Adam McFarland

One of my huge pet peeves is when someone is in a difficult situation and they whine and complain about it, but proceed to do nothing to change the situation.  Usually this comes in two flavors -  relationships and jobs - although it really can apply to anything.  It drives me nuts.  If you don’t like a situation in life get off your ass and do something about it.

When it comes to starting your own business, everyone has a tendency to talk a big game.  You might succeed, you might fail, but to me it’s unacceptable to talk about changing the world without even trying.  In most cases, “failure” leads to success at some other point down the road…even if it means you just laid the groundwork for someone else to come along and succeed.

The other day I saw this index card over on Indexed, one of my favorite blogs:

No arguments from me on the sex side of things

But I started to really think about the “changing the world” portion of the card.  And you know what?  Yea, I’d say that’s what most people do.  But that’s not what I do.  Or - more appropriately - that’s not what we do.

My definition of  “changing the world” - an action that improves the life of one or more people.

I don’t agree that the only events that can “change the world” are curing cancer or eliminating poverty.  I think that mentality makes it too easy to give up and walk through life feeling like you can’t make a difference.  That just simply isn’t true.  You might not be able to cure cancer, but you can brighten the day of a little kid with cancer down at your local hospital.  You might not be able to end poverty, but you can pick up some extra groceries for your local food pantry.  I look at this blog, SportsLizard, iPrioritize, Detailed Image, Music-Alerts, etc and I know that each one has “changed the world” in it’s own minor-but-relevant way because I’ve seen hundreds of emails from people expressing their gratitude for the work we’ve done.

What if I didn’t decide to start this blog back in 2005?  What if I gave up on SportsLizard after the first few tough months?  What if George and Greg didn’t take initiative on the opportunity that they saw to start an auto detailing site focused around great customer service and educating car owners?  What if I gave up on my search for an album release date service and didn’t start Music-Alerts?

The obvious answer to me is that we wouldn’t have changed the world.

All of those emails from satisfied users/customers would seize to exist.  To me that’s more important than any dollar amount in my pocket.  That’s why I continue to try to change the collectibles industry with SportsLizard even if it accounts for (and probably will always account for) a tiny percentage of our revenues.  If I can make enough money to live and I know my work is making the world a better place, I will be wholly satisfied with myself.

You might contest my definition of changing the world.  That’s fine, it’s certainly debatable.  I’ll tell you one thing that isn’t debatable:  no one has ever changed the world by just talking about changing the world.  Talk without action will get you nowhere.

As I mentioned last week, weekends have been our busiest time (which does seem counter-intuitive, but whatever, we’ll take it).  Friday afternoon Mike sent out a newsletter with a code for 10% off and free shipping for orders over $75 on Detailed Image.  Combined with some killer daily specials and the DI busy season, the flood gates opened and the sales came pouring on in.

George took this photo mid-day of all of the domestic FedEx Ground orders for DI and TD.  This doesn’t include a handful of international orders (we ship those via USPS) or FedEx Express orders.  It also doesn’t include about 30 orders that we couldn’t ship because products are on back order.

Damn that’s a lot of boxes!

On top of that, Tastefully Driven orders have picked up in the past week or so.  I’ve also been having quite a bit of success finding talented authors to write for us for what we’ve now decided is going to be a re-launch of the blog portion of the site.  Overall, just a great day (well - except I got an email from someone who was upset that the Premium Price Guide Account on SportsLizard costs $4.99/month.  He used the phrase “fuck you” every other sentence, and also ended with “P.S. Fuck You”.  Gotta love people’s manners.  The Price Guide isn’t perfect and definitely has it’s flaws, but it still is a useful tool that makes us good money with no work, so I’ve learned to just ignore any pissy emails that don’t have substance.  I just wrote him back with a link to an article I wrote about various methods of pricing collectibles and wished him luck.  No sense in letting someone like that ruin a great day).

