Alex is the founder of Novatorius and the creator of *Siren*, a WordPress plugin focused on building meaningful affiliate relationships. Siren is crafted to prioritize quality over quantity, helping businesses attract affiliates who align with their brand values and drive impactful results. Alex’s deep understanding of partnerships and affiliate programs, shaped through years of working with high-performing individuals and companies, fuels Siren’s mission to redefine online partnerships.

With Siren, Alex aims to empower creators and businesses to build targeted, high-impact affiliate networks, allowing them to grow in ways that genuinely benefit both parties involved.

Key Moments

[06:38] Camper relocation plan between Vermont and Texas.

[08:26] Fewer responsibilities allowed focus and travel freedom.

[10:48] Project required third-party API integration.

[15:34] Accidental sabbatical led to career reflection.

[20:12] Being your own boss requires financial readiness.

[22:44] Runway allows sustainable business growth, overcoming feast-or-famine.

[26:23] Organize methods, tasks, and pull requests efficiently.

[29:42] Outsource effectively by having sufficient financial runway.

Find Alex Online

https://www.alexstandiford.com

https://www.sirenaffiliates.com

Check Out Rocket.net

https://gmedia.sh/rocket and use enigma at check out to get 50% off your next 3 months of hosting.

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Also, if you’re getting value from the show and want to buy me a coffee, go to the show notes to get the link to get me a coffee to keep me awake, while I work on bringing you more great episodes to your ears. →  https://gmwd.us/buy-me-a-coffee

Follow Seth Online:

Seth | Digital Marketer (@s3th.me) • Instagram: Instagram.com/s3th.me

Seth Goldstein | LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/sethmgoldstein

Seth On Mastodon: https://socl.bz/@seth

Seth’s Marketing Junto Newsletter: https://MarketingJunto.com

Transcript Provided By CastMagic.io

Seth Goldstein [00:00:00]:
Hey, guys. I want to introduce you to rocket.net. They are a super fast WordPress managed hosting provider who I use for my business and all my clients. In fact, Entrepreneur’s Enigma’s website runs on Rocket. Rocket is not only one of the fastest hosts out there for WordPress websites, they are extremely reliable, knowledgeable, and there for you when you need them. I’ve been in the WordPress web design world for more than 15 years. I’ve used a bunch of hosting providers in the past, but none have generally been as good as Rocket, nor have they been reliable enough. I wouldn’t trust my website to anyone else.

Seth Goldstein [00:00:36]:
We all know stuff happens online. Rocket has always had my back when I get stuck on something. And something would happens with an update or something gets hacked. Rocket support is fast, and the reps are beyond fluent in the WordPress CMS so they can solve the most complex issues quickly and effectively. So go check them out. Give them a shot. Go to gmedia.sh/rocket. That’s gmedia.sh/rocket.

Seth Goldstein [00:01:06]:
Use the code enigma. That’s the enigma, e n I g m a, at checkout, and you get 50% off the 1st 3 months of hosting. That’s enigma, e n I g m a, and you get 50% off the 1st 3 months of hosting. Trust me. You’ll be glad you moved to Rocket. I sure am.

Intro Voice Guy [00:01:40]:
You’re listening to Entrepreneur’s Enigma, a podcast about the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey. Every week, your host, Seth Goldstein, interviews entrepreneurs from all walks of life about their entrepreneurial journeys. From store owners to fortune 500 CEOs, we all have stories to tell. So sit back and join us for the next 20 or so minutes while we explore the entrepreneurial world.

Seth Goldstein [00:02:15]:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Entrepreneur’s Enigma podcast. Today, I have a good buddy of mine, Al Standiford. Right? I said that right? There’s a I hidden in there.

Alex Standiford [00:02:26]:
There is. Yep. It’s a very sneaky I. That’s why nobody stole it. Eye.

Seth Goldstein [00:02:30]:
I’m pretty up here here at Stanford, Stanford’s, you know, all that all that kind of stuff.

Alex Standiford [00:02:34]:
I had a nickel.

Seth Goldstein [00:02:35]:
If you had a nickel, you’d be rich.

Alex Standiford [00:02:36]:
Yeah. For sure. You’d be able to

Seth Goldstein [00:02:38]:
RV too, in that case.

Alex Standiford [00:02:39]:
Yeah. Exactly. So For sure.

Seth Goldstein [00:02:42]:
Is a former digital nomad literally. Like, I’m talking about nomading around the country nomad. Like, in our RV, in a 5th wheel RV with his family, which is what? Your wife, you, and 2 kids, and then animals.

Alex Standiford [00:02:56]:
Yep. Me, my wife, 2 kids, 2 cats, and a dog.

Seth Goldstein [00:03:00]:
Yeah. He’s certifiable. He’s somewhat certifiable.

Alex Standiford [00:03:03]:
It was yeah. It was fun. But it was 5 years. Right? 4. But, yeah, it was still 4. But it

Seth Goldstein [00:03:09]:
was, fortunate things. The guy who was moving it for you kind of didn’t know how to take a turn, and it was like Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:03:15]:
Something. I don’t know. He sideswiped something and didn’t tell us and then just kinda bolted. And, yeah, we ended up we ended up actually totaling that game.

Seth Goldstein [00:03:23]:
Now you’re in on a foundation, living your best life. You’re a former lead for GoDaddy. Now you’re on your own. You have your your siren affiliates plug in. You’re doing development. You’re you’re living the you’re living the life, buddy.

Alex Standiford [00:03:37]:
Yeah. I’m living a life. It’s a good life. It’s a very, very hectic. Yeah. There’s a lot of lot of stuff going on. A lot of transition right now for me. Dog.

