I did this because when I first set up the family blog, I didn’t know what to call it, and I had reserved the domain with my name a few months before, so I just figured I’d use it. But it didn’t make much sense, and now that our family is growing larger, it seems most of the topics we post are about the family. So because we’re the “Stauffer Family,” and this site has updates about “Us,” we’re now at our new .us domain.

So if, for any reason, you have this site bookmarked, please update it to:

WWW.STAUFFERFAMILY.US

Thanks!

–Ron

Ron Starts A New Brand

In fall of last year (2009), I left the company I was working for, to brand myself and work for my own company (four by five photo and design, LLC). So I took my part-time company I’d had for a few years and went fulltime. Boy, building a business sure is hard work! I had no idea how tough it would be—not doing the actual work of my business, but working to build the business. That’s the really hard part.

Late nights, working 7 days a week, staying up until 3am, chugging obscene amounts of coffee and blasting loud music at immoral times of day… I didn’t think it would ever come to an end. But alas, it finally has. Not necessarily because we’ve struck gold, but simply out of necessity. We found out earlier this year that we’re pregnant again. That puts us at four kids. And a home. And two cars. And we’re tired, broke, and starting a new business… not a recipe for success.

So around Valentine’s Day 2010, I decided I would try to make a clean break, and sort of start over, in a sense. So as of June 1st,  I’ve started a new division of my company dedicated to only building websites: “Ronswebsites.com.” Kind of an arbitrary “clean break,” but needed nonetheless. I’ve stopped hawking any skills I may have for photography, graphic design and print work, and I’m only focusing on building websites. And starting something “new” offers me the opportunity to set new rules.

Last fall, when I took my company full-time, I went out and interviewed several vendors form different industries: photography, graphic design, printers, direct mail, radio advertising, and more. And I’ve essentially assembled a “virtual agency” of strong, dependable companies who can work in tandem for my clients. It’s worked very well so far, and as I’ve mentioned—I’m able to focus on what I’m good at, and leave the other stuff to the experts in their respective fields.

One of the most important changes I made was a scheduling change: my new company has hours of operation. What does this mean? It means that if you call me at 11pm, I won’t answer the phone. This is new. And borne out of necessity. Around Christmastime 2009, I realized that I was leaving the house to go work after dinner…. after working all day. I noticed that I was kissing my daughters goodbye both in the morning around breakfast time, and again after dinnertime. I eventually starting asking myself: “Golly…. who am I going to work for, anyway?“

With my new company, I’ve decided to set hours for my business and choose to not be available for work outside of those hours… even though I technically may be able to. (Obvious exceptions include technical support and other urgent needs). I haven’t nailed this down yet, but I’m thinking 8:00am—5:00pm. Sure, I could do alot more, but over the past few months, I’ve decided that spending time with my kiddos is WAY more important than making money.

So on the weekends, I’ve started turning off my phone, ignoring voicemails and emails (again, unless they’re urgent) and just spending time with my wife and kids. And life is fabulous. I’ve seen a measurable change in my family—to see my girls smile at me at bedtime and say “Dad, can you stay and sing to us?” and for them to be pleasantly suprised when I say “yes” is huge. HUGE.

I’m reminded of a quote that I heard from a very wise business man one time, several years ago: “It’s just money.” For the life of me, I can’t recall who it was that first shared this nugget of wisdom, and for that I apologize. But whoever he was, I now see the wisdom in that statement. Yeah, I work to support the family, but without my family, my job would be kind of worthless. It’s kind of a weird catch-22—you work to support your family, but you’re not necessarily supporting your family by going to work.

So, after this tough internal struggle of wanting to be a superhero to my clients and wanting to tell them that they can call me at 1:00am and I’ll still answer…. I’ve finally come to the conclusion: “I like you, but I love my family more.” And I think you’ll understand why.