It’s funny - when sales are down or there’s other financial stress, everyone gets a bit down and starts to question everything we do and everything we’ve done.  Admittedly we all take it too far at times (myself included).  Then, when sales are great, we look/act/feel like rock stars who can’t make a mistake. The reality is that we’re somewhere in between.  So is the life of a business owner.

Tonight my little sister Jenna graduated from 8th grade. I accompanied her and my parents to the ceremony held at the high school that I graduated from back in 2000. Being twelve years apart with no siblings in between, I always feel like there’s a huge gap between my generation and her generation. In reality, there really isn’t. Much of what she goes through is the same as what I went through twelve years ago. Take tonight for an example:

The principle gives a speech about reaching for your dreams, pursuing your passions, and striving to do something amazing. The teachers hand out all sorts of awards to the kids who have perfect attendance or have an average over 90. Each kid gets called up and given a diploma, a class picture, and a folder with certificates for their various achievements. My sister had nothing short of 20 different awards and certificates. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a great student. But is anyone that good? I’m guessing most kids went home with the same bag of goodies. We live in a world where everyone gets a trophy for just trying. Kids become conditioned to being rewarded for just showing up.

The question I kept asking myself was: does all of this give our kids the best chance to succeed? As the (very long) graduation ceremony began my mind started to drift back to the time twelve years ago when I was sitting in the exact same spot. I thought about who was in my graduating class and what they’re doing now. Some have gone on to start businesses (two of my partners - Mike and Greg - were in my 8th grade graduating class). Some are working in politics. Some have joined the peace corps. Most have settled for mundane jobs and given up on their dreams. Still, others have hit rock bottom and become addicts or criminals. Yet twelve years ago we all sat there just like my sister. We were all filled with hopes and dreams and promises of greatness to come. Why did some veer off course?

At that point I realized something - our parents don’t prepare us for greatness. They prepare us for mediocrity, to be average. Do you want your kid to cure cancer? Start their own business? Join the army or the peace corps? Work for a non-profit? Get a Ph.D? Teach inner city kids?  Help the disabled? The question parents should ask themselves deep down: do you really want your kid to change the world?

Every single parent would answer “yes” to that question. But their actions speak louder than their words, and the two don’t agree. They’ll go on and on about how their child will become president or solve our energy crisis, but what they don’t realize is that achieving anything great requires hard work, sacrifice, passion, focus, determination, and most importantly the ability to deal with failure. Because most likely, if you’re striving for greatness, you’re going to fail. Achieving great things is hard. Most of the great things in this world have been discovered or achieved by people who relentlessly fought for what they believed in even when they failed repeatedly, even when they ran out of money, and even when others told them to quit and get a “real job”.

Parents: how will you react when your kid has $20k in student loans and leaves a secure job to start a company like I did? Or when they take a leave of absence from college to go overseas to help in Darfur? Or when they decide to join the army and go fight in Iraq because that’s what they believe in? You’ll get nervous. You’ll push back. You’ll ask them to reconsider. Because it scares you to see them fail. But what you don’t realize is that your fear also prohibits them from doing something great. Your fear pushes them into working 50 hours a week doing something they don’t love because it’s “safe” or “secure”. Our world has warped our minds into believing that your 401K is more important than your happiness or what you do for others.

We do a great job of telling our kids to be great, we just do a horrible job teaching them the traits they need to become great.  My advice to every graduate this spring - be it 8th grade, high school, or college - you truly can do anything that you want with your life. Dream the impossible, then do it. Cherish that mentality - don’t let other people ever take it away from you.

Back in February I wrote a post about positive reinforcement.  At the time we were just realizing how important it was for all four of us to see the positive feedback that the others get.  The prime example that I used were Detailed Image orders.  At the time we weren’t yet in the warehouse and George and Greg were doing 100% of the shipping of the products.  There was no real “need” for Mike and I to also see the emails every time a sale came through, but we started doing it after I realized that it was helping our morale to open up our inbox and see ten orders instead of just getting weekly sales updates.