Alex Standiford [00:03:44]:
Yeah. Yeah. My wife. Yeah.

Seth Goldstein [00:03:44]:
But I’ve but the, the the

Alex Standiford [00:03:45]:
good thing is I have a door now.

Seth Goldstein [00:03:46]:
I’m a huge fan of doors

Alex Standiford [00:03:46]:
after living in a camp for a while. Oh, because you were working in a common area. You had the bedrooms,

Seth Goldstein [00:03:56]:
but you had, like, oh, how’d that work?

Alex Standiford [00:03:58]:
Yeah. Well, it was raw. I mean, these headphones I’m wearing right now are, they’ve passed through, so I could hear the noise outside around me. These were not what I used in the camper. I was using noise canceling ones. And sometimes I would actually put earplugs in on top of it and then put headphones on and then turn the volume up with music. Kids. Because the kids were being homeschooled.

Alex Standiford [00:04:15]:
Yeah. So so I would actually, like I would I would sit at my desk and I specifically had it facing the wall, so I didn’t see what was going on behind me. And I wear headphones to be able to isolate the sound myself from the sound. It worked really well. The only thing that would happen is the camper would shake a little bit if the kids were jumping or running around too much, especially on, like, gravel or door. You

Seth Goldstein [00:04:33]:
did this during COVID too.

Alex Standiford [00:04:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s when we we we we start we decided we were gonna start traveling in January. And then by February, COVID was, like, full swing.

Seth Goldstein [00:04:44]:
We actually And you actually had COVID in the camper too.

Alex Standiford [00:04:47]:
Yeah. We we did. We we managed to don’t know why I remember

Seth Goldstein [00:04:50]:
the whole story of that.

Alex Standiford [00:04:51]:
It’s great.

Seth Goldstein [00:04:51]:
I don’t

Alex Standiford [00:04:51]:
know why I

Seth Goldstein [00:04:52]:
had to You’re you’re We we busy mass the dining or tweeting or posting about how, god, this sucks.

Alex Standiford [00:04:58]:
Yeah. We made it we made it pretty far. We went, because the thing that’s kinda cool about being in the camper is you’re able to isolate a lot easier. So, like Pretty

Seth Goldstein [00:05:06]:
much isolated.

Alex Standiford [00:05:06]:
When we were traveling yeah. So because we had we we had an entire environment that we were bringing around with us. So, like, if we were in, Yeah. Right. Right. For better or for worse. But usually it was for the better. So, like, if we were traveling and we needed the only place the only time we would ever potentially be exposed to anybody was at grocery stores.

Alex Standiford [00:05:24]:
Even when we were traveling and we get gas at a gas station or need to use the restroom or something, we just use our camera.

Seth Goldstein [00:05:28]:
And you had your entertainment too.

Alex Standiford [00:05:30]:
Yeah. Totally. So, like, we

Seth Goldstein [00:05:32]:
for entertainment. You had to be

Alex Standiford [00:05:35]:
Yep. And it actually kind of systems. It kind of, like, messed with how our travel went for the next few years. Like, even now as we’re reflecting on it, we’re like, you know, if we were gonna do that again, I would probably do this, this, and this differently. Like, we would probably gone out to lie use libraries more and stuff like that. Just because when we started, we couldn’t. And then we just never, like

Seth Goldstein [00:05:56]:
could not go to a library. Yeah. Right.

Alex Standiford [00:05:58]:
So then, like, we just wall. Right. So we never like and and then it never clicked that we could do that until we were done. And now we’re sitting here, and we’re like, you know, we could have probably, like, gone to a live like, parked at a campground that’s closer to a library or something like that and done school with a library.

Seth Goldstein [00:06:15]:
House, done the work at a library, or gone to open an era. But back when back in 2020, 2020, 2021, that’s hard to say. Yeah. Fast. You couldn’t. Yeah. And then I think this is let up, but then, you know, I mean, serendipity is kind of a is a strange mistress. Like, you I mean, would would you think you’d still be on the road if the camper wasn’t mangled?

Alex Standiford [00:06:38]:
Probably, actually. Because that was, like, the last piece of our of our puzzle, because because that was being delivered to Texas. And once that was in Texas, we would have had a camper in Vermont. We would have had a camper in Texas, and then we would have a smaller one that we were gonna use to go around travel around. We would have probably just bounced back and forth between Vermont and Texas indefinitely. That’s all. Yeah. It’s but it’s okay.

Seth Goldstein [00:06:58]:
Tell us somehow you ended up in Ohio.

Alex Standiford [00:07:00]:
Yeah. That’s where I know. That’s where I grew up, so I didn’t know where to go. And so we were like, oh, let’s just put this

Seth Goldstein [00:07:04]:
and all that?

Alex Standiford [00:07:05]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s definitely not where I would choose to live. I don’t I don’t hate where I

Seth Goldstein [00:07:09]:
live by any means. It’s Ohio. People who don’t know where Ohio people, European’s not in the world, Ohio is.

Alex Standiford [00:07:14]:
Yeah. Right. Well, I mean, this this state is famously, picked on by the by the young ones these days. Right?

Seth Goldstein [00:07:20]:
Oh, or by our generation with the with, you know, what was it? Drew Carey would go at the end of the intro, go Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.

Alex Standiford [00:07:27]:
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Just so somebody would talk about it.

