SportsLizard Entrepreneur Blog

The end!

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 23:34:00 +0000

After 296 posts, this is officially the last post of the SportsLizard Entrepreneur Blog. If you'd like to continue to follow my story (you damn better continue to follow my story) you can do so on Adam-McFarland.Net. Within the next hour I should have that site up and running with a few posts. As I said in the last post, if you're subscribed to the Feedburner feed you should have a seamless transition to the new blog.

See you on the other side :)

This blog is moving!

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:49:00 +0000

I apologize for the lack of posts the last week or so...I've been programming my brains out.

For a while I've been considering moving this blog to its own domain, and since I'm a step ahead of my partners on finishing off the DI site, I've got a week to kill and I'm taking care of a lot of little things that I've been putting off. Those subscribed to the Feedburner RSS feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/SportsLizardEntrepreneurBlog) should have a seamless transition. Everyone else can find me at the new URL, which I'll announce next post.

Here's WHY I'm doing it:

Blogger sucks ass. I started this blog in 2005 as my first blog and Blogger was a simple setup. Now I use Wordpress for everything and I can't stand Blogger. The new blog will have all of the Blogger Archives, but will use Wordpress so thankfully I don't need to worry about Bloggers' crappy FTP and commenting anymore.
Both SportsLizard and this blog have grown considerably in the past 2 years. I want the SL domain to be 100% sports and sports collectibles, and I want the new site to be 100% young entrepreneur. It just makes sense that way (and won't confuse search engines so much about the topic/focus of the domain).
I started another blog on this domain about sports collectibles earlier this year, and it's confusing having 2 blogs on one domain.
My entrepreneurial journey has led me to do much, much more than just SL, and I don't want to have this be my primary association any more. It's just a piece of my life and Pure Adapts' overall business.
I think I'll be more honest. I mentioned recently that I was struggling with blogging, and I think having a separate place to vent my thoughts will be good for me. I also hope to share more detailed solutions, such as specific sample code I used to solve a problem.

As soon as the new blog is ready, I'll post one last post here and then be done with it. Being the SEO that I am, I'm going to 301 redirect every post to it's counterpart on the new site (the archives will look almost exactly the same). It'll be interesting to see how my SE rankings are hurt because of the move. Hopefully my link juice will be passed successfully...it'll sure be interesting to track how the move impacts both SL and the new domain.

To my advertisers and sponsors: I checked, and nearly all of you will expire in the next month or two. I've decided to go sans links/ads on the new site, so how about this: I'll leave your ads up on the archived version of this blog indefinitely and we'll call it even? Of course, if you want a pro-rated refund I understand...just email me and I'll take care of it.

What is your PSP (no, not Sony)?

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 19:31:00 +0000

Last night I read an absolutely fascinating article in Fast Company Magazine about former YE (now 34) Adam Werbach entitled Working With The Enemy. Werbach, who was a leading environmentalist and president of the Sierra Club at the ripe old age of 23, has pulled a 180 and aligned himself with Walmart. His speech in 2004 "Is Environmentalism Dead" sent shockwaves through the community that supported him.

Werbach asked a simple question to the head of every major environmental agency: "Have you achieved your goals?" We all know that the answer is "no" and that the world today is probably in the worst shape it has ever been in.

I've never been one to call myself "green" at all - but over the past year I've been buying more and more into the philosophy that we have to do SOMETHING or else the world won't be around for our grand kids. The beauty in this disaster we've put ourselves in, is that we HAVE to rise to the occasion and that means that we're going to see great entrepreneurial efforts to try to get us there.

Back to Werbach. What has he done since being ostracized? He sided with the enemy - Walmart - and has implemented a project called PSP, or Personal Sustainability Project (read the case study).

What IS PSP? Werbach was impressed that Walmart is taking it's role in going green seriously (senior execs now have sustainability objectives built into their evaluations and bonuses). His company, Act Now, teamed with Walmart to try to get each employee to care about sustainability. Each employee is being encouraged to make one small change in their routine that supports sustainability - their own Personal Sustainability Practice. Like it or not, with 1.3 million employees spanning the country, Walmart employees have a huge influence on society. The strategy is to spread PSP practices (such as quitting smoking or walking to work) to the communities through these employees.

So far it's worked. Some accomplishments from their site:

Some noteworthy accomplishments of the Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club Associates are:

lost more than 60 tons of weight;

walked/biked/swam more than 380,000 miles

created over 16,000 “Idea Groups” to support one another around Personal Sustainability; and

quit or reduced smoking, with more than 10,000 Associates to date making a healthier change!

Recycled more than 5 million pounds of aluminum, plastic, and paper

Associates across the U.S. are eager to take PSP to the next level, ready to “pass it on”, to their customers and community, and feel proud to work for an organization that is committed to sustainability.

Here's why I buy in: it's impossible to completely change people. But if everyone focuses on doing a few little things, the impact will be measurable. Instead of striving for perfection (impossible anyway), try to make real and quantifiable changes that will add up over time to make a substantial difference.

So what is my PSP? I thought of a few things I've been doing or have done in the last year that help:

I now make a conscious effort to recycle anything that can be recycled (I threw everything out previously)
I've reduced my bottle water consumption by about 6 per week (I'd say I was at 1/day before and now it's 1/week) by buying purchasing a reusable bottle from Think Outside the Bottle. Bottled water wastes plastic in production and energy in transportation, and on top of that the water is sometimes bottled in areas (FIJI is a perfect example) where the citizens don't even have drinking water!
I programmed a system to automatically PDF and archive all invoices for Detailed Image. Previously we were printing paper copies of everything.

Don't get me wrong, I still do a lot of wasteful things. But I'm not a hypocrite. If I was operating at 100% un-sustainability before, I'm probably operating at 90% right now. Where would we be if everyone made a 10% improvement? People who criticize the simple changes and do nothing because "it won't matter" are the ones preventing us from making progress.

No lease for Pure Adapt

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 00:09:00 +0000

Here's how our lease negotiation went:

Her (owner of office/warehouse park): "it costs $1,200/month to rent our mediocre space and we require a 3-year lease"
Us: "we'd like to move in in October, and there are a lot of improvements that need to be made...but we'll move in September 1 and overlook the improvements if the price is reduced to $900/month"
Her: "I'll do $1,050/month"
Us (knowing full well we'd be happy to do $1,050): "How about $1,000?"
Her (apparently insulted by our $50 reduction counter-offer): "No, and now $1,050 is off the table. I'll give you $1,000, but year 2 will be $1,100 and year 3 will be $1,300"
Us: f*ck off

Those might not have been the exact words, but you get the idea....

