Adam McFarland

On January 1 I wrote about how I hate New Years Resolutions and then proceeded to make one myself:  to improve my sleep schedule.  Throughout college and my early professional life I’ve always been an erratic sleeper to say the least, and I became envious of those who were able to wake up early and start the day “ahead” of me.  I decided on 6 AM as my new wakeup time because it’s early, but not so early that you have to be asleep at a ridiculous hour every night to get your 8 hours.

So how has this past month been?  Amazing and life-changing are probably the two best adjectives to describe the feeling.  I have been:

• Going to bed by 10 PM most nights.  The latest I have fallen asleep is probably 10:45.  If a good sports game or show is on, I’ll record it to watch in the AM.
• Waking up every single day at 6 AM.  I use my iPod to wake me up, and I have a backup alarm set for 6:10 in case music doesn’t do the trick.  The latest I have risen from my bed has probably been 6:12 AM.
• I generally eat, check email, and watch Sports Center (or a recording of a game/show from the previous night) from 6-7, and then leave for the gym around 7.
• By 9 I am showered, dressed, have eaten my post-workout meal, and am back at work (having already cleared my inbox earlier in the morning).
• Stop working by 7 PM at the latest so I have a few hours to myself.  If I have dinner plans or other plans with friends, I can stop working at 4 PM and still have accomplished a ton.

Here have been the benefits:

• Far less stress.  Instead of waking up and thinking “crap, I need to get to the gym and rush my workout and get back and get to my emails” I’m now way ahead of the game.  Clearing my inbox from 6-7 lets me relax at the gym knowing I don’t have anything major waiting for me when I get back.  By 9 AM I’m at the point where I used to be at noon, and that is huge.
• Much higher productivity.  Obviously if I’m 3-4 hours ahead of my old daily pace I’m getting a lot more done.
• Less tired - I’m only really tired for the last 15 minutes before I fall asleep and the first 15 minutes when I wake up.  Never think about it otherwise, which is a huge change for me.
• Better workouts at the gym.  Now that I’m not rushed, I feel 100% satisfied with my efforts instead of the usual ‘I wish I could spend more time working out’.
• More consistent eating habits.  I have always been a wanna-be-nutritionist, but with a regular sleep schedule I’ve been able to really hone in and eat my 6 or 7 meals at the exact same times each day.  And by having more time, I can prepare what I really should eat instead of settling for faster-but-unhealthier alternatives.  Much like never feeling tired, I never really feel hungry except right before I am scheduled to eat.
• More time to hang out with friends.  I’ve seen my friends more in the last month than I did all last year…seriously.
• More time to play read, watch sports, and play video games.
• Just overall more happy and fulfilled.  I’ve always been a pretty happy guy, but if I could quantify my happiness increase it would be around a 25% increase…solely from waking up early!

Amazing as this has been, I probably couldn’t have done it even a year ago.  Your social situation dictates when you can and can’t sleep and wake up.  At 25, the whole “going out to the bar every night” thing has worn off and I don’t really have the desire to be out until 4 AM anymore.  When I do go out, I can stay out until 12 or 1 and still get a decent amount of sleep by 6.  And of course, I can always sleep in on a rare occasion.

The big question is:  can I stick to it and make it a true lifestyle change like I have with diet and exercise?  I vote yes.  Partially because I made it 30 days and I have no desire to ever sleep in again, and partially because it just fits perfectly in my entrepreneurial life.  Obviously I won’t know for a year or two if it sticks, but I’m going to be extra serious about sticking with it for the next few months and hopefully by mid-year it’s just automatic.  I’ll try to post updates every few months to force myself to stick to it or admit that I suck if I don’t.

I recently went back and visited with one of my old engineering professors.  He seemed happy that I had started my own business, but the whole time we were talking I could sense a bit of skepticism.  Then I said “I went into industry for a while after college but didn’t like it”.  He looked at me with sort of a puzzled look and bluntly said “why?”

Here’s the thing - product development and web development are very similar.  At their core, each is just a challenge in problem solving and that’s why I love both.  Hell, gun to my head I’d probably say that product development is more interesting than web development:  there is more freedom and the problems you can solve are more diverse.

But - and this is a big but - the barrier to entry is far more difficult in product development.  The project I was working on developing in late 2005 as an engineer still hasn’t hit the market yet…and it’s not a complex product (it’s the equivalent complexity of a web mashup that you’d build in a week).  A simple product, but we needed to do several rounds of prototypes, scout out manufacturing facilities, do consumer safety tests and other QC testing that takes months, negotiate deals with our customers like Walmart and Target to stock the product, etc.

