. It helps.

Tim Melanson: It helps. Did you, did you have a home office when you started

Seth Goldstein: or were you at the kitchen table? Oh, I was always, I always had the spare bedroom. I always made sure I had some dedicated space. Absolutely. [00:16:00] And you think that’s important then? Oh, you have to have your own space. I mean, cause I’ll come up, I’ll go upstairs and work on the kitchen table every now and then change up the space.

So I was up in the spare bedroom and then my kid was born and I moved down to the basement so that, you know, my wife could have an office and all that stuff. So it’s very important to have a dedicated space for your office so you can work in this, know that this is work time, that’s family time. So when you’re at home, so.

And, you

Tim Melanson: know, do you have, uh, like kids and all that stuff as well?

Seth Goldstein: I have one child who is, how old is he now? He’s almost 11. So he is 10 and a half. He’s going to fifth grade down here in the states. And I have a year and a half year old, um, air doodle, which is a, he’s 50% Airdale, rest is poodle. So that’s my other child.

So

Tim Melanson: I’ve got a toy poodle too,

Seth Goldstein: so. Aw, mine. Mine’s not a toy. Mine’s 65 pounds. Oh, mine’s, I have a big one. Eight pounds.

Tim Melanson: So like, uh, now [00:17:00] this has been a struggle, I will say for me is to, is to try to like balance out, especially when you have kids, keeping them out of your office when you’re trying to get some work done.

Do you

Seth Goldstein: have any tips on that? Oh my God. It’s so tough. Oh my God. Well, I generally let him be on the computer when he went, when I’m working, like right now when we’re podcasting, he’s upstairs at school, hasn’t started yet. And so I literally have said, all right, these hours when I’m on podcasts, I’m doing a podcast for my podcast and all that stuff, or I’m on calls, you can go be on roadblocks, you can go be on Minecraft and play with your friends.

And after that, like we’re going to go to Dave and Buster’s, which is a big arcade down here later, just the two of us that have fun. So, but as I said, I, I, I make sure that they’re plenty distracted while I’m working. So.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. I did the same thing too. My son’s now 16,

Seth Goldstein: believe it or not, but he was one when I

Tim Melanson: started my business.

Seth Goldstein: So there you go. So you’ve been through it all and now he’s kind of self sufficient.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Now he does his own thing, but. But yeah, it was, it [00:18:00] was, uh, it’s, it’s easy and it’s hard at the same time. It’s, it’s, it’s very hard, but also kids are, they’re learning all the time. So you can set up some rules and some systems and they will figure them out.

Seth Goldstein: Right. Oh, they’ll figure out, they’ll figure out how to get around them too. Yeah.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I think the harder part I imagine would be starting a business when your kid is already sort of like, you know, five or six

Seth Goldstein: years old. That would be, you know, I started mine when I started mine. Oh, wait, he was born in 2012.

So I was, I was pretty much in my business during that. So the first iteration of my business. Yeah. So.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So now, uh, any other, like, uh, tips for the, for the home office

Seth Goldstein: that you can give us? Um, make sure you have multiple screens. I mean, I would definitely say at least have two screens, you know, have your laptop screen and have your desktop and have a desktop screen.

I have that and, and smaller screens. I have three screens. And then if you can do a standing desk, because it’s helpful to stand up in a room as well, [00:19:00] and you shake the cobwebs off, so. Yeah, I’ve got, uh,

Tim Melanson: I’ve got two screens plus my laptop as well. And I’ve also got a standing desk next to me too. I very, very rarely use, but

Seth Goldstein: I never use, I’m always sitting.

I’m always actually use this more often. Yeah, right

Tim Melanson: on. So now it is time for your guest solo. So tell me what is exciting in your business.

Seth Goldstein: I, I’m, it’s exciting. My business is that it’s most of the podcast thing. It’s, it’s done getting out, interviewing people and talking to interesting people. And some of them are turning into clients and it’s always fun.

