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Let The Games Begin

by Em Are · Aug 2, 2016

No, not the Olympic Games. The Minimalist Games! A different type of game, where you win even if you don’t come in first.

The brainchild of The Minimalists – Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus – this exercise in jettisoning excess stuff is just what I need at this point in my quest for living a more meaningful and stress-free life. Carol and I are doing this together, so that means by the end of the month, together, we will have reduced our possessions by almost 1,000 items. ^{*Show my work.} That sounds incredible!

As I write this we are on day two of #MinsGame. Carol has already done away with her two items for today – a pair of unworn and forgotten shoes (not quite sure if that should count as one pair or two shoes, but I’m trying to check my severe anal-retentiveness at the door for this). We both did our due diligence yesterday, day 1.

Matt

Carol

If you are so inclined, follow along as we try to regularly record our progress on Instagram.

I have been dancing around the edges of a more simplistic lifestyle for a while now, partially out of necessity, but more out of a desire to better appreciate things around me. The book, Essentialism – The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown, which I first read back in early 2014, got me hooked on the path to create a lifestyle of intention, focus, and purpose; devoid of excessive noise, stress inducing clutter and disruptive distraction.

As a solopreneur, by definition I work by myself, and full expect to remain so. I do interact with clients via calls, both voice and video, and lots of email. Since my clients are global (yes, I can say that now), I don’t do much in the way of face to face meetings. Regular monthly WordPress and Computer Society meetups keep me in touch with the human side of being a remote website developer. Without commuting and less meetings there’s more time to spend in the office. I need to find ways to decompress when its time to move away from the keyboard.

My wife and I are empty-nesters, our youngest having moved out about 17 months ago, so simplifying things is high priority. I really want to be able to enjoy this new stage of life. Simple life, reduced stress, more quality time, time to learn new things – I think this is a good point to find these things.

We had a yard sale about a month ago. It was wildly successful and enabled us to stuff our “minimalism fund jar” with lots of cash (mostly $1s, but hey, every dollar counts). More importantly, we were able to move physical “stuff” out of our house and onto others who could love it and re-purpose it for a new use. I don’t want to fill up my local landfill with my past, but rather move it along its life-cycle.

Our stuff has had a purpose here, in our house, and now its time for a new purpose, with someone else.

Many of the books I’ve read and bloggers I follow talk about surrounding yourself only with things that bring you joy – whether they be new things, or well used things – they should make you happy to see them, or at the very least, not bring about pangs of “I need to do something with that thing”.

Reduce the clutter and reduce the stress. That’s our goal. By the end of this month, if all goes as planned and we fully participate in our 31-day #MinsGame, the clutter will be reduced by 992 clutter-contributors. I’ll be real happy with that.

Gotta start somewhere …

Work Shown

1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15+16+17+
18+19+20+21+22+23+24+25+26+27+28+29+30+31 =

496 things * 2 people = 992 clutter causers => approx 1,000 items outta here!

Like Clouds in the Sky

by Em Are · Mar 15, 2016

I hit a milestone today. 400 meditation sessions using the Calm app on my iPhone. Not too bad if I do say. That’s over a period of about 20 months or so.

The results?

More patience
Less stress when confronted with, let’s say, life’s frequent challenges
Greater sense of what’s going on around me
Being aware of today; less consumed with tomorrow

These are all good things for me, my family, and my business.

Having the ability of being able to take a step back a bit and breathe usually allows me to insert just enough time between ‘hear’ and ‘react’. That can make all the difference. Not that I was a knee-jerk reactionist before, but as a small business owner I’ve learned that I need to put time between when I first learn of a situation and how I respond to it.

I’m a solo-preneur. I work alone. Many days I have no direct interaction with client and other human beings outside of email and online chats. [Yes, please pity my wife for she gets the brunt of my cooped up desire for person-to-person interaction when she gets home from work most days.] In that environment, I find myself slipping into too much of an inwardly focused reaction template. Meditation has helped me by looking into myself and seeing what is most important. I must be present to what I am exposed to, while at the same time being aware of what the other person is being exposed to.

Meditation is good for my business. Through meditation I have learned to step back, add space and better understand the how’s and why’s of the situation presented to me.

