Paul Krush

I am now focused on learning formal project management skills and out-sourcing at the employee level.

I need to update everyone on where I am heading. I tried hard at being a corporate sales person. But after 8 months I think I don’t have the politically smooth to pull it off. I’m a pretty open and hate hiding details for ill gain. When do honest profits turn into ill gain; I don’t know. I know I spend too much time thinking about this stuff. Maybe I am an analyst at heart, and an outside sales career is not a fit. Maybe it’s just not my passion. I know I can learn to be more political savvy, but would I lose genuineness in doing so? I don’t know. I did learn a lot about myself, working at this for 8 months. I have added a new level of humility, and learned a lot more about sales.

I got into sales because I feel need to work with people more face to face. So now I am learning about project management (a people-facing role). I had no idea there was such a huge methodology to PM (project management). After years of doing projects (mostly alone) I wonder what I am going to find out. I am reading a few books on it, ask me how they turn out.

I am also reading the book “Producing Open Source Software” by Karl Fogel. It’s pretty dare interesting because it describes a successful model of creating software with people that remotely communicate over the Internet. It talks about having a website, mailing list/forum, a bug tracker, and version control. What is so interesting is how oDesk.com is promoting the same virtual PM environment. I have often thought about going open source with the mass custom tools. If you know me “free” software suits me well, but I am not sure about the profit model. I went looking for .NET C# people out on Linkedin.com for the Rhino Plug-in’s I want to write. I was surprised at the number of people that were interested in the project because of the shear coolness factor. This would be one key to attracting great volunteers. With my budget I am going to have to call them volunteers!

ODesk.com is an employee focused out-sourcing site. I like them a lot better then eLance.com, Guru.com, and RentaCoder.com in that they are focused on having the buyer develop long term relationships with the employee/freelancer. They only charge 10% and take care of all paperwork and paying the person. They have profiles, history/ feedback, and tests for people to demonstrate their skills. OK, I need to quit talking about it and use the site. I do have some pretty neat plans for it.

So what are all my plans? I don’t know. For the next two or three 3 months I am learning these two areas (PM and oDesk.com). I have a number of little projects I would like to try that I think would be profitable.

So in the next few months I want to:

1.) Create a bench of Jewelry modelers/designers on oDesk.com
Anybody could go out to oDesk.com and use these people I bring in.
2.) Create more free models for the site.
I like to showcase what you can (and can’t) be out-sourced.
3.) Do some CAD/CAM consulting in order to create a CAD/CAM for jewelry FAQ (and earn cash).
I have been doing this already. It’s nice to make money and keep my feet wet.
4.) Really get comfortable with using oDesk people for Web Development.
I have high hopes for this. I want to leverage time & skills. There are so many projects I want others working on, if oDesk.com works out.
5.) Learn a lot more about PHP tools such as Drupal or Joomla.
Neat stuff, I don’t know much at all about them.
6.) Create some basic 2D Flash consumer jewelry design tools (Mass Customization configurators).
These would output 2D curves to manually build models in Rhino. I will offer these for free download for jewelry manufactures large and small around the world so they can get started in mass custom for jewelry. If this works well I am thinking about a mass custom Flash builder builder. Meaning you can generate your own .SWF (Flash) files for your jewelry website. The .SWF files would be customized to your website & models you want to sell.
6.) Expose my jewelry model database so people can search my models by all different ways.
I have a really nice working model database that people can use to search my models. I am not sure what all to do with this beyond exposing it. I am not sure I want to get into the jewelry model business. Right now I am trying to use what I have to jump to mass custom. If models pay the bills to develop software, so be it.

I think these tasks will lead to a model that will start paying the bills. If not, I will work locally in web development.

So some of you out there think I am schizophrenic. I say I’m out of jewelry, then I’m in, and out again. Get use to it. Some people think I am a flake and others a visionary. I think to really be a great visionary you have to be a total flake!