Seth Goldstein [00:07:30]:
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Alex Standiford [00:07:32]:
Yeah. It’s it’s it’s fine. But

Seth Goldstein [00:07:35]:
Through all this journey, you were you were doing full time work. You were doing side hustles. You’re doing this. You’re doing that. Keep yourself busy, which, you know, it’s not hard to do when you have 2 kids, a wife, a dog, and 2 cats.

Alex Standiford [00:07:46]:
Yeah. And you’re, you know, 25 minutes away from your 70. You know? Yeah. Stuff like that. So you’re

Seth Goldstein [00:07:50]:
always doing something. Like, how did you manage to do all of that and have a side hustle that then eventually turn into a main hustle?

Alex Standiford [00:07:57]:
Well, I didn’t have a side hustle at that point. So, you

Seth Goldstein [00:08:00]:
tried to side hustle.

Alex Standiford [00:08:01]:
Yeah. Yeah. I I didn’t no. I mean, I did a little. That’s not that’s not completely true. I did have a side hustle. Yeah. So so prior to traveling, I actually ran an agency, a WordPress agency for a few years.

Alex Standiford [00:08:16]:
And then I ended up getting a job at Sandhills Development, working on Affiliate WP, and I stopped doing the agency work pretty much entirely.

Seth Goldstein [00:08:24]:
And I found that kinda nice.

Alex Standiford [00:08:26]:
Yeah. Right. Well, it’s not even just that. It was also just the general, like there was just so much less responsibility, really. You know? And and and I was able to focus on working on that job, and and it was really good job, really good management, you know, and all that stuff. So I was able to, like, kind of I just found that I had a lot more space in my brain, in my time, and everything else that enabled me to actually be able to capitalize on doing all the traveling and stuff like that. Like, I in hindsight, whenever I talk about it and I think about it now, I actually think about the RV, the 4 years that we spent in the RV as like a an accidental sabbatical of sort. It wasn’t a full blown, like, a real because

Seth Goldstein [00:09:03]:
you weren’t true one. Working. Yeah. But it was like sabbatical from the other side of it, not work, like, but a sabbatical from being stuck in a house home.

Alex Standiford [00:09:13]:
Right. And it was scale and and the work that I was doing was scaled back and the sense of, like, ownership and responsibility and stuff like that was scaled back.

Seth Goldstein [00:09:22]:
Doing an agency from an RV?

Alex Standiford [00:09:24]:
No. I can’t. I can’t even like, the only

Seth Goldstein [00:09:26]:
reason why email box.

Alex Standiford [00:09:28]:
No. Okay. Well mailbox. Yeah. It’s it that’s one of there’s ways to work around that. But it’s Yeah. But with

Seth Goldstein [00:09:34]:
2 kids, 2 cats, a dog, and a wife, and running an agency. And Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:09:39]:
Yeah. I wanted no part of that. So I was able to actually focus on those things. Now I was, while I was in the camper, we would go to when we while we were living in the camper. Yeah. We in in in, we would end up in Texas Yeah. In November December and sometimes January too, depending.

Seth Goldstein [00:09:57]:
Good place to be not usually that

Alex Standiford [00:09:58]:
cold. Right. It’s relatively warm.

Seth Goldstein [00:10:00]:
Which is like, oh my god. I can’t get in my feet.

Alex Standiford [00:10:03]:
Yeah. Right. You need to get out of there by September because it’s getting cold. But It is, but not

Seth Goldstein [00:10:08]:
right now. My mom my mom has a house in Weston, and I just doxed my mom. Not really. But, you know, she she has a house in Weston, and it’s hot up there still, which is kind of disturbing. But you know? For sure.

Alex Standiford [00:10:19]:
Yeah. So we would spend time in Texas, but we wouldn’t move at that time. So during those months, I had a lot more time available to me, and and I found myself in but no. Right. Right. Exactly. So so I would I started doing what I would call I would take snacks, I call them, which would be just like, WordPress gigs. It was a gig.

Alex Standiford [00:10:41]:
Right? WordPress gig. That’s like,

Seth Goldstein [00:10:42]:
so like, so stuff got stuck on something. Hey, Alex, got a $1,000 for you. You fix the stand

Alex Standiford [00:10:47]:
sheet

Seth Goldstein [00:10:47]:
from that kind of thing.

Alex Standiford [00:10:48]:
Yeah. It was, it was usually bigger than that, but it was like, it was usually like, well, no, no, I don’t mean in terms of dollars. I mean, in terms of, well, not necessarily not, but like in terms of scope. Like, so it would be like, I have this plugin build. I have this, like, one of them was like, I have this news company that I’m that this agent just came to me and they’re like, they have this news company that they’re maintaining, and they needed this third party rest integration with their custom API. They needed And they were like,

Seth Goldstein [00:11:12]:
years above our pay grade.

Alex Standiford [00:11:14]:
Alex, can you do this? Right. So they hired me to come in and do that. And it worked out great because they happened to need somebody in November. Right? So Oh, it’s perfect. Yeah. It was perfect. So, like, I I worked on that for November, December, and then a little bit of January. And and, while I was already parked in in one spot.

Seth Goldstein [00:11:32]:
Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:11:32]:
And I call them and I call them snacks because they are fun. They’re tasty. And, they, you know, bring really great short term results. But if you have too much of them, it makes you sick. You feel sick. So Yeah. So you were getting GoDaddy

Seth Goldstein [00:11:48]:
at the time too. Right?