It’s crazy how much this has helped.  We all get the immediate positive feedback any time a sale comes through.  We also all have become great at inspecting orders at a quick glance for any errors.  As refined as our system is, there are infinite order possibilities - I’d say 1 in 100 orders still has one of us doing some manual work to double check that everything went through properly.  A few times each week I make minor tweaks to the code to prevent a wacky scenario from happening again.

BUT positive reinforcement also works the other way.   Weekends and Monday’s have been our biggest sales days the past few months.  Of course, the days where we get the most work done are probably Tuesday - Friday.  See where this could mess with you mentally?  I feel like in the middle of the week I’m working my ass off and seeing so-so sales.  Then we’re out drinking beers on the weekends, doing no work at all, and George pulls up our system on his iPhone and shows everyone how much money we just make during dinner.

Don’t get me wrong - making $1,000 while you’re out drinking for the night is a cool feeling that you can’t really get unless you run your own business.   However, waking up every day in the middle of the week and seeing sales slow down a bit kind of sucks.   You go from the high of all highs to just feeling OK about things.  Even though I know the weekends are when we make our money it still messes with my head.  I’ve become conditioned to seeing a sale as my positive reinforcement for doing a good job, whereas I used to just think that the completion of my daily tasks was enough.  Not saying that we shouldn’t be monitoring sales closely, but doing so often has the by product of being on a roller coaster ride emotionally based upon how many customers purchased on that particular day.

As any college student will tell you, scheduling classes is an art form. My first semester I didn’t have much choice and had to take whatever was available. My second semester I loaded up on Monday and Thursday and had the rest of the week off. It sucked - Mondays and Thursdays wore me out and the rest of the week I had to spend 10 hours doing homework. My third semester I put large gaps between my classes so I’d have time to get work done during the day, but all I did was bone around on ESPN.com and AIM.

My fourth semester I finally got it right: 1 - 3 hour breaks between classes, equally spread out throughout the week. I got the same amount of work done in a 2 hour break that I’d get done in a 5 hour break the previous semester. I didn’t mess around and waste time because I was under a time crunch. A 2 hour break really means like 70 minutes of work when you factor travel time and setup time into the equation. You don’t have any time to mess around with 70 minutes: you’re always under a bit of pressure and that’s why you get so much done. You’re focused. This one lesson has stuck with me ever since.

Read the following excerpts and stop and think for a few minutes before continuing the post.

If you’re an employee, spending time on nonsense is, to some extent, not your fault. There is often no incentive to use time well unless you are paid on commission. The world has agreed to shuffle papers between 9 and 5, and since you’re trapped in the office for that period of servitude, you are compelled to create activities to fill the time. Time is wasted because there is so much time available. It’s understandable.

Most entrepreneurs were once employees and come from the 9-5 culture. Thus they adopt the same schedule, whether or not they function at 9 AM or need 8 hours to generate their target income. This schedule is a collective social agreement and a dinosaur legacy of the results-by-volume approach. How is it possible that all the people in the world need exactly 8 hours to accomplish their work? It isn’t. 9-5 is arbitrary.

Since we have 8 hours, we fill 8 hours. If we had 15, we would fill 15. If we have an emergency and suddenly need to leave work in 2 hours, we miraculously complete those assignments in 2 hours.

Tim Ferriss - The Four Hour Workweek, pages 73-74

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 4-Hour Workweek, you helped people understand that because of technology, people don’t have to defer living until retirement. They can design their own lifestyle. Now imagine what would happen if the entire culture of a workplace went through the same transformation. That’s what a ROWE is. A ROWE is a work culture that gives people the power to take control of their lives. As long as they get their job done, they’re free.

One of the misconceptions about ROWE is that it’s a work-from-home program. It’s not. If you want to work in a cube, that’s great. If you want to work from a coffee shop, then that’s great, too. The question in a ROWE is not “where is everybody?” but “is the work getting done?”

Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson in an interview with Tim Ferriss

The United States leads the world in two categories: work and waste. American employees put in more hours and take fewer vacations than just about anyone else in the industrialized world, and our individual ecological “footprints” are much larger.

Coincidence? I think not. The way we work drives our habits of consumption and waste. The more we work, the more we drive, the more energy we burn, the more styrofoam to-go containers we use. At the end of the day, we’re so tired, we devour more takeout and TV, often falling asleep in front of the latter. If we want to accelerate the recent trend of reducing waste, it may be time to consider the radical step of, well, relaxing more, consuming less, and living fuller lives. May the Wall Street Journal editorial board strike me down.

Naturally, most businesses blanch at the notion of giving up any competitive edge in a globalized economy. But it’s not as if moving to a four-day (or 32-hour) workweek would simply lop 20% off the economy. Cutting hours may actually raise per-hour productivity. France, home of the 35-hour week, creates more GDP per work hour than the United States ($37 versus $34, as of 2003). Norway spanks us too ($39), and Norwegians work 26% fewer hours a year than Americans. It’s a myth of modern hypercapitalism that an overworked, sleep-deprived, stressed-out workforce is a necessity. Studies have consistently shown that longer workweeks increase productivity only in the very short term. In a recent survey by Salary.com, workers copped to wasting about 20% of the average day Web surfing and gossiping. Sound familiar?

Companies can take the first step by reinventing the workweek. Then it’s up to us to devote our increased leisure hours to activities with low environmental impact — and not to driving around gas-guzzling cars or booting up power-hungry electronics. Then we could enjoy both continued wealth and improved planetary health.

David Roberts - Reinventing the Workweek, Green Business Practices - Fast Company: May 2008

OK, soak those in for a second…got it? Here’s what I think when I read excerpts like that:

The Logical Thought

So if I’m not an employee, and we’re in long term growth mode (past the start-up phase), and 9-5 is completely arbitrary, and it’s shown that less time working will make me more productive per hour spent, and if I’ll be healthier/happier by spending more time on things outside of work, and it’s better for the environment, why the f*ck am I working so many hours?

In the startup phase there’s a “cavalier” attitude that you have to have. Life = work and work = life, and that’s OK. But I’ve been doing that for two years and I don’t want to become that guy who works 24×7 for their entire life and misses out on everything else. I enjoy new experiences and new people. I enjoy experiencing life. A large part of that is being an entrepreneur, but there’s also a lot that has nothing to do with running a business.

I spent a lot of my engineering days in college, on internships, and in the work force working on Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing projects and always thought to myself “why can’t these principles be applied to areas in business outside of manufacturing?” What 4HWW did for me was validate that increasing effectiveness and efficiency not only can be applied to all areas of a business, but in all areas of life too. Like everyone else I have become conditioned to 9 -5 and needed a little push to realize that I didn’t have to stay a part of it.

What I Want us to Become

I badly want us to become a model of efficiency and effectiveness. I want it because it makes us a more valuable company. I want it because removing the mundane and repetitive improves the quality of our lives.

In my head, all of this starts with our business processes. Unless you’ve got a ton of money (we don’t) you need to do the equivalent of hiring people by automating anything that is repetitive and can be done without human input. It started with our shopping cart software that automates inventory and shipping (side note: we had the owners of a large e-commerce store that’s been running for twelve years come visit us recently. The founder turned to George and said “I could fire two employees if I had that technology”. That made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside). It continued by moving all of our data to the web and automating backups and with George automating his accounting. In the future we’ll automate more of our marketing - while things like Google Base submission are automatic, niche newsletters based on customer behavior aren’t quite there yet…but they will be.

Once the business processes are set we can move on to us. We all want to work less hours. Some tasks - like packing and shipping - cannot reasonably be automated with technology so the way you “automate” them is to hire employees. I feel that by the end of ‘09 we’ll have the 2-3 people in place that we need to allow us to work 20 hour workweeks. That’s my personal goal for each of us - the other guys might be thinking less or more, but that’s what I’m pushing for.

