Adam graduated Magna Cum Laude from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2004 with a degree in Industrial Engineering. Earlier that year he started SportsLizard.com, a sports collectibles marketplace that won Honorable Mention in the Microsoft Start Something Amazing Awards and was featured in the February 2006 issue of Tuff Stuff Magazine.
After seeing the potential successes that online business has to offer, Adam left his engineering job on the one-year anniversary of his graduation date and embarked upon the adventure of running his own business. In December of 2006 Adam teamed up with three long time friends to form Pure Adapt, Inc – a web design, development, and marketing company with a focus on e-commerce.
Pure Adapt's two large e-commerce sites – Detailed Image and Tastefully Driven – provide customers with premium auto care and mens care products shipped directly from the company's warehouse located in Albany, NY. Adam and his partners have distinguished themselves from the competition by developing their own proprietary shopping cart software, providing superior customer service, utilizing cutting edge web marketing techniques, and meticulously refining their supply chain. In 2008 the company launched their Commerce with Conscience program on Tastefully Driven, which donates 5% of pre-tax profit from sales to local charities in the Albany area.
Since 2005 Adam has maintained a blog of his experiences as a young entrepreneur in hopes of inspiring other young professionals to follow their dreams and pursue their passions.
Adam McFarland's blog is Adam-McFarland.net.
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.
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.
Businesses always have unique problems, issues, things that are unsettled that stress owners out. It’s because of this that you either fall flat on your face or develop an extreme sense of optimism and a strong work ethic.
The show follows the startup adventurs of Earth Class Mail, a company that receives, sorts, and scans your snail mail for you to view online or on your phone. It is a fascinating watch for anyone interested in startup life, particularly anyone interested in a large startup that requires quite a bit of Angel/VC investment.
Since January I have been fighting to get a fraudulent account removed from my credit report. I have spent hundreds of hours working to get a $517 collection account for someone else’s Sprint home phone service removed from my credit report. Here’s what it took to solve the problem.
My gut tells me that in a few months we won’t have a choice: we’ll need to hire. IF our threshold is where I think it is (fingers crossed), we’ll already have our raises and it’ll be a question of: do we hire one full timer or two part timers?
The world truly would be a better place if we all took more time to share our appreciation with others. For some reason it’s a really hard thing to do (for most people anyway), but that doesn’t mean we can’t work on it.
It might not happen tomorrow. It might not happen next week. But if things keep going the way they are going gas prices are going to drastically change our lives. Food and shipping prices will continue to rise. Air fare will continue to rise. It’ll probably get worse before it gets better.
Ask any one of us what we accomplished today and we’d probably have to think for a second, look at our to-do list, and rattle off a few things that we did in addition to our day-to-day. All relatively minor, but all subtle things that make us just a little more efficient, just a little more effective, and just a little bit better as a company.
The past four days has been the best for work/life balance in my life–there’s nothing outside of work that I wanted to do that I didn’t. That’s huge for me. You can get there, too.