Thanks for the comments over the years, Paul

I have been running diamond auctions on eBay for 5 ½ years continuously. Stopping these auctions is quite a big deal for me. It’s an emotional because there is still a little profit left, I have been doing it for so long, and I guess because it was my first profitable business. It’s hard to know when to pull the plug. Averaged out, I have broke even on too many months to care. My time has to be spent on my new career in executive search and IT talent. I want to move on and learn new things. Probably the biggest reason is I want to do business face to face. The jewelry industry has been in recession for years. I am not emotionally invested in jewelry, this would be a dumb industry to start a new business in where I am working face to face.

Financially it was a bigger deal when I pulled the plug on making jewelry. That was easier because it was basically bust all the way. Not listing on eBay any more is emotional. It’s not like I am selling my eBay ID. I think it will have substantial value one day. Started in Dec of 1998, it’s 9 years old. The ID GemHunt.com is Grandfathered in. eBay has not let people register domain names as eBay ID’s.

I am still going to sell diamonds, but I am not going to pay to advertise them. So for the past 5 ½ years I paid eBay $224K. It’s like I gave them a house. I sold $5.4M in diamonds, but many were repeat sales and referrals. So I paid them 4.1% of sales. Compared to a retail store this is not bad. It started out 1-2%, and is now up to 7-10%. The margins on the sale over the years have shrunk. It was easier when I was one of the first in the business. There is no room left to pay eBay. With no profit there is no business. I knew this in the beginning, and have spent the past 5 years fighting it. This is called the “evils of discounting”. I got into this business because information became available to consumers on how to buy diamonds at a wholesale price. I am one of the people that taught that information. But you never win at this game, there is always someone fighting harder for the last percentage point of margin. Diamonds have suffered because of this. Diamonds have valve because they were promoted. With less people promoting diamonds, their demand drops. The value stays the same because the dollar is dropping and demand is coming from outside of the US. People want stuff from Best Buy instead. Will the demand pick up like it did in the 1970’s because of inflation? I am not going to try to guess that. I can always get back in the business. This time I will have a network build out locally.

I got a job in IT staffing sales in the end of August. This quite a shift from the diamond and custom jewelry sales. It’s been 3 months, and I can say this is shift for the long term. I was looking into B2B sales jobs for over a year, and working on networking and sales skills for much longer.

I wanted to work in a career that was about building relationships locally. I have been looking at a computer screen for too many years. It’s just plan fun and refreshing to do something new. There are so many fundamental concepts to learn.

So now a new goal of mine is to find ways to help technical/IT recruiters on this web-site.

This was only a matter of time. I am not going to let these assets depreciate. I still have Rhino and I can always use a service bureau if I want to make jewelry. I don’t know where I am heading with jewelry design software. I would like to write something, but it’s a hobby at this point. You can look at my views and think I’m a flake or a visionary. The farther you go out on that limb the more of flake you become. At some point your not writing business plans, but sci-fi stories.

So I posted those 3D jewelry models last month. To me the surprises were:

• There were a lot of professionals against me putting out free models. They thought it was dumb and threatened them in different ways.
• The number of models downloaded (132,300 so far and still over 3000 a day after 5 weeks).
• I’ve had a large number of people tell me they would never use a model downloaded, but were looking at them to be inspired to help them model in Matrix/Rhino better.
• Another interesting thing to me is to see what people choose to download the most and least. I would love to recursively evolve models from the top downloaded files.

It’s a surprise that no one told me it was a bad idea to post models that are not perfect for making jewelry. There are some real issues in this group of models. Some have channels too thin and prongs to close or too small. A lot of setters work in different ways, so automatically some models are wrong for them. One of the reasons I got out of this is I never formed a very good relationship with a setting to get into a grove of designing “correctly”. Basically, all models can’t fit every application. Most people are not very good at this, so our medium level work looks awesome to a lot of people out there.

Am I a visionary or a flake? I would say both. I don’t think you can be a visionary without being flaky. The unreasonable man is the one that makes the progress. Visionaries do and flakes talk. I do a lot of both.

It’s hard for me to write a blog on a regular basis. I have to get use to this format. I don’t want to put out mediocre information or ideas that I have not fully developed, but really this is what a blog is. I am always learning and can only make my best guess. What is most interesting for me is to write about subjects that I don’t know, so I am going to be wrong in this blog on a regular basis.