So if you visit my new website at ronswebsites.com and see that it isn’t finished yet, now you know why. It’s certainly not because I don’t like you. Or if you call me on a Saturday, and I don’t answer you—now you know why. Or even if you call me on Monday morning and it says my phone’s been disconnected due to non-payment, you even know why for that too. Hopefully, I’ll be able to make this work financially after all, but you know what?

It’s just money.

…and I’m thrilled to death about it. After all, I’m probably out taking a walk with my hot wife, my two fabulous daughters, my new son, and our little one that’s coming in Winter.

It’s official—We’re Pregnant!

Stauffer baby four is on the way! We’re expecting our new little one sometime in early December. Supposedly, Rachel’s due date is December 11th… which is her birthday. So if Rachel can somehow plan on being exactly a week late, we would miraculously have four children all born on the 18th. So we’re planning on that.

Everybody keeps asking us “so, is this the last one? Are you having more kids?” so here’s my official answer to that:

I’m really surprised by the audacity of this question, to be completely honest. We’ve never asked anyone else what their very secret, intimate plans are for their family, so I don’t really know why I hear this question so frequently. It’s a very private matter between husband and wife, and certainly not public info.

I come from a large family (nine kids), so I’ve heard lots of questions and comments about large families. My family growing up was never particularly aiming for a specific number of children. Rachel and I are not specifically shooting for a particular number of children. At this point, we’re open to whatever God gives us. And that could change at any point in time… without notice!

Anyway, at this point, we’re happy to have four. We can’t wait to meet this new little Stauffer person. Below is an image from BabyCenter that shows where our baby is at currently.

Rachel and the Girls made special home-made party hats that we all wore.

• Dad had a snake hat
• Mom had a whale hat
• Aja had an elephant hat
• Meredith had a giraffe hat
• Kendrick had a lion hat

…and we all had a great time!

Here’s a video of the occasion:

And some photos:

]]> http://www.staufferfamily.us/family-youtube-channel-launched/feed/ 0 http://www.staufferfamily.us/learning-to-crawl/ http://www.staufferfamily.us/learning-to-crawl/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:33:11 +0000 ronstaufferjr http://www.ronstauffer.com/?p=189 Kendrick is getting big! He’s learning to roll over and start to crawl. These are fun stages of life in child.

Ron Stauffer is a family name. I’m the third. My dad’s name is Ron, as is my grandfathers’. When I had a son, I chose a name other than my own to pass down through the generations. (Not that I mind the tradition—it is fun, but I wanted to start my own tradition).

So here’s a photo of four generations of Stauffer men:

• Ronald Reller Stauffer
• Ronald Duane Stauffer
• Ronald Paul Stauffer
• Kendrick Rush Stauffer

Kendrick is a very special boy—he’s my first son, my dad’s first grandson, and my grandfather’s first great-grandson. He also has two sisters to help take care of! My dad has set a goal of having over 100 descendants before the end of his life. Well, I’m doing my part to contribute!

Aja and Meredith toast to the New Year with sparkling apple cider.

The girls with their presents! A slide, ducky washcloths, notepads and lots of lollipops!

Kendrick was happy all by himself.

Kendrick smiles at Uncle Ray.

The girls opening their presents.

Happy girls!

Even Kendrick got a present in the end. Tigger!

Earlier this year, Rachel and I had been thinking about moving out of our townhome in Briargate and buying a house. We had signed a lease that wouldn’t expire until March of 2010, so we figured we’d have plenty of time to look around and see what was available. So I called my Realtor, Ray Brown, and told him “let’s just look around and see what’s out there. We’re not in the market to buy—we just want to know if there are any homes in our price range.” So he put an electronic search in place that emailed me the daily listings of homes that were within our price range.

That lasted for a few weeks, and we discussed some options (mostly short sales and foreclosures), until Rachel and I found out that she was pregnant with our third child. This was very exciting, but it also stressed Rachel a lot, to be thinking of preparing for a new baby, and moving at the same time. So we called Ray and told him to cancel the house search. We would just wait until next year.