Clients come from every possible perspective, I can see that. I’ve not been in business all that long, but I’m seeing new things every day. It’s all in how I react, how I embrace their needs, and most importantly, how I respond to them.

The more empathy in my response, the more likely that everyone will see the interaction as a successful one. One in which everyone’s concerns are heard, and appropriately responded to. I think that is the crux of small business. Approaching each and every situation in a personal, human manner. Let go of the corporate image, the crafted branding. Respond humanly.

One of the suggestions offered during the guided meditation I use is to “…let outside thoughts float by like clouds in the sky…”.

I find this suggestion helpful throughout the day to stay focused on what is truly important. Try it. Meditation may be just what your business consultant forgot to tell you.

_{Photo Credit: Logan Gorman}

Two Corinthians Walk Into A Bar

by Em Are · Mar 1, 2016

I couldn’t resist. My wife and I have a running joke based on a recent biblical reference flub that came up during the current presidential campaign circus. This past Sunday at church, the second reading was from 1 Corinthians and I looked at my wife and we both kind of snickered a little. Shared moments keep things going I guess.

It’s hard to get back on track when you begin a post tangentially like that. Bear with me. Here goes.

This past Sunday’s reading, from 1 Corinthians 10, ended with the declaration that we are not given more to deal with than we can handle; that the burdens we find ourselves carrying are ones we actually have the strength to bear.

This is most applicable right now. My business is 20 months old this month. Not old by any measure; but still operating. That’s a good thing. I absolutely love what I’m doing. I work with small businesses all the time, both mature small businesses and brand new I-have-an-idea small businesses. They share a number of philosophies, but the one that stands out the most for me is the persistence to move forward, to keep going and make it through whatever challenges they are now facing. They create. They adapt. They believe in themselves.

When I get to work with a small business its typically at a very positive time in their life cycle. For the mature ones, they are at a point where they want to make a change, to try something new, to freshen things up a bit. By ‘things’ I am referring to their website, since that’s what I do.

For the new ones, wow! Talk about positive energy. Ideas, dreams, confusion, fear, excitement, you name it, they are experiencing it. When I work with them, I get to experience this too, to a certain degree. I love funneling a bit of their creativity into their website.

And that’s the point. I get to experience a little of the newness, the excitement, the fear, the dreams, the it’s-time-to-tweak feeling over and over and over again with each new small business client I work with.

I need that. As a small business owner, I go through the ups and downs too. Two months ago I had my best revenue month ever; last month, not even close. Yesterday, one of my small business customers informed me that she had decided to take a break from her business for a while and wouldn’t be needing my services any longer. But you know what? It didn’t feel bad to me.

It’s not like a oh-too-recent time in my life when a corporate ‘leader’ came to me out of the blue and told me that “we’ve decided to go in a different direction and will not be needing your services any longer”.

No, it’s not like that at all. This small business owner was going in a different direction, a direction that was not going to depend on a functioning website, a direction that she needed to take to power through the challenges she was experiencing. I was happy that she was finding her way forward and that I had been a part of her path to this point. She was happy with the work we did together, and I am positive she will be an excellent reference going forward.

Entrepreneurialism, small business ownership, freelancing – whatever it’s called, is all about finding your way through. There are countless books out there on how ‘they’ did it, but it’s how you or I do it that really matters. Find the inner strength. Power ahead.

I firmly believe that I am not given more to handle than I can. I might not know how to handle it at this moment, but my heart tells me that I will learn it, come across it, be shown it, and a direction will be uncovered.

Onward and upward.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah. So two Corinthians walk into a bar, one says . . .

What a Year It Was

by Em Are · Dec 31, 2015

As 2015 comes to a close I find myself looking back on the year it was. There is so much to think about. I debated on putting something like this together, but I decided that if I am to firmly embrace my intention to blog on a regular basis in 2016, I might as well just start now.

I have successfully completed a full year as a self-employed business owner, continuing to pursue a dream many years in the formulation stages. While the realization of the dream was forced into being by a couple of unpleasant external forces, I now feel that I’m in the right place.

My wife, Carol, and I, are slowly embarking on a journey to a minimalist lifestyle; in part due to a greatly compromised personal financial situation, but also, as a means to find that which truly makes us happy together.