It's actually for the better. DI's slow time is the winter, and heating costs in an old warehouse like that would have been high for the winter. We're going to take a step back and weigh our options. My gut feeling is that we'll end up buying a place now, and that we'll be far better off by not signing the lease. If we buy we'll probably look to get extra space so we can rent some of it out to another business and help supplement the mortgage. A much, much better long term move.

Kind of a weird feeling, because we thought we might be moving today. But I have a question for you: who becomes so offended during a negotiation over $50 that they retract their previous offer? What a biatch.

How will your friends react?

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:21:00 +0000

There was an interesting article about young entrepreneurs in this months Entrepreneur Magazine (here's the web copy of the article entitled "A New Direction"). It essentially deals with the difficulties YEs face with their friendships, particularly after they have some success. Let's face it - those of us who dream about starting a business and then actually do it in our teens or early twenties are in the minority, and that can put a strain on relationships with other people our age.

I thought YE Alex Vaz put it best:

Stick with what you're doing, because once you do make money, there will be plenty of time to party. If your friends aren't happy about you excelling and making money, they're probably just jealous. Your real friends will always support you.

Every experience is different, and some people may get 100% support from everyone they encounter, but most of us have or will experience a divide amongst our friends. Personally, I've noticed that my family and good friends have eventually come around and it's to the point now where they know this is what I do and it's barely a topic of conversation. If I say I can't make a social event because of the business, they don't hold it against me. They know that as we grow and stabilize I'll be able to be more flexible with my time spent working.

The shock factor is gone for me. However, it wasn't like that initially, and anyone doing something as ballsy as starting a company has to be strong enough to use the questions and criticism as motivation and not let it crush them.

The only problems I still have with people I was friends with in my engineering career. Good friends from college or my first job seem to have a bit of that jealousy. Maybe they feel like I bailed on them because we went through so much...or maybe they are unhappy with their jobs and wish they took the leap that I did. I really don't know, but that's the only spot in my life that 2 years later that I feel there's been a strain because of the business. I'd like to keep those friendships, but at some point you stop calling and emailing and just focus on the people who want to spend time with you.

Kudos to Entrepreneur Mag for talking about such a pertinent topic.

Letter of intent

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 15:15:00 +0000

With all of my ramblings about outages, I failed to mention that we put in a letter of intent for warehouse space in Albany. The space is huge for the price, in an OK area, and the company that owns the business park is very easy to work with. They're asking for $1,200/month and we were planning on moving in October 1. We offered $900/month and said we'd move in September 1. We also said we'd take it as-is - there are a few minor improvements we want done but we'll do them ourselves if we can save 25%/month.

We'll see. If not, we might pay a little more or we might put out offers for some other spaces we've looked at. We like this place because it gives us sufficient space to grow in to (2,500+ sq ft), but we know it's a renters market and the spaces available outnumber the tenants out there. For that reason, we're not taking anything less than what we consider to be a great deal. If need be, we can wait a few more months.

Power Outage

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 15:03:00 +0000

Last night I went to go see the 6:40 PM show of Superbad. Absolutely hilarious movie, put me in a great mood despite no Skype and no PayPal Sandbox. Afterwards I went home and was contemplating either a) playing about 3 hours of Madden '08 or b) going out for a few beers. After deciding to stay in and play Madden, the power went out. I ended up grabbing a few beers and had a decent time.

Was there a tornado? Hurricane? Bad snow storm in the middle of August? No to all of the above. There was a 5 minute "wind storm" where it barely even rained. And BAM - 10,000 houses are without power. WTF! What would happen if there was actually a legit natural disaster? Glad to know our power grid is incapable of sustaining some wind.

This whole week has been one of those weeks where stupid things keep getting in the way. Despite all of my WTF's, I'm not really that mad and I'm not really that annoyed. Sometimes it's nice to NOT have every little thing get in your way, but in reality these things are really not that big of a deal...and amazingly I've gotten a crapload of work done despite them.

I'm sitting in a wi-fi cafe right now doing some email and a few other things. I've probably got 3 hours of work to do and then I'm going to relax the rest of the day (although I wish that relaxing could include a few hours of Madden...eh).

Damn you eBay for making me wait

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:57:00 +0000

When today started a few hours ago, it was looking as if I was about 5 solid hours of programming away from wrapping up the majority of the Detailed Image site. Sure there are some minor things, but the largest and most important functions - shipping integration and credit card processing - are nearing completion.

After spending last week painfully integrating the FedEx and USPS API's (waaaaaay harder than they should be to work with), I was excited to wrap up the boring-but-important stuff with the credit card processing. Yesterday I handled all of the cards (AMEX, Visa, Mastercard, etc) and got them working in a test environment, so the last piece of the large puzzle today is to enable customers to pay with their PayPal balance.

Well, the day started off with Skype's outage (still down as of this writing). Skype is our main form of communication as a company, so it definitely puts a damper on things. "No worries" I said to myself, because I'll just wrap up my programming. Of course it couldn't be that easy. Freaking PayPal's Sandbox testing environment is down too. What are the odds! Then I remembered eBay owns them both. Wtf is going on? Two major services like this should never be down for this long...particularly when I need them!

I suppose I'll go work on something else for a little while. It's so frustrating though - I've been programming this site since the beginning of July and today I thought I'd wrap up the big stuff. Guess not.

Flipping the switch

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 19:22:00 +0000

The past few months I've really worked on my efficiency. I channeled the inner industrial engineer inside of me and really focused on improving the processes associated with our business. In doing so, I've probably got more done in less time this summer (and therefore spent more time doing fun stuff). But you can only make such improvements once the system is set up and in place, and doing that takes a crap load of time. Such is the case with this new Detailed Image site we're developing.

Once done, the entire company will be operating close to 100% efficiency and we can all work a few less hours each week while still getting more done. For now, however, I've "flipped the switch" and gone back into crazy programming mode. Our artist and designers have finished, so the majority of the work lies on my programming shoulders to get this thing up. Every day that we don't have this site, Greg or George wastes hours doing tasks that will be automated. That's costing us money, and for the short term I'm busting ass to get it done.