Entrepreneurs enigma. com is the podcast and it’s fun to talk to people. And it’s fun that now I’m using pod match. I get to meet people like Tim over here, where like, I’m going to be on his show and hopefully I’ll get him on my show. And, you know, a lot of fun stuff and all that stuff. I got to go to the WordCamp US last week, which was a lot of fun, which was the big WordCamp, national WordCamp WordPress conference.

It was really nice to go to meet people in person after three years of [00:20:00] pandemic. So that’s what’s really going on in my world. So that’s awesome.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. I’ve, um, I think podcasts are so cool nowadays. It’s a great way to network with other people. It’s a great way to meet new people. It’s a great way to keep your, your skills sharp too, because you’re always

Seth Goldstein: learning from them.

Right? Absolutely. And you have, you have to kind of, you got to invest in yourself. That is key. Yeah, absolutely. And so tell me a little bit more about your, your podcast, actually. My podcast runs every twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays goes out at 8 a. m. Eastern time. So about an hour. So 10 o’clock here, no nine o’clock your time.

Cause they’re Atlantic time. I think. Right. Yep. I am. And it’s just about the, the enigma of entrepreneurship about how it’s always a puzzle and the ups and you’re at all these, all these overnight successes are really. 15 year successes, people would look like, Oh, you’ve, you had such big success. They’ve been in it for a lot longer than you think and struggling just like you have.

I like to kind of highlight that there is a [00:21:00] struggle.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You don’t see all the work that went in to prepare the person to the point where they’re at the point where they could take that opportunity and

Seth Goldstein: run with it. Right? Yeah, exactly. Now, what about your business? So tell me a little bit about your business.

So Goldstein Media, we’re a general digital marketing agency. So we focus on startups, midsize companies, but funded, funded startups, which always clarifies that they had to have some money for, for marketing and stuff, but funded startups through midsize companies, just help them get both the websites and WordPress to help them optimize them in Google and Bing and DuckDuckGo, get them found, help them out with the digital strategies.

Email marketing, you know, social media generate generation a little bit. We’ll kind of come up with a strategy for them, how they can create the content. And I usually tell them to go get an intern right out of college who needs the experience to get the job. That’s a cyclical thing. So,

Tim Melanson: yeah, that’s a really good way to do it.

Seth Goldstein: And so tell me how we can find you then. So you can find [00:22:00] me mostly on LinkedIn. Um, Seth M. Goldstein, you know, that LinkedIn. com slash n slash Seth M. Goldstein. That’s a mouthful. It was, it was Goldstein Media for the longest time. Then I realized that I shouldn’t be my business name. It should be my name.

So I changed it around and broke all the links over to the internet for the past 15 years. Cause they don’t give you a 301 redirect on that. So boo on them. But you can also find me on Mastodon. I’m over at FullyCodeHound at Masto. ai. And pretty much just look for Seth M. Goldstein. If you look up Seth M.

Goldstein, you’ll find me. If you look up Seth Goldstein, I’m on the second page. Because there’s apparently a lot of Seth Goldsteins out there. Apparently it’s, it’s a John Smith of the Jews.

Tim Melanson: Great. So Seth M.

Seth Goldstein: Goldstein. Awesome. You can usually find that. You’ll find with some of the older articles too, when you do that.

Cool. Well, thank you

Tim Melanson: so much for rocking out with me today, Seth. It’s been a lot of fun.

Seth Goldstein: The guitar solo. Sorry, everyone who had to hear that. You said, you said rock out. So I’m going to [00:23:00] jam out. So there you

Tim Melanson: go. Yeah. If you’re listening to this on like Spotify or something, go on to YouTube so you can see the video.

So you can see him actually rocking out. Air guitaring. Yeah. There’s a little more to it when you see the air

Seth Goldstein: guitar. Yeah, it’s not me making a weird noise for, you know, giggles here. So

Tim Melanson: thank you so much again. And to the listeners, make sure you subscribe, rate, and comment. We’ll see you next time on the work at home.

Rockstar podcast.

Seth Goldstein: Thanks for listening to learn how you can become a work at home rockstar or become a better one. Head on over to work at home. Rockstar. com today.