How did I come up with 20 hours? In 4HWW Tim Ferriss asks the question “If you had a heart attack and had to work 2 hours per day, what would you do?” He asks the question to challenge you to think about what you really need to do to successfully complete your job. However, he bases this on the premise that you don’t like your job and want to work as little as possible. That’s not me/us. I love this stuff. One of the things I really want to do a lot this summer is white water rafting - I’ve been twice and it was fun as hell so I want to officially make it one of my hobbies. I’m pumped. But I equally want to expand upon an email marketing system that we recently launched (right now we send follow-up emails to everyone who makes a purchase asking them to review their products on the DI blog or TD forum, but there’s a ton of growth potential there). I also equally want to hike every state park in the Albany area. Of course I also equally want to bulk up my AJAX skills and improve the user experience on our cart.

Clearly I love our company as much as I love non-work related things. It’s a good place to be in life. 20 hours limits you just enough so that you get excited to work. If I can only work 20 hours the intensity in which I work will be multiplied many times over. I’ll also really look forward to those few hours a day instead of letting my mind drift to things that I might rather be doing.

What I’m Doing About it

I realize that this all starts with me. I’m the one usually “proposing” these wacky things to my partners so I have to prove the concept before I can expect them to get on board. 20 hours isn’t realistic right now because we don’t have an employee and won’t for a while. However, I’m always looking to make progress and prove my point so I’ve decided to limit myself to 35 hours of work each week. After a few months, I’m going to make it 30. Then I’ll stay at 30 until we have our 2-3 employees in place and trained.

What counts as “work” you ask? Good question. I’m counting everything that is related to running Pure Adapt with the exception of:

• Commuting time
• Blog posts on this blog
• Time spent reading business books or business magazines
• Time spent learning (for example, I have a few AJAX books that will take a lot of time to work through…those don’t count)

Everything else is fair game. I purposely waited until the end of Thursday to do this post because I wanted to test my limitation this week. This week is the perfect test week - if I can do it this week I can do it 95%+ of the time. Being that I got NOTHING done last week with our server mess, my to-do list was backed up a ton. On Sunday night I took all 20 action items and split them up equally among the days of the week. In my head I said to myself “you’re only going to have 6 or 7 hours to do all of this, so you better be focused”. It has worked. Every day I knocked each item off. I am getting at least as much work done in far less time. Some days I worked right up to the last second and others - like today - I was done early. Thus far here are the hours I’ve worked:

• Monday - 7 AM - 2:30 PM (7.5 hrs)
• Tuesday - 7:30 AM - 4 PM (8.5 hrs)
• Wednesday - 7:30 AM - 1:30 PM (6 hrs)
• Thursday - 7:30 AM - 1 PM (5.5 hrs)

That puts me at 27.5 hrs through Thursday. We each have four days at the warehouse and one “off”. My off day is Friday, so I generally do the most work Monday - Thursday. 7.5 hours for Friday - Sunday sounds just about right. I’ll probably work about 4 hours tomorrow, 3 hours on Saturday, and just check email on Sunday (Indy 500 baby….anyone else pumped!?!?!).

This past four days has been the best of my life in terms of work-life balance. There’s nothing outside of work that I wanted to do that I didn’t. That’s huge for me. I’ve also stopped doing work at home - I do most of my work at the warehouse and the rest at Starbucks/other local coffee shops, which helps me mentally unwind when I walk through the door of my apartment. Continuing this schedule will go a long way to ensuring I get the fulfillment I’m looking for out of both work AND life.

I’ll definitely continue to post updates as this unfolds…should be interesting.

Every once in a while I have one of those moments where I say to myself  “holy crap, I can’t believe this - I’m 25 years old and my partners and I run a company.  We’ve built our own e-commerce platform and have our own warehouse, and we did it without giving up any stock or taking any outside money.  I am living my dream.”  It’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day crap that I forget that sometimes.

