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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: Employees
Hiring Within Your Network
Yesterday I spent my day training Charlie, our second part time warehouse employee. Like John, he picked everything up very quickly and by the end of the day was able to do 90% of the work without asking a question. And like with John, this is partly because he’s a very intelligent guy and partly because we did a good job of designing systems that set him up for success. I think we’re now pretty confident that any hard working, smart person can be up and running at full speed in our warehouse in less than a week. That’s great … Continue reading
Setting Up Employees For Success
These first two weeks with our first employee have been a fascinating experience for us. John has picked up the job much faster than we anticipated. He’s getting more work done more accurately and in less time than we could have ever predicted. Now, a good portion of that is because he’s a very hard working, intelligent kid. I think we realize that not every employee is going to pick things up quite as fast as he has. But the other portion of that, the part that we have more control over, is how well I think we set him … Continue reading
Employeeless No More
We just hired our first employee. Well, technically that’s not true. Back when we were doing SEO and web design work we had a few contracted employees. But for Pure Adapt in it’s current e-commerce centric state, he is our first employee. Who? His name is John. He’s our accountant’s son. He just graduated from High School and will be attending college locally at Siena. Both he and his father are into detailing. His father actually came in on Christmas Eve last year and did some last second shopping for John for the holiday. Side note: it’s a pretty good … Continue reading
Small Businesses and Jobs
This is a follow-up thought on my last post about being an employee right now. All of this has sort of led me to take a step back and see the true value of a job and the role that small businesses like ours play in people’s lives. When you have a successful business you have the amazing opportunity and privilege to create jobs. A few years ago, I would have said “big deal, if I don’t create a job there are a million other opportunities out there”. Clearly now, there are not. According to the US Bureau of Labor … Continue reading
More on College as a Results-Only-Work-Environment (ROWE)
I’ve referenced Tim Ferris’ awesome blog post about Best Buy’s Results-Only-Work-Environment before, but it bears quoting again: ROWE stands for Results-Only Work Environment. In a ROWE, each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. Currently, there are two authentic ROWEs—Fortune 100 retailer Best Buy Co, Inc. and J. A. Counter & Associates, a small brokerage firm in New Richmond, WI. At both organizations, the old rules that govern a traditional work environment—core hours, “face time,” pointless meetings, etc.—have been replaced by one rule: focus only on results. In the … Continue reading
An Interesting By-Product of Running a Small Business
I had a great lunch yesterday with a friend and former classmate who now has a PhD in Entrepreneurship. He’s teaching a class called Entrepreneurship and Small Business at prestigious Skidmore college in the fall and asked me if I’d like to come in and speak to the class. Of course, it’s a total honor and I said yes. At one point in the discussion I started talking about our hiring situation. He mentioned he’d keep an eye out for exceptional talent, which I said would be awesome. That got me to really thinking: I haven’t been in the corporate … Continue reading
When to Hire: Our Next Big Task
If this first story sounds familiar, it is – I touched upon it in my Productive Output post. A few weeks ago the owner of a local large online retailer (approx 10x bigger than us) visited the warehouse. George worked for him prior to starting DI, and he based much of early DI off of this particular website. After seeing our shipping process on the back-end of our shopping cart, the owner turned George and his co-owner and said “I could fire two employees if I had that technology”. I unfortunately was not there to hear this, but upon getting … Continue reading
How To Do Client Work Right
While it’s on my mind, I want to reflect on how I think client work can be done correctly. By ‘correctly’ I mean being happy with the work you’re doing, not being over-worked, making plenty of profit, and satisfying your clients. It can be done – I know people who do it – but it certainly wasn’t for myself or Pure Adapt. Based on my experiences, these are the rules you should strictly adhere to if you want to do client work right: Charge what you’re worth. What are you worth? Do some math: if you want to make $100k … Continue reading
Standing Up For Your Partners
As is the case with any service company, we have to wait on files and information from our clients regularly before we can complete their project. This morning, in two such cases, both clients of ours blamed their partner for the delays. Something along the lines of “they didn’t get me the file”, “they screwed up and gave you the wrong information”, or “that decision they made makes no sense”. One even bashed their partner three times in a four sentence email! It might not seem like a big deal, but those businesses are in trouble big time. I would … Continue reading
Should You Hire Your Friends and Family?
The best answer I can come up with to that question is: it depends. I know a lot of people who swear by never hiring people they know. Those are the same people who also say they’ll never date a colleague, or never mix any form of business and pleasure. Those things all sound noble, but they’re just blanket statements that don’t hold up in the real world. How many companies do you hear about that are founded by two brothers, or two sisters, or father + son, or lifelong friends (like in Pure Adapt’s case)? A lot. Know why? … Continue reading