Alex Standiford [00:11:49]:
I was. Yeah. At that point I had switched over from saying,

Seth Goldstein [00:11:52]:
oh, they’re kind of cool about you. I mean, a lot of these a lot of these hosting companies are kinda cool with saying, they want you to kind of keep building stuff for this. It’s gonna benefit them in the long run if you know how to do something. So

Alex Standiford [00:12:02]:
Yeah. I I found that yeah. I mean, my my manage it depends. GoDaddy’s a big company, so you never know It

Seth Goldstein [00:12:07]:
doesn’t seem to be

Alex Standiford [00:12:09]:
facets of it. But, like, where I was, they were they were okay with it. Yeah. So And your snack.

Seth Goldstein [00:12:15]:
Mhmm.

Alex Standiford [00:12:15]:
Having my snacks. Exactly. And it it I think it actually benefits businesses. To allow that because it’ll it well, for 1, it’s an outlet. Right? Like, there’s all there’s one specific way that you work in a company. There’s one specific set of problems that you’re solving.

Seth Goldstein [00:12:29]:
Assembly’s room is good. Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:12:31]:
Right. In a lot of ways. Yeah. So so allowing people to be able to work outside of that, gives them an opportunity to, you know, mix things up a little bit, work on different things that helps them stay fulfilled and ready to be able to, like Yeah. Be there at their job, ironically enough. If you do it in a healthy amount, again, it’s a snack. You have

Seth Goldstein [00:12:49]:
to think of it. Right? You don’t get bloated. Yeah. Exactly.

Alex Standiford [00:12:52]:
Yes. Yes. So so that that’s been that was a lot of it a lot of that mentality. And then I would just not pick up anything.

Seth Goldstein [00:12:59]:
It’s just like, you play a piece, like, I can’t have snacks. How many times?

Alex Standiford [00:13:03]:
Right. Exactly. I have I have time to I have a full time job, travel. I have I have 3 things that I was doing. I was picking up snacks, I was traveling, and I was working at GoDaddy at that point, and I could have 2 of them. I could never do all You

Seth Goldstein [00:13:15]:
could rotate them. So when you’re stationary, you could you could do you’re not moving. You’re actually in a house of sorts somewhat. Yeah. Exactly.

Alex Standiford [00:13:22]:
Yep. Yeah. So, and then, obviously, when we stopped traveling, I I realized that I we were pretty burned out on the travel, honestly. Like, we were we were ready to move on.

Seth Goldstein [00:13:34]:
Like, against again, serendipity

Alex Standiford [00:13:37]:
Serendipity. Serendipity. Serendipity. Your

Seth Goldstein [00:13:37]:
thing. It’s like, maybe you needed a break.

Alex Standiford [00:13:41]:
Yeah. Well, we looked at the situation and we looked at where we were at. We were like, this is probably time. We’ve been talking about it. We’ve been thinking about, like, you know, stopping

Seth Goldstein [00:13:49]:
A sabbatical is not sabbatical.

Alex Standiford [00:13:51]:
Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. We’re I’m I’m ready to, like, have more of a, like, a provincial kinda life, sedentary, even you know, like just a boring, I don’t even boring is the right way, but like relatively speaking, you know, yeah, less mobile. Yeah. Sticks and bricks and all that jazz. So, yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:14:08]:
So, So yeah, we did that. And then all of a sudden I found that I had because I’m not traveling, I was like, okay. Well, now I can start, and at that time, I had been working on Siren a little bit.

Seth Goldstein [00:14:21]:
Yeah. I was gonna say that. Is an affiliate management plug in

Alex Standiford [00:14:25]:
Mhmm.

Seth Goldstein [00:14:25]:
Which I bought because I wanted to support you. I assume you used it. I’ll be honest. I I bought it. I put it on my site because I was like, I wanna I’m gonna get you know, well, I’ll give them all give you all the data I can get through and all that stuff. I’m like Yeah. Don’t need this yet, but it’s Alex. Of course, I’m gonna buy this plug in.

Seth Goldstein [00:14:39]:
So Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:14:40]:
And it was you got that lifetime deal. You got that that sweet deal. Yeah. I’m never gonna offer a price that good again. But,

Seth Goldstein [00:14:47]:
I was like, I’ll get it if I never use it, whatever. You know, I I supported Alex on his launch, which was exciting. So We’re gonna take a quick break, hear from our sponsors, and get right back to the show.

Alex Standiford [00:14:56]:
Yeah. I appreciate that for sure. Yeah. So, yeah, it’s it, so I started working on Siren, and then I, I ended up realizing that I wanted to do I I was really having fun with it, really enjoying it, and we weren’t traveling anymore. And I was like, man, maybe I do have the capacity to, like maybe I’m ready. I I just I it wasn’t even maybe. It was just I woke up one day, and I was just like, oh, okay. It’s time to do an agency again.

Alex Standiford [00:15:25]:
Like, I was just like it was like that clear. It was like, I’m ready. Let’s go. And because

Seth Goldstein [00:15:29]:
now you only had 2 things to worry about again.

Alex Standiford [00:15:31]:
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And they

Seth Goldstein [00:15:32]:
snacks and entrees.

Alex Standiford [00:15:34]:
Yeah. And there were and there was some time off, time away from it, time to reflect in that, again, accident this is what I mean, accidental sabbatical. So there was a lot of reflecting on that phase of my life. My first design frame is what it was, my agency, and and what it was like to work in that and, like, the pros and cons and, like, facing, do I even wanna do it anymore? Am I okay with being an employee? Do I like, there because there’s a lot to love about it.

Seth Goldstein [00:15:57]:
Both. Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:15:58]:
Yeah. For sure. So, like like, having just really internalized and reflected on that stuff over that 4 year period. Mhmm. I come back, and it was just like like, it all just kinda culminated. And, like and I was just I just had this clarity where I was like, okay. I’m ready. I’m gonna go do it now.