I wouldn't want it to always be like this, but right now I'm loving the time crunch. I love forcing myself to complete a 1-year project in 2 months without sacrificing quality. The pressure makes me step up my work and really eliminate everything from my life that I don't have to do. In a weird way, it's kind of relaxing to just forget about everything and focus your entire mind, body, and soul on accomplishing one task.

DI currently uses osCommerce (a pretty massive open source ecommerce solution), and our new cart is going to blow the doors off of the current set up. Automated accounting, shipping, web metrics, and inventory on the backend...and on the front end an upsell system that we feel is exceptionally unique and should help increase the average sale, coupled with an amazing design by artist Sam Li that makes you feel like you're sitting in the front seat of a car. We're pushing to launch 9/1/07 and I'm going balls to the wall everyday until that happens.

I think most people would say we're crazy for pushing so hard. Although I think the sentiment among entrepreneurs is probably "that's awesome"....one of the many differences between average joe and a business owner that I've observed.

Traffic is less important than you think

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Every morning in my inbox I get a handful of quasi-spam (you know, spam messages from "partners" of a list you actually want to be on) telling me that they can get me "more traffic within 48 hours" or "#1 search engine rankings in 24 hours guaranteed". It's all bullshit, but on top of that it plays into our overall misconception about traffic. Pssst, more traffic not nearly as important as you think.

What IS important is the right traffic. Between the sites I own and the sites I've worked with, I've seen every end of the spectrum. The best example is the old SportsLizard (pre Price Guide, which converts 15%+ of visitors into users) vs. the current Detailed Image (before our SEO-friendly redesign). SportsLizard was getting 10 times the traffic but the site was set up poorly to convert the traffic and in turn it didn't make much money. Detailed Image got very little traffic, but all of it came from forums that George and Greg sponsored and spent hours each day describing detailing in depth and "selling" members on what products would work best for them.

How would you feel if your site was getting 50 visitors/day? Not very good unless 15 of them were placing $100+ orders! That's what DI has perfected and it's one of the things I think people miss with web business - the ultimate goal is to make money. Usually that requires the user to take action....either buy something or sign up for something or click a bunch of ads. Getting the "right" user is SO much more efficient than getting 1,000 of the wrong users and hoping he or she is the right user.

It really starts with your marketing plan. If your goal, like many site owners, is simply to get more traffic, than don't be surprised if that's all you get. If your goal is to make money than you'll approach it with the techniques that will create sales, which are usually different than what just drives the most traffic. Maybe it's pure SEO, maybe it's PPC or other paid marketing, maybe it's forum sponsorship like DI, or more likely it's a blend of all of the above and then some. The key is to focus on getting people in your target market to your site, and then focus on converting them to a sale once you get them there. If you become good at that, you'll be profitable regardless of raw traffic numbers.

Trust me on this one. Want to know how to get a bunch of traffic quick so that you can show mommy that 1,000 people came to your site today? Go to Stumble Upon and get some of their cheap traffic, or better yet post an ad on Craigslist. I guarantee you'll get a ton of people in either instance. You'll also get a ton of people that look at your site for 4.3 seconds and then click away to never come back.

On second thought...

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 01:12:00 +0000

I'm going to keep blogging and I'm going to keep it as candid and raw as I can. It's what I believe in, and (based on what you've told me) I know it can be an enjoyable and informative read. It's funny, after I wrote that last post earlier this morning I had a handful of great ideas for posts that I really, really wanted to do. And then I checked the comments and my email and realized that I've got something good going and I'm not going to change the way I do things. Sure, I'll be careful about the stuff coming down the pipeline, but to be honest I think businesses and people are FAR too worried about someone stealing ideas, and that the whole world could be improved by opening our lines of communication and learning from each other.

On a side note - we looked at a freaking sweet warehouse today that has more than enough room for all of Detailed Image's products, office space for us all to work, an area to meet with clients, and an area for a kitchen/lounge. The location is OK (not the nicest part of Albany), but for $1,200/month the price is right. We had a lease at a nicer office park all but signed, but now we might end up going with this new one because the price per square foot is significantly cheaper. We really were just hoping to have something to bargain with, but now I'm confident that we'd be fine in either place which means we can hopefully barter for price and other perks. We really do need our team to have a common place to work so the sooner we can get into a place the better.

Struggling with blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 14:32:00 +0000

For the last four or five months I've been mulling over closing down this blog, and it's not for the reasons you'd probably think. If you take a look at that mission statement I wrote almost 2 years ago, I said "I plan on giving a candid look at the ups and downs of running a business" and I think for the most part I feel I've done that. However, as we grow, I find myself asking the question "does this need to be kept confidential or can I blog about it....and if I do blog about it are their any possible repercussions?"

To be honest, I don't want to give people an overly-filtered perspective of what it's like to run a business. I want to give a raw, emotion filled, and very "real" look at what it's like to be a 24 year old who runs a company. I'm in a unique situation and I think people who are considering the same path can find value in it. And since this blog ranks so high for terms like entrepreneur blogger in Google, I understand the impact that I can have if I do it right (probably more so than the rankings are the wonderful emails and comments I get all the time, many of which are pinned up to my bulletin board because they mean that much to me).

For instance, right now we have two large "happenings" in our company that I haven't even hinted about on this blog. How can I possibly give you a candid read if I hide that stuff? Of course, how can those things succeed properly if I make them "public" before they should be? My partners have been great about never criticizing a post, but my guess is that they'd rather I be more censored than I am.

Here are the options I see:

Give up blogging completely
Run a more censored YE blog, where I talk more about general topics (like finding partners, and getting funding, and motivating yourself) and be careful about how I tie them back into our business.
Turn the blog into my personal blog. This sort of is my personal blog, but the focus has to be on business and YE's most of the time. On this personal blog, I could be more rogue and pretty much do whatever the hell I wanted - post whenever I wanted and talk about whatever I wanted - sports, religion, politics, pop culture, business, etc. This would still give me a voice, and would hopefully still entertain and be helpful, but gone would be the candid look inside the life of a business owner.

Right now I'm leaning towards continuing to blog in some fashion, I just don't know exactly how yet. Thoughts?