In the entrepreneurial world, it can take five or ten years to get a product to market compared to five to ten weeks to get a website to market.  The barrier to entry costs less and takes less time, and that is why I prefer web development.  I’ve been able to get every single “great” idea I’ve ever had to market in the web world - I was able to get Music Alerts online in a weekend.   Some of the stuff has been a success, some of it hasn’t been - but I’ve been able to find out in a matter of a few years what would’ve taken fifteen years in the product development world.

Imagine spending years patenting a device, finding a capable vendor, getting a contract to sell it in Target…and then finding out consumers like your competitors brand better.  It happens all the time, and it would suck to waste $500k and 5 years to find that out.  Now, spending $2k and 2 months isn’t so bad.  I crave the ability to throw a lot of shit against the wall and see what sticks, and the web world makes that possible.

Back in the year 2000 I was an 18 year old freshman in college and living in Albany, NY.

Somewhere 150 miles away in New York City (Bronx to be exact) some guy opens an account with Sprint Long Distance for his home long distance service. He uses the name ‘Adam McFarland Jr.’ and opens the account with my social security number. He runs up $517 in charges and then cancels the account.

In November of 2003 I start getting phone calls from a collection agency looking for an Adam McFarland Jr. At first I just say ‘you have the wrong number’, but after a while I start getting annoyed and ask them why they keep calling. They say they have my number down as the phone number for whomever is on the account. I tell them they’re wrong, and that I’m not a ‘Jr.’ and I’ve never lived in the Bronx. They read off the SSN on the account and it matches mine.

I stop dead in my tracks and tell them I’ve been a victim of identity theft. They don’t believe me (much less common even 5 years ago than it is now). After about 50 more phone call arguments and a call to the police, I provide a packet full of evidence to the collection agency and they drop the case. I contact all of the credit bureaus and put alerts on my credit reports (which last 90 days). Thankfully, it’s kept off of my credit report….

Until November of 2007 when the debt collection agency sold my resolved debt to another agency and that agency decided to get me to pay up by putting it on my credit report, even though they know I have no legal obligation to pay it. Apparently this happens all the time (read this shocking story from Businessweek), and it works because they scare people into paying down debt to save their credit report. Just think about if I was trying to buy a house right now - I’d probably have no choice but to pay the $517 if I wanted to get a mortgage in a timely manner.

So of course, today is the lucky day that I check my credit report and see the very average score of 680. Not bad, but I have near perfect credit and that’s too low. Sure I’ve got some college loans and a car loan, but I’ve never ever missed a payment. My score is usually in the 720 - 750 range. Of course, after digging further I discovered this error and started cursing uncontrollably.

I immediately filed a dispute with Experian, and now I’ve got to sit and wait up to 45 days for a result. The debt says it’s ‘closed’ on my report, but it still is a MAJOR red flag to have a delinquent account on your credit report….especially when I never opened the account in the first place. Experian estimates that my score will go back up to 740+ with the account removed - exactly where it should be. However, I most definitely will not pay the $517 to the collection agency to get this removed from my report - I would rather pay $2k in lawyer fees to get the collection agency in trouble for this shady crap.

I’m also going to suck it up and sign up for LifeLock. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that some scumbag out there has my SSN and could use it against me again. It’s worth the $ for the piece of mind.

This has been one hell of a week for me/us financially, and quite frankly it’s becoming a bit draining. Thankfully the BoA situation worked itself out. Let’s hope that this will be resolved in an equally timely manner.

Following in George’s footsteps, Mike has launched a blog at Michael-Li.com to chronicle his entrepreneurshp experience. Now this is getting cool - we’ve got 3/4th of our company blogging, and anyone subscribing to all three will get the same story told from three uniquely different viewpoints.

In Mike’s second post he talks about how he’s always been an entrepreneur from day one. George has told me similar stories about himself. Funny thing is, I was most definitely not like that. I didn’t have mini-businesses as a kid like these guys, and I never even considered running a business as an option until I started working internships in college. I suppose this re-kindles the born vs. bred debate. Is it possible the answer is both?

Anyway, I also love Mike’s design:

We were sitting in the movie theater a few weeks ago waiting for Juno to start (and saving seats for George and his girlfriend who were running late) when I said “you know what would be cool? A side-scrolling blog.” You could see Mike’s eyes light up and he immediately started planning it out in his head. That night he started designing it, and this is the finished product. Once he gets post #3 up you’ll see how you can side-scroll through the posts. So freaking cool.

Greg - you’re the only one left not blogging. You’re on the clock…

In this day and age there’s an overload of information available to us without much effort to get it. If you’re not careful you can spend all day reading books and magazines and blogs, or watching YouTube, DVDs, and TV. Pretty soon the only thing you DO is consume and you forget to actually do anything yourself.