Fast forward to early October. The week before the baby was due, we dropped off our girls at the Grandparents’ for the weekend, so we could focus on cleaning up the house and fixing all the “little things” that was driving our nesting mama crazy. We did some touch-up paint in the girls’ room, had the carpets cleaned, organized the garage and basically gave the house a thorough cleaning from top to bottom. The weekend was very productive, and we got almost everything done, so we went out to dinner on Sunday night (which was the day before the baby was due), to celebrate. We had a good time out, and after dinner, dropped by Home Depot to pick up a few small things. When we pulled up to the townhome, we heard several smoke alarms going off in a loud, erratic fashion. As we got out of the car, I recall joking “That’s an awfully annoying sound. I sure hope it’s not coming from our place.” What I saw as I opened the front door shocked me—it was coming from our place. All the lights were off, all the smoke alarms were sounding, and there was water everywhere. Water was gushing through the ceiling from the top floor. The kitchen table, where I had two laptops sitting, was swimming in water. The globe lights in the ceiling were completely filled with water, just like fish bowls. Paint was bubbling, the ceiling was falling out in pieces, and our feet were sloshing and splashing with each step.

I eventually found a flashlight and managed to slosh my way upstairs to see where all the water was coming from, still completely stunned by the overwhelming event. The smoke alarms apparently had shorted out due to the water, and that’s why they were all screaming. We eventually found the source of the water—water was spilling out over the top of the washing machine, as it had apparently never stopped filling during its rinse cycle. The following hours and the next few days could be summed up as follows: grab everything of value, dry it off, survey the damage, make lots of phone calls, friends come over to help us move soggy furniture, friends offer for us to stay in their basement, we say yes, we move our whole house into their basement and start unpacking boxes of hastily-packed items and moldy books.

By now, it’s a WEEK PAST Rachel’s due date, there’s still no baby, we’re both very sleepy, stressed out, and living in an unfamiliar place, living out of boxes, trying to find lots of our “things” that make life easier (such as toothpaste, etc). We picked up the kiddos and brought them to our new “home,” and tried to explain that our old home was “broken” and we couldn’t stay there any more. They didn’t understand. Two weeks pass, and there’s still no baby. Eventually the baby does come—15 days late. We had planned to have a homebirth, so we asked the family we were staying with “can we have our baby in your basement?” Fortunately, our friends were gracious and understanding, and they didn’t mind at all. (Though I still think it’s probably the strangest request I’ve ever asked anyone).

The property management company eventually deduced that it would take over two weeks to dry everything out and completely restore the townhome, so they let us out of our lease early (thankfully!) so we could find somewhere else to live. At that point we started up the house search again, figuring that as long as we needed to find a place to live, we may as well see if we could just buy a home so we’d only have to move once. Rachel and I looked over a few pages of photos and information on homes, and after looking at a few on the list, she told me “Ron, why don’t you just go look at these homes and tell me when you’ve found one? I’d prefer not to be a part of the home search because I’ll be too disappointed if we choose one and the deal falls through.” I told her that I thought it was a great idea, so I took her up on the offer, and told Ray, “let’s go see some of these homes—with just you and me.” He asked if my wife wanted to come, and I told him she didn’t want to be a part of the home selection process. He couldn’t believe that, and told me “you must have a very trusting wife.“

So I looked at houses, applied for a mortgage, and did everything necessary to start the buying process. Fortunately, our timing coincided with the recent “First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit,” so we qualified for that, which was a huge blessing. Ray and I looked at a few homes until I found one that was perfect. The location was great, it didn’t need that much work, it had enough bedrooms, and it looked nice. So I told him “put in an offer—I’ll buy it.”