The goal of our business

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 14:12:00 +0000

I believe that in life and in business you should be in a state of constant improvement. The second that you're content is the second that you've let your guard down and you've already begun to slip. So what's the goal of Pure Adapt? What are we working towards?

If you were to take a snapshot of our day-to-day operations in a vacuum and not talk to us, we'd look horribly inefficient. Detailed Image accounts for 60%+ of our revenue, yet we probably spend 10% of our collective time increasing sales an another 25% packing/shipping/accounting, etc...and the rest of our time is spent on an array of projects that on the surface don't tie together and aren't generating a ton of revenue. When I explain our company to people right now, I get the reaction "you guys are all over the place."

Well we're not. We have a few simple goals: 1)Remove ourselves from the day-to-day operations of the business by ~2009 through a combination of automation and smart hiring, and 2)Create 3-5 large sites that generate substantial revenue, and methodically add to that number over the course of several years.

Here's how we get there: my day right now is spent primarily programming a new DI site from scratch. Why isn't osCommerce good enough? It's not bad, but our new custom cart will 100% automate shipping, accounting, inventory, product upsells, and more, saving George and Greg about 3 hours/day each. Once the site is done (about a month away), we'll be moving into a warehouse where we can streamline our packing and shipping processes, and hire an employee to do those on a daily basis.

At that point, we'll have our day-to-day for Detailed Image covered, and we can focus on an expansion for them: new product lines and new marketing ventures. The four of us can also spend time expanding our smaller web properties, and starting a handful more that we think have the chance of exploding. In the end of the day, we're going to need to throw a lot of shit against the wall to have a few pieces stick. To have 3-5 revenue generating monsters (and hopefully a few smaller ones) we're going to need to have the time and resources to launch a lot of quality sites quickly...at least 4/year in my opinion.

Believe me, we know where we're going and we're excited as hell about it. How many businesses have such a focused goal? Probably more than you think - sometimes chaos on the outside doesn't mean chaos on the inside.

**on a side note, Mike's t-shirt rating site Hotteeez has taken off, largely due to his Simpsons Spider Pig shirt that he designed weeks before the movie came out. He's got a good formula - design shirts for things that will be searched a ton in the coming months - and we're really happy to see that the site has monster potential.

//EDIT - no sooner than 15 minutes after that post did Mike inform me that Hotteeez was penalized by Google (if they still had supplemental results, which they got rid of last week, we'd be in them). Steady drops from top 5 rankings to rankings in the 500 range are not too good. I see a slew of reasons why it probably happened, but it does suck for Mike and for us - that was turning into a nice little revenue stream and now we're back at square one building it back up. So goes the world of SEO - just one more reason not to rely on organic search for your primary source of sales...even if you've got a strong domain.

I'm at a weird age...

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 19:06:00 +0000

I'm 24 years old, and will turn 25 later this month. Last week when we met with our new accountant the first thing he said was "sorry I'm late, my kids we're driving me nuts. Do you guys have kids?" My first instinct is "hell no buddy, I'm only twenty..." and then I realize that a lot of people my age are married and do have kids.

Today, while there was construction going on by my house, I spent the majority of the morning at an internet cafe. My partner Mike and I got asked to take a survey for a college student who had a summer research grant and was doing research for her psych department. In the normal conversation that goes on when doing those things, I learned that she was going into her senior year and was still a good four years younger than me. Damn I'm getting old.

Whenever we go out to bars, I feel like we're either surrounded by the 30+ crowd and we feel young, or we're in with the college crowd and we're five years older than everyone else. When I hear a girl say she's 25 I think "wow, an older girl" and then I realize I AM 25 (or will be in 30 days)!

It's a weird, weird spot to be. Some of my friends are married, some have steady girlfriends, and some are single. Some still are in school and working part-time as waiters, some have professional careers, and some like us run our own company. Neither way is "right", it's just interesting to have such a split amongst people of the same age group.

None of us know quite which way to lean. We're not really full-fledged adults (whatever that means anyway) but we aren't really college kids either. Most of the time I just focus on enjoying life and having a good time, but every once in a while I start wondering if I'm "behind" others because my free time looks a lot like it did 5 years ago. Then again, I also run a corporation and I'm 24 years old so in that sense I'm significantly ahead of where most people are (again, if there really is such a thing as being "ahead").

I honestly have no clue where I'm going with this rant, other than the fact that being in that "quarter-life crisis" age group puts a unique pressure on a young entrepreneur. Being 22-30 is tough on most people, but the YE has so much to focus on that I think there is an added pressure put on you by friends and family, and by yourself. You are choosing a unique lifestyle at an age when most people are starting to settle into jobs and a family.

I have to wonder though: if you do the wife/kids thing first, there has to come a point in the next ten years where the lack of career focus early on catches up with you and you want to change jobs, but have the pressure of a family biasing your decisions. Conversely, if you settle the career stuff first you can focus on the family later on sans distractions. Of course life rarely is very cut and dry like that, and if the right person comes into your life I doubt anyone would say "I'm not getting married until I'm 35 because I need to stabilize my career first". I've sort of fell into the career-stability-first thing, so I'll let you know how that works out for me :)

Limiting wear and tear

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 15:32:00 +0000

After four and a half grueling years of college, a tumultuous few years in the working world, and now a few years running a business, I've seen what stress and everything associated with it can do to someone and it isn't pretty. It seems as if there's an innate pressure put on us that we must sacrifice our health and well being to be successful. While hard work and sacrifice are certainly necessary ingredients for success, I just don't buy the fact that you need to ruin your physical and mental well being to get there.

In college I saw people pull all nighters, cram for days without sleep, pump themselves full of caffeine, all because "it was what they needed to do". I was ranked at the top of my class and never sacrificed a night's sleep. I never once pulled an all nighter and did better than most of my classmates on every single test.

In the working world I saw people drink 10 cups of coffee every single day. They took what they did in college to the next level - they crammed to finish projects and in doing so sacrificed their health, happiness, and well being. I never fell into the trap, and always got everything done that I needed to get done.

However once I started working for myself I lost control a bit. No longer was a teacher or boss giving me projects. I was giving myself projects, ones that were harder and had shorter deadlines and greater rewards. I started doing the "all-out all the time" thing and worked every waking second. It was a mistake, and I'm glad I caught it when I did.