As a solopreneur running a WordPress website development and support business, I have developed and expanded a number of personal skillsets this year. Most of these skillsets can be attributed to getting through day-to-day business operations, but others are aimed at increasing my technical skills and market value.

Online classes through Codecademy, Treehouse, and Lynda.com to get deeper into PHP, CSS and Genesis themes
Workshops and multi-session seminar series on Genesis Customizations, SEO Basics, and social media marketing

A related component of skillset development was to push my comfort zone considerably and deliver a number of presentations at some of the technical gatherings I participate in on a regular basis.

3 lightning talks at WordPress Meetups -2 at the Philly Burbs Meetup that meets in 4 different locations outside of Philadelphia, and one at the Philadelphia WordPress Meetup.
Three short presentations for the Social Media Special Interest Group (SIG) at the monthly gathering of the Philadelphia Area Computer Society (pacsnet.org).
Led one full session of the WordPress SIG for PACS.

One of my goals for 2016 is to try and deliver a talk at a regional WordCamp. Yikes. We’ll see how that goes. Okay, LP, it’s out there!

The WordPress support business has grown nicely this year. Word-of-mouth and customer referrals have enabled this segment of my business to grow each month. We’re not talking ‘hockey-stick’ growth, but growth. I’m good with that.

By far, the most satisfactory area of my business is the WordPress website development. I really like to be in a position to help small businesses get moving online, whether its with a brand new website, or an overhaul of an older site. It is very rewarding to talk with a small business owner and help them to put together their ideas for their website. I try to help them answer the hard questions about their website.

Why do you want a website? What will your visitors do on it? What are you trying to get out of the website? How will you know if the website is helping your business?

Cap Web Solutions’ portfolio is growing. Check it out for yourself. My goal is to double the number of websites shown on it in 2016. eCommerce sites comprised the single largest single segment this past year, while church websites, a stated focal point, not so much. I hope to expand this later segment in 2016 through a marketing program aimed at local denominational dioceses. Nothing like demonstrating success in your own back yard I say.

On a personal note, this new life as an empty-nester is different. Our youngest moved out of the house in early February. Now both sons are about about an hour drive – one to the north and one to the west, with about an hour in between the two of them – a rather nice equilateral triangle I might add, or is that a special case of an isosceles triangle? Grocery bills have dropped considerably, but the house has an almost constant state of quiet about it. This is helpful for meditation, but not so much a feeling of family. Working from home only enhances that. Thank goodness for Wegman’s Market Cafe and free wifi!

So that’s it. An overview of 2015. Never done one of these posts to this degree before. It has been, let’s say, therapeutic. Good for the soul.

Onward and upward into 2016.

Stick with me. Let’s do this.

I’m In The Right Place

by Em Are · Dec 23, 2015

I celebrated my birthday yesterday. Another one in the books. It was different somehow. Working as a freelancer, from a home office, gives me plenty of opportunity for quiet reflection, especially at this time of year when business activity seems to slow.

The development projects were all caught up, support issues had been dealt with for the moment, so I had time to read a few of the blogs I follow. There were a number of year-end wrap ups, and a few really good how-to posts. The year-end wraps caught most of my attention. You see, I am coming to the end of my first year as a full-time WordPress developer and small business owner.

In previous years I was able to look back and see how things went as a part-time freelancer. Those two years are marked with an asterisk (*), you know, the indicator to check the footnotes. They had some other form of income, either from a part-time job, or most recently, from another full-time gig that ended abruptly with the Friday-end-of-day-can-you-stop-in-my-office-before-you-leave-im. “We’ve decided to go in a different direction….”. Oh, please, spare me the BS!

While the income as a freelance business owner has no-way come close to the income I earned in corporate America, the intangible benefits have far exceeded my expectations.

Visited my doctor this past week for my 6-month check-in. Blood pressure and that bad cholesterol stuff are both way down. First time in more than 7 years. Now THAT’s an accomplishment to be proud of. I think I can count that as some sort of money in the bank, right?

I categorize that as a symbol of one of the soft benefits of my new chapter. I’m more relaxed, I think, and I have slowed down. I like to think that decisions I make are more thought out and less knee-jerk. I’ve learned to step back from potentially tense situations (aka questionable communications with clients, friends, family) to add space for thinking.

I can’t control how things will turn out. I can’t change things that have occurred. I CAN affect how I react to things right now. I can live in this moment and be present to what I am experiencing and how I react to it.