I didn’t think it was that unusual, but at every turn in the home buying process, people kept asking me “what does your wife think?” and I got to the point where I just started saying “she doesn’t know about the house yet. It’s her Christmas present.” Around the end of October, I did check in with her, making sure that she was okay with me looking for a home without her. She looked me in the eyes and calmly said “Ron, when I married you, I made a vow that I will stay with you and follow you wherever you go. And I meant that.” This was very reassuring!

She looked me in the eyes and calmly said “Ron, when I married you, I made a vow that I will stay with you and follow you wherever you go. And I meant that.“

So I filled out all the paperwork to purchase the home, signed the contracts, completed the applications, and all the while, Rachel figured I was still in the very early stages of looking for a home. All the paperwork came through, the loan was approved, and it was just a matter of small negotiations between the seller and me. (I asked for all new flooring because the pets from the previous tenant had totally torn up all the carpet.)

Old Linoleum

The Old Carpet

I kept working on getting the contractors in to repair/replace the parts of the house that needed work, and Rachel just trusted that I would take care of her. Throughout the entire process, the reactions I got from different people were astounding—some were funny, some sad. I’ve kept track of a lot of reactions because they’re interesting to me, and they tell me a lot about the culture we live in. Here are just a few.

Comments From Men:

Sad:

• “I can’t believe your wife is letting you pick out a house without her!”
• “My wife won’t let me buy a shirt without asking her first!
• “Are you sure you want to do that? It could be the worst choice you’ll make in your life!”
• “She may divorce you over this—you know that, right?”

Happy:

• “You have an amazing wife! She must really trust you!”
• “Wow, your wife is one in a million!”
• “Your giving her a house for a Christmas present? That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard! I wish I had done that for my wife!”

Comments From Women:

Sad:

• “I would never let my husband choose anything without me. I hate surprises!”
• “My husband is terrible at surprising me. If he bought me a house, I’d cry!”
• “She’s crazy. She WANTED you to buy a house without her?”

Happy:

• “Your wife is amazing—she must be very easy going.”
• “You must have a strong marriage, cause that’s a lot of trust.”
• “Good for her! She’s a lot more relaxed than I am.”

Almost everybody responded with shock and disbelief. Some thought I was joking. One day, right before I closed on the house, some of my friends cornered me in a room and somberly warned me that this would probably turn out to be the biggest mistake in my entire life, and that it may cost me my marriage. I had never really worried about this home search until I started hearing these comments—I was sad to hear this kind of commentary. Some people were supportive, but a majority thought I was being young and foolish. One person asked me “How is it possible that she doesn’t know? You’ve been living in a basement for a month…. isn’t she constantly nagging you to find out what your plan is?” I simply responded “I told her I will find a place for us, and she trusts me.”

After thinking and praying about it one last time, I bought the house. I had applied for the mortgage alone, I closed alone, I signed the final papers alone, and my name was put on the title, alone. The closing in itself was a story! The title company told me that I’d have to bring my wife to closing to sign some final papers. I insisted that I didn’t want her to come to closing, cause it would spoil the secret. I wanted to be able to give her the keys and tell her “Merry Christmas—I bought you a house!” They did change the paperwork, reluctantly, so that only I had to be at closing. Even then, while I was signing the final papers (hundreds of them), the lady from the title company told me “in all my years of business, I’ve never heard of anyone doing this before.“

I wanted to be able to give her the keys and tell her “Merry Christmas! I bought you a house!”

So after everything was signed, on the morning of Friday the 13th, I was handed the keys to my house and told “Congratulations! You’re now officially a homeowner!” I walked out of the building with a huge grin on my face and a little extra bounce in my step.

This is when the real work began. It kind of felt like an episode of “Extreme Home Makeover.” About an hour after I got the keys, I drove straight to the house to meet the flooring and window contractors, to discuss fitting the house with new floors and windows. We decided to wait on the windows, but had the flooring guys tear out all the carpet and tile, and replace it with new “StainMaster” carpet (which is supposedly child-resistant, but we’ll see), and put real Maple hardwood in the kitchen. The very next day, I hired an arborist to chop down the massive Ash tree in the backyard that was leaning over the house, to prevent it from falling into the structure.