Things are going good right now for us.  We weathered the storm of all of the moving expenses.  Our sales have been on the high side of what we were projecting.  The only way we don’t pay ourselves before our June 1 deadline is if we choose not to do so - cash flow is very good.  On a personal level, I’m moving into an apartment closer to the warehouse in a few weeks (cutting my commute in half).  It’ll be my 7th move in 7 years by my count, so hopefully I’ll stay at this place for a while.  There’s some stability after a few years of chaos, and it’s refreshing to be able to focus on my work without it consuming the entirety of my existence.

Dare I say it without coming across as lazy or satisfied:  I’ve finally made it.

I can finally say that without a doubt I can do this for a living.  It’s no longer a pipe dream.  I’m no longer a “lost” kid who left his career to tool around for a while with a business before going back to the “real world”.  This is for real, and it’s so f*cking awesome I can’t put it into words.   It doesn’t matter to me that we aren’t “rich” because that’s not what it’s about to me:  it’s about the experience, it’s about living your life to your full potential without others getting in your way, it’s about building something great with other people who believe in it as much as you do.  All of the ideas I’ve really wanted to pursue - SportsLizard, iPrioritize, Music-Alerts, the shopping cart, etc - I’ve been able to get to market and see what the market thinks about them.  How many people get to turn their “best” ideas into a reality?  Yes, it’s come with a lot of sacrifice, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Like most of us, the time in my life when I met the most new people and developed the most relationships was in college.  Lately - for some reason known only to God - I’ve been hearing from and running into a ton of people that I haven’t heard from in years.  It’s been great catching up with everyone and seeing what they are doing.  However, I’ve noticed a pattern - many of them aren’t doing what they want to be doing.  In and of itself, this isn’t a huge deal…as long as you’re working towards what you want to be doing, or what you feel you are called to be doing.

But most of them aren’t working towards what they want to be doing.  They aren’t trying.  They aren’t even thinking about trying.  I’ve spent a lot of time thinking back to conversations I had when I was in college.   I thought back to discussions about passion and drive and determination, and what these friends wanted to do with their lives.  We all had big dreams.  Sadly, in a matter of five years or less most of the people I know have given up on their dreams.  This has nothing to do with being married, having kids, or working a crappy job for a while:  I understand that circumstance often dictates what you do for money.  It has to do with the fact that they’ve given up - you can hear it in their voice.  They are content to not pursue the things I was so sure they’d pursue only a few years ago.  It’s sad and it boggles my mind.  How can they not even try?  How can they not even  take a chance?  Won’t they wonder what if?  Why don’t they just spend a few hours a week working towards their dreams…at night, on the weekends, over their lunch break?  I just can’t comprehend that.  I can’t comprehend giving up.

In the words of the immortal Jimmy V:  Don’t give up, don’t ever give up. 

It’s a weird feeling that I always get around this time. Every single time I’ve launched a new site or project I’ve felt the same thing, best described by a post I wrote back in 2006 just after the launch of iPrioritize:

From my limited experience as an entrepreneur, I’ve come to the realization that the day after the launch of a new business or product is a weird one. The initial excitement and relief of the launch has been replaced with a realization that you have exactly zero customers. Now, maybe for some people this doesn’t happen the next day, but I’d say something’s wrong if you are still celebrating your launch a week later.

I woke up in a weird mood today. I had that “holy crap, how am I going to get people to start using my site and eventually buy my service” feeling, despite the fact that I have a well-thought out marketing plan to execute. I suppose that I get this feeling because marketing is such an inexact science.

For the past week I was in sort of a post-launch-work-life-funk. All day long I’ve felt anxious and unsatisfied (not typical at all for me) and I’ve questioned if I/we have done everything we could have done to make the site great.

The difference this time is experience: I’ve felt this feeling before and it’s always gone away as soon as things start to pick up and I realize that our months of development were justified. Tastefully Driven has been shipping out 2-3 orders a day, which is fantastic for a nine day old site. I’ve got to remember that we’re in this for the long haul and we don’t need $50k months right off the bat to be having success. I knew this all along - it was part of our plan, but I still got the same anxiety. So I started asking myself WHY.