You don't need to look in the mirror at age 30 and look like you're age 50 from years of sleep deprivation, fast food, lack of exercise, and caffeine overload. There's a reason why people are so unhealthy and why diabetes is so prevalent in the US, and I'm telling you it doesn't have to happen to you...even if you want to be successful.

Business - and life - are marathons, not sprints, and should be treated as such. Among the things I do to ensure I minimize the stress and keep myself happy:

Eat healthy, and eat regularly - it's simple, fill the kitchen with only good foods and you'll always eat healthy. Eat at least every 3-4 hours and you'll give your body the energy balance it needs to work at it's peak.
Sleep as much as you need - I've always had problems getting into a sleep schedule. For me, my body varies in needs based on a variety of factors, and I just sleep until I feel rested. Some nights that's more than others. Some days I have to get up early so I make it up the next night. Conversely, some nights I want to stay out late so I sleep a little later. The important thing is that I don't walk around sleep deprived like I did at times in the past when I forced myself up at the same time each day.
Exercise - it helps the body and mind so much. Whether you like to run or lift or play bball or whatever, just get out and exercise at least 3 times/week...no excuses. I would be much less healthy and much less happy if I didn't exercise.
Plan - the reason I didn't pull an all nighter. If a test was a week out, I studied a little each night as opposed to cramming. You learn better that way, and you accomplish a lot more in a lot less time if you plan out whatever project you are working on and break it up into small sub-projects that can be accomplished leading up to the one big goal.
Set goals each day - this ties into planning. Each day, I set my goals for the day. They tie into the bigger plan for the week and month, and if I hit my goals each day I know I'll hit the big goal. You'd be surprised - often times my goals take only 3-4 hours, and I end up spending the rest of the day not working. When I wake up the next day, I focus on those goals and try to do the same. Some days take longer than others, but the important thing is I'm moving forward each day and reaching for something attainable in the short term.
Limit distractions - I'm the king of this, it's my best trait. When I'm focused, nothing can bother me. The TV is off, my email is closed, my phone goes un-answered, and I'm just "doing". I think in our generation (particularly with IM, text messages, and cell phones) it's almost impossible to just DO something without a distraction. This is SO easy to do in my mind, and it helps SO much. There's a time and place for emails and IM and phone calls, but when you're focused on a task just do it. Then spend the rest of your time having fun.
Limit caffeine - caffeine is not necessarily unhealthy, and it can really help on those days when you need a pick-me-up, but if you *need* it you're in trouble. It messes with sleep patterns and does more bad than good. I monitor myself and make sure I don't drink a caffeinated drink more than two days in a row - never before 11 AM and never after 5 PM if I can help it. I don't want to need it to wake up, and I certainly don't want it inhibiting my sleep.

Nothing really ground breaking there. All obvious stuff, but if you make the effort to get all of it working in unison you become far more healthy and productive, and in turn you'll probably be a lot happier and live a lot longer.

Something to think about this weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:44:00 +0000

This is an excerpt from The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss (I don't think he'll mind, considering I'm helping promote the book, which was fantastic):

An American businessman took a vacation to a small coastal Mexican village on doctor's orders. Unable to sleep after an urgent phone call from the office the first morning, he walked out to the pier to clear his head. A small boat with just one fisherman had docked, and inside the boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of the fish.

"How long did it take you to catch them?" the American asked.

"Only a little while," the Mexican replied in surprisingly good English.

"Why don't you stay out longer and catch more fish?" the American then asked.

"I have enough to support my family and give a few to friends," the Mexican said as he unloaded them into a basked.

"But....what do you do with the rest of your time?"

The Mexican looked up and smiled. "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Julia, and stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, senor."

The American laughed and stood tall. "Sir, I'm a Harvard M.B.A. and can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. In no time, you could buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats."

He continued, "Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell them directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, where you could run your expanding enterprise with proper management."

The Mexican fisherman asked, "But, senor, how long will all this take?"

To which the American replied, "15-20 years, 25 tops."

"But then what, senor?"

The American laughed and said, "That's the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions."

"Millions, senor? Then what?"

"Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll through the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos..."

Why customers are assholes sometimes

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:03:00 +0000

Remember a few weeks back when I discussed how SportsLizard's Price Guide was a love/hate product and how I am dealing with it? Well the past few weeks the love has intensified (more press mentions has led to ~1k new users/week) and with that so has the hate.

Towards the end of last week I got a wave of complaints and it set me off. People generally complain for a few different reasons, all of which are addressed in a handful of places throughout the site. Granted, the majority of people do not contact us, but when they do they seem to be PISSED. They clearly have not taken the time to read the site or check FAQ's, and they always feel screwed over. Sometimes it's because they think we billed them without their permission (forgetting of course that they signed up less than a week ago), other times they demand a refund for no reason whatsoever (some even going as far as opening disputes with PayPal).

Again, in many business situations these things would raise red flags. But in our case, with the volume we're doing, and with the love/hate nature of the product, I'm not worried. Revenue is still increasing fast and there are a lot of happy paying users. Nonetheless I'm only human and it pisses me off when customers send emails accusing us of wrongdoing when we are nothing but stand up, honest, and fair (I almost always give refunds to people who request them).

And being human, I started asking myself why people contacted us with such malice. Were they just assholes and should I leave it at that? I'd like to think that people in general are good by nature, so I don't think that's it. I think customers are so accustomed to companies not caring that they jump on the defensive right away. When I go back and look at the second emails I received from people - after I contacted them and diffused the situation - and most people look like angels compared to their first email. Most are very thankful for my help and the speedy response. They were really just afraid that no one was going to get back to them and help, so they took their email to an extreme.

Unfortunately consumers have been largely treated like crap (particularly on the web) and they'll take it out on companies that don't deserve it. I suppose that many things in life are like that - people take out their frustrations on other people who don't deserve it. There's not really much you can do about it, but if you plan on having a love/hate product like I do you better be ready to deal with it :)

Why so many young entrepreneurs?

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 23:34:00 +0000

I was reading Entrepreneur Magazine last night when I came to a somewhat obvious conclusion - the low barrier to entry on the web is the reason for more YE's. This is fundamentally different than saying that there are more young entrepreneurs in our generation and that they choose the web because it's the easiest place to get started.