I hired my younger brothers, Reuben and Ryan, to rake leaves, pick up garbage, tear off wallpaper, put painter’s tape on all the trim and start painting. I ordered 10 gallons of paint, and we got busy. I needed a way to have the house painted without Rachel finding out about it, so Reuben spent two weekdays working on it, while I was at the office.

By Friday night, the painting had taken much longer than expected, so I told Rachel I’d have to work all night on some important, last minute work, and went to the house to paint as much as possible. So Reuben and I chugged coffee and energy drinks, blasted 80′s new-wave music and painted until 5:30am. I finally arrived home (our friends’ basement) at about 6:30am and crawled into bed.

Later that morning (Saturday), we woke up and I told her I wanted to take her out on a date at a coffee shop. So we left the kids with the Grandparents’ again, and headed off for our date. (Or so she thought… secretly, I was going to show her the Christmas present I’d just gotten her!) On our way there, she noticed that I had turned on a residential street and was driving through a neighborhood and asked me “where are you going?” I told her I had to stop by someone’s house to pick up something for work. We drove for a while until I pulled into the driveway and parked. I pressed play on the van’s CD player, and while Etta James sang “At Last,” I pulled out a set of keys and said “Merry Christmas Rachel. I bought you a house!” She reacted as I expected: “Really? Are you serious? This is our house?” I gave her the keys and said “It’s all yours. Do you want to open your present?” So we walked up to the front door, and I ran inside and turned on my already-set CD player with “our song,” ran back outside and carried her over the threshold of our home. Our home. Our very first house. I popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate, and we danced in our socks on the brand new hardwood floor. On the counter top, there was a box of chocolates and a card I had set out the night before.

All those weeks of uncertainty, with people criticizing and heckling me for my decision had paid off. Her reaction was everything I had hoped for. I knew she would cry. What I didn’t expect, was that I would cry too! We both did, as we held hands and I showed her each room of her new house. She loved it! She even liked the colors I chose for the carpet, the hardwood and the paint. I had sweated over those decisions! I didn’t want to show her a perfectly good house that I had ruined by choosing funky colors! But it turned out just fine.

All those weeks of uncertainty, with people criticizing and heckling me for my decision had paid off. Her reaction was everything I had hoped for. I knew she would cry. What I didn’t expect, was that I would cry too!

I felt like superman that day—not only had we gone through so much in the weeks leading up to that day, but we had come so far as a couple, as parents, and as friends. We had just celebrated our 4th wedding Anniversary the month before, she had just given birth to our third child, and now we had a home. We had just spent 6 weeks living in another family’s home (which was very generous), but it still wasn’t “our house.” Now we actually had our house.

In conclusion, it was worth it! I’m glad we did it this way. It was a fun experience for me, and it was exciting to be able to surprise my wife with a new home. I don’t usually like to be the center of attention, or have people gawking about me, and how different or strange we are, but this was a little different. This was worth being different and standing out. My wife, as folks reminded me, really is extraordinary. Our relationship has been that way from the beginning. When we were married, I promised her that I would provide for her as long as I was able, and she promised me that she would stay with me—for “richer or poorer.” And that’s the way marriage should be. I need to know that my wife will follow me, even if I get laid off, or become poor, or move to another country. And fortunately, my wife trusts my leadership. I love my wife!

-Ron Stauffer

So I’ve finally taken the plunge and gone full time with my website business! I started my company, four by five photo and design, LLC, in March of 2008, so it’s been around for a while, but I’ve finally decided that I should spend all my work hours with this venture.

