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Hi. My name is Adam. I am the co-founder of Pure Adapt, Inc in Albany, NY. We own Detailed Image, LockerPulse, and a bunch of other websites. I write about our company, entrepreneurship in general, work-life balance, and whatever else interests me.
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Category Archives: Culture
4 Rules for Fantastic Internal Email
Internal email (or inter-company email as some people like to call it) is one of those topics that unfortunately seems to get omitted when discussing the keys to creating a successful business. My experience has always been that if it’s done well it can improve productivity and moral drastically. Conversely, if it’s done poorly it can do the exact opposite. I think that this is one area that our current team excels in. For us this is especially important because we’re scattered in various locations. It’s very rare that my partners and I are all at the warehouse on the … Continue reading
Helping Your Employees Succeed
A few months back we started transitioning our Twitter and Facebook management over to our new employee Reece. It’s a perfect compliment to his customer service work. While Facebook has been a huge success for us, Twitter has been only a moderate success. During a meeting that he and I had we discussed ways to better captivate the Twitter audience and take advantage of the immediacy of Twitter as a platform. A few minutes in he had an idea: what if every Thursday we do some sort of Twitter promotion and call it “Twitter Thursday’s.” We could do a variety … Continue reading
Volunteering as a Team for a Great Cause
On Tuesday we shut down operations at the warehouse and our entire team volunteered to help move a soup kitchen in downtown Albany to it’s new location. The project is a Roman Catholic-Jewish partnership between the Blessed Sacrament parish in Albany, Catholic Charities of the Albany Diocese, and Temple Beth Emeth in Albany. They serve over 150 meals, three days a week to the poor in the community, as well as provide a clothing thrift shop, medical screenings, legal advice, and other assistance programs. In order to make the move happen, Father John Bradley of Blessed Sacrament was tasked with … Continue reading
Welcome Reece & Bobby to the Pure Adapt Team!
We’re extremely excited to be welcoming two new full-time members to the Pure Adapt family. In September we set out to hire a “Sales, Marketing, and Customer Support Specialist” for Detailed Image. We recently made an offer to our leading candidate Reece for this position. He accepted and is scheduled to start in January. Reece is a recent graduate of St. Rose college. He handled everything we threw at him exceptionally (and believe me, we didn’t make things easy on our applicants). He’s also a great culture fit – his family owns a body shop and he’s a passionate sports … Continue reading
Now With a “Real” Office
Back in ’09 I wrote The Bootstrapped Office. At that time we had the simplest, most basic work spaces at our warehouse and at home. As should be the case, there were a million things more important than the aesthetics of our office: Thing is, our customers will never see our work area. So when things go good for us we invest in better technology, employees, new product lines, new marketing initiatives, and a little bit in ourselves. Those things matter in our business. The aesthetics of a work area don’t. That was 100% true back then. The office was … Continue reading
Teamwork in Action
I’m writing this on Wednesday morning. Up to this point my work this week hasn’t really resembled what a “normal” workweek looks like for me. At all. I’ve spent the majority of my time in the warehouse helping the guys pack orders (we had a really successful early early holiday sale), answering customer service questions (which spike during big sales like this), and interacting with job candidates for our customer service position. Kind of a far cry from the usual web development and web marketing stuff. Why? Because while I was away Greg closed on a new house. Mike and … Continue reading
Why We Now Prioritize Team Outings
2011 has been our busiest year yet. Busy in terms of sales, but also busy in terms of work load for everyone. In February I posted about how and why we’re starting to think more about our company culture. We’re working to become more cognizant of our culture: what we’re doing currently, how that impacts the future, and whether or not we should adjust what we’re doing right now so that it aligns better with our desired future culture. This year we’ve made it a point to have regular team outings. About once per month we’ll do something together as … Continue reading
What a Spring!
Traditionally, the busiest months of the year for Detailed Image have been March and November because 1) those are the months that demand is highest (in March because of Spring time, November because of the holidays), and 2) that’s when we run our craziest sales. Ever since I can remember, March has always leapfrogged the previous November as our highest grossing month in company history, and then when November comes along it beats March, and the pattern continues on the next year. What’s made 2011 so special is that after a record-breaking March, April was essentially even (slightly less revenue, … Continue reading
Simple Gesture, Big Impact
Because of rain delays and extra innings, last night’s Angels vs. Red Sox game took over seven and a half hours to play. After a few hours of rain delays the majority of fans left the game. It looked desolate in the stands. Not many people are willing to stick around until after 2 AM on a weekday in the cold rain. But some did. What did the Red Sox do for these crazy dedicated fans? They announced over the PA system that fans could go sit anywhere they wished. Many people who could never afford seats behind home plate … Continue reading
The Intersection of Technology, Communication, and Culture at Pure Adapt
Yesterday I gave an abbreviated version of my “Entrepreneurship as a Career Choice” talk to the students at James Madison University. We then had a discussion about the pros and cons of starting your own business out of college, and then a brief Q&A. What made it different than the past talks was that I gave it virtually over Skype. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but it went pretty well. The webcam on their end was good enough for me to almost feel like I was standing up in front of the class like I’m used to. The … Continue reading