Hello and welcome to my blog! I’m a padel player, entrepreneur and investor with a very strong sense of curiosity about many seemingly unrelated subjects.
My work projects:
- WP Mayor (a blog focused on helping people learn more about WordPress)
- WP RSS Aggregator (a WordPress plugin for importing RSS content)
- EDD Bookings (a bookings add-on for Easy Digital Downloads)
- Mastermind.fm (a podcast about doing business in the WordPress space)
- Crypto Headlines (a cryptoasset news and content aggregator site)
- WP News Desk (a WordPress news and content aggregator site)
- Other WordPress plugins (my open source contributions on WordPress.org)
- Alyona Travels (travel blog that my wife runs with a little help from my side)
Some tidbits:
- Current location: Barcelona, Spain
- Favorite books and podcasts
- My Hardware setup
- My Software setup
- My Padel Tournament history
My 5 major strengths according to the Strengths Finder test:
- Focus
- Futuristic
- Restorative
- Discipline
- Significance
Favorite band: Queen
Chronotype: Lion
Another popular psychological test is the Myers-Briggs test. My result is INTJ, which stands for Introvert, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging.
I consider myself a citizen of the world (watch this). I also identify with skeptics. That means that I’m a person inclined to question or doubt many widely accepted opinions. In common vernacular, a skeptic is someone who requires extraordinary evidence before accepting extraordinary claims. Finally, I consider myself a student of life, which means that I view life as a long course and my daily goal being to make sense of this life.
Want to know more?
Read on (it’s quite a long read, mind you), as I share with you my motivation for doing what I do, tell you about my online ventures, and how I got to where I am today i.e. my life story.
My Motivation
I truly believe in breaking the conventions, doing something you love and that you are passionate about. Only by doing this will you ever be happy in your life.
Don’t you have a feeling, like me, that most people spend their lives chasing a highly paid job or career promotion? That might give you more financial security, but what are you sacrificing?
Think about it.
What about the stress, being forced to fit into a system, the office politics, and going against your core values. All these are daily features of corporate life. At one point you will end up asking yourself: what am I doing with my life?
Life is not about how much money you have, or the heights you’ve reached in your career. It is about you and your talents, and how you are going to use them as best as you can, doing something you truly love.
From my experience, I can tell you that yes, you can achieve all this and more!
However, don’t be fooled by all those internet marketers offering you the latest shortcut to internet riches. You most probably don’t need to spend much money to start off, and the most important thing I can share with you is this:
If that’s something you’re ready to do, then you will find this blog useful, as I share my techniques and ideas.
If you need some more inspiration, read on…
My Online Ventures
My biggest success story to date is WP Mayor (founded in late 2010), a WordPress blog which started out as a place where I could store all the new cool things I was learning about WordPress. Perhaps the biggest lesson learned from the success of WP Mayor is that in order to receive, you must first give.
Of course, we’ve all heard this phrase from many sources, but to experience it first hand is truly life-changing. WP Mayor has given me much more than the freedom to work whenever and wherever I want. Much more than the monetary aspect of blogging, I have come to value the new relationships I built and the opportunity to meet and learn from great people in the community.
Nowadays, WP Mayor is not only a repository of my ideas and WordPress knowledge, but also a place where I can discuss and learn from other people, and of course, a means of making an online income.
I have also ventured into the digital product business by launching WP RSS Aggregator (early 2012), a plugin that is currently being used by more than 40,000 sites. The product operates on a freemium model with a free version available on the WordPress.org plugin repository and more premium add-ons are available on the WP RSS Aggregator website.
Want to know more about me? Ok, read on…
My Life Story
I was born and raised on the tiny island of Malta. My teenage years were good, although nothing spectacular. I loved trying out new things especially when it comes to sports, and reading was also one of my biggest hobbies. I never particularly liked the way the educational system worked and was quite a rebel at times. However I had a huge thirst for knowledge so I guess the two compensated each other, and I fared well at school.
I was always interested in entrepreneurship and would spend countless hours reading about how businesses were founded and about new business ideas that were being explored. The arrival of the internet was something big for me, I immediately realized that whatever I did during the rest of my life, my work had to be related to the internet. Coupled with my fascination with business and entrepreneurship, my passion for the internet and computing would provide the basis for the next few years.
In my early twenties, I went to University and majored in Business and Computer Science, before spending a year in the UK reading for my Masters in Multimedia and Computer science. This experience of living and studying in the UK was a huge turning point in my life.
Although I had traveled extensively all over Europe on short holidays, this was the first time that I spent considerable time abroad. I now had the chance to get immersed in the culture of the place. During this year I also met many fantastic people and established some very close friendships. In short, this experience opened my eyes to the exhilaration of long term traveling.
On my return to Malta, contrary to expectations, I didn’t get a job but started working on my own ideas and online ventures.
I founded a web design and development business revolving around WordPress, and went on to create WP Mayor, which became a very popular WordPress blog and resource site. After that, I also developed a WordPress plugin, WP RSS Aggregator, which in time has become one of the most popular plugins for RSS. In the podcasting space I’ve co-hosted Mastermind.fm, a podcast about doing business in the WordPress space.
In these later years, I also experimented with being a digital nomad, and lived in Barcelona and later in Mallorca. That’s where I met my wife Alyona (we got married in 2013). Together we’ve lived in Thailand, Mexico, Malta, Spain and we also spent a few months traveling around Europe.
After visiting close to 50 countries, we settled on Barcelona as our favorite place to live in. We moved there definitely in 2017. In Barcelona I discovered padel, which is the fastest growing sport in Europe. I have always enjoyed racket sports, but I found padel in particular to be really addictive. Through padel, I meet many people so there is the social element as well. I am now training hard to become a good padel player, and I’m enjoying participating in tournaments locally and internationally.
To conclude, one of my all-time favorite quotes and something I really believe in myself…
“I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.” – Richard Branson