The article I was reading was talking about the relatively low cost to enter into the toy business -relatively low being at least $50k. And 10 years ago that would have been relatively low. Even in the beginning of the web, it took quite a bit of funding and a lot of programmers to do something amazing.

Now, with refined free open source platforms like PHP and MySQL, it's essentially free to compete. Toss in a phone, business cards, legal fees, domain registration, and a few other necessities and you're still spending under $1k, something almost any college student can afford.

This was just coming into play during my college years (2000 - 2004). When I first wanted to start a company, it was of the product design variety. I even remember distinctly telling a girl on a first date that my passion in life is product design...oops (although web development really isn't as far off as it seems). My partner at the time and I had no choice but to enter several business plan competitions in an attempt to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to get our products off the ground. It sucked and we failed because we didn't have the persistence to chase funding for years, develop for a few more years, and wait another 5 until the product hit the market and had success.

When I took a class in information technology and learned about web development I realized just how cheap it could be done, and I did it. Therein lies the "proof" of my point - I'm sure there were many college students before me that wanted to start businesses, saw the daunting task at hand just to get something to go to market, and then moved on to take a job and never become an entrepreneur. If I got my degree in 1994 instead of 2004 I would have been in that boat as well.

To me, that's the reason for the wave of YE's. Not the fact that we're the video game generation, not the fact that schools are teaching entrepreneurship (I believe that's a reaction to my pt, not a cause of), and not any other cultural trait you can assign to the current 18-30 demographic. Put me (or any number of YE's) twenty years back and I doubt that many of us would have still started businesses. It was just too tough back then unless you had a lot of help. Now it's a viable option for anyone who has a computer and an internet connection.

Having a great team around you

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 22:15:00 +0000

The growth of SportsLizard and its Price Guide the past few months has been an amazing experience, particularly when you consider that I had pretty much given up on SportsLizard. The reason I started iPrioritize in the first place was that I didn't "trust" the long term potential of SL. In this post last summer I asked "If push come to shove, would I sell , SportsLizard.com to fund iPrioritize?"

So what changed? I got partners. When we incorporated Pure Adapt at the end of '06 we reviewed all of our sites with our partners, and my partners really honed in on SL and saw its potential to succeed in its niche that I quite frankly did not. The more I researched it, the more I bought in (particularly when I saw the opportunity for the Price Guide) and the more that initial fire from 2004 resurfaced. My passion of innovating the collectibles industry is now just as strong (or maybe even stronger) than it was on that night in early '04 when I decided I was going to start a collectibles website.

When I was a solo-entrepreneur I often sought out the advice of people that I trusted, but it just wasn't the same as having partners that have a vested interest in what you are doing. A year ago I thought I needed "control" and could never work with an equal partner. Now I see all the needs that my partners fill better than me and there's no way in hell I'd enter into a business venture alone. By becoming part of a team I've really learned my weaknesses (accounting, sales, and over-reacting to situations, just to name a few) and down the road when I'm moved on to my next company I'll know what to look for to balance me out.

Anyway, it's just funny sometimes how another set of eyes will see your work as better than you do, and how in turn it can provide the necessary push to turn something good into something great.

It's all paying off

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:21:00 +0000

If you go back and read this entire blog from its beginning in November 2005 you'll see just how much my plan has changed over time. I started as an engineer working on my business part time, then I quit to run SportsLizard. That was struggling so I started iPrioritize. Both were doing OK but I wasn't making enough money to get by, so I started doing SEO work, which led me to my Pure Adapt partners and ultimately led us to forming Pure Adapt, Inc and the subsequent revival of SportsLizard with the help of my partners.

One of the things I think this blog has done well is show the true roller coaster ride that is entrepreneurship: coping with making little or no money, believing when no one else believes, struggling with decisions on whether or not to give up on a project, learning to balance your social life with your business life, and above all else remembering to enjoy life and have fun.

It's been a seemingly long journey since that first post, but after a meeting with my partners last week I can say that it's all beginning to pay off. A few months back the light at the end of the tunnel seemed so far off that even the most optimistic among us knew that there was still a long ways to go until we started reaping the rewards of our hard work. While we've always had enough positive re-enforcement to keep us pushing forward, it's nothing compared to what the next six months will bring.

At our meeting we committed to an aggressive expansion plan that will keep the growth fast and furious, without ever dipping the company into the red. Among the cool things we have planned:

A re-launch of DetailedImage.com with our own custom built shopping cart to integrate and automate all inventory, shipping, accounting, etc. I'm about 30% done with the programming side of things, and I can honestly say this will be the most impressive site I've ever worked on - we're using all four of us (plus a graphics designer) to utilize everyone's best talents.
Moving the company into a warehouse space. We've all but signed the lease in one of the nicest corporate parks in the area...plus we know the owner so we're getting a good discount. By 10/1 we should be all moved in, which will allow us to immediately expand DI by about 35% (right now we have no space in our basements for more products).
Steady pay raises. George came up with an amazing plan to raise everyone's salary quarterly by about 30%/quarter for the next year, and also pay out a large birthday bonus on everyone's birthday. We've all worked for so little for so long, that we're all thrilled to finally be able to plan our personal lives out a bit knowing when we'll be making what.
SportsLizard's Price Guide will break even (remember we've spent quite a bit on PPC) AND hit 10,000 registered users by the end of next month - not bad for a four month old service. We're really going to expand and push the site even further once I finish my commitment to programming DI.
Hiring a few employees. Starting with a full-time packer for the warehouse, we plan on also adding a few full time programmers by the end of '08. The beauty of living in Albany is that it's a collegiate hotbed, yet has very few high tech jobs in private industry, so it's easy to find skilled programmers who don't want to go to Southern CT or Boston or NYC for work.
Start working on our next big project. I'm sworn to secrecy by my partners, but as DI matures and SportsLizard is hitting it's growth phase, we plan on beginning work on our next long-term project, which we want to launch by the end of '08.

All in all, things couldn't be better. All four of us are much less stressed than we were before because we can see now that we are economically stable as a company, and that to an extent we've validated our ambitious career choice.

Personally, I'm seeing my social life begin to match my work life, and I'm excited to get back to playing just as hard as I work :) I'm glad I've got a great set of business partners, and I'm thrilled to see our business growing well. I'm also glad that this blog started before I really had any success - it's EASY to sit on your high horse after having some success and tell others what to do, but it's hard to allow them into your life to watch you struggle through the ups and downs. That's one of the things I'm most proud of....maybe someday I'll publish the whole thing as a book :)

What's the worst that can happen?

