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 revolutionary ideas about consumers designing their own jewelry that I have been developing for years. Few people see what I am talking about and the rest think I’m nuts. Sometimes I start believing these naysayers. For the past week I have thinking I should hang it up and go totally corporate, say good by to jewelry software, and become an Oracle developer. Well it’s been months really. OK, I’ve been like this all my life. I put my foot down a few years ago and said I was finish the goals that I start. It’s hard to believe I’ve had my own business in the jewelry industry for 5 ½ years.

As my ideas get better and I have more experience with jewelry I times are getting tougher in the industry. Stores are going out of business and people are more interested in Best Buy than jewelry. Consumers are so educated that the products have turned into commodities. Asia is cranking up production, doing great work, and crushing manufactures here in the States. Franchises make it difficult for the independent to survive. The trends are not good at all. But, I see something different. What happens when consumers have a chance to design the jewelry themselves? Look at how incredibly popular beading is. Heck, there are no consumer jewelry design packages right now. There has to be room for one person in the world to make some cash at this software.

I see past these tough times for the jewelry industry. There is always going to be room for jewelry. Just thing what’s going to happen when all these electronic devices start getting so small they can be put into jewelry elegantly? Cell phone or mp3 player in your custom earrings? Why not? I think the number of medical monitoring devices will fit into this category as well.
It’s very hard to decide when to quit with these ideas. What if I’m a few weeks away from the finding right ingredient to make this all come together? How do I stay motivated?

The deeper I get into this, the harder it is to get out. I really think I have a great business plan for free jewlery design software for consumers. I need to get this plan on paper and criticized! I know. I need to talk to a lot of people about this. This is one reason I started a blog.

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.