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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: Finance
Teamwork
We have a pretty stressful few months ahead of us. It’s not the same type of stress we had last year when we feared that one wrong move would crush us and eventually decided to not pay ourselves for a few months, but nonetheless it’s still a little more stress than anyone would like. We’ve set up a culture of constant improvement, and because of that we expect a lot out of ourselves. Like any business owner, we see all sorts of opportunities that we’re leaving on the table because we haven’t had the time or money to get to … Continue reading
8 Tips to Financial Stability for Small Businesses
This is a guest post by my business partner George. Each owner of Pure Adapt will be writing a post while I’m on vacation. Financing a small business can be very stressful when you are working with limited capital. Not having a solid cash flow can make or a break a company, so properly handling your finances is something no business owner should overlook. Below will outline some ways Pure Adapt has managed sustain positive cash flow and to continue self funding our growth without looking for outside investors. 1. Invest in QuickBooks or some other accounting software Keeping track … Continue reading
Bootstrap Yourself
While we’re on the topic of Mark Cuban posts, there was something else I wanted to comment on from that same post. As he often does, he included a “classic” Mark Cuban post at the bottom of his current post. In this case it was a post from earlier this year entitled The Best Equity is Sweat Equity: There are only two reasonable sources of capital for startup entrepreneurs, your own pocket and your customers pockets. I personally would never even take money from a family member. Could you imagine the eternal grief and guilt from your mom, dad, uncle … Continue reading
An Easy Way to Save a Cool $1k
Remember that post I wrote about our American Express Plum Card a few months back? We’ve only had the card since February, but we were just informed that we reached the maximum limit of savings that we can receive from FedEx in one year. Apparently the 5% discount only works up to $1,000/year of savings. That means in ~9 months we saved $1,000 just by having our FedEx charges automatically charged to our Plum Card! This doesn’t even include the 2% cash back we’re getting too. It also means that we spent $20k with FedEx in that short amount of … Continue reading
Profitability Update
Back in April I did a post entitled Thoughts on Pricing and Profitability where I basically pondered the advantages of become a higher volume, lower margin retailer: Generating sales is the hardest thing to do in the world of business. If I find a hands-off way to drive sales AND can turn over inventory faster by doing it, I’ll gladly sacrifice some profitability. The comments were mixed – some in agreeance, some not. And rightfully so. It’s an interesting debate with no clear cut right answer for every business in every situation. In the time since, we’ve become more and … Continue reading
The Economy, The Election, and Entrepreneurship
Like every other American, the economy has been on my mind a little more lately than I would like. This post isn’t really put together with much of a “point”, more so just a collection of thoughts I have on everything that’s been going on. —- James Hong, co-founder of Hot or Not, wrote the following in a post on his blog, which I happen to think is dead on: Ideologically, I don’t like the idea of a bailout. But I also understand that if there is no bailout, the economy might collapse faster and harder than we can deal … Continue reading
Pure Adapt Rocks The AMEX Plum Card
Have you seen the commercials for the AMEX Plum Card? It’s freaking unreal. Mike talked us in to applying for one earlier this year and it was one of the best financial decisions we’ve made. There’s no limit – we each carry a card around and we charge all of our purchases on it, with the exception of a few places that don’t take AMEX If you pay within 10 days of your statement closing you get 2% cash back. When you buy ~$30k/month in inventory and supplies, $600 back is no joke. We also get 5% off of our … Continue reading
Identity Theft Finally Resolved (I think)
Since January I have been fighting to get a fraudulent account removed from my credit report. In the time after my initial post about this almost six months ago, I have spent hundreds of hours working to get a $517 collection account for Sprint home phone service removed from my credit report (turns out the guy was from Brooklyn, not the Bronx as I had previously reported). Over the past six months I have spent time daily doing fun tasks such as: Filing online disputes with Experian (3 times) and TransUnion (1 time). Equifax did not have this charge appearing … Continue reading
Wohoo a Paycheck!
Back in February we made the somewhat difficult decision to self-fund our move and expansion by not paying ourselves for three months. In retrospect, this was a riskier move than I think we all realized. It’s really, really stressful to see your bank account dwindling without anything to replenish it. It’s also really, really stressful to work 12 hour days and see nothing in return. That said, it was the best move we ever could have made. Taking no pay brought us together as a team – we united around the fact that we needed to work our asses off … Continue reading
The Best Way to Raise Money? Don’t Pay Yourself
It’s the dirty little secret of running a business. I hear about it all the time, but rarely hear it publicized. It’s glossed over by Karen Northup of Corefino in this Churchill Club Video, and it’s mentioned by store owner Dan Fox in this article: founders of seemingly successful businesses who don’t take a penny of salary for themselves. The reasoning is quite simple: it’s expensive to run a business, and faced with the choice of paying themselves or furthering the business, most entrepreneurs will choose the latter 10 times out of 10. This past weekend we made a similar … Continue reading