I think I was wrong back in 2006 - it’s not at all because marketing is an inexact science. It’s because you downshift yourself from going balls out to launch a site to a more steady, long-term marketing strategy. It’s a massive life change that’s akin to switching from being a sprinter to a marathon runner.

For months I was pushing with everything I could to launch the site. Since I knew it was a short term thing, I could work 15 hour days and push aside other aspects of my life. The “rush” was always there because I saw us rapidly achieving goals that brought us closer to the ultimate goal: launch.

Now, I’m doing a mix of things that will bring some sales right away (PPC, product syndication, etc) and things that will bring in sales months/years from now (blog posts, forum posts, videos). Programming goes from exciting features to mundane maintenance, with the occasional exciting feature a few times a year. The ultimate goal is thriving over a period of years, something that’s much harder to get motivated for.

I KNOW from experience that what we’re doing is right and will work. I also know because nine days in things are going about as good as they possibly could (from a sales standpoint and from other important metrics). I feel like a puppet-master who knows exactly what strings to pull at exactly the right times - a skill that only comes with experience.

That said, it’s still a major life change and those take a while to adjust to no matter how confident and prepared you are. The rest of my life that I set aside for a few months now resurfaces and I’ve got to deal with the things that will allow me to live a more balanced life so I don’t burn out - I’ve got to ensure I finish the marathon and that means working a bit less and doing a bit more for myself.

After about a week I feel like I’m getting into a new “groove” and am beginning to find my place. But man, I’m happy we aren’t planning on starting any new sites for a while - even though I knew this funk was probably coming it still sucked.

I’ve never actually heard another business owner talk about this, but I’d imagine it’s a somewhat common feeling for anyone that sells out for something for a short, intense period of time.

I’ve never been the world’s biggest Tiger Woods fan. I respect him, am in awe of his athletic ability, and admire his work ethic. However, I’ve always thought he came across a bit too ‘rehearsed’ and not ‘real’ enough…kind of like Michael Jordan. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, but in sports, business, and in life I tend to look up to people who are a little more transparent and strong in their convictions.

All of that said, his interview this week with Scott Van Pelt for the ESPN Sports Center Sunday Conversation was fantastic. Slowly but surely (likely because of his marriage, child, and death of his father) it feels like he’s showing a little more of his true self, which I find refreshing.

One sequence in particular stood out as particularly interesting to me. It shows the type of desire and focus that you need to be great at anything in life:

SVP: “You have 64 wins on the PGA Tour, a fortune in the bank, how do you fight the human nature that says ‘I’m going to hit the snooze button today, I’m gonna take my foot off the gas, I’m just gonna coast for a while.’ Where does the hunger inside of you come from?”

Tiger: “I don’t know how you can think any other way”.

SVP: “There’s no….what would allow you to be satisfied?”

Tiger: “Hmm - win more.”

SVP: “So the 64th is…it feels as good, as fulfilling, as the 1st, the 2nd, the 33rd?”

Tiger: “God yes. Oh yeah”.

SVP: “So there’s no point when you can sort of put the feet up on a Tuesday afternoon and say ‘Today I’m not going to the gym’.?

Tiger: “No. Because the next…that’s…I look at life as: the greatest thing about tomorrow is that I will be better than I am today. And that’s the way I’ve always lived my life. So I have no understanding why people do hit the snooze button because you have a chance to become a better person, become - for me - a better athlete…all the different things you can do to become better for tomorrow. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of that?”

You can check out the full interview on the video below:

Today I was planning on writing a post about the startup life and the mentality required to live it, but Adam Gilbert stole my thunder…by using the EXACT same quote I had written on my index card this morning. Adam basically summed up my thoughts in his conclusion:

If I’m going to do something then I might as well be doing something remarkable/great/worth doing/worth talking about. Otherwise, why bother?