After all, isn’t that what it’s all about? Being present to the situation we find ourselves in, engaging with it, and making the next right decision on how to proceed with it.

I’m going through the process of looking back on my business year. I think that I have positively impacted a number of small businesses by building new business websites for them, or helping them to maintain their existing small business website. Revenue has definitely increased from the previous year; albeit a little short of where I had projected. Time to re-think marketing and prospecting activities.

I have met a number of awesome people this past year. Some I have been able to teach something to, but many more I have been able to learn from. I attended 5 WordCamps and 12 WordPress meetups. I made presentations three times at meetups and volunteered at the Philly WordCamp. Being the’local guy’ I even helped coordinate a multi-national gathering of #genesiswp folks at the inaugural WordCamp US in Philadelphia earlier this month. Now THAT was cool.

So, as long as I’m willing and able to learn something new, I think I’m in the right place. This place, this moment, right now.

Onward and upward.

I Found Some Peace

by Em Are · Dec 16, 2015

It’s December. It’s Christmas-time. It’s crazy-time. It’s year-end. It’s “i-need-this-today” time.

I get that. I surprised myself. I found peace and comfort within the last 12 hours.

My wife and I made cookies last night. First time in I can’t remember how long that we did that. Have we ever in our 25+ years of marriage? Don’t know. But we did last night. Four, count ’em, 4 different kinds. Just her and I, in the kitchen, for a couple of hours.

Man, it was cool.

And the result? Lots of goodies to try. Sure, some of them didn’t come out quite right. What do expect when you put the two of us in the kitchen together to do one of HER favorite things? I posted a pic of the goodies to our family Google+ hangout. (Believe me, that’s the only way two empty-nesters can stay in touch with two adult sons anymore.)

Their responses to the pic were priceless.

Son #1:

Ok now I’m jealous.

Son #2:

Oh boy…I might have to stop by in the mornin”.

I chuckled to myself this morning while I was sitting at the kitchen counter eating my breakfast and I heard a key in the back door. Son #2 “stopped by to say ‘hi'”. He grabbed some cookies. We had a few minutes of quality conversation and he was off.

I had turned on the lights of the Christmas tree to show Son #2 how good a job his mother had done on the tree this past weekend. After he left, I sat and stared at the tree for a bit. It was simple. One of the simplest ones we have had in a long, long time. Memories of my wife’s mother covered the tree. Good memories.

Man, what a calm feeling.

As I walked to my office this morning (not much effort, only about 75 feet down the driveway), I thought to myself that I had really experienced some wonderful feelings of peace over the past 12 hours.

Not a bad start for December 16.

And Along Comes Something New

by Em Are · Dec 15, 2015

Something New and Different

Something new? Really? Yes, I have done something like this before, but this will be new and different, at leat I think it will. A combination of personal journey, technology, lifestyle simplification and entrepreneurial exploration.

I’m going to put them together, so that I don’t spread myself across too many different platforms. I will continue to add information to my business blog at capwebsolutions.com. That will focus on the business portfolio and the occasional ‘how-to’ for something that I’ve worked my way through successfully. Some of that may spill over onto this space. I’ll have to see how it plays out.

Write It Down

My goal, now out here, is to add something new a few times a week.

I have tried this before, the blogging goal thing, but without writing it down. My head-space mentor, Michael Hyatt, tells me that if the goal doesn’t get written down, it substantially reduces it’s chances of being realized. Check out his podcast. It is well worth your time.

Exploration

I want to explore the opportunities that come along, share those experiences, and hopefully find some like minded souls to walk with me. Along the way I’ll be share to share bits a pieces of myself, as appropriate. After all, if you don’t know who I am why would you even be interested in reading what I have to say.

Regular Blogging

Blogging isn’t only about originality of content; a good deal can be learned from reading someone else’s interpretation or reaction to a piece. You’ll find that here too. I will always add attribution to the original author. It’s only fair.

Technology

I did it. I finally grabbed a domain with my whole name. How ’bout that. A dot co, as in, well, a shortened dot com. It’s real. You WILL be seeing more and more of these in the interwebs. Pay attention. Get in touch with me if you’d like to get one for you. I can help.

With that, let’s do this.

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