The answer is certainly not to cut yourself off from the world. Business owner or not, the information available to us you can help improve the quality of your life. And as a budding entrepreneur, the information available to you can give your business the competitive advantages that it needs to thrive. That’s why Mark Cuban professes to read three hours a day. That one great idea he gets from a magazine he spends hours reading will pay off a thousand times over for his business.

The challenge then is to limit the crap you consume and focus on what’s actually going to help you. You know, so you can actually make progress with your company. I might not spend three hours a day like Mark Cuban, but I’d say I read close to two a day if you factor in the non-business stuff. I don’t think most people will care too much that I read Fire Joe Morgan for my daily baseball fix, but here’s a list of the business-related media that has made it through my crap filter:

Blogs

I read blogs for two reasons: to stay up to date with the latest tech news, and to follow small niche entrepreneur blogs of people I think are in the same boat as myself. I add all of my RSS feeds to Google Reader, which I check once or twice a day. Here are my favorites:

• SEO Book Blog - Aaron Wall is the best SEO writer out there in my opinion, and his blog offers tremendous insight into the latest search engine optimization and web marketing trends
• Blog Maverick - the aforementioned Mark Cuban shares his insights into the tech industry, the entertainment industry, and being an entrepreneur in general. The most down-to-earth and accessible billionaire that I know of.
• Guru Gilbert - the blog of fellow young entrepreneur Adam Gilbert. He and I have a ton of stuff in common, and I’ve gotten to know him a lot better recently after he hired us to program his blog design into WordPress. He has the extreme fire and passion that differentiates entrepreneurs from everyone else, and it’s reflected in the quality of his posts.
• James Hong - founder of HOTorNOT.com, he only posts once every few months, but his opinions on business and technology are priceless.
• Lifehacker - all sorts of interesting tech-savvy productivity tips. I’m also partial to them because they - unlike let’s say TechCrunch - covered iPrioritize and Music-Alerts, thus passing my sites a ton of traffic and new users.
• NevBlog - another young entrepreneur who is my age. The blog originally caught my attention because Nev posted every single cent he made online publicly on his sidebar (now gone), but I’ve continued to read because his unique business insights - particularly his e-commerce posts related to his sites - are extremely honest and helpful. Just the fact that he was willing to post his financials online shows me he’s got balls that most people my age don’t.
• Guy Kawasaki - much like Mark Cuban, Guy is one of the uber-successful entrepreneur role models that I really look up to. Famous for evangelizing Apple, he’s now a VC who is brutally honest about what it takes to run a tech startup. He also has a great balance of posts: one day he’ll talk about a VC pitch, the next it’ll be about human happiness, and the next about social entrepreneurship.
• Trizoko - the owners of Trizle have the most unique writing style of anything I’ve ever read. They also have a brilliant philosophy about business success. A must read for any business owner.
• Webware - a great Web2.0 blog….much preferred over TechCrunch in my world.
• E-Commerce Times - tech news that’s geared toward e-commerce.
• SitePoint Newsletters - OK, can’t add these to my RSS reader. The only email newsletters I still read, they offer great insight into running a web design business - including programming tips, design tips, and business strategies.

Magazines

After a long day, one of my favorite things to do is shut down my computer, throw on some baseball/basketball/football/hockey, and pick up a good business magazine. My mind is relaxed and free so this is when I usually let my mind wander, and consequently this is when I usually get my best ideas.

Entrepreneur Magazine is now officially off this list - a good resource for entrepreneurs when they’re just getting started, but unless you own a franchise or sell on eBay there isn’t much recurring info worth reading (except Guy Kawasaki’s column).

• Inc. - hands down the best business magazine. Their cover stories are great, but recurring columns like Street Smarts, Case Study, How I Did It, Business for Sale, and Elevator Pitch are absolutely brilliantly written.
• Fast Company - you’ll never get more information from a magazine than you do from Fast Company. Their cover stories are ridiculously in-depth and well written, and there are four or five of these stories every magazine. It’s like reading five mini-business books every issue.
• Fortune - the latest addition to the group, I find it extraordinarily well written and filled with interviews that Inc. or Fast Company probably couldn’t get (case in point: the first issue had that fantastic Melinda Gates story and also has an exclusive with the new CEO of GM).

Books

I’ve been reading less and less business books. Most of the ones I have read were advanced copies sent to me for free that I review on this blog. I just don’t need the ‘rah-rah’ kick in the ass that most entrepreneur related books provide. I’ve already started my company. We understand how to be efficient with our business processes. We understand the sacrifices involved in the whole matter. Those books were useful a few years ago, but not so much anymore.

