I had a very interesting day today. The day started with getting up a little bit later than usual. But I quickly reviewed all the emails and basically planned out the day.

Earlier in the morning I found out that my CFO, Carsten, resigned abruptly without any notice. And so…in fact it was interesting because I didn’t react to it the way I would have in the past. Basically it was, that’s how it is and we move on. And so I just went on about the day.

Met with Jerry and Aileen, and we went over the discussion, about how to provide training for our staff on better use of Share Point, how to task tract, and how we’re going to roll out the projects. And then we jumped into an interesting conversation about the position of the sight manager. Which is going to be a commission based position. Then we basically laid out the whole structure of how somebody would get paid, what the criteria are, how we handle a mature sight verses a green field sight.

The afternoon I basically took over financing…finances again, once we change all the passwords on the accounts. Adjusted my cash flow, moved things around, and just started to think about how to handle the finance all over again.

So the bottom line is, finances are in pretty good shape, I’m just about to be there with the systems, the departure of a CFO is going to be a pain, but the reality is, I’m no further back than I was before. I’m a little further ahead, I guess, and overall in pretty good shape. So; interestingly, Phillip, one of the guys that I was talking to about becoming a CFO sometime ago, called me today just out of the blue. We had about an hour discussion about how I should be looking at the financial position, and what I should be thinking about. So it was actually very kind of Phillip to reach out to me, and just give a little bit of coaching. So that was great.

Beyond that reach out to Pecce, who I had met at the Opposite House on Sunday. I was really enamored with this gentleman. Lots of wisdom, I basically, very directly asked him if he would become my mentor. I know he’s in Hainan right now for a few months. So I offered to fly to Hainan for a lunch, if he would be willing to basically coach me. So we’ll see where that goes. But I basically stick my foot in the ground and moved along with that.

I have hired, temporarily, a designer. And we’re working on the overall strategy for navigation for all the new sites, the myjewelrycove sites, and this girl from Romania, she did an amazing job, actually, with just a couple of hours worth of work. Brought together some really cool cross navigation stuff that I was looking for. This is thanks to odesk, and just out sourcing through that engine. Really fast, really efficient and seems like really good people.

I had a bunch of people from India that were applying for the jobs and I…at the risk of being biased, my experience with Indians has not been so good so far.

So I actually have been seeking out people from Ukraine, Romania, and Eastern Europe. I find that the talent there seems to be really keen, quite fresh, and in touch. And again I was proven right. The girl I had brought on just did a tremendous job. I’m going to include the image of her work in the blog.

I kind of gave myself today, to kind of cool off after Carstens abrupt resignation. I kind of realized that what he did was not acceptable. I’m just not going to accept that kind of behavior from anybody, now or in the future. I’m going to engage Carsten and make sure that…lets just say that we behave in China like we would in the rest of the world. Which is obey our contracts, obligations and so on.

My plan is to be nice about it. If it doesn’t go nice, then there’s always plan B. Yeah, but the days of nice Paul just saying, hey…OK good luck, are not there anymore. Somebody does something wrong, I’m not going to accept it.

I’m ending up the day, with a really nice dinner at a Korean restaurant. Sitting outside, the weather is really brilliant. Clear skies, perfect weather, great food, great company. Bumped into Gerry on the patio after dinner, so it was kind of great to see everybody enjoying themselves.

Tomorrow we have a karaoke night planned out for the whole company to celebrate the success of our Amazon deal of the day. It was something else that everybody pulled off together. I was really proud of how we did. I wanted everybody to feel, kind of the same joy that I’m feeling, that we’re working so well.

With that, I’m ending the day with a foot massage, a little bit of relaxation. I’m going to finish a couple of small projects in the next couple of hours, then start the day fresh again tomorrow.

(Dictated via Voxie)