Alex Standiford [00:16:13]:
There wasn’t like it wasn’t tumultuous in that moment. It wasn’t like

Seth Goldstein [00:16:17]:
Oh, you left into terms, which is what which is what you wanna do. Because you can always you can always boomerang back if you absolutely had to.

Alex Standiford [00:16:24]:
Yeah. For

Seth Goldstein [00:16:25]:
sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Seth Goldstein [00:16:27]:
Not at work.

Alex Standiford [00:16:28]:
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. You know, whatever. Yeah. No. I’m just kidding.

Alex Standiford [00:16:31]:
Yes. You should definitely do that. So, you know, I I, I I took my exit from GoDaddy, couple months ago.

Seth Goldstein [00:16:39]:
Oh, it’s only been a few months? Wow.

Alex Standiford [00:16:41]:
Yeah. Yeah. I I I I think I don’t even remember the exact day I left, but it hasn’t been long. It was like, I think I wanna say somewhere around the end of August, early September.

Seth Goldstein [00:16:54]:
Oh, wow. So it was a very quiet act that you kinda tiptoed out, said bye. Yeah. And you

Alex Standiford [00:16:59]:
went on it

Seth Goldstein [00:16:59]:
in the merry way. That’s awesome. Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:17:01]:
We we had a conversation about it. And and, so, yeah, I I I ended up leaving and then started, building, developing and getting more clients who can actually, you know, do you know, and started outsourcing some some of the different things and Yeah.

Seth Goldstein [00:17:18]:
Absolutely.

Alex Standiford [00:17:18]:
And all that stuff. So, yeah, it’s been it’s been exciting. It’s been like, that and that’s kinda what I mean by, like, the last couple months have just been crazy.

Seth Goldstein [00:17:25]:
Yeah. I know.

Alex Standiford [00:17:25]:
Because it’s like, I’m I’m I’m I feel like I’ve been fast tracking an entire business in a lot of ways. And I don’t mean like I’m taking shortcuts.

Seth Goldstein [00:17:37]:
Yeah. You can miss the the goofs.

Alex Standiford [00:17:39]:
Right. Yeah. Exactly. And that’s kind of what it feels like. It’s like, I know if if I knew then what I knew now, how would I have done this differently? And I’m just kind of doing those things.

Seth Goldstein [00:17:49]:
Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:17:49]:
And a lot of that is just, 1, getting help faster. And Yeah. Knowing that you need

Seth Goldstein [00:17:54]:
help and then sucking in that having that pride crap is, like Right. I always don’t wanna ask for help. No. Ask

Alex Standiford [00:18:00]:
for help. Yeah. Yeah. No. I’m okay.

Seth Goldstein [00:18:02]:
Because I’m I I might come in version 2 of Goldsmith Media. I had Goldsmith Media at the very beginning, like, in 2,008. Kim was born, got a full time job in corporate America, learned I hated corporate, went back to media. And I’ve learned I’ve learned that, like, look, I can’t do all the everything. I can’t do websites and sales and all that stuff. So I got myself a small team, and that’s what you do. You love and you learn on what you can do and what you can’t do. And, like, you you do what you can do when you hire for the rest.

Alex Standiford [00:18:28]:
Yeah. All you can do is start. You know? Just start. Do the thing. Make the mistakes. I mean, every every owner I know any business owner, any entrepreneur I know, they they almost never say, oh, yeah. I did this thing and I succeeded. Like, there were there were

Seth Goldstein [00:18:41]:
There’s a bunch of fails in the middle. Yeah. For sure. Right. So you so here’s comes the question. So you’ve done the entrepreneurial journey. You’ve done the corporate world. You’ve done the side hustle thing.

Seth Goldstein [00:18:51]:
You’ve literally done every possible way of doing things, like, literally. You’ve built a product business. You built now you go back to the agency. What’s the best thing about being an entrepreneur versus being an entrepreneur or a side hustlepreneur or whatever you wanna call that stuff? I

Alex Standiford [00:19:09]:
I find it to be really thrilling to be to to have real stakes. I don’t know how else to put it. Like Yeah. Like, there there’s potential. There’s there’s, you know, I just see the potential and the opportunity in what I’m doing, and it’s just really exciting and fun to get to, like, think through that and do that and and and have control over how it all works. It’s all Yeah. All of that. Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:19:39]:
Right. And that’s awesome. I love that. Yeah. I love and that’s exactly and and if you were gonna ask me the things I don’t like, it would literally be the exact same answer.

Seth Goldstein [00:19:47]:
That was an excellent question. It’s it’s all new.

Alex Standiford [00:19:49]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s the same exact problem. It’s it’s, you know, and but I what I’m one of the big things that I told myself is that the first time I ever did it, people were always like, oh, yeah. You get to be your own boss, and that’s great. It’s not always And that and, well, here’s the well, the problem. It is it is great to get to be your own boss if you’re a good boss. Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:20:09]:
You know what I mean?

Seth Goldstein [00:20:10]:
But that’s how that’s yourself.

Alex Standiford [00:20:12]:
Yeah. Yes. That’s that’s the tricky part is, like, you you know, like, okay. You can be your own boss, but are you gonna be a better boss than your boss at your current job? You know what I mean? Can you do that? Like yeah. Right. I also I also find that just having, you know, the advice is people always talk about, like, having a nest egg of money Yeah. In your account before you make the jump helps. I would say that that is that’s always seen as advice.

Alex Standiford [00:20:44]:
I think that that is, like, now knowing what I know now is, like, it’s night and day. Because my first business I ran, I I started it because I was just getting started in my career as a web developer. Mhmm. And I didn’t have the experience

Seth Goldstein [00:20:57]:
to get the job. Okay? Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:20:59]:
Yes.

