AMAMUS : WE LOVE cutting the grass… it symbolises the summer arriving in earnest, a new lease of life in both the garden and ourselves.

Previous situations saw us trapped in dark office spaces throughout the week, chained to desks with terrible postural habits and frustrated by having to endure the wrong kinds of stress.

NOW: We work hard, relax well and control the stresses.

We’re enjoying having fewer clients, YES, fewer clients, that was the plan at the end of last year. It’s working.

The secret has been; having BETTER clients, cutting the time wasters, the greedy and the delusional.

This month will see us launching a great new food based brand for an Edinburgh client, a web site for an awesome arts venue in Aberdeenshire, another 55 inch multi-touch screen will be deployed and installed, this time, at Paris Air show and ongoing global awareness and uptake of QikServe® continues.

Busy times but not too busy.

Currently listening to an inspiring audio book by a chap called Oliver Burkeman, his book:

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking has been a great companion on recent travels in and around Scotland.

Get away from the screen, think more, play more… more importantly, move more.

In this past few weeks; Prague was cold but awe inspiring and Hamburg was vast and welcoming.

Now, what does the summer hold for us? Who really knows yet.

Mindfullness is at the forefront, health and fitness is a serious focus and success is inevitable. (good old hard work is to thank for that)

Here at Coffee Cottage, we’re looking forward to a summer of letting the good stuff happen, cutting off from the stresses of work at the appropriate times and enjoying the company of great friends, family and even clients (who become friends anyway!)

Our workload is being scrutinised in order to prioritise lifestyle over daily slog! We feel like we’ve been stuck in the Cat Race (YES CAT!… it’s like herding cats with clients sometimes) for the past wee while.

So, we’re picking the few that we WANT to work with and no longer saying YES to everyone. This empowering approach is rewarding us even more with a new lease of life and a better work/life balance.

You should all try it.

Don’t like what you are doing? Get the F**K out!

Now, off you go and have a great weekend.

Colin & the Coffee With A Lid Team

Please have a look at Smiling Mind, meditation and mindfullness is not reserved for the Hippies™

The App on iPhone is inspiring and the design is breathtaking. Respect due.

Have a Smiling Mind all (go visit these inspiring people in Australia)

http://smilingmind.com.au/

We’re having a rather splendid year so far, running around a whole lot… but fun all the same.

We head off to Prague on a fact-finding mission for 4 days then return to East Lothian for a day before heading to Hamburg to help set up a rather humungous 55 inch LED touch screen set up for a very cool client.

Once back, we have a very busy April lined up with a few web sites going live here in Scotland as well as some interesting ‘touch’ technologies being looked at!

QikServe® is now a registered trademark ! Yet more progress and some LARGE news very soon regarding the App & where you may find it appearing soon.
Such a swift and intriguing journey is being had with the QikServe® team this year.

We’re happy to have sponsored the Society Of Scottish Artists by donating the build and design of their shiny new web site.
Artists can now have their own promo/biog/gallery page and the visibility of the society is now growing fast online.

Julia Douglas has worked painstakingly as both the administrator for the SSA as well as WordPress Queen for Coffee With A Lid.

Go visit : http://www.s-s-a.org/

And finally…

Saw a postcard that said this last week : “Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life“.

So true…

A good friend also said to me : “be busy but for it not to matter“.

Now… this is even more relevant to us. Don’t go letting other people’s stress get in the way of your quiet.
We’ve made some serious changes and life is so much more rewarding.

That is all.

Colin, Coffee Chief

Why… we are so damn busy, we can’t believe it.

Apologies if this post ends up sounding ‘saft’ or ‘egotistical’ but you know what! We don’t give a FROCK!

Being busy with the right clients, the right kind of work with the best outcomes and achievements is a privilege.

We’ve worked hard for this privilege and intend to continue doing so throughout 2013.

I suppose what we’re trying to say is thanks, show some gratitude for our good fortune and celebrate knowing some very awesome people.

Change

Media work (digital, design, web dev etc etc) traditionally comes with the ‘what evening? or ‘what weekend’ tag as well as the ‘it’s OK… we’ll pay you when our accounts team come back from their procrastination trip’ one.

We swore that this year we would sack the time-wasters, forget about (but not forgive) the f**kwits, and move forward with a new vigour and energy.

Colin has been going through the grizzly bear wellness plan with Ash Boddy at Boddy Language in sunny Leith.

A new lease of life has been found as well as vastly improved health, spiritual wealth and a more productive work/life balance.

As their site says :

This is not a workout, a diet or a cult.

It’s a plan to kickstart your health.

It is certainly working!

Go visit them… Ash & Rachel could help you change your lives.

http://www.boddylanguage.com/

OK, time to go and enjoy a well deserved weekend (after the Friday gym session, mind).

‘Hope you all have a great weekend.

Kat Slaters

 Pictured above, our other hero: Nacho Libre

We promised ourselves that 2013 would be a year of no stress, less jobs, and that we’d hang out with a higher calibre of client.