Feel free to email me. A lot of people do. The variety of people that read this blog is quite interesting to me. I’m in touch with a wide range of people involved with CAD/CAM for jewelry and I might be able to help you. If you are interested in having CAD, CAM, and or mass customization for jewelry software written please let me know and I can help you.

I put a 166 free jewelry models out on my site.

I don’t need them any more. I want them to get used as we put a lot of effort in them. I have become far more interested in simpler models that can be created by consumers inside of a browser. For those of you who know me I am have been working on this stuff off and on for years. Manually designing models was more of a break while I was waiting for better software. Well the time has come. Adobe is releasing some very powerful tools that will let programmers design in 3D, in real time, right in browser. Basically think Matrix Builders in a pop up Flash advertisement that only requires a click to use and no user permission to install. Adobe Flash has a larger installed user base the Windows. I have been dreaming of this sense the summer 1996 sense seeing 3D with Java and VRML. The time has come for real time 3D in the browser!

Enjoy the models,

Paul Krush

In the field of rapid manufacturing and mass customization of small simple items:

• To provide an entertaining and challenging experience for site and local Pro-Am users.
• To connect small businesses and individuals around the world.
• To provide a very large open database of simple manufacturing models always free of charge and unrestricted.
• To be an in depth source of information and training both on and offline.

This mission statement has deep meaning to me and took weeks to write. I love this mission, and have been working on piece and parts for over ten years. You would not think 69 words could mean so much. At the core this is a business of providing experiences. I am creating a new type of hobby. One that can pay for itself, or even is profitable depending on how people pursue it. I see the PaulKrush.com website being a super-connector for people and information in this subject. We will become the franchise holding company for this hobby/business. PaulKrush.com is going to help create jewelry stores in which the customers fill the cases. It’s ground breaking in one sense that it is going to happen, but simple in the fact that people have talking about this stuff for years.

2-3 years ago I wrote a few modeling tools for consumers to design diamond rings over the internet in 3D. This time I am not going to have diamonds in the jewelry. I am going to try to be a simple as possible.

I’m starting with just one part. I think a half dollar size coin is the shape I can capture the most interest with, and the simplest model I can work with. It’s 30.61mm in diameter and 2.15mm thick as per the US Mint. I am going to give people one or two 3D “windows” to work. People can submit a 3D model 29mm in diameter and .5mm thick for the front or back, or just a 1mm thick version for the front. Starting out I will mill these coins in wax. This means the 3D model only needs to be 2 ½D (X and Y information, and only a Z height). This means I can have configurrator tools written that will use 2D images to model the coin; the grayscale color value determining the Z height within the .5 or 1mm window I am giving people.

Doing a flat object like a coin or charm is a step backward for me. Three years ago I wanted to have consumers design their own diamond ring in full 3D in the browser. This was the gist of a few tries with RingHunt.com. Ten years ago I was tinkering around with pieces for mosaics. I even built my own CNC mill to cut out the parts. I’m a DIYer to the core, but have learned to delegate over the years. You can see some of these projects at Inlay.com. Yes I would still like to build CNC machines to pump out the parts by the millions, but first things first, we need the content!

My interest in operating a service bureau is purely for testing this idea out. So at first I will be acting like a service bureau, but what is interesting is it will be a public service bureau. Everyone will be able to see and use the 3D files people will submit for manufacture. I feel this will foster a huge amount of creativity.

I have decided to try out a blog format for publishing. On one hand I think it’s very sloppy, but on the other hand it will get the information out. It serves to output ideas where the forums and other pages on the site don’t. This blog is about getting these loose ideas out to the world. I’m am going to release the content and let others sort though it if they want. It just takes too much time to organize it correctly. I want to spread my seeds to the wind and see want happens.

The blog is personal and for my use mostly. This is my way of talking to myself, building and recording ideas for latter use. I have keep journals over the past 12 years and written over a ½ million words in these journals. Most of what I write is not private. It’s time my writing gets more public. I hope to see what comments people leave and who I meet from this blog. I also hope this blog will also generate significant income over the years. Post topics will be mostly based on the PaulKrush.com Mission Statement.

I want to thank you for reading.