Author: Daniel and Lucila Gurtner

Daniel started a new consulting gig with a platform called Hopps. This is where small businesses who need help with their website, online shop, online presence, or social media etc. can have a consulting session with an expert in the field that they need help in and don’t have to hire an employee or freelancer for more than just the task at hand.

Sessions can run anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, depending on the client’s needs… sometimes there’s a whole list of things!

Hopps describe themselves as the world’s first on-screen help platform. To get help with website troubleshooting, anything WordPress, anything Shopify, or if you need to translate something from or to German, GO TO DANIEL’s PROFILE to get started!

This year, Daniel had the chance and availability to create some Ugly Christmas Sweaters before Christmas is over. Over the last few years, this as been something we wanted to create but could never quite get around to working on before December. Well, this year, one of our distributors, Printful, offered a selection of designs specifically composed for custom creating Ugly Christmas Sweaters. With these compositions there didn’t seem to be any excuse left for not getting some designs into the Gift Shop before December. Take a look…

Today, Daniel decided to go swimming every day (or at least as many days in a row as possible) to start losing weight through High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). What’s nice is that it’s gentle on the joints. This is what some people do in Switzerland – you don’t notice the cold or “bad” weather as much if you stick to swimming every day because the temperature of the water doesn’t change that much from one day to the next, even if you’re swimming in a river or a lake.

The nice thing is that our apartment complex has a community pool and jacuzzi so the current idea is to warm up doing stretches and sit in the jacuzzi for about 5 minutes. Then jump in the pool (like ripping a band aid off!) and swim laps for 1-2 minutes. Repeat jacuzzi and laps every 1-2 minutes to get 5 repetitions then relax in the jacuzzi for another 10-15 minutes before taking a cold show to rinse off the chlorine.

You can find updates on his Daniel’s YouTube Channel and Daniel’s Weight Loss Journey page. This is the first post so we don’t know yet whether we’ll be posting more updates here or on YouTube… Just keep checking both 😀

While I can build a Content Management System (CMS) from scratch I choose not to because there are so many out there already. There are usually multiple solutions to a problem and it’s the same way with CMSs; there are usually several good options to choose from. I’m not a big fan of reinventing the wheel. If something is not working the way it was intended, let’s find the solutions to the problems at hand. That’s also how I see open source – someone has a great idea and the community can help turn it into something, even make it better, and collaborate on a problem to come up with the best solution. You can’t know all the answers but you can work on knowing where to find them, which people to talk to, and be humble enough to ask for help.

Excellence is the journey of striving to be the best version of myself. It’s not about finding a way to do the bare minimum by comparing to what others are doing but rather looking inward and finding the potential that’s there and working toward reaching it to its fullest. Amazingly, when everyone excels, everyone wins. There are no losers when everyone gives it their all.

To the best of my ability, I live with an attitude of gratitude for the things I have, and without complaining about the things I don’t. The same goes with circumstances; I may not be able to control them, but I control how I respond. I control whether I see myself as a victim or as an overcomer. I control whether a situation pulls me down or becomes a stepping stone in my life, whether to give up or to live a life of excellence. And excellence is not a thing I can do one time and then I have it. No. Excellence is a way of life, something to continually be with my whole being.

The Tesla company, for example, has this way of excellence that I’ve observed from the outside. Starting with the design, everything is well thought out, every detail looks like someone went out of their way to put it in the exact right spot. And even with the release of new models, from what I’ve read, releases are sometimes delayed because of an update being added to them. Delaying the release of a product so that a better version of it will go to the customer, if this is really true, is evidence of excellence. I want to be seen by those around me that way too… that I would go out of my way to make something better, better than the minimum, better than my initial goal, so that those on the receiving end have a better version. Excellence means that those around me experience the best version of myself.

~ Daniel Gurtner

Not sure if we share this before but we started using Fetch Rewards sometime last year. Fetch Rewards is basically an app where you can take snap a picture of your receipt, and depending on what you bought, you get varying amounts of points.

At the very lowest, you receive 25 points for a receipt. Well, that’s after you you sign up and snap your first few receipts. In fact, if you want to try it, we recommend starting on a day that you will likely have more receipts, like on grocery shopping day, because our experience has shown that Fetch Rewards gives more points right at the beginning.

Also, if you use our referral link here, you’ll receive somewhere around 2000-4000 (during special promotions, they increase the amount) points as a bonus when you scan your first receipt. To put that in perspective, 1000 points = $1 at least 99% of the time. And most rewards start at around $3-5 gift cards (except Walmart who’s in the < 1% that make you work more for your rewards). So you could potentially get a $3-5 Amazon Gift Card right on your first day!

So, turn your receipts into gift cards with Fetch Rewards. Just click THIS LINK and get 2,000 points when you snap your first receipt. You can also download the app first and use our promo code, HWAWGK, which will give you the 2000 points as well, once you scan your first receipt.

We have so far been able to receive over $100 in rewards from Amazon, Domino’s Pizza and Starbucks!