Seth Goldstein [00:20:59]:
Yes. Come here.

Alex Standiford [00:21:00]:
I didn’t have any nobody would hire me, so I hired myself. Right? But I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have any income. My bank account was basically 0. Mhmm. And my first client was literally my aunt. You know what I mean? Because she happened to have she was a soft she’s a software person. Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:21:14]:
And she’s like, my orthodontist needs a website. You know? So, like, it was literally that. You know? Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, I I it was stressful and scary, and I was forced to be reactionary and all that stuff. And then this time around, like, I’m not, like, by any stretch of the imagination rolling and dough or anything like that, but, like, I’m not in a super runway.

Seth Goldstein [00:21:34]:
You have your product out there. Go go daddy savings a little bit, which I’m sure those kids will eat through in a heartbeat.

Alex Standiford [00:21:40]:
No. They can’t have that. They can’t touch it. They don’t know it exists.

Seth Goldstein [00:21:43]:
Oh, shit. Don’t don’t listen to that.

Alex Standiford [00:21:45]:
Yeah.

Seth Goldstein [00:21:46]:
Rich. Yeah. Exactly.

Alex Standiford [00:21:47]:
But yeah.

Seth Goldstein [00:21:47]:
It’s not it’s good to have a little bit of a runway. Yes. You’re gonna trip. You’re gonna stumble, and it’s gonna be like, okay. You know, servers might go down, god forbid, one day. You have to, like, ramp things up by a different servers. Like like, that kind of stuff. Like, unforeseen issues.

Alex Standiford [00:22:02]:
Yeah. And it’s even it’s even kinda, like, bigger than that. Even and and, like, I don’t even mean bigger, but I mean, like, a little more existential in a lot of ways where it’s like, okay. I have I have Siren. I have Novatorius, the agency side. I have all these pieces. I have all this stuff. Thank you.

Alex Standiford [00:22:17]:
I have all these pieces, and now it’s like, okay. So I’m doing these things now. I have these services. I have these skills. I have these resources. Yeah. And I have this much time to figure out how to utilize that to the best of my abilities. Right? So just just with that, it allow it it just really changes how I, one, how I approach outsourcing, who I’m outsourcing to, the conversations that I’m having, the people who I’m talking to, the questions I’m asking, and things like that.

Alex Standiford [00:22:44]:
Just that little bit of runway is just giving me enough to, like, okay. I have enough room. I have enough space to start developing the business to be able to actually work in a more sustainable way than it was before. Because for me Absolutely. Biggest my biggest problem in my first version of my business was I was very much feast or famine because I couldn’t afford to outsource. So I would sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell.

Seth Goldstein [00:23:09]:
And you’d be like, go for it.

Alex Standiford [00:23:10]:
I gotta

Seth Goldstein [00:23:10]:
do do do do do do. I gotta

Alex Standiford [00:23:12]:
now I gotta fulfill all the promises I just made. Exactly. And then I do do do do do. And guess what I’m not doing during that time is selling. I’m not taking meetings. I’m not taking calls because I’m too busy doing the

Seth Goldstein [00:23:23]:
work. Exactly.

Alex Standiford [00:23:24]:
So so yeah. So and and it was almost still. Like Mhmm. Right. Exactly. So the problem I’d run into and I there are people who can do this. There are people who have the self control and the ability to maintain their calendar and maintain their things Super good stuff. And, like, I I am that is not a strength of mine.

Alex Standiford [00:23:39]:
It is something I’m working on. It is something I’m trying to do better. But, like, that is not something I’ve been historically great at. So, so what I would

Seth Goldstein [00:23:48]:
do battle.

Alex Standiford [00:23:49]:
Yeah. Right. Yeah. That’s that’s fair. So but what I would do is I would sell like crazy when everybody got new fresh budgets in January. Right? And I’d be booked up. And then by summer, I would have I’d be out of work, and I’d have no work, no prospects. And it’d be months before I’d pick up anything.

Seth Goldstein [00:24:06]:
Stupid. You you start thinking about stupid. Picking out a job. Exactly.

Alex Standiford [00:24:09]:
Yeah. Yeah. I guess so. That’s been that’s been a lot of that’s been a that that is the big thing that I’m trying to, like, avoid this time. It’s, like, trying to avoid that feast or famine. And I don’t wanna put myself back in the same patterns as what I did before. I wanna be a better leader. I wanna be a better, like, steward of my code.

Alex Standiford [00:24:26]:
I wanna, like

Seth Goldstein [00:24:27]:
Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:24:27]:
You know? And and so so there’s been a lot of that. And, you know, kinda like double dipping in regards to, like, training people training developers with client with client work. Right? Teaching them how the Novatorius methods, the, you know, what I call nomadic approach to development and stuff like that and how all that works and developing that and documenting that and educating that.

Seth Goldstein [00:24:52]:
Documenting you were there to document this up. Yeah. I can’t all be

Alex Standiford [00:24:55]:
able to do that. So then I can take those developers, and if they like working with me and they wanna continue working with me, to invite them to actually work on Siren itself because they have now been educated on how to do

Seth Goldstein [00:25:06]:
it things done.

Alex Standiford [00:25:07]:
On how I want it done. Right. Exactly. So then now if they want to, they can now start to work on Siren with me so that I can stay focused on the marketing and the sales. I can review the code and make sure things are working, but I’m I’m kind of trying to keep I’m I since day 1, I told myself Which

Seth Goldstein [00:25:23]:
is what I’ve done with close to me is that I’ve been like, I’m the project project manager. I’m I’m so far detached, unfortunately, now that I’m now doing a website myself Yeah. For a client. And I’m like, oh my god. I gotta I gotta let this happen again. I gotta make sure I’m a little bit more involved than I was.