So let’s say you’re like Adam and my partners and I, and you have the privilege to be part of a company that embodies your passion.  As much as you love every second of it, and don’t consider it “work”, if that’s literally the only thing you do your life will fall apart - physically, mentally, and socially.  Friends, family, significant others, and other hobbies/passions still need some attention or you’ll go crazy and everyone will resent you.

How on earth can you handle balancing it all??? 

I have a simple rule:  aside from going to the gym (which is ingrained into my schedule regardless), every day, no matter how insanely busy it is, I try to have one non-business related goal. It could be calling a friend, reading a book for an hour, watching a game on TV, having beers with my friends, having dinner with my parents, etc - but no matter how chaotic or crazy the day goes I try as hard as I can to still achieve that goal.  And 99% of the time I do.

I also find that this helps productivity because I don’t really feel like I’m sacrificing.  If I watch a few bball games a week and catch highlights of the rest on ESPN, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on a sport I love.  If I grab beers with my friends two nights each week, I’m not neglecting them or missing out on what’s going on in their lives.

Sure, entrepreneurs will never achieve the same work-life balance as someone who works a 9-5…in large part because we don’t want that balance.  Bottom line:  I tend to like to spend my time doing things I enjoy (crazy me).  When I’m working, I’m loving it.  When I’m spending time doing those other things - even if it’s only an hour or two a day - I’m also loving it.  What more balance can you ask for?

I bet you think I just haven’t been posting much this week because we’ve been busy getting acclimated to the warehouse. Right? Right? Nope - I caught a wicked cold and have spent most of the week home sick getting very little accomplished. This was supposed to be the week where I started my ‘new’ routine, but that’ll have to wait until next week.

Speaking of next week, we could end up spending the majority of the week working with the oil company trying to figure out why our heater mysteriously stopped working today. That should be fun.

With the move and everything that it has involved, combined with George and I being sick the past few weeks, and George losing his laptop to repair for 2 weeks, I would have expected sales to have struggled. Nope. Detailed Image exceeded expectations by about $15k of additional revenue for February. We’ve spent so much time on total BS this month that sales weren’t doing so great I think I’d be in full-out panic mode.

Is there a point to all of this rambling? Yup. All of this has put us behind the 8 ball a bit with Tastefully Driven. A month ago we were way ahead of schedule, and now we’re cutting it really, really close. The site will launch 4/1 regardless (I’ll make sure of that), but I want it to launch 4/1 with 100% of our pre-marketing plan executed (haven’t started yet…eh) and 100% of the rest of our marketing - like our PPC - prepared.

I’ve also learned that vendors move slow as shit. Every vendor I’ve contacted for Tastefully Driven has been extremely receptive to Pure Adapt and has bought in to the Tastefully Driven concept…which is great. Once they’re sold however, I basically say “we need to place an order ASAP, how fast can I pay you?”. The majority have taken weeks to place the first order, and then weeks to ship the first order. Wtf.

In most cases we’re working direct with product manufacturers, which is an archaic world where fax machines still get more use than computers. One company even told Greg that they charge extra to “ship to companies south of the Mason-Dixon Line”. The Mason-Dixon Line??? Is this 1820 or 2008? Thanfully we are NORTH of the Mason-Dixon line. Whew.

To take product photos, take initial inventory, stock shelves, etc, we really need to have everything in our hands by the middle of March….which I’m confident won’t happen for all of our products at this point. There’s a chance that 75% of it will be here by the end of next week, but the other 25% are going to be pushing it. We could literally be receiving products the last few days of March and photoing them on 3/30 or 3/31. Lesson learned: contact new vendors 3-6 months before you plan to begin selling their products.

Does TD have to launch on 4/1? Of course not. Nothing has to be done. But I won’t let us screw this launch up, even if it means working every waking second the next month to get it right. A few unforeseen road blocks only motivate the shit out of me. In a way, the more daunting the task, the more focused and driven I am to get it done. The easy thing to do would be to postpone the launch to 5/1 - but that’s just not how I work.