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 00:42:00 +0000

Seriously. I encounter so many friends/family/ex-co-workers that WANT to take the plunge like I did and start a business but I know the majority never will. One of the things that helped me overcome my fear of leaving my career was asking myself what's the worst that can happen? In my case, people were telling me how promising my engineering career was and how crazy I was to give up the "guaranteed" (I would dispute that) career advancement and financial success I had coming at the company I worked for. People told me I'd be crazy to forfeit the great pension plan my company had, as if retirement 40 years from now is a reason to be miserable for the next few decades.

Despite what they said I quit my job to run SportsLizard, which at the time was making very little money. I think most of my co-workers thought I was nuts when I told them I'd make little or no money my first year. But seriously, take a step back and take a look at the worst case scenario: I move in with my parents and go absolutely broke trying to make the business work. Six months later I'm looking for a job. In that case, I could jump right back into my engineering career at the ripe old age of 24. I have a great degree and solid work experience so I've never had a problem getting plenty of offers.

Thankfully things worked out and my "risk" paid off and I should be able to do something I love for the rest of my life...but if what I presented above was the worst case, was that really that much of a risk? Going after something I love and giving up...well to me, I really didn't give up much more than a steady paycheck and a pension plan. Seems silly in hindsight.

Whether or not other people decide to take a similar plunge is up to them, but I think people need to check themselves and realize that going after something you want, be it a new career or a new girl, isn't as big of a risk as you think it is. I'd imagine the majority of us are lucky enough to never have to take risks that will be putting our basic needs of food/shelter/water in jeopardy. And if that's the case, it becomes more of a situation where you need to overcome fears and leave your comfort zone to pursue your passion, and less of a situation where you're taking a real risk.

How much should you pay yourself?

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 20:23:00 +0000

One of the hot topics amongst entrepreneurs is how much you should pay yourself. Pay yourself too much and you'll stunt the growth of your business. Pay yourself too little and you'll stress yourself out worrying about the daily expenses of life. There is no "correct answer" to this question.

I was watching the No Plan, No Capital, No Model, No Problem video on Guy Kawasaki's blog a few weeks back and someone in the audience asked that very question to the panel of entrepreneurs. Some of the entrepreneurs were not much farther along than I am, and some had been running successful companies for years. No one on the panel agreed upon an answer per se, but they all agreed that most founders make little to no money during the startup phase and into the first few years. The majority of the panel worked for 6 months to 2 years without taking pay.

I feel like there's a misconception about entrepreneurs and how much they pay themselves. Just because you own a million dollar company that doesn't mean you pay yourself $100k, $50k, or even $30k. True entrepreneurs do what's necessary for the business to succeed and many times that means paying yourself less than the three college programmers you just hired.

How much to pay yourself and when to pay it is a decision each entrepreneur has to make for themselves, but I've been in three distinctly different situations since I left my career and one has worked much better for me.

Situation 1: I just quit my job and my sites (SportsLizard and iPrioritize) were essentially breaking even. I took NO pay for about six months and lived off savings. This was stressful...avoid doing this if you can :). I am now a firm believer that every business should immediately generate revenue, and if it doesn't it should tweak it's model so that it generates revenue temporarily until the original plan is making income. This leads me to situation 2...

Situation 2: I started SEO consulting and I was pocketing everything. Once I figured out I needed revenue, I started spending about half of my time doing SEO consulting and the rest trying to grow my sites. I made a lot of money in this phase, but the problem was I was biased towards anything that would bring money ASAP since I pocketed it right away and that changed the way I worked.

Situation 3: I form Pure Adapt with 3 other developers and we go on salary. We toyed with different payment plans, but ultimately decided on salary. Our "performance incentive" is our stock in the company, and it's nice to know exactly how much I'll be pulling in from month to month. We pay ourselves VERY little for how much revenue we generate, but at least I can budget for my bills and not worry about doing a quick "cash grab" project that's bad for the business to pay my credit card off. Extra money gets re-invested into the business, and we're just getting to the point after about 7 months that we're considering giving ourselves raises to the point where we make what an average 23 year old makes coming out of college...still much less than I think people think we make, but it's what's necessary for us to grow the right way.

The faster you can get yourself into Situation 3, the better in my opinion. Salary becomes an expense just like hosting or rent, and the company finds a way to pay it every week. For me, this has enabled me to stop worrying about my personal financial situation and focus solely on growing the company for the future.

Of course, in a few years we'll hopefully be able to pay ourselves a high salary and still have plenty left over for the business. But as we grow in the meantime this will work just fine.

Having a love-hate product

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 18:44:00 +0000

For some products and services it's easy to know exactly what you're going to get when you buy and there usually aren't a ton of surprises. Software and web applications don't fall into that category, so most intelligent businesses have trial versions and/or free trial periods so people can evaluate the real thing before buying. SportsLizard's Price Guide is no different - people like what they see when they watch the video on the homepage and read the sales copy, but they'll never know for sure until they try it out.

In our first month and a half I've done the best I could to "fool proof" the site by adding additional literature, tutorials, and features that make it hard to screw up. It's my opinion that anyone that spends a few seconds on the site and has an IQ over 20 can figure it out and see the value it provides. And most have - the feedback from the collecting community has been overwhelmingly positive, even more so than I initially thought it could be. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, not everyone feels that way.

Some people (many of them young kids), sign up, skip over the tutorials, try one price search that usually includes a bunch of misspellings or other blatant inaccuracies (you can't even Google something properly if you don't know the basics of querying/searching). Not only do many of them never come back, many of them find the need to tell me that "I shouldn't have the audacity to charge for such a product" or that "it's the worst tool they've ever used." At the same time, I've got the "wow, this is amazing" and "you're filling a huge need in the hobby" emails coming through. So what should I do?

Absolutely nothing. Read the negative comments, send them an "I'm sorry you didn't like the price guide" email, then delete the bad boys. It's true that for the 5,000+ subscribers we have that I'm getting more negative emails than I'd like, but I also know that we're meeting a need for a lot of collectors and that I'd be stupid to change. The majority of happy customers will never contact me, but when I couple the positive feedback from the hard-core collectors with the premium subscribers who have now been paying for over a month, I know we're on the right track. Sometimes it's real important to act on customer complaints. Other times you risk alienating the customers you really want by making adjustments for the ones you don't.