Alex Standiford [00:25:39]:
Yeah. I get that. So I that’s that’s kind of where I’ve been.

Seth Goldstein [00:25:42]:
Balance kind of thing.

Alex Standiford [00:25:43]:
Yes. For sure. And for me, that’s coming in the form of reviewing the pull requests for the code. So

Seth Goldstein [00:25:48]:
Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:25:48]:
The process that I’m doing, I’ve got this, I have this really interesting, code driven discovery process that I’ve been working on where, the code is being written, but instead of completely fleshing out and building everything, you build out the classes for the code, and then you add comments to the code with to dos. And then whenever that gets merged, all of those to dos automatically get added to the correct list, inside of my task management system.

Seth Goldstein [00:26:19]:
Well, that’s fantastic. That is key. Freaking task. I love it.

Alex Standiford [00:26:23]:
Yeah. So so then so now what happens is as the project progresses, every time there’s pull so then after you do the classes, then you’re able to do it again with the methods. So you you you flesh out what methods need to exist, what they need to return, what they need to accept, and you add another you add to dos for all those. And then you then after that, all those tasks, you work on each individual method, do pull requests. But, like, as you’re going, what’s cool is, like, if there’s a pull request and there’s something that you notice while you’re in there, while you’re working on something, instead of just fixing it there. Because developers, they we want to. That’s what we wanna do is because it’s like, I’m gonna forget. I don’t wanna go through adding this to the system, blah blah blah.

Alex Standiford [00:26:59]:
So they just so now I just tell them, just add it to do.

Seth Goldstein [00:27:02]:
Add it to do and get it done later. Exactly.

Alex Standiford [00:27:04]:
And when it gets merged, it’ll get added to the system. We’ll add to the backlog. So so you’re not breaking that context or any of that stuff. So, like It’s

Seth Goldstein [00:27:11]:
commenting is key.

Alex Standiford [00:27:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So that’s been most That’s been really cool.

Seth Goldstein [00:27:15]:
What is the most important thing we carry with you all the time?

Alex Standiford [00:27:19]:
Oh, I think, really, for me, personally, it’s it’s to maintain my my, my level of burnout. That is something that I I struggle with. So, like, yeah, so, like, it’s it’s always people always think about it as, like, a a binary thing. Like, either you’re burnout or you’re not.

Seth Goldstein [00:27:38]:
1 or 0. 1 or 0.

Alex Standiford [00:27:39]:
And I don’t think I don’t think of it like that. I think of it as, like, a scale. Like so I’m just kinda, like, doing about another thing that I’m just yeah. I’m doing a better job of paying attention to how I feel from a day to day basis, how tired

Seth Goldstein [00:27:50]:
I am. Go play with the dog.

Alex Standiford [00:27:51]:
Go Yeah.

Seth Goldstein [00:27:52]:
Walk for a walk with the wife.

Alex Standiford [00:27:53]:
Go for a walk. Yeah. And that’s been a big thing. It’s like,

Seth Goldstein [00:27:56]:
Monday, like don’t go to the coffee shop. She needs scenery.

Alex Standiford [00:27:59]:
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. A big one I’ve been doing a lot of is has been just just simply going on a walk, like you said. And with my wife, I I don’t like to do it alone. So I’ll go on walks. I play disc golf, on Tuesdays and on 10 days. Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:28:14]:
And I just I just it sounds silly, and it sounds so obvious, but, like, that is not something I historically ever did well. It’s Again, bad thoughts.

Seth Goldstein [00:28:21]:
Something that for yourself when you’re saying it’s breaded bedded and stuff. So that’s great.

Alex Standiford [00:28:26]:
Right. So, like, a lot of it has been, like, I have to look at it that way Mhmm. Where it’s like, I because what that does by looking at it as a a, spectrum, like you said,

Seth Goldstein [00:28:37]:
of

Alex Standiford [00:28:37]:
burnout and, like, making sure that that that thinking of that as, like, an actual measurable thing that I need to maintain as, like, as importantly as my own bank account or other things like that. It’s a bucket thing. Yeah. The bucket It’s a bucket. Yeah. Totally. Off. Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:28:51]:
Totally.

Seth Goldstein [00:28:52]:
So Allowing all analogies in in one fell swoop.

Alex Standiford [00:28:54]:
Right? Yeah. Totally. I got them all. So, like, I think I find myself thinking about that kind of stuff a lot. And I think all of that kind of plays back into what I was saying earlier about being a good boss. I don’t mean just a boss for other people, but I mean for myself. Like often things. Yes.

Alex Standiford [00:29:08]:
Exactly. Exactly. So as a as a business owner, you know, it all falls on you. And I got into this in the first place because I wanted to be my own boss. That was the promise. I love that idea. I love I love the word freelance. It’s got the word lance in it, and the origin of it even is about, you know, mercenaries who would freely be, freelances that you could just hire to, like, do that.

Alex Standiford [00:29:29]:
Everything about it is so cool. I always loved it, and I always wanted to be a part of it. So, like, why am I but then I got so focused on making the business work that I stopped actually, like

Seth Goldstein [00:29:40]:
Lansing.