It was also a prerequisite that we clean out the time wasters from our diaries and address books and embark on a year of work that we enjoy as well as spending time with people whom we actually like.

Well… It has worked. Within only a few weeks of 2013, we defined our goals, proceeded to set them… and now we are enjoying the exercise of carrying out the work for our lovely wee handful of clients.
Holidays WILL be in abundance this year, a load more smiles and a lot of uncontrollable giggling.

Last night saw us at the art school in Edinburgh to witness a talk by Vaughan Oliver.

His artwork features highly in my musical and artistic history. From The Pixies, to The Breeders, This Mortal Coil and Heidi Berry.

What a pleasure to hear about his journey and be reminded of his illuminating and inspiring work. He is a VERY funny man too…

Please go visit his site here: http://www.vaughanoliver.co.uk/

Thanks go to the team at Long Lunch for organising this.

We shot & Edited this for them over a few weeks in Glasgow.

Paul Riley from Still Game, Billy Boyd & John Barrowman all helped by making appearances alongside the Swingcats.

All the very best from all at Coffee Cottage

http://www.dogstrust.org.uk/

Listening to this inspiring book over a few days on car journeys too and from the office and meetings around Scotland, really got us thinking about priorities and the way people in the UK are  force fed a pretty lame work ethic.

A lot of what Jason & David have written in their book rings very true to our philosophy but maybe we were a little afraid to vocalise it!

We HATE ‘overtime martyrs‘ (…and have known a few! Fannies!)

Despise people who call themselves entrepreneurs.

and

Totally agree with ‘Interruption is the enemy of productivity‘

The basic principle of this book is to trust your gut feeling, get the hell on with it and DON’T listen the consultants.

Seth Godin says – ‘Ignore This Book at Your Peril’

He may be correct

This post started out with me trying to think of the best way to both plug and thank 37 Signals for providing Basecamp & Highrise.

Their book says it all… I’d suggest that you listen to or read REWORK by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson and then start using Basecamp and see how quickly you sign up for good.

Our wee company runs on these two ‘digital fuels’ and we are forever grateful (and more than happy to pay the very reasonable monthly fees).

Link here to 37 Signals

Link here for the book Amazon Kindle

We hope you filed on time, paid on time and are NOT filled with feelings of anxiety, stress or that sinking sensation! (that used to be us you know…. but not now!)

Here at Coffee Towers, we pride ourselves in actually enjoying doing our accounts now.
We have a great accountant, Stu Fordwood (The Kilted Accountant) who specialises in taking care of the ‘Wee Guy’ and he keeps us firmly on the right track with personal tax issues, corporation tax and VAT. (Not to mention keeping us well grounded in matters of spending.)

On top of this great relationship, we use an awesome online accounts tool called FreeAgent.
As it says on their front page, “Accounting software, simplified”.

I discovered this solution while part of a busy but very inefficient office a few years back. All the other solutions were over complicated and most of the team couldn’t  get their heads around them… FreeAgent looked the business. FreeAgent IS THE BUSINESS! Our 30 day trial was only actually a 30 min trial. We signed up that day.

So, when I set up Coffee… the first thing we did (after alerting the Tax office of our existence) was sign up to FreeAgent and hit the ground running knowing that we weren’t getting in an accounts tangle from day 1.

You’ve probably guessed by now which accounting tool we absolutely LOVE here at Coffee… I only repeat myself as I feel every small business, freelancer & lonesome trader should give it a go and believe our wee success story. An Edinburgh based company to boot. We hope they grow far.

So, all the very best for this Tax Year to one and all.

Coming soon… Colin gushes unreservedly about Basecamp and Highrise from 37 Signals.

Best Film : Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom

Runner-up : Brave

Best Album : Baxter Dury: ‘Happy Soup’
(although a 2012 release, we discovered this in Lisbon while on a break. Our 2012 go-to album)

Runner-up : David Byrne & St Vincent : ‘Love This Giant’

Most Inspiring Happening : Felix Baumgartner jumping into the record books when he plunged to Earth from a balloon floating on the edge of space

Runner -up : Olympics were pretty awesome

Best iPad App : Paper by 53 We use this app for meetings, workshops, fun and artwork. AWESOME

Runner -up : Has to be Spotify! Great companion on travels and in the kitchen

Best iPhone App : Tomorrow HD The to do list that is just that. Very clever

Runners -up : BBC iPlayer Radio Clever buggers! and Mobile Agent for FreeAgent. Productivity enhanced sevenfold.

So, just a short summary of the Coffee With A Lid Digital Awards 2012

We look forward to being inspired (and inspiring) in 2013

We had a fabulous break and are back at it with a vengeance!

A shoot with the Tree Of Knowledge team and some filming at Glasgow’s SECC made our first day back a rather interesting one.

Looking forward to the mayhem, in earnest, starting next week.

Be prosperous and have a great year.