However, there are a few great books that I read this year that I’d recommend to any business owner or aspiring business owner:

• Good to Great by Jim Collins - the most exhaustive study ever performed on what makes a company great…and a lot of the conclusions are counter-intuitive to what you’d initially think.
• The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss - an extremely unique look at business and life that blows away any pre-conceived notions that you have about either. You probably won’t follow the step-by-step guide outlined in the book, but even adopting a few techniques from the book will drastically improve your life and your business.
• Getting Real by 37 Signals - available online for free (or in paperback for $25), this book is the definitive guide to web software development.  37 Signals has mastered the art of what’s important in a business and what isn’t, and this book will challenge your conventional thoughts about what is really necessary.

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Hope that my list gives your reading routine a much needed kick in the butt!

We’ve made the decision to make my Faceup Web Marketing eBook available for free download.  After filling out the form on the eBook page you’ll be emailed a link to download the book directly.

I updated the book last week, and it now includes updated information on keyword research tools, link building, Google AdWords, and more…in addition to all of the topics outlined on the eBook page.

I’m hoping this:

1. Helps spread what I’ve learned in SEO/web marketing in the past few years to all web entrepreneurs.  Now that it’s free, everyone can afford it
2. Creates new business for Faceup Sites and some of the other services I reference in the book

Anyone who purchased the book prior will be compensated with some free products/services from us, although I haven’t decided exactly what yet.  If you read it, let me know what you think.  Feedback from customers who purchased the book and received advanced copies last time was very good so I’m hoping people get a lot of good info out of it.

At 12:34:28 PM this afternoon George sent us all a message via Skype:

good news fuckers, time to party - reopened 40k line

What ensued in our chat room was an onslaught of remarks that were an equal mix of extreme joy and extreme slandering of Bank of America and everyone who works there.

I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life. It was only about 28 hours since this fiasco began yesterday, but losing an important $40k line of credit sent my mind into a tailspin:

• How would we account for the missing money?
• Would we still move in to the warehouse that we’ve tentatively agreed to (still no lease….waiting for that too)?
• If we did move in, but couldn’t afford product expansion, SHOULD we move in?
• Should we take no salary for a while to raise the money? Would that create a divide among the partners. What if someone couldn’t take it and wanted to quit?
• Should we try to get a round of Angel/VC funding, and give up some control. And if so, how much time would we have to spend (i.e. waste) raising money.
• At what point do we call our lawyer? Should we try to sue Bank of America if they won’t return our calls?
• Could this be one of those unfortunate events that sets a company back for 6 months…or maybe even years.
• Were we EVER going to be able to make the next jump as a company that we need to make by moving out and expanding?

And that’s just the stuff I can shoot off the top of my head right now

The official reasoning from Bank of America was that it was a computer glitch that shut our account down. OK, fine, whatever. I’m sure it happens, but you couldn’t have re-instated it YESTERDAY when we were harassing you on the phone all day? What if this lasted through the weekend? Would they have even called us if we didn’t pester them?

Regardless, we’re back on track after a really, really scary day.

I want to make sure I thank those who expressed their concern via email and comments, and especially thank that one person who emailed me flat out offering us a cash loan that would be wired to us same day (you know who you are). This was a pretty big deal for us, and it’s always nice to have friends who show that they care.

And for all of the stress and anxiety and worrying about the fate of our company: attention Bank of America, and I mean this with all of the deepest sincerity I can muster: SUCK MY BALLS.

(yes, I am a Michigan fan)

Small business finance is a tricky thing.  Contrary to popular belief, more startups are funded on debt than on equity and Pure Adapt falls into that category.  We value our stock immensely and would prefer to intelligently manage our debt as opposed to giving up equity.  Up until this morning, that process had worked out well for us.  At any given point we generally have about as much revolving debt as the value of our Detailed Image inventory - which is pretty good considering if we liquidated we’d be in the positive (not including the value of our sites, client list, etc….not bad for a 1 year old company).

George has a meticulous plan that he’s been adhering to that takes advantage of low interest rates on our lines of credit and credit cards by shuffling money back and forth.  Yea, it takes some effort, but we pay almost no interest on our debt.  Again, this is pretty good.

A few days ago we cleared up our largest line of credit - a $40k line with Bank of America - in anticipation of using that money to move in to our warehouse (almost signed a lease) and cover other expenses during Detailed Image’s slow time.  We’re OK with DI being a little slow because we can knock off our move, do some development work on the cart, and launch a new e-commerce site before it gets busy in spring time.