Alex Standiford [00:29:42]:
Well, being a good boss, just taking care of myself. And Absolutely. So, like, you know, I’ve been there’s been a lot of this time in particularly just thinking about that, and a lot of that comes down to outsourcing more. And in order to be able to outsource more, I need to have money. So I need to have that that road that that runway that we talked about. So, like, all of it, you can see how it all kinda, like, stacks up. Like, okay. Because I have this runway, not you know, it’s not huge, but it’s enough that if I move quickly and I’m swift as I’ve been, I can make it work.

Alex Standiford [00:30:12]:
Right? If I have this runway, I can now hire the people and give myself the things I need to be able to run my own business.

Seth Goldstein [00:30:18]:
Because you’re not gonna if you’re if you’re burned out, you’re not doing anyone any help.

Alex Standiford [00:30:22]:
Right. Exactly. Good. So Yeah. Yeah. Totally. So then so then I’m able to stop myself from being burned out so that I’m able to actually have enough time to take

Seth Goldstein [00:30:30]:
Love it.

Alex Standiford [00:30:31]:
Take walks and take care of myself and do those things. So, like, that’s been a lot of the reason why I’ve moved so fast in the last 2 months has been because I’ve been aware of how fast I know I’m gonna burn myself out. And I know that if I didn’t stay ahead of it, I was gonna just crush myself in the responsibility of all of this, and I wouldn’t come out of it okay. So I I told myself I was like We’re

Seth Goldstein [00:30:53]:
glad you’re okay.

Alex Standiford [00:30:54]:
Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate

Seth Goldstein [00:30:55]:
that. Alex is a happy life.

Alex Standiford [00:30:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So I I made a I made a point to, like, move quick, do the thing fast because I wanted to make sure that I was able to get myself out of overworking myself as fast as I could. Absolutely. So that’s been that’s been a lot of what the last 2 months has looked like. It’s been like, okay. I’m drowning.

Alex Standiford [00:31:14]:
I’m going to continue to drown. If I don’t do something about this, I need to make sure that that doesn’t and fixing it. And, I’m I’m this I’m actually just now starting to really come out of that. I’m still pretty I’m still pretty overwhelmed, and there’s still a lot of stuff going on. But, I’m I’m at a I’m at a relatively healthy level. I feel healthy. I feel good. I’m I’m able to, like I’m taking I feel like I’m taking care of myself.

Alex Standiford [00:31:37]:
I’m tired. I’m definitely so tired, and I’m definitely, there’s definitely more on my list than, I can personally do.

Seth Goldstein [00:31:45]:
Yeah.

Alex Standiford [00:31:46]:
But but every day but I see that list shrinking. It’s not growing. So I’m starting to see, like, the the the signs that there’s a velocity in all the things that I’m doing and the progress that I’m making. And Love it, man. So yeah.

Seth Goldstein [00:32:00]:
It was where do people find you online? I mean, they’re they think you’re prolific on Mastodon in one shape or another. I know. You have w w w in your app after the at, and it’s kinda hard to find

Alex Standiford [00:32:11]:
out sometimes. So we gotta find out crazy. That’s a whole that’s a yeah. Speaking of everyone. Yeah. So, you can you can find me a Mastodon. So it’s just, Alex at

Seth Goldstein [00:32:21]:
What’s the what in the put it in the show notes. It’s Alex

Alex Standiford [00:32:24]:
at dot com. Yep. He’s

Seth Goldstein [00:32:25]:
on mastodon. You’re over the web.

Alex Standiford [00:32:27]:
Yep. I’m on hang out a lot

Seth Goldstein [00:32:29]:
is on there. Right? Because you like Yep.

Alex Standiford [00:32:30]:
That’s that’s my preferred spot for sure. That’s that’s,

Seth Goldstein [00:32:33]:
Mastermind and heart.

Alex Standiford [00:32:35]:
Yep. Yep. A, a a distant second, is x. I’m on there too, at Alex Danford, but, I definitely am with you. I prefer Mastodon.

Seth Goldstein [00:32:44]:
I can’t because I go to x only with the WordPress drama. I go there and pee. Yeah. I don’t write anything on there. I’m like, I can’t. It just can’t. It makes me I feel like I take a shower afterwards.

Alex Standiford [00:32:54]:
Yeah. I get that. I, so I’ve been on there a lot, just mostly because, a lot of conversations related to Siren and stuff like that happens there. So I’ve been staying there because of that. But then, of course, alexdandifer.com, my personal website. I publish everything through my site first. So Yes. If if, you know, if you’re not on Mastodon and you’re not on x or anything like that and you wanna connect with me, go there.

Alex Standiford [00:33:18]:
Everything. I publish everything on there through there. You can add comments to everything. You can talk to me on there.

Seth Goldstein [00:33:23]:
It’s so good.

Alex Standiford [00:33:24]:
Yeah. You can send me an email.

Seth Goldstein [00:33:25]:
Yeah. But

Alex Standiford [00:33:25]:
yeah. Yeah. I I, definitely leaned into the car.

Seth Goldstein [00:33:28]:
Exactly. So awesome. Well, Alice, this has been so much fun. I’m so glad we got to do this. We let’s not be a strangers, and guess what? We’ll see everyone next week because I’m not crazy.

Alex Standiford [00:33:40]:
Oh, how about that? Yeah. No problem. His pleasure’s all mine. Thank you.

Intro Voice Guy [00:33:45]:
That was a great show. If you’re enjoying Entrepreneur’s Enigma, please consider giving us a review in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps us reach new listeners. If you like Entrepreneur’s Enigma, consider the other shows on the Marketing Podcast Network at marketingpodcast.net.

Seth Goldstein [00:34:19]:
Goldstein Media hopes you have enjoyed this episode.