I’ve been encouraged by several people to do so for quite some time, but up until Thanksgiving, I wasn’t ready. This November, I took a good look at the number of clients that I had, and the limited number of hours in a week, and figured I’d be better off focusing on one industry instead of two at a time! I’ve been wary of over-committing myself, because I still had one foot in each camp: one in construction, and one in graphic design and building websites. Construction right now is hurting, but marketing is booming! When companies need business, they need to find ways to bring more people through the door. That’s what I specialize in, so I saw my business shrinking on one side, and increasing on the other. So I jumped ship and dove into the deep sea of self-employment.

Rachel is thrilled with this, as this hopefully means I can spend more time with her and the kids instead of working two full time jobs. I’ve also had a passion for website marketing for years, so I’m excited about being able to serve many different clients in several different industries. (Marketing is a horizontal industry, which means my clients come from all kinds of industries, as opposed to construction, which is a vertical market–catering only to clients with money that want to build.)

Working with Stauffer & Sons Construction was a fabulous way for me to break into the Colorado Sp-rings market, and I certainly learned a lot in my 6 years there. I was hired right before Thanksgiving 2003, so I’ve been a part of Andy’s company for EXACTLY 6 years. How funny is that? Major kudos go to Andy, my Uncle, for allowing me to work my way up from the garbage collector, errand boy and all-around “gofer” as a young teen. Eventually becoming the assistant manager, working on payroll, hiring and firing, managing personnel issues, and eventually marketing. I’ve taken that experience and the work ethic I developed with it, and put it to good use in my current business.

“What does ‘four by five’ mean?”

I’ve gotten this question several times recently. It’s a fair question. Here’s the deal: when I filed my LLC, I figured I’d make a go of photography (another passion of mine) and graphic design. “Four by five” (or “4×5″) refers to a special size of old-fashioned camera film. It’s part of a genre of now mostly obsolescent film sizes, called “large format. 4×5 film comes in sheets, measuring 4 inches by 5 inches. Usually used for either transparencies (slide film) or black and white, it offers the photographer a massive amount of control over the image, contrast, angles, distortion, etc. It also makes for some of the cleanest, sharpest images ever put on paper. (Think Ansel Adams and his giant view camera—he used 4×5 film almost exclusively). I bought a view camera a while ago, and had a blast learning about dips, swings, tilts and other aspects of creating and developing 4×5 film shots.

Click HERE to see an example of a 4×5 film sheet.

If I had it to do over, I probably would have added “websites” or “marketing” somewhere in the name, seeing as how I haven’t done much professional photography, but have served many clients with website design and marketing campaigns. In the end though, it’s just a name, and I could have spent years trying to come up with the perfect name for my own company. That doesn’t matter much to me—all I’m focused on is helping other companies come up names and campaigns that work and earn them more business. If you think about it, a large number of insanely successful companies have somewhat nonsensical names as well: Apple (computers? what?), Tiger Direct (computers as well?), Amazon (an online shopping site?), AT&T (phones? it’s a boring acronym!), Facebook (its not a book, and doesn’t have much to do with faces), and more. You get the point.

“So what do you do?”

These days, I’m focusing on honing my specific area of focus for work. What I did at Stauffer & Sons isn’t necessarily what I’d like to do for others. (Though there will be similarities). Here’s what I am doing right now for some clients:

• Building New Websites (Corporate and Family sites)
• Redesigning Old/Existing Websites
• Secure Logins
• Email Newsletters
• Web Traffic Analysis
• Brochures & Banners
• Business Cards & Thank You Notes
• Blogs (like this one!)
• and more

Quite honestly, my biggest request so far is to create new corporate websites for small businesses that already have a site that isn’t working for them. It seems that these days, almost everyone already has a website, but a lot of folks had theirs thrown together quickly by a relative three or four years ago, and it hasn’t been touched since. That seems to be my niche.

So feel free to email me or leave any comments if you have your own website that you’d like help with. Or just to say hi. I’ll keep you updated here. Or you can check out my website here: www.fourbyfivewebdesign.com.