Unfortunately, as soon as we paid off the Bank of America line they closed our account. No email, no letter, no phone call, no nothing.  So of course, George went to use some of the cash today and it wasn’t there.  This line goes back to when George and Greg formed Detailed Image in 2005 and we have never ever missed a payment in 2+ years.  We also have had pretty high balances at times so they’ve made some decent interest off of us.  And we were planning on using the line in the coming months.  Not only have we proved we can pay down a high balance to nothing, but we were planning on building up another high balance.  Essentially we’re the perfect customers for them!  And they shut down the account for no reason?

George called several times only to be told “we cannot give you information regarding your account.  A specialist will call you back within a day”.  Wonderful.  Very helpful.  A great way to treat a loyal customer. Why wouldn’t you call us BEFORE closing such a big account?   Don’t you realize that you can crush a small business by taking away $40k in available credit unannounced? 

One way or another we’ll be fine, but this is definitely a pretty big roadblock.  Gotta love being a business owner - never a dull moment.

To replace the remaining issues of my subscription to the now-defunct Business 2.0 Magazine I was given a subscription to Fortune. Surprisingly, I really like it. I learned about this sick web based golf game, and more importantly I was able to take a lot away from their amazing article on Melinda Gates - her first ever profile in a major magazine.

We all knew that she was one of the worlds largest philanthropists, and that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation does great things for the world. After reading the article, she comes across as what we should all aspire to be if we’re lucky enough to have wealth and power. Her and Bill are giving away OVER 95% of their money to help make the world a better place.

A couple of my favorite passages:

If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped. - Melinda Gates, valedictory speech, Ursuline Academy, 1982

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Her close friend Charlotte Guyman, a retired Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft executive who is now on Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway board, recalls a trip to Calcutta in 2004. One day, when Melinda had foundation meetings to attend, Guyman and a few in their group spent a half-day at Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying. There, they were captivated by one young woman suffering from AIDS and tuberculosis who was “just bones,” Guyman says. No one could break the woman’s zombie-like stare. The next day Melinda visited. “Melinda walks in, pauses, and goes right over to this young woman,” Guyman recalls. “She pulls up a chair, puts the woman’s hand in her hands. The woman won’t look at her. Then Melinda says, ‘You have AIDS. It’s not your fault.’ She says it again: ‘It’s not your fault.’ Tears stream down the woman’s face, and she looks at Melinda.” Guyman can’t forget the connection. “Melinda sat with her. It seemed like forever.”

———–

“My fatal flaw?” Melinda says, laughing, during our third and final interview. She sometimes wishes for a simpler life, she admits. “It depends when you catch me. Most days, no. But if you’d asked me yesterday if I would like a much simpler life, I would have told you yes.”

Even Melinda has days that she doesn’t want to have to live up to the responsibilities of the foundation. We all have our issues, and unfortunately it seems like too many people walk around saying to themselves “how do I get X” instead of “how do I use my talents to help someone else”. If we all let our problems dominate our thoughts, we’ll never make the effort to help those around us. Melinda is one of those special people who sees through the BS that encapsulates most people. I can’t imagine a person I’d rather see have the wealth that she does.

Not exactly what I expected from Fortune. Maybe I’ll actually renew this subscription.

In my post earlier this morning I mentioned that this was probably the most productive week of my life. It’s partly because I’ve become an early riser, but mostly because we’ve had such success with the Detailed Image shopping cart that it’s eliminated a lot of the questions we had about our company direction. The back-end automation, SEO friendliness, and built-in upsell system have more than doubled sales and we’ve recognized that continued efforts in e-commerce are probably our best chance at using our skills to thrive as a company.

Before doing much with the cart though, we needed to clean it up a lot and add several common features that it previously lacked. Since it’s 100% custom programmed, the end result is a seamless e-commerce experience for both us and our customers that - in our opinion - isn’t rivaled by any shopping cart.

For example, with our soon-to-launch affiliate program you can apply simply by clicking a button in your ‘My Account’ section. There’s not a second registration like most sites require, and you can manage everything DI related by visiting that single ‘My Account’ page.

Anyway, in addition to Mike’s redesign and his blog redesign, I was able to complete the programming (with the aid and advice of our entire team of course) for the following features in this past week:

• Improved upsell system javascript to be more efficient and more visually appealing (example product page)
• Created the aforementioned affiliate program
• Integrated wholesale pricing tiers
• Created phone order system
• Added the ability for us to offer packages of items (and still have our inventory system updated correctly)
• Added gift certificates
• Product review system for every one of our products
• Fixed a pesky SSL problem that was causing a warning in IE7

Far and away my most accomplished week ever. Hell, if we can do all that in a week, what can we do in a few more months?