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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: Life Balance
Getting Back on Track Post-Launch
In a lot of ways, it’s easier for me to approach life as a whole while I’m developing a large project like LockerPulse or the new Detailed Image last year or Tastefully Driven the year before. I tend to have a very narrow focus. I don’t think much past launch date. I want to work as hard as I can every day to push to get the site out to the world as soon as possible. I still work out and eat well and try to get enough sleep, but almost everything else gets reduced/minimized. I find this completely necessary … Continue reading
A “Typical” Week
As we’ve grown and changed, so has my work schedule. This year though, I’ve settled into a pretty nice schedule that I hope I can keep for a while. Here’s how a typical week goes: Monday – because we have to ship out all of the sales from the weekend, Monday’s are our busiest day. The entire team heads in to the warehouse. Whenever we finish orders, the four of us have our weekly meeting while our employees get the warehouse ready for the rest of the week (stock shelves, make boxes, fill the peanut dispenser, etc). This is the … Continue reading
Changes in Work, Sleep, Learning, & More
In looking back at posts from previous years, I realized that I used to post more frequently about all of the other things I think go into running a business and being an entrepreneur. Stuff like sleep and happiness and work ethic. As I’ve slowed a bit with my posting, it seems like those posts have been fewer and farther between. This certainly wasn’t intentional, but it’s always easier to put off a post about sleep & productivity than it is a post about a new feature on one of our sites. Nevertheless, I don’t want to lose that balance, … Continue reading
15 Productive Hours
I’ve instituted various time management and task management “systems” for myself over the years. I’ve almost always had a daily task list with automated reminders for routine things like “remember to check on backups”. I’ve grown into being very strict with how often I check and answer my email. Those things are pretty steady. But how I go about accomplishing the bigger projects changes based upon all sorts of variables, like how busy we are and what types of things I’m working on. During the holiday season I have to be very flexible and (gasp) leave my email open more … Continue reading
Looking Forward to 2010
I’m not really a big New Year’s Resolution guy. I mean, what’s the real difference between last week and this week? All that changed was the calendar. But in business it’s a little different. When your fiscal year aligns with the calendar year like ours does, it just makes sense to take a step back and evaluate 2009 vs 2008 vs 2007 and then put together a tentative game plan for 2010. Last year we did a good job of setting realistic goals. We got the new Detailed Image launched. We hired our first employee. We grew a lot in … Continue reading
Always On Call
The flexibility and freedom you have when you run your own company is awesome. Now that I’ve experienced it for a few years, it’s something I don’t ever want to give up. But there’s a flip side. If you are critical to your company’s operations (and let’s be real, if you’re bootstrapping a small business, there’s no way that you aren’t), there’s always that potential that something could go wrong. It could be anything, and it could be caused by any one of an infinite number of variables, most of which you have no control over. So you end up … Continue reading
Vote With Your Actions
A few months ago I saw the movie Food, Inc. I’ve become quite obsessed with the food industry the past few years. I’ve read a bunch of books and watched a bunch of documentaries. It fascinates me just how broken things are and how negatively that affects the entire population. One of my favorite parts about Food, Inc was at the end of the movie, after revealing just how bad things are, they give you specific steps that you can do to take action. The list is up on the website. I love the fact that they encouraged action. How … Continue reading
Warehouse Hockey & Company Culture
Last year I wrote about how we use our shipping dock as a hockey goal. For a while it was fun to just blast shots at the goal. Then it was fun to try to score a goal from real far away. Then it was fun to put up targets with pictures of our least favorite vendors. But alas, all of that grew old. So Greg and I set out to make up a new game to entertain us when we didn’t feel like working. After months of experimentation I think we’ve found it. On the back side of our … Continue reading
The Entrepreneurs Hierarchy of Needs?
On the way to work today I was listening to an audiobook version of the book FREE: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson (available for free on Audible) when he mentioned Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, something I was familiar with from college psychology class. Immediately I zoned out and started thinking about how this impacts business owners. The basic premise of Maslow’s hierarchy is that there is a pyramid of human needs, the higher up of which can only be met when the lower, more basic needs are fulfilled. Here’s the diagram from Wikipedia: Without having your … Continue reading
There’s Always a Trade-Off
In the most recent Inc. Magazine, Norm Brodsky used his Street Smarts column to answer a few reader questions. One in particular caught my interest: Dear Norm: I am 17 years old and recently sold a website for $100,000. It took me and my partners eight months to build, and we had to overcome many obstacles. And yet, when we finally sold it, I didn’t feel excited or elated. Rather, I’ve been really depressed. I went to a dance with a date last Friday and had a horrible time. It reminded me how out of touch I’ve been. As I … Continue reading