This definitely isn't unique to software or to the web - when I was an engineer we had one very unique product that solicited more hate mail than any in the history of the company. That same product also was a huge seller and had a more loyal fan base than any previous product in our history. From my brief experience, it seems like the more "out there" your product or application is from the norm (and lets face it, getting people to jump from a magazine to our price guide is pretty different), the more push back you'll get from some and the harder it'll be to hold ground and let the product do what it's supposed to do.

I contrast this with Detailed Image - our largest site - they get barely any complaints because there is no guesswork. They are an e-commerce site, and as long as people can place an order and receive it when they should, we never hear a complaint. If you go from one type of business to another, you have to realize the potential for varying reactions from your customer base or you'll go crazy trying to figure out what you did wrong. When in reality you're really doing something completely right. It's a different mindset, but it's necessary if you push the boundaries even a little.

On a side note - I haven't taken a vacation (that I can think of) since going to Orlando with my family in January 2005. Starting tomorrow I'll be camping up in beautiful Old Forge, NY for 3 days. It's only a 2.5 hour drive, but being up in the Adirondacks feels like you're in a different world. No cell phone, no laptop, no work - just my buddies and I with about 60 beers, some burgers, and a camp fire. Exactly what the doctor ordered :)

How to Reach ANYONE

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 16:57:00 +0000

Quick - what's the one thing that every person does? Regardless of age, gender, race, fame, wealth, or just about any other quantitative measurement you can come up with we all Google ourselves (and if by some off chance you don't Google yourself, I guarantee that your friends and family have Googled your ass). Personally, I Google myself about once a month, usually to check if this blog has surpassed the weirdo who owns Adam-McFarland.com (still not yet unfortunately).

So how do you reach that VC/Angel/Competitor/Celebrity that you've been emailing and mailing constantly to no avail? Buy an AdWords ad for their name. Believe it or not, hardly anyone has thought of this technique so you can buy an ad for nearly anyone for next to nothing. Seriously - even Bill Gates only has a few ads show up. You could bid the minimum and still end up on the first page (and those ads are horrible and generic so a personalized well written ad would definitely stand out).

As cool as this idea is, I can't completely take credit for it. Mark Cuban mentioned it last year on Blog Maverick and called it "the best sales idea I have seen in a long time". Ever since I read that I've been keeping it in my back pocket until I had a use for it, and now that time has come.

With our Price Guide having exceeded expectations in the first 40 or so days, I'm starting to look to ideas to take it to the next level. We've worked out the kinks (as with any new app there were a ton) and added a few minor but necessary features, and now I'm ready to let the whole world know about it. That includes the big boys in our industry - maybe they'll want to acquire us, maybe they'll want to partner with us, or maybe they'll just make note of what we're doing - either way I want them to know we exist.

Unfortunately, the sports card and collectible industry is very old school and many of the large companies in the industry would have a hard time seeing the value in what we offer. The same old school companies are also ridiculously hard to reach. So I gave up on them, and instead decided to target two very progressive companies in a very non-progressive industry - McFarlane Toys and NAXCOM. I'll spare the details, but let's just say that each has the type of track record that impresses me and makes me want to develop a long term relationship with them.

So a few hours ago I purchased AdWords ads for Todd McFarlane and Eric Beckerman (the founders of each company) and directed the ad to the Price Guide home page with a "special" message for them. Here's a shot of the ad for Todd McFarlane:

...and the special page he'll see when he lands on the Price Guide home page...

I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

You can compete with anyone

noreply@blogger.com (Adam McFarland) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 20:48:00 +0000

Really. I'm not lying. Regardless of the industry you are in, I bet you can find a way to compete with whomever you want. On SportsLizard, I recently wrote an article entitled Proof That You Can Impact and Industry where I showed how one article about the problems with autograph authentication now ranks in the top 5 when someone searches for "autograph authentication". Large authentication companies like PSA would KILL to have that article removed from the results because of the negative publicity it gives them.

And that's just one example. I'm competing with established price guides like Beckett and Tuff Stuff with SportsLizard's Price Guide. Psst - here's a secret: I spent $0 developing it. The only expenses thus far have been for our massively successful PPC campaign. Yes, I am a pretty good programmer. And yes, I leveraged the existing SL user base and strong domain to maximize impact. But to be honest, in the life of SL (2004-2007) I know I've spent less than $20k. And that includes every programming book I've ever read, every marketing dollar ever spent, and every other business expense....including three computers.

But Adam, don't big companies with tons of resources do it differently? Not really. It's like it's some big secret - they develop in the same programming languages and struggle to get pages indexed in Google just like you and I do.

Take this example: Guy Kawasaki's new site Truemors. When I first read about it on his blog, I assumed it was a site that he developed in concurrence with his venture capital company and figured he had a ten person staff and $10 million in venture capital. And then a few weeks later the truth came out in his post By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09.

Guy shows us dollar-for-dollar how he built Truemors. If you take a look at the $12k he spent, most YE's could cut that down to a few thousand dollars if they could program themselves and didn't spend $5k on legal fees (we spent about $1,500 on legal fees incorporating Pure Adapt, and Pure Adapt involved merging several established businesses together...you should never have to spend more than $500-$750 in legal fees in my opinion starting a business). In looking at the site, I know I could program it in a week or two, and I only consider myself an average/above average programmer. If you aren't a programmer and don't have the desire to learn, then either pay someone in cash or stock (hint: college programmers love to work for stock).

The other golden nugget in this post: no business plan and 7.5 weeks of development. He launched a new business after 7.5 weeks. There's really no need to spend more than a month or two developing your site. If you do, you either suck at programming or you're adding to much unnecessary crap to your site. Read a (free) copy of Getting Real by 37 Signals if you need to know how to rapidly deploy an app. The faster you get it out, the faster you get real feedback and make real money...it's as simple as that. Again, for reference, I developed our entire Price Guide in about 5 weeks...and if I hadn't been stressed out and losing sleep from my chronic back pain, it would have been 3 weeks.

I suppose the lesson is this grasshopper: don't let people tell you that you can't compete, and don't let people tell you that it